Closer To Heaven by Patrick Sean Lee (books to read romance .txt) 📖

“Oh sure!” Lashawna said. “First we need to go back to Target and find a telescope, though.” She smiled at me when she said that. I wondered if Jerrick could hear smiles?

“Wait a minute. FIRST we go to the library. All of us. Then we can go to Target, if there’s time,” Jerrick said.

I think he heard his sister’s smile.

“You’re not the boss, Jerrick Freeman!” I told him.

“Well, someone has to be, Amelia Earheart.”

“That’s not my last name, and you’re still not my boss,” I answered.

“Well you’re scatter-brained. If it weren’t for me you’d still be eating cold food and lighting candles to see with. Someone has to tell you what to do, Amelia…whatever your last name is.”

“It’s McDougal! And you’re still NOT MY…BOSS!”

“Hah. Then go find your telescope and your dumb clothes. I’ll find the library without you. Take care of your own self,” he said.

“How will you find anything,” I yelled. “You can’t even see!”

“Get away from me you little spoiled brat,” he said. I could see he was very hurt, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like him telling me what we had to do, and so I ran out the front door to get away from him. He was nasty and mean lately. I didn’t like him anymore.

I walked through the yard between the rectory and the church, and then went out onto the sidewalk in front. It was quiet, and I was tired of that, too. I wished there would be a noise. Anything besides the sound of Jerrick’s dumb generator chugging away behind the house. A dog barking, or other children screaming. A jet up in the sky. Anything that was NORMAL!

Sometimes I think wishes are prayers, if they’re good wishes. I’d walked almost to the corner when I heard that different sound. One I’d heard lots of times before everyone died. It was the sound of a car’s engine behind me on Birch Street. The street where I used to live. I turned quickly and saw the back end of a car. I don’t know what kind it was, but I think I saw flames on its side near the rear—and it was going south very fast. I just knew it was Munster driving! He and the grown-up were the only other people alive. It had to be Munster. He must be all right, I thought. He just must be!

I ran back toward Birch Street as fast as I could, and on the way I asked Saint Therese to tell Jesus I was sorry for being mean to my friend Jerrick. Later I would tell Jerrick I was sorry, and that we could go all day long to the library if he still wanted. But for now I had to see if I could follow Munster in that car!

I came to the corner, and then looked way down the street, the way the car had gone, but I didn’t see anything. I did hear the car, though. It was far away, and so I began to run faster, hoping it would stop so that I could catch up to it. I got to the next corner and turned. There was a big house that had always been there, and big trees and lots of bushes. I was on Munster’s street again. Halfway down the block I saw the flame car parked in front of my friend’s house, but no one was inside the car. He and the man—the man must have been with him, I thought—had probably gone inside.

Munster had to be alive, and if he was, the man had not murdered him yet, and that meant that maybe he wasn’t bad after all. Still, I thought maybe the man had just captured him and was keeping him prisoner. There was only one way to find out for sure, and that was to go down to his house and peek through the windows to see if Munster was all tied up and had cuts and things on him. If he was tied up and hurt, I’d have to figure out a way to get him free. That would be very hard because grownups, and especially murderers, are much stronger than little girls.

When I arrived at the house next door to Munster’s, I sneaked into the yard, which had a big wooden fence separating it from Munster’s. Like every other place, the grass was very high and falling over, but not in swirls, which was good. The windows of the house nearest to me were broken, and I guessed that was because of Munster. The smell coming through the broken glass wasn’t too bad, but it was still there. I held my nose with one hand and tiptoed down the sidewalk until I found a board in the fence that had been broken. I looked over at Munster’s house. There were three windows; one near the front, which is where his living room was, one right across from me, and that one was his dining room I think, and another near the back of the house. That was his kitchen. I listened, too, but didn’t hear anything at first.

As I stood there peeking through the broken fence I wondered if I should squeeze through and get closer, or even walk around to the back and look into the kitchen window? IF Munster was tied up, and if the man saw me, I knew he would chase after me and catch me. But, too, maybe I would see them sitting at the table having lunch and just talking. I had to decide what I should do, and so I looked once more into the windows—there was no one inside—and then scrunched up my body and went over into his yard.

