Aiden wanted to hug Freddie, to shield him and say: “Everything is going to be all right. You’ll see. Everything is going to be fine.”
But he knew that maybe it wouldn’t be all right. That maybe it never would be. The doctors, they hadn’t been able to save Bruno. Nor would they be able to bring Brian back from the dead. The three best friends had played their last video game together, tossed their last disses at each other.
Now it was just the two of them in that treehouse.
The two survivors.
14.
THE RADIO DIDN'T WORK.
Or if it did, no broadcasts made their way this far out into the boonies. Both bands, AM and FM, were a void of emptiness. Nothing, not even static played as Aiden cycled from the bottom to the top and back again.
It was an old radio. Its dials were digital, made back when digital was as new augmented reality and glasses-free 3D. Exposed to the air and moisture up here for two decades or more, the old radio had probably stopped working ages ago.
And what had he been hoping for? A broadcast, a warning?
"We interrupt this evening’s performance of A Prairie Home Companion to bring you a breaking news report: a monster has been sighted in the foothills south of the city. He wears tattered clothes, has three legs, a taste for flesh, and goes by the name Mister Skitters. If sighted contact Animal Control."
Aiden let out a private chuckle at that thought: a dozen animal rescue officers all trying to wrangle Mister Skitters with doggie restraint poles. It seemed a little more serious than a rabid possum or a raccoon attack.
He turned the radio off, checked the iPad for the errant end of a signal but nothing came through. Not good, he thought to himself. They were in a treehouse, but they might as well be on an island in the middle of the ocean.
—
Time passed in a heavy slog, punctuated only by Freddie's faints sobs. Aiden sat there in numb detachment, replaying the events over and over. The thing from the woods, tattered rags and teeth. A mouth large enough to swallow a head. Those gnarled haunches. And that arm, that wretched arm with the double joints, the tentacled fingers, the eyes. Blinking berries and bitter acid. The smell was still thick in the air.
He rewound the events, again and again, yet the horror remained. It was, he thought, not unlike the first time he'd seen a horror movie. Not that different at all.
It had been at Brian’s house, three years ago, when Freddie was out of town, that Aiden and Brian had stumbled on to his sister’s DVD case. They’d scoured the discs until they found one, a gruesome image of six women, bodies forming a skull-like mask. The movie itself had been just as grim. It was a dark tale about a trip into a cave home to cannibal mutants. At first the monsters killed the women. Then the women killed the monsters. In the end one of the women killed the other, and by the time the credits rolled Aiden didn’t even know who lived and who died and who went crazy. It was an ending as bleak as any Aiden had ever seen by age nine. And now, at age twelve, an ending that didn't seem so far fetched.
Sleep hadn’t come in the hours after the credits rolled. Brian had been scared, clearly so, and when Aiden was almost asleep Brian had snuck out to use the bathroom but never returned.
The monsters had gotten him, Aiden thought for hours. They had gotten his friend and he was next.
Dawn was a world away, and so he hid beneath the covers, waiting for the moment the door creaked open and a ghost white mutant with blood-soaked teeth entered the bedroom. Waiting for death, he realized.
But dawn did come, and somehow he had fallen asleep, or perhaps had drifted in and out. Brian returned at breakfast, confessing that he had been so scared he had snuck off to sleep in his parents' bedroom. He had abandoned him, Aiden remembered thinking. His best friend, he had left him to the creatures from the cave and his imagination.
Yet it had only been a movie that had caused Brian to forsake his friend that night two years ago. A movie they were never supposed to watch.
But this wretched night was no movie.
This was real. His friend lay dead on that great lawn, that no man's land between safety and sanctuary. He had abandoned Brian, no different than Brian had abandoned him on that dark night years ago. Part of him had never forgiven Brian for that, part of him never trusted Brian after that.
And he wondered: if Brian ever returned, would he forgive Aiden for leaving him to the monster?
15.
SLEEP CAME.
It was not a warm respite but a cut, a cold splice between time. There was something, then there was nothing. Then there was a foot in his ribs, nudging.
