"Don't say that," Aiden said. "Please, don't say that."
Freddie shrugged and stared off at a dark corner, lost in thought.
Maybe it had gotten to them first, Aiden thought. His mind went back to that idea again and again. What if Julie and his dad were off in some horrible black cocoon, acid flowing through their veins as that horrible thing turned them from family into a feast?
No, he thought. His dad was smart, strong, resourceful. He'd seen him knock a ball out of the park once a few years back before his work became the only thing he ever did. Back when they played catch until the sun set. Back when they lived in the same house, and Julie was just a woman that answered the phone at an office.
But that was a different life, a time when they were a team and not three fractured pieces.
"What time is it?" Aiden asked again.
"Five," Freddie said, turning the iPad on and off.
"Can I see it?"
"Why?"
"’Cause I want to see it. Why's it matter?"
"It matters," Freddie said slowly, "because I don't want you to throw it like you threw the flashlight."
"Dude, what's your problem?"
"I don't have a problem. I also don't have a flashlight."
"Yeah, and you wouldn't have anything if I didn't throw it." Aiden felt warmth run up his body. "I saved your life."
"Yeah, so? Whose stupid treehouse are we stuck in? Whose stupid house did we go to?"
The heat built, climbing. Aiden felt his fists ball up, tight. "I didn't make you come here," he said. "Plus, it's not like I knew some freaking monster lived in the woods, okay? What's your prob?"
"My prob? What's my prob?" The lanky boy's voice hardened, primed. He stood up, swaying. Aiden saw a fist inside the pocket of the hoodie, another one at Freddie's side. Dark veins, pale skin.
He's losing it, Aiden thought. Just like he did with Dong Hyun, or Lloyd in P.E., or Brian or...
"My prob is that we're stuck in some tree, and that thing's down there. You threw our only flashlight away! We don't have any way to get out, or call out or anything! That's my prob!" Freddie pointed a finger, red and swollen, right at Aiden's face. "It's your fault! All of it!"
The heat rose from a simmer to a boil. Aiden slapped his hand away. "Don't take it out on me! I'm only trying to help."
Then Freddie was upon him, fists swinging. It happened so fast, a blur really. A left and a right cross sent him back, more open-handed slaps than full on punches. One popped his ear and he heard crickets and bees and felt warmth.
Fists flew from both kids, angry haymakers that went too wide or too narrow and bounced off shoulders or missed altogether. Freddie pinned Aiden but couldn't get enough torque to land more than a glancing blow. And all throughout the assault that heat rose. Hotter, hotter. His hands seemed to pull him up from beneath his friend like a marionette on strings. Rising, fighting, shouting, and the treehouse went sideways.
And suddenly Aiden was the one on top. Suddenly Freddie was beneath him, hands scratching at Aiden's face, fighting him off. Suddenly the four inches Freddie had on him didn't seem to matter at all. Strength, fire, heat that was what mattered. Aiden was a lucid flame, fists alight.
"Guys..."
"Stop it!" Aiden shouted and struggled with his friend. "Stop it!"
"Guys..."
"Fuck you!" Freddie frothed and flailed. "This is all your fault!"
"Guys...help..."
"STOP IT!" Aiden shouted, pinning the lanky boy to the wood.
"Please... help me... guys..."
And then Freddie stopped fighting and Aiden did too. They had both heard it. A faint voice, quiet and tired. Exhausted perhaps. It came from far off, from the shadows.
It came from below, they realized at the same time.
"Is that—"
"—Brian?" Aiden cut in.
And with that, Aiden got up and Freddie wriggled free. They raced over to the window. Nothing but darkness and wet grass outside.
"Brian?" Aiden called. "Brian, buddy, is that you?"
"Brian!?" Freddie shouted, almost a cry. "Brian!?"
"Help me," came the voice, faint enough to be a whisper.
"The hatch," Aiden said as they scampered over and threw it open.
Thirty feet below, among the dirt and tanbark at the base of the redwood, standing over the fallen flashlight, was their friend.
Brian stood, swaying and grey. A beard of wet darkness covered his chin, his neck. He had been stripped of his shirt, his pudgy girth hanging over a drawstring on his cargo shorts. One of his shoes was missing. His skin was cold and dirty on one side from where he had lain for hours. Leaves clung to his neck, his shoulders, his wide chest.