I stood with my back against the stucco wall beneath the dining room window, my arms and hands spread out as though I needed them to balance me, or hold me tightly to the wall. I listened. I thought I heard voices, but if I had, they were very low, or coming from another room. I took a few deep breaths and then crouched low and went to the back of the house where the kitchen was. Near the back of the yard, beyond the mess of old bottles and cans that Munster had tossed out the kitchen door, I saw the big mound of dirt, just inside the wire fence that blocked his yard from the alley. His momma and daddy were under that pile of dirt, which gave me the shivers.

There was a small porch made out of wood outside the white door, with two steps leading up to it. The old screen door that used to cover it hanged by the bottom hinge, like someone had smashed into it and broken it. It was lying, hooked by that hinge, onto the porch and the steps. If I stepped on the screen trying to get up onto the porch, it might creak or make some other noise that would make the man know I was outside, and so again I had to decide whether to risk that or go to another window. The sound of voices had gone, and it was very quiet, like it would be in our church when no one was inside.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a movement out in the alley. I turned my head and nearly fainted. A cloud had appeared, spinning very rapidly right outside the gate—which I knew would do me no good, because the cloud could just whisk right through the gate and attack me.

I stared at it, frozen. It stared back at me, and I knew it wasn’t scared at all. I wondered many things in that moment, but mostly I wondered how long I had before it decided to come and get me? Near my right foot was an empty jar. I bent over, picked it up, and then threw it as hard as I could right at the cloud. I didn’t stop to see if the bottle hit the cloud, instead I turned, jumped up onto the porch, and threw myself inside the house!

Maybe the cloud would be angry that I threw something at it, maybe the man was right inside and would jump on me. The thought of that was not as scary as being attacked and killed by an angry cloud. At least the man was human. I guess that’s what I thought. It all happened so quickly, though.

Once I’d landed on the linoleum floor, I jumped to my feet and slammed the door closed and locked it. I didn’t wait around to see if the cloud was coming, instead I ran screaming out of the kitchen, into the little hallway that had Munster’s momma and daddy’s old bedroom and a bathroom on one side. On the other side was the dining room, and at the end of the hall was the stairway that led up to Munster’s bedroom where we’d slept until he got captured. There was another bedroom up there, and another bathroom. Because Munster and the man weren’t on the main floor, I knew they had to be upstairs in one of those rooms. Because I had screamed, too, I knew they had to have heard me. Well, I was so scared, that’s why I screamed. I couldn’t help it.

Which was it to be, the cloud or the man?

I had a thought. I went back to the kitchen and yanked open one of the drawers by the sink and pulled out one his Momma’s big knives. I couldn’t cut the cloud, or stab it, because what good would it do to stab a cloud? But I’d seen movies where women grab knives and stab a killer in their house. I would stab the man if he came after me—and I knew he would very soon.

Another thought came to me. Hide before the man came down. In the living room there were big, heavy curtains that hung from the ceiling almost, clear to the floor over the windows. If I could get there, maybe…but that was no good. I didn’t have time. I looked at the sink. Under it was a cabinet. Not very big, but big enough for me to climb into if it wasn’t all filled up with cleaning stuff like Momma’s always was. I opened the doors. Inside there was only a box of dishwasher soap and some plastic shopping bags. I pushed them aside, climbed in with my knife, and then pulled the doors back closed. I waited there with my knife right by my face, pointing at the closed doors. If the man opened those doors, I’d cut his hands, and then jump out and stab him! I hoped. I was shaking.

Through the little crack between the doors I could see light. As I lay there imagining having to fight a grown up when he opened the cabinet and saw me, the light began to fade, and then it went all gray, as though…a big, black cloud…had covered the sun.

The cloud had come into the kitchen, and I was certain it would find me soon enough. My only hope was that it found the man before it found me, and that it would kill him. And that Munster was tied up upstairs. And that the cloud wouldn’t know it or bother to look for me or Munster because it had killed someone and wasn’t hungry to do that anymore.

Dear Saint Terese please go straight to Jesus and ask him to send an angel down here right away because I’m very scared and don’t want to die I’ll light more candles if I ever get back home Amen.

The next thing that happened made my hair stand up.