A Hollow Dream of Summer's End

by Andrew van Wey

  "Dude, it sucks," Freddie said as they crossed the fence and gate that signaled the end of the preserve. "Seriously, it's like something my sister would read."

  "Well, it is a diary," Aiden said. "And it was written by a girl."

  "Plus it's, like, fa-famous and stuff," Brian added. "I think there's a movie."

  "It's still boring. Plus it's only famous ’cause she died, which sucks and all. But still, why couldn't we read about like vampires or something?"

  "’Cause vampires aren't real," Brian said.

  Freddie gave Brian a smirk. "No shit, Sherlock."

  "Keep digging, Watson."

  The woods thinned and the trail ended at the edge of the grass lawn of the backyard. A dozen yard lights shaped like small Japanese lanterns glowed around the perimeter. Bright, warm, welcoming, like the tarmac of some airport seen at night. Maybe it wasn't home yet, but was starting to feel a little more like it.

  He turned and gave a final glance back at the woods and the creeks, the rolling hills and folds of the preserve behind them. That dark path, silent and empty. What else was out there beyond the shadows? What had happened, back in that dry creek bed?

  "Dude, food!" Freddie called out.

  Nothing, Aiden told himself. Nothing happened. Then he turned and hurried toward the lights of the house, a sunset sanctuary at the top of that cold hill.

  12.

  THERE WERE FEW TRUTHS he knew at age twelve, but this was one: pizza always tasted better after it had sat for a few hours.

  Aiden closed the box and put it back on the kitchen counter before devouring another slice. They had enough left over to have three slices each for breakfast. Unless they stayed up past midnight and got hungry, which was always a distinct possibility.

  "Where's Julie?" Brian asked, folding two slices over into a sandwich.

  Aiden shrugged, sipped his soda. He hadn't seen Julie or his dad since they'd taken off an hour and a half ago. Maybe they were watching TV, or working, or...

  "Maybe they're, like, doing it," Freddie said with a grin.

  Aiden shrugged a second time, not wanting to give Freddie the satisfaction of an answer.

  "I bet they are," Freddie added. "I bet they're doing it."

  "Dude, you don't even know what 'it' is," Brian said. "And even if you du-du... even if you did, you'd end out doing it wrong."

  —

  They got blankets and pillows, three sleeping bags, two candles and a flashlight from the linen closet downstairs. They unplugged their Nintendos, now fully charged, and brought them along with Freddie's iPad. At half past nine they crossed the great lawn, carrying their gadgets and snacks, a safari expedition in their own minds. It was no different than the countless times they'd done this before, tossing up a tent in one of their backyards back in Alder Glen. It was no different except the lawn was an acre long and the tent was a treehouse three stories above the lawn. Still, it was familiar enough and comforting, even if the details were different.

  "Crap, I forgot my phone," Aiden said, turning to Freddie. "Can you carry my bag?"

  "Get it later," Freddie answered. "My hands are full."

  The treehouse was lit like a dim torch, a candle on the otherwise dark hillside. The yard-lights that lined the perimeter and the houselights from the kitchen were the only signs of human habitation. The freeways and bridges, the distant airport and the rumbling trains that made their way up and down the peninsula, all should have been visible from the treehouse.

  Yet they weren't. The dark night obscured what should have been an otherwise gorgeous view of the Bay Area below. A fog perhaps, he thought, yet when he looked skyward he saw the stars above, a faint red-blue among the darkness of space. And a moon, blood red and half lit, high in the sky.

  Waxing gibbous, he recalled, thinking of the field trip to the planetarium, and how it felt like a lifetime ago.

  13.

  THE SUMMER SHOULD HAVE lasted forever.

  And, for the past two and a half months, it almost had. Almost.

  Yet everything had its eventual end, even summers, he thought. And here it was, the final weekend before they returned to the courtyards and classrooms, to the friends and fights, to their final year at the L-shaped school they'd known since they'd started at one end as kindergartners and made their way across it and to the other end as fifth graders. This was it: the final night of summer before the final year of elementary school. And beyond both horizons lay an unknown future.