"Holy shit, he's okay!" Freddie said. "Brian, we thought you were dead—"
"Ladder," Brian said softly. "Ladder down."
He hadn’t been killed, Aiden realized. Only injured.
"Okay, buddy," Freddie answered, gathering the rope and wood rungs. "Did you get away—"
"Stop," Aiden said.
"What? It's gonna come back any second now," Freddie snapped. "We've gotta get him up!"
"No," Aiden held the ladder back. "Look."
"Ladder," Brian said from below. "Laaaa-duh down."
Freddie jerked the ladder out of Aiden's hand. "Look at what?!"
"Look at him, you idiot!" Aiden snapped. "Listen to him."
"Throw down," Brian mumbled. "Laaaa-duh. Help. Help."
"I don't understand," Freddie furrowed his brow. "Look at..." Then air escaped his throat—a sudden exhale followed by a grasp—and his face soured. "What... the fuck...is that?"
"Help," Brian mumbled. "Help. Laaaaa-duh down."
From big kid’s back dangled a shadow, a wet tendril that glistened in the flashlight. It ran, hose-like, from the base of his spine all the way to the ground, where it curved and snaked around the tree.
"His stutter," Aiden said. "His voice. It's all wrong."
"Oh my God," Freddie whispered.
"Help... Laaaaaa-duh," Brian said, staring up at the two boys. "Down laaaaa-duh. In. In you let. Up. Help. Laaaaaa-duh."
The tendril moved and twisted, a grotesque umbilical feeding the fat boy words. Between the sounds Brian's lips moved awkwardly, mouthing invisible words. And his eyes... they stared not up at his friends, but beyond them, perhaps miles away.
His eyes were black.
"Help me..." The umbilical twisted and flexed. "Help me," Brian mouthed.
"It's hurting him," Freddie gasped. "It's fucking hurting him."
"No," Aiden answered. "That's not Brian down there. It's using him, like a puppet or something."
Using him, or speaking through him. A transformation had occurred in the hours since he’d vanished. A grotesque protrusion had sprouted from Brian’s midsection, like a pregnant lump distending from his back. A horrible hunch, visible behind him, inflated and deflated.
“It put something in him,” Aiden said. “Earlier. It must’ve infected him, or—”
“Aiden Park,” Brian mumbled, words all wrong. “Aaaaay-din Park. Lad-duh.”
And his skin, that too had all gone wrong. It was grey around the hunch, as if it were old, ready to shed off the big boy’s bones.
"You're not Brian!" Freddie shouted. "You're not our friend."
Brian blinked, eyes coming into focus. And then he was there. Then the face looking up at them was that of the friend Aiden had known for years.
"It's so cah-cah... It's so cold in the woods," Brian said. "So cold and empty. Nothing but nothing, forever. Just night."
Those eyes, staring straight at Aiden. Into him. Boring a hole to his core. There was pity in those black eyes, he realized. Brian was crying, perhaps for them.
"You wah-wah-won’t get away. You can't. All the time won't make any difference. You’ll see. It’s all fuh-fuh... it’s all falling apart. It’s all gone to rot. Just open the hatch and let us in. We need to go back to the woods. We need to go back to
the deep. We all just need to sleep. Laaaaa-duh..."
Brian's eyes glazed over, went distant and numb again. Aiden noticed the fat boy’s left arm, and how it now seemed to have an extra joint. How the fingers moved like liquid, like there were no bones beneath the skin. Like tentacles.
"Down," Brian mouthed, tongue clicking. "Down.... Gweeeee. Laaaaa-duh. Gweeeeee!" The voice was wet and hoarse. "Gweeeeee!"
"Leave him alone!" Freddie screamed.
"Gweeeeeee!" Brian screamed back, hysterical. "Laaaa-duh... Gweeeeeee!"
Freddie had reached his fill of the night's horrors, this Aiden knew. Everyone had a breaking point, adults and children and all in between. Tonight, Freddie had crashed through his own. Perhaps seeing Brian die had dislodged something inside of him. Perhaps it was the thought of being trapped in the treehouse until dawn, or beyond. Or perhaps it was just the sight of their friend of the past five years, transformed and puppeted by some wretched horror that lurked just out of sight.