"Wake up," Freddie said. "Shh, get up!"
It felt odd to have slept. Impossible. Yet somehow his thoughts had drifted to darkness and the time had moved on without him. An hour, perhaps a little more. The candles had gone down, but not too much. And in that dim light Freddie seemed more composed, more put together. A sanity had returned to his eyes.
"How long was I out?"
"I don't know," Freddie answered. "It's two-fifteen."
"Is it still there?"
"No," Freddie said. "It's gone."
Aiden sat right up. "Really?"
"I think so."
Aiden hurried to the window, studied the yard. Sure enough, the thing was gone. In its place a half-dozen sprinklers clicked and clattered, spraying blooms of water across the dark lawn.
"Sprinklers went off a few minutes ago. When I looked it wasn't there."
The sky was unchanged, a grey cotton blanket. No moon, no stars. Yet the lawn glistened, a starry night in a world of wet shadows below. A single patch of grass was more disturbed than the rest. A few holes, some pieces torn out by finger and foot. Evidence of a struggle. And an empty space where their fallen friend had lain.
"Where's Brian?" Aiden asked. "Where did he go?"
"I don't know. Maybe it dragged him off into the woods. I was trying to work the radio when I heard the sprinklers go off. When I checked, they were both gone. Maybe it took him to the woods, I don't know."
The thought of Brian, shirtless and alone in those dark woods, disturbed Aiden deeper than he thought possible. Brian had always been scared of the dark, and Aiden knew of no place more shadowed than an oak forest on a moonless night. No worse place to be alone.
Not alone, he realized. He was with Mister Skitters.
Freddie fiddled with the radio, slapping the side and adjusting the antenna.
"FM's the same," Aiden said. "It doesn't get any channels."
"That's impossible."
"Why?"
"’Cause it should be getting something. Like static at least, right?"
"I don't know, maybe," Aiden said, studying the yard below. "Even if we get something, so what? It's just a radio. We can't talk or anything."
"Piece of crap," Freddie said, slapping the silver shell of the old device.
Aiden traced the perimeter of the yard, unable to find any outstanding shape among the shadows. There were a thousand suspects, sure, but none better than the others.
"Do you think we should go down?" he asked. “To check at least?”
"Yeah, maybe that's a good idea," Freddie answered.
The two boys slowly opened the wood hatch, ready for anything to pop out. But nothing did. They stared down into the wet abyss below. Damp grass glistened in the beam of Freddie's flashlight. Soggy dirt and tanbark at the base of the redwood.
They would get wet. They would have to run through the sprinklers, but perhaps they would get away, and if they did the cold would be worth it. Anything would.
"I don't see it," Freddie said. "Do you?"
"Hand me the flashlight."
"Don't drop it."
“Duh.”
Aiden leaned over the hatch, lowered his head. The world tilted upside down. The grass became the heavens; the dark, cloudy sky a milky seascape below. Aiden panned the flashlight across the yard, searching for forms among the shadows. Shapes and faces, so many dark places to hi
de. Yet he found nothing, no trace of Mister Skitters.
"I think it's clear," he said.
"You sure?"
"No, I'm not. But I think it's clear. Maybe we should drop the ladder."
"Okay," Freddie whispered and started to unroll the ladder.
"Dude, your hand," Aiden said, pointing to Freddie's left hand.
"It's nothing," the lanky boy answered, scratching his enflamed forearm. The skin had taken on a dark discoloration, not unlike a rash of poison oak. There was plenty of that in the woods and foothills of Alder Glen of course, but none that acted that fast. This rash had come from that lash of Mister Skitter's arm.
"It itches, okay? Just stop staring."
"Yeah, sure," Aiden answered, making sure to avoid the dark spots where the filth had spotted and stained the rungs of the ladder. "Okay, that's it."
The ladder dangled thirty feet into the wet shadows below. Again, Aiden dipped his head below, turning the world upside down once more. He scanned the lawn, the perimeter, that faint flashlight beam doing its best to render monsters out of nothing.
And what if that was all it had been? he wondered. A shadow and a fear? A prank his dad had pulled? What if Brian had been in on it?
Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps that was it. Two summers ago it had been the campfire story of the Razor Tickler. Or the woman with the painted face that wandered by the old asylum. Or the twins in the middle of the lake, the ones that could only be seen at midnight on the anniversary of the night they drowned trying to save each other.
And suddenly it didn't seem so scary to climb down that ladder. Suddenly the thought of something that skittered on three legs seemed to be back where it belonged: among the childish fears of shadows in closets and monsters beneath the bed.
"Who goes first?" Freddie asked.
"I don't care," Aiden answered. "Rock paper scissors?"
"Sure."
They bounced their hands in three silent bumps, each throwing paper on the first try. Freddie's fingers were red, long tendrils running down his arm, even more vibrant than they seemed a few minutes ago. Aiden tried not to notice. "Rock, paper, scissors," the lanky boy called.
A second round saw them both throw rock. Then paper. Then three sets of scissors and two more sets of paper. Finally they throw rock five times in a row until Freddie just gave up and snapped, "I'll go. I don't care."
But something told Aiden he did care. He always cared. Freddie tried to hide a lot of things behind a mask of indifference, but at the end of the day that's all it was: a mask.
Then he was gone, descending the rickety rope ladder. Aiden lowered his head, studied that upside down world. Clicking sprinklers. Shadows. A thousand trees on the edge of the property. And that distant house, bright, warm. Sanctuary. Could he make it?
Yes, he thought. Freddie wasn't the fastest, but he could move when necessary. And if anyone had a chance...
Aiden's thoughts turned cold.
"Freddie," Aiden gasped. "Stop, Freddie."
"What?!" Freddie asked, voice laced with fear. "What!?"
"I think..."
"Think what?"
Nothing had moved: no sudden burst of speed, no shifting shadows. Yet his mind said something was there that didn't belong. Something was askew.
"Think what?!"
The sprinklers clicked and clattered, the dull hum of water on grass. And behind it...
Tick-tick-tick.
"What?!" Freddie whined. "God dammit, Aiden—"
"Shut up!"
Click-click-click, went the sprinklers.
Tick-tick-tick came the sound, so close by it almost seemed...
"Freddie! Come back! Come back now!"
And with that the tree trunk shifted.
"Oh my God, Freddie, come back!"
A horrible black shape extended itself from the tree trunk. A living shadow that clutched the bark like a barnacle to the hull of a ship. It was beneath the treehouse, so close. Those wretched legs were dug into the fibers of the tree.
It hadn't run away, Aiden realized. It had climbed into a dark spot and waited.
The sound that came from Freddie's lips when that long arm snatched was a pitch so high Aiden's ears rang and his body tensed. Primal, he thought. Pure fear and terror. The sound any animal makes when cornered and fighting for its life.
Freddie screamed and pulled himself up the ladder as quick as he could. Not quick enough, however. The creature latched on three rungs beneath his foot and pulled the rope ladder toward the trunk. The whole ladder bent, taking Freddie with it.
"Freddie, climb!"
Aiden reached out a hand, but his friend was still a quarter of the way down. And that arm, it pulled, hard. Alien joints and muscles curled, wet fingers flexed. Aiden's flashlight passed over it and all went to horror. The skin was patchwork stitching, rotten in some parts, fresh and new in others. Tendons and fibers flexed beneath a grey layer wrapped in torn fabric. A piece of Brian's jacket was tied to a bicep, a brown muck seeping out beneath it. And teeth. A hundred teeth in a dark maw. So many teeth all gnashing as it pulled his friend closer.
At the sight of only a fraction of the monster, Aiden's mind did what he never thought it would do: it screamed out to him to slam the hatch. To shove his friend down into the darkness. To save himself, and himself only.
And yet, he ignored it. "Reach, Freddie!" he screamed, hand out. "Reach!"
Closer, Freddie climbed. Closer...closer...
The ladder bent. The ropes creaked. Freddie screamed and climbed.
Closer... closer.
A loud crack pierced the air. Bones breaking, Aiden thought. Freddie's.
