A Hollow Dream of Summer's End (7 page)

"You're pu-pu-playing cheap," Brian protested. "All you do is throw fireballs."

"You call it cheap, I call it winning."

"Whatever, I'm du-du...I'm finished." Brian closed his Nintendo and tossed it onto his sleeping bag like a piece of rotten fruit.

"It's all right to cry," Freddie sang, rubbing a fake tear out of his eye. "Crying gets the mad out of you."

"It's 'sad,' dumbass. That's how the song goes."

"You're the one that memorized it."

"Whatever," Brian said, waving Freddie away like a bad odor. His attention was fixed out the window.

"What's up?" asked Aiden.

"Should we have turned off the kitchen light?" Brian asked.

"Maybe. I don't know," Aiden wondered. He'd left it on for his dad and Julie, thinking perhaps they'd be downstairs, but perhaps they'd already gone to bed. Or perhaps they were upstairs, ‘doing it’ as Freddie said. The thought repulsed him.

"Come on, chop chop. The winner's hungry," Freddie said.

"Maybe I'll just eat your slice," Brian answered and swung his feet over the hatch.

"Then good luck getting up without a ladder," Freddie answered. "That's the fat tax to get back."

Brian gave him the finger and climbed down, the rope ladder clattering, the floor creaking from the strain. Then, moments later, he was on the grass below.

"I bet he eats it all," Freddie said to Aiden.

"Nah, he's honest," Aiden said, knowing this was true. Brian was many things, but a liar was the least of it. Honest to a fault sometimes, which was why Freddie gave him hell. After all, it was hard to cheat off a friend who had the opposite of a poker face. Who often collapsed into a stream of confessions from little more than a stern look.

"I'm gonna watch to make sure he doesn't," Freddie said, and pressed his head against the window, staring out into the dim yard. The faint lights cast dim shadows around the edge of the grass.

"Dude," Freddie said. "Hey, come here. Look at this."

"What's up?" Aiden came over to the window facing the edge of the yard, opposite the direction Brian had headed.

Freddie tapped the glass. "What's that?"

"What's what?"

"Over there. On the path."

Aiden pressed his face against the glass. It was dark, a world of shapes and shadows. The yard lights made it hard to see exactly what he was supposed to be looking for.

"I don't—"

Then his eyes adjusted, spotting the shapes along the edge of the yard and the woods. More importantly, the shapes that belonged there. And the one shape that didn't.

His blood ran cold.

"There's someone standing there," Freddie said. "Holy shit, do you see that?"

"Yeah," Aiden whispered. "I see it."

Sure enough, at the edge of the yard where the path led off into the dark woods of the preserve, a shape lingered at the edge of the darkness. At first he had thought it to be a lump, perhaps some old tree trunk half cut down.

But no tree trunk stood like that. No tree trunk swayed and shifted.

Aiden slid the window open to get a better look. A dozen bugs fluttered against the screen, moths and mosquitos all drawn to light and fighting to get in. He ignored them and opened the screen as well, focusing on the lingering thing at the edge of the yard.

Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick!
came a sound from the shape. It wore something, clothes perhaps, although Aiden couldn't be sure. Rags seemed to flow and fall about it like an old quilt, patchwork tatters almost a part of the woods itself. Its head bobbed, animal-like, as if it had caught a scent.

"Holy shit," Freddie said. "It's coming."

It moved onto the lawn, sneaking almost; a slinking crouch, low and close to the ground. Like a bandit in a dark house, a thief among a thousand traps. Aiden rushed to the hatch, ready to pull the ladder up, but the shape passed beneath the treehouse.

Brian, he realized. It's going for Brian.

Both Freddie and Aiden ran to the opposite window, just in time to see the thing slink across the lawn and toward—

"Brian," Aiden called out, spotting his friend about a quarter of the way across the yard. "Brian!"

"What?" the chubby boy answered, turning back to the treehouse.