Most likely it had been all those things, Aiden thought. All of them and more. How he himself had not cracked and shattered, he didn’t understand. All he knew was that he was thankful for that.
“It’s not Brian!” Freddie screamed and retreated, back into the corner of the treehouse, wrapping himself in the sleeping bag he had, hours earlier, helped Brian carry up into the treehouse.
"Shut up!" he screamed. "Shut up!"
"Help me...” Brian’s voice bounced between the one they’d known for years, and this abomination. “Help me... Gweeeeeeeee!"
"Go away!" Aiden yelled. "You're not our friend. Go away!"
The appendage detached from Brian's back, a horrible undulation that made the chubby boy spasm. Rolls of fat bounced as Brian's eyes rolled back into sockets, two white marbles in an ashen face. Then the boy collapsed sideways into the trunk and slid facedown into the dirt, a marionette without strings. A final, horrible action: Brian's limbs curling in on themselves, like the throes of a dying insect. Then their friend was still and stiff.
A moment later Mister Skitters emerged, clicking and clattering, tiptoeing forth on uneasy legs into the patch of light. It let out a bitter hiss upward at the treehouse. Vile and spiteful, like that of an angry child. A brat, tattled on. A failed trick.
A dozen black eyes studied Aiden. A dozen dark jewels glimmering, blinking. Hypnotic almost.
Ladder, Brian had said. Throw down the ladder.
Only it hadn’t been Brian, had it? It had been Mister Skitters, speaking through Brian. And if that thing below could speak through their friend, perhaps it could understand them. Perhaps it could listen.
“Why are you doing this?” Aiden asked.
For the longest time the thing just stood there, clattering and clicking, black eyes blinking like stars in a dark sea. Then it raised that arm upward and curled in on itself. The gesture was clumsy, imprecise. It drew that limb up and touched wet tentacles to its head.
It was tapping its own temple.
Think about it, it seemed to say. Think about it.
“I don’t understand,” Aiden said. “What do you want from us?”
Mister Skitters studied him, those wet eyes shimmering, blinking.
Maybe it hadn’t understood him, Aiden thought. Maybe it had just been a reflex, like a dog cocking its head sideways.
“What do you want?” he asked again.
That limb unfurled, raised, and stretched through the darkness. Wet fingers curled in on itself, all but one. The gesture was universal, and with it Aiden felt his stomach drop.
It was pointing straight at Aiden.
You, its gesture said. I want you.
Gweeeeeee! it screamed.
Then it wrapped that limb around Brian’s ankles, and bounded off into the shadows, dragging their dead friend with it.
It wasn’t gone, Aiden realized. It would never be. It was merely waiting, baiting them. Playing its own sick game until the kids came down, or it found a way up. One way, or the other.
Aiden closed the hatch and collapsed against the wood. He was tired, exhausted. He thought of his dad, and of Julie. He wondered: where were they? What were they doing? Why hadn’t they come, and was he really alone?
“What did it say?” Freddie asked, voice little more than a squeak among the shadows. It was good that he couldn’t see his friend, Aiden thought. The treehouse had become an asylum, and Freddie was quickly becoming its first inmate.
“What?” Aiden asked.
“I heard you talking. What did it say?”
It wants us, Aiden thought. It wants us, and it’s going to wait there forever and ever. And if that doesn’t make your head spin then soon there might even be two of them. Mr. Skitters, and whatever it was turning Brian into.
“Nothing,” Aiden said. “It didn’t say anything.”
“So what do we do?”
"We wait,” Aiden replied, perhaps more to himself than to Freddie. "We just have to wait. Someone will come, you’ll see. Someone will come."
In the darkness those words became his mantra, his lighthouse.
Someone will come, he thought. Someone will come.
This shouldn’t be happening, not to him.
Someone will come.
This shouldn’t...
16.
"IT'S NOT UP!" Freddie's voice was a panic that cut through the darkness. A knife that severed shadow and sleep.
There had been black, the creaking boards of the treehouse in the breeze. And there had been a dream of summer. Aiden was out at Frenchman’s Tower with Freddie and Brian at the height of July. He was carving his name into the red brick that made up the ruined fort. Yet every time he checked the brick his name had been erased and so he started over. Then his father was there, and he shook his head and said: “Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to wish it all away. Like I said, part of growing up is learning to let go of what we wanted, and to accept what we’ve got.”