Yet then the ladder swung the other way, away from the tree trunk. Away from the horror attached to it. Away from that grotesque arm that clutched a broken rung. Three inches of wood had been snapped like a child bending a toothpick.
The momentum caught Freddie off balance, sent him spinning sideways. For a moment, brief and horrible, the rungs were jerked from his fingers, and he fell.
Three rungs passed Freddie’s fingers. Then he grabbed the fourth, his body swinging around the side of the ladder. The whole rope structure spun awkwardly, a pendulum now rushing back toward what had set it free: Mister Skitters, and its snarling, gnashing maw.
Aiden reached for the only thing he could think of and threw it. Didn't know if it was a good idea. Didn't even care. He sent the metal flashlight spinning from his fingers in the hardest overhand he'd ever pitched.
The flashlight let out a meaty thump as it smacked into that tumorous face below. A cloud of dry skin and rot erupted. Tendrils of black ran from broken grey skin. A howl, wounded and furious. And then both the flashlight and Mister Skitters plummeted fifteen feet below.
Freddie scrambled and crashed against the trunk, brushing up against the torn bark and indentations from where the creature had latched on. Seconds later he was back in the treehouse. Tears and snot covered half his face. His pants were wet, a dark patch puddling out from his crotch and down his left leg.
But Aiden didn't care, didn't even have time to notice. He pulled the ladder back up as quick as he could. Far below the flashlight cast long shadows at the base of the tree. And down there, skittering and rolling among the darkness and light, Mister Skitters squealed and slapped at its face as if stung by a dozen angry bees. It hissed at Aiden, a resentful shriek, child-like and vulgar.
And then it ran off, skittering into the shadows, leaving the flashlight at the base of the tree. A fallen torch just out of reach. Above, only candles remained. An amber glow, and from within its warmth a boy sobbed.
—
Freddie spent a good twenty or thirty minutes crying. After that he went silent, moved off to the other side of the treehouse to lick his wounds and gather his thoughts. He said nothing to Aiden, no word of thanks or acknowledgement.
Aiden tuned the radio through empty channels, thumbed through the iPad. Again, no signal on either.
When Freddie returne
d all he said was: "You threw our only flashlight."
"I tried to save you," Aiden replied.
"But you threw away our only flashlight," he said again.
"We've got this," Aiden said, holding up the iPad. "Better than nothing."
Freddie snorted as if the idea was stupid, absurd. Still, he took the tablet and flicked it on, the white light filling the treehouse.
"You're welcome," Aiden said when he passed off the glowing tablet.
"What?"
"For saving you. You're welcome."
Freddie gave no reply, simply stared at the glowing screen as if it held an answer.
He was right, Aiden thought. Throwing the flashlight had been a stupid idea. Yet Freddie hadn't thought of a better one. Aiden had taken initiative, as his coach said. Taken initiative and acted. All Freddie had done was piss himself and scream.
"It's quiet," Aiden said. Again, Freddie gave no reply. "At least it'll be dawn soon."
Aiden opened the hatch, stared into the darkness below. At some point the sprinklers had gone off. Thirty feet down the flashlight lay among the dirt at the base of the damp tree. It might as well have been thirty miles.
"Think it'll come back?"
"Of course," Freddie said. "It's waiting."
"You sure?"
"Yeah," Freddie answered, hand scratching inside the pocket of his hoodie. "Yeah, I'm sure."
"How do you know?"
"I just do."
"We can wait it out," Aiden said. "The sun'll come up. My dad and Julie will come out. They'll help us."
"Yeah, maybe," Freddie chuckled, his voice dripping with annoyance. "Like when they came out to save Brian. Oh, they didn't, did they?"
"Maybe they didn't hear."
"Or maybe it got them."
Aiden opened his mouth to respond, but found himself unable to come up with anything. The words were heavy, thick.
What if it had gotten them?
It was an idea so horrible it hadn't even occurred to him. What if his dad and Julie were the meals, and they were the desserts? Maybe that's why the lights were still on, why he hadn't seen them since the game of laser tag.
A Hollow Dream of Summer's End Page 6