"Oh my God, it's moving," Freddie said. "It's running!"

And move it did. The shape strode across the lawn, passing a light and giving a brief hint at its attire. Long strips of cloth were tattered and frayed, some covered in moss or bramble. A person, homeless perhaps, wrapped in a dozen different rags. A wretched shamble, humanoid in only the vaguest sense, only on the surface.

And beneath that? Something
else
. Something that ran on legs too long and twisted for a natural gait.

Hwock! Tick-tick-tick!
it screamed and picked up speed.

"Brian, look out!" Aiden called out, his words coming high pitched and panicked.

Brian turned the wrong way, exposing his back to the...

The
what
? Aiden wondered. The
thing
.

And at the sight of that boy’s vulnerable back, the shambling form let out a burst of speed.

Tick-tick-tick!
it rattled.
Tick-tick-tick! GWEEEE!

It covered the space between the treehouse and their friend in mere seconds. It moved fast, so fast. And that sound—that clattering ticking, that sudden, child-like shriek:
GWEEEE!

Brian turned just in time to see the frayed shape emerging from the shadows, wondering for a split-second: what on earth could make such a piercing, shrill call at such a late hour?

And then the answer was upon him.

"Hey—HEY! No NO NO!" he screamed and went over backward as the two shapes merged.

"What the fuck!? What the fuck!? What the fuck!?" Freddie gasped.

"Run!" Aiden screamed, or at least he thought he did. "Run and don't look back!"

But running was out of the question. Brian was down, rolling on the ground as the shape engulfed his upper half.
Gweee!
it screamed almost gleefully.
Gweee! Gweee!

Then its scream turned wet.

"DON'T PU-PU-PLEASE OH GOD NO DUH-DUH-DUH—" were the last words they heard from Brian's lips before his voice became a gargle, and his shriek reached pitch higher than any note he had sung. The fat boy's legs spasmed beneath the massive form. His fingers dug into the lawn, squeezed a fistful of dirt and grass, flopped about, and then went limp.

Gweeeee!
the thing shrieked as it reared back and revealed a mouthful of wet teeth.

Not just a mouth: a cavern. An abyss, wet and sharp and lined with a thousand foul razors.

Hwock! Tick tick tick tick...
it clattered and chattered.
Hwock! Tick tick tick...

"It's a killer! Oh God oh God oh God it's a killer," Freddie was screaming, clutching Aiden's hand. "It killed Brian Oh God... oh God..."

The world had slowed, gone sideways, and yet somehow those moments felt more real than anything Aiden had experienced. Sound faded, warped, distorted. Freddie's words were silent, mute. Perhaps his mind simply couldn't process it all, or perhaps Freddie had simply folded in and gone numb. Yet the sounds the thing on the lawn made over the body of their friend felt closer than the sounds of Freddie's gasps and cries inches away.

It was eating, Aiden realized. That person, that rag-covered
thing
was slurping at their friend like a dog over a plate of fallen spaghetti.

Gweeeee!
it cackled with joy.
Gweeee!

It tossed its head back into the air and, for one brief moment, Aiden saw that it was not a person. No, of course not. No such person could have moved that fast, his brain seemed to say in a calm voice. No such noises like that could come from a human throat.

Hwock! Tick tick tick! Hwock! Gweeeeee
!

Its head was a glistening thing, a reptilian mound covered in tumorous bumps. Its mouth was a maw, a glistening bear trap that stretched across a knotted face. Black eyes, perhaps a dozen, blinked like glistening onyx stones set on the side of a head more lizard than human. Thick strands of liquid—perhaps once a part of Brian—fell from that maw of knives that snapped, chewed, and swallowed.

Gweeee!
it shrieked.
Gweeeee!

“That’s not real,” Freddie mumbled in a daze. “That’s not... that’s not real... that's not...”

Something seized Aiden, a sudden anger, a rage. Brian was hurt, or worse. If he didn’t do something, that thing would have their friend. If he didn't act, he'd never forgive himself.