Then Freddie's voice cut through, laced with fear, and the dream was gone.
"Why isn't it up?!" he whimpered.
Aiden opened his eyes, instinctively looking for the rope ladder. But there it was, in a pile by the closed hatch. "What are you talking about?"
Freddie was staring out the window. "The sun. It isn't up."
"What time is it?"
"After eight," Freddie said. "It's after eight and the sun isn't up."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure. Look!"
Aiden didn't have to look. If the sun had been up, light would've been pouring in through the window, between the cracks and boards, in through the holes. But it wasn't. Only darkness painted the world inside the treehouse.
Still, he stood up and peered out into the night. A grey world of shadow lingered over a black lawn, a distant house, a kitchen light.
"See?!" Freddie said. "See?!"
"Are you sure it's morning?"
"Of course I'm sure!" Freddie held out the iPad. The clock read: 8:17 a.m. "Check your Nintendo! It's the same!"
Aiden opened the case and studied the start-up screen. Sure enough, 8:17 a.m.
"I don't understand. It's gotta be a glitch."
"A glitch? On the iPad and the Nintendo? What about the birds?" Freddie asked. "Where are the birds!?"
"Let me think for a second, okay? Jeez."
Aiden paced, studying the world through the window. Darkness everywhere. No stars beyond that grey sky. No crickets, no sounds. Only the creaking of the boards beneath his feet, Freddie's trembling voice.
"Has the moon moved?" Freddie asked. "It hasn't, has it? Tell me it's moved."
Aiden studied the sky but couldn't find the moon. No waxing gibbous among the dark blanket above. No stars.
"I can't find it," Aiden said. "What about Mister Skitters? Is it still—"
"What?" Freddie's voice was confused, desperate. "Skittles?"
"The thing," Aiden corrected. "Is it still down there?"
"I don't know. Aiden, why isn't the su
n up?!"
"Just... One thing at a time, okay?" Aiden opened the hatch, peered down. The flashlight glimmered, still shining like a beacon at the base of the tree. The ground was peppered with pieces of fabric, and something else. Flesh, perhaps. Pieces of their friend. Aiden didn't want to know, so he put that gruesome thought out of his mind, looked beyond the mess and scoured the yard for any sign of the creature. The woods, the lawn, the tree and that long trunk it had climbed. A dozen shadows, a dozen places, yet no sign of Mister Skitters.
"I don't see it," Aiden said. He took a length of rope ladder, held it over the hatch.
"What are you doing?" Freddie asked, a weakness creeping in to his voice, to his words.
"I'm just testing the water, okay? I won't drop it all the way."
"Why?"
"Cause we gotta see if it's still there."
"Where else would it be, huh?"
"Gone maybe. I don't know." Aiden ignored him and lowered the ladder down. Two feet. Five. Ten. Fifteen. "So far so good..."
At twenty feet a shadow broke off from the tree line and raced toward them. Freddie gasped. Aiden's stomach tightened.
"Up! Pull it up!" Freddie panicked.
Aiden yanked the ladder up, the shadow still a good fifty feet away.
"See?!" Freddie whispered. "It's still there! I told you!"
Hooves kicked up grass as at slid to a stop. Hwhoooooock! it hissed. Tick-tick-tick. Then it turned and scampered off, back to the woods.
"It's waiting for us," Freddie said. "It's gonna starve us out. Oh God, it's gonna wait forever."
"It's not gonna starve us out, okay?"
"Sure it will. It's gonna stay there until we get hungry, and then what?!"
"It can't stay there forever."
"Why not?"
"Because," Aiden said. "It just can't, okay?"
"And the sun's supposed to come up at six, but that didn't happen. So now what?"
Aiden turned on the iPad, double checking the time. Half past eight.
"Could we run?" Freddie asked. "Think we could run?"
"Run where?"
"The house. We could run to the house and hide or get knives or something."
Aiden studied the distance from the treehouse to the kitchen. "No, not both of us. It's too fast; we'd never make it."
A Hollow Dream of Summer's End Page 7
