
The Animal Parade
While this was going on at the Kent house on Sunday, in a house not far away in the same town, a young girl named Evangeline Marie Clark was working on a series of drawings.
She was making animals.
Evangeline was creating a fabulous parade filled with fantastic animals. The young girl sat at the kitchen table in her house, singing, chattering, and drawing happily. She spoke charmingly and eloquently to the characters in the parade she was creating, pausing to listen, nod, laugh, and even gasp with excited surprise or joyful tears. There was apparently a host of others all about her — invisible as they were to the family — all with names, faces, and histories that she seemed to know and share.
There were people, too.
Humans are also animals.
She drew a picture of a striking young woman who seemed to be smiling right back at her.
“Abigail Grace!” she said excitedly, pausing her work. "You know me so well, so very well! You have thought of absolutely everything.”
The lovely Abigail Grace Shirley had a generous scatter of tawny freckles on her shoulders, back, arms and cheekbones, and Evangeline dressed her in a simple dress that matched her pale skin perfectly and clearly showed the beautiful markings on her left back and shoulder. Evangeline recognized the symbol they made at once and smiled as she wove Abigail's thick wavy hair atop her beautiful head so as not to obscure the pattern.
In addition to her long conversation with Abigail, Evangeline spoke to the other animals, who apparently answered. As she drew two adult giraffes, a male, and a female, she spoke in a quite serious tone at first, saying, “Now you two are together again, be blessed!” She listened intently for some time and smiled with a sweet sigh. “Yes! The days are grief and sorrow are behind you. My dearest Sheena, how precious your little ones are!”
Sheena the giraffe responded, and Evangeline listened intently, her beautiful eyes lit bright with tears as she etched out the two little twin giraffes.
The very first picture she drew in her animal parade was the giraffes, and the woman named Abigail Grace was with them. Evangeline spent a lot of time drawing Abigail and the giraffes. They were all tall and slender and lovely and their faces and eyes sparkled brightly.
The giraffes were led by the pair she spoke to, the great living Ndlulamithi,(taller than the trees), alongside Mother Sheena (gracious of God), together with all the younger giraffes, including Aisha, Twigger, and the dear departed twins, Shay and Shari.
“The living and the dead, reunited in grace!” Evangeline said.
The young girl certainly spoke quite differently than she ever had. In fact, no one listening could make any sense of it, although it sounded dead serious.
The mother, sitting in the next room, shuddered to hear words from the child’s mouth that were so strange and yet so authoritative.
“Oh my God!” Patricia cried out, again and again. “We need help! Who can help us? What can we do, Lance?”
The oldest brother Lance handled all the family business starting that morning, running out to pick up food from the store and keeping a sharp eye on the visitors that kept arriving at the house to leave different items. Standing near the front window he described for his mother each individual or group, as well as their behavior.
“Who is it now? What do they want?” Patricia would ask. “What are they wearing? Are they from here? Do you recognize them?”
“Just regular clothes, Mama. Still, they ain’t right. You can see it in their eyes.”
He also reported on what was happening in the town when he went out, such as the activity of shoppers at the store, any other unusual events, and his personal thoughts on the matter.
“It’s an alien takeover.” Lance said. “Others have been taken over, too. They are definitely planning something.”
The younger brother Joe spent a lot of his time up in his room playing video games, especially now. The endless commentary of Lances along with his mother's plaintive words was too much for him to take. He was also very worried about his sister. When he came downstairs, he would stand in the door to the kitchen and gaze intently at her until his brother finally stopped him.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, man.” Lance said. “Don’t even look at her, we don’t know who or what that is. Just stay upstairs where you are safe.”
The family saw that she had changed physically as well as mentally. Her face had taken on a more adult shape and posture, her skin glowed, and her eyes were so bright and wide. She was eating well, too. Starting early that morning, the first package of food was delivered with a delicious smelling egg sandwich hot from an oven somewhere close by. Evangeline smacked her lips happily over this while she drank the milk that came with it, saving the fresh fruit and nuts for a snack later. Each meal was delivered like this on the front porch, and somehow the girl knew exactly when to get up and retrieve it.
The people who arrived with these things were all different, adults as well as children — mostly people that Lance did not know and had never seen. Some of them didn’t even bring anything. Many hung out for a while in the yard or on the sidewalk, talking privately to each other and waiting for his sister to appear.
The strange thing was how quiet it was, other than that strange feeling in the air. Very few cars and regular folks were out and about.
Occasionally, he did recognize someone, and he shook his head regretfully.
“It’s Jake Thompson!” He said urgently to his mother at one point. “I’m not really too surprised. He’s here with some girls, and they are just sitting out there in the yard waiting.”
“I wonder where his family is.” Patricia said. “I guess they just let him go anywhere he wants and bother us when we already have trouble enough.”
They — whoever they were — also brought her other items, including special pens, markers, paint, brushes, pencils, and paper, as well as items like slippers for her feet, soap and cream for her evening bath, and even some pretty bracelets that she got great joy out of putting on her bare arms and jangling now and then, especially when she had finished another drawing.
At times she went out and spoke with the visitors who came, all of whom she seemed to know. Kind greetings flowed from her lips as well as gentle but certain commands. Observers — neighbors as well as the amazed family — were astonished to see that the guests behaved reverently and paid the young girl great honor with their body language and words. They gave her strange titles and even bent their heads respectfully in front of her.
Lance heard her being called Queen Nikki Kitten more than once, which he reported from the window where he listened through the crack. When Evangeline came into the living area to go outside and when she headed back to the kitchen through the room her mother and Lance shrank back from her and sat in stiff silence.
They started their conversation back up as soon as she vanished into the kitchen again.
“Why? Oh — why is she doing this? What is she even doing? Why are they coming here? Oh my god — what do they want with us?” Patricia moaned fitfully.
“Chill out.” Lance said. “They are sick, they can’t control themselves. We have to help them, Mama! We have to help ourselves, too.”
The mother was terrified to hear all those strange words and witness so many bewildering activities. She was also thinking of something else. She clearly remembered making passionate love to a stranger on a trip she had taken by herself to visit her own family after the death of her aunt.
He had been a powerful, strong, and handsome man who she had never forgotten although she never learned his name. He was foreigner with a rich, deep voice that had thrilled her to the core when he sang a strange song at the end of their lovemaking.
She had never forgotten it.
That was surely the moment Evangeline had been made!
Thanks for reading!
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