  They passed the hours before midnight playing video games, the three of them in their own separate little worlds. They spoke occasionally, Aiden showing Brian the legendary quality sword he'd acquired off a robot hydra on his latest hack-n-slash dungeon crawler. Brian gave a sidelong glance, grunted out approval, and returned to tossing fireballs and swinging fists at Freddie on Street Fighter.

  Afterward they watched a movie on Freddie's iPad. It was forgettable flick about vampires and werewolves fighting each other, and all throughout some woman in a skintight outfit flung bullets and one-liners at the bad guys. Freddie fell asleep for the second half until Brian woke him up by pouring water in his ear. The lanky kid wailed on the big kid, five solids punches to his meaty arm until all Brian could say was: "Sorry! Uncle! Sorry!"

  The night darkened. They lit citronella candles that turned the air sweet. Midnight turned to one a.m., and yet Aiden still found himself wide awake. It was the last weekend after all, the last time they could stay awake until sunrise and not have a quiz or a test looming on the horizon.

  Brian's stomach rumbled as he shifted. "Is it cool if we bring the pizza up?"

  "We?" Freddie asked. "Does your stomach count as a separate person?"

  "I'm thinking of us, dumbass," Brian said. "It's called manners."

  "Yeah, go grab it," Aiden said, adding: "Not it."

  "Not it!" Brian and Freddie shouted in perfect unison.

  "Arm wra-wra, arm wrestle for it."

  "Eff that! You're the one with the talking stomach, you get it," Freddie countered.

  "Rock paper scissors," Brian replied.

  "Whatever."

  One a three count they tossed out paper. On the next count they both tossed out rock. On the third they kept rock. The fourth count, scissors. The fifth, paper. By the time they hit twelve identical counts it had gotten ridiculous.

  "I think you two just broke some record," Aiden said.

  "You're totally cheating," Brian whined.

  "Okay, Einstein," Freddie replied. "How do you cheat at rock paper scissors?"

  "I don't know, bu-bu-but you'd find a way."

  "What, like I'm psychiatric?"

  "You mean psychic."

  "Same difference."

  Another three in a row, all draws. Brian threw up his hands. "Fight you for it," he said, picking up his Nintendo. "Two out of three."

  Freddie fired up his Nintendo as well, the glow from the screen turning his face a sinister blue-green in the darkness. "You're on."

  "You two make a cute couple," Aiden said. Like my mom and dad, he wanted to say, but didn't.

  It was true. His parents had fought much the same way Freddie and Brian fought, always picking at each other. Their words were less cruel than his friends’, but beneath it there was something colder, something that had festered for years. And when there were no words there was a silence that had hung heavy over dinner time until dinners were taken at separate times in separate rooms.

  Aiden turned his attention back to his book. Funny, he thought, how the words required reading could turn a story into a chore and drain the excitement from the every page. Still, it wasn't as boring as Freddie had said. In the story the girl in it and her family were now living in the secret room behind the bookcase. They hid from the Nazis at night and tried not to kill each other during the day. Sure, it had started out slow, and the thought of reading some dead girl's diary was a boring chore, but the part he had read tonight was fascinating. It was as if a new author had taken over the act of writi
ng the diary. It was exciting, full of intrigue, fear, terror. Of whispering walls and creaky boards and hungry monsters that wore uniforms and hunted for children to consume.

  He turned the page, captivated, curious to find out what was going to happen to the little girl, yet the page was blank.

  "Huh," he whispered as the sounds of Freddie and Brian's battle rang out. "Guys. Check this out."

  He held up the book, thumbed through it. The pages past the end of the chapter he'd started were all blank. Not one but dozens. Over one hundred empty pages by the time he'd flipped to the back flap, not a dot of ink on any.

  "Hope you ke-kept the receipt," Brian said.

  "Think I'll get out of required reading?"

  "As if," Freddie said, his face furrowing as he focused on his handheld.

  Brian's face soured as the glow off his handheld game turned from blue to red, indicating a death. "Dammit!" he snapped.

  "And stay down," Freddie laughed, putting his handheld down and pumping a fist. "Two-zero. Loser gets the pizza."

  "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. Per
haps 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.