He grabbed the closet thing he could find: his Nintendo. Then he flung it out the window at the shape.

There were many things Aiden was poor at: math, science, and lately it seemed interacting with his friends and classmates. But one thing he did have was a damn fine arm. He’d pitched two seasons of Little League, played up to live pitching at age nine. He had thrown some wicked fastballs from forty-six feet when most of his classmates were still using the machine. And while it wasn’t a baseball, in his hands it flew like one.

The Nintendo arced, spun, and caught the thing in the side, a meaty thwack!

Startled, the shape leapt to its right, clicking and clattering in surprise. Its massive maw, that head with no neck, bobbed and lowered, studying the broken object that had struck it. For a brief moment, as it shifted and moved, Aiden saw not two legs beneath the rags but three. Something that resembled a gnarled arm jutted out from the center of its chest. And those eyes glimmered and glistened, its head rising and scanning the yard.

Tick-tick-tick-tick!
it clattered and clicked, body lowering to a defensive crouch.

“Stay away from him!” Aiden shouted, pitching a glass bottle of iced tea. The second throw wasn’t as good as the first: the shambling form sidestepped just as the bottle clattered and rolled past. The shape let out a gargle and spat something at the bottle. Then, almost like a cat, it bounced over and sniffed the bottle. A faint wheeze, then silence. It seemed to understand the object posed no further threat.

Then it snapped its head in the direction of the treehouse.

“Why did you do that?” Freddie whispered, but it was too late.

The hunched thing scanned the yard, dark eyes moving quickly.

"Why did you—"

It spotted them. The eyes shifted, a sheen of silver glistening in the black orbs as it blinked and centered on the treehouse. From fifty feet away Aiden could see those hideous pupils focus in on them.

Gweeeeeeeeee!
it shrieked.
Gweeeee!

And it took off toward them.

"It's coming ohmygodohmygod—" Freddie gasped.

It was coming indeed, but not like anything driven by human legs. It skittered and bounded, more of an insect than a human. The frayed clothes and rags flapped like bloody streamers behind a child's bike.

And then it was beneath the treehouse and the rope ladder shook and swayed. Freddie ran to the edge and curled up, his hands covering his face. He was gone, Aiden realized. Gone to some far off place that made sense, more sense than this. The world had turned on a dime, gone dark and sour, and poor Freddie was still back in a land where monsters didn't exist.

But Aiden wasn't. For all his faults and flaws, initiative was not one of them. He didn't want to die, he thought. Not tonight. Not in this treehouse. He ran over to the hatch, slid legs first, and peered over the edge. What he saw sent hot spikes of horror up his spine.

It moves fast, he thought. So fast.

The thing was already nearing the top of the ladder. A grey face of a thousand wrinkles and lumps, a mouth as wide as Aiden’s shoulders. It climbed the ropes quickly, wrapping long fingers around each rung as its three legs pulled a bloated body upwards.

He had seen enough; no more was necessary to infect his dreams. And with that he slammed the hatch down as hard and as fast as he could.

But not fast enough.

The thing screamed and clicked, sending a wretched protuberance inside as the hatch smashed down on top of it.

"Mommy please ohgodohgod—" Freddie cried in the corner.

"Help me!" Aiden screamed, fighting with the hatch as the limb slapped about the wood floor. "Freddie, fucking help me!"

It wasn't quite an arm that slapped about in the gap. Nor was it a tentacle. It was more of a foreleg, like something found on a praying mantis. Wet, spastic, and strong, it was multi-jointed, quick, yet terribly clumsy as it slapped about and tried to strike. Pocked skin, grey and sickly, contracted over lean muscle joints that bent in bizarre ways. Sweat glistened and dripped from pea-sized pores all up and down the obscene limb. A dozen small barbed tentacles wriggled at the tip, set above a clustered lump of black eyes, berry-like and blinking.