A Hollow Dream of Summer's End (12 page)

"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."

"What if the sun never comes up? Then what do we do? We can't just wait—"

"It'll come up," Aiden said, growing frustrated. "It has to. That'd be, like, I don't know... freaking gravity going wrong or something."

"Then why hasn't it come up? Why?"

"I don't know, okay!?" Aiden snapped, those hands balling in on themselves again. "I just... I just think we should wait, okay?"

Freddie winced at the words. Aiden studied him. He was desperate, Aiden realized, because he was in pain.

"I don't think I can wait much longer," Freddie said, voice cracking. He looked on the verge of tears, weaker than Aiden had ever seen him. "I'm so scared." Freddie's eyes dropped down to his arm and his pocket.

"What is it?"

Freddie removed his arm from the pocket of his hoodie. "It hurts so much," he said.

"Aww, jeez," Aiden coughed.

The smell was what hit him first. It was a vile stench; of rot and curdled things, of death and decay. Red tendrils traced an infected circulatory system from finger to elbow. Black and blue and green fought off patches of yellow and orange like layers of rust. The olive hue and freckles that once covered the tall boy's arm had been swallowed by infection. Even his fingernails were dark and grey.

"That's not good," was all Aiden could say. Not good at all. He'd seen enough zombie movies to know that when something went to infection that fast nothing good could come of it.

"It itches so much," Freddie said, wincing. "I didn't think anything could itch so much."

"We need to get you to a doctor."

"How? How do we go to a doctor or a hospital when that thing's still out there and the sun hasn't come up? Tell me how we do that, huh?"

"I don't know," Aiden said, rubbing his temple. "I don't know. Just let me think."

Think.

Easier said than done, especially when you'd been tree'd by a monster and time didn't seem to be operating the right way. When nine in the morning was no different than nine at night.

Think, think!

He'd always been the leader, the glue that kept Brian and Freddie together. That compass that led the way to the adventures. But now that Brian was gone the balance was all wrong, and Freddie couldn't keep stay on the rails. He'd reverted, gone back to Freak Out Freddie, as the kids had once called him. Back when every insult led to a fist fight.

Think, he told himself.

Come up with an action, a plan, something. Yet every course of action led back to one problem: that they were stuck in a tree. That there were two of them. That the thing below ran faster than either of them did.

Unless...

No, he thought.

No, that's a horrible thing. A terrible idea. He tried to put it out of his mind, to think of alternatives. Yet it kept surfacing like a bottle in a stormy sea. A bottle with a single, brutal thought inside.

Perhaps he didn't need to run faster than the thing, he thought. Perhaps he only needed to run faster than his friend.

Suddenly, the treehouse felt smaller, cramped. Suddenly, Freddie's eyes seemed to darken, to study him. Wondering.

"What?" Freddie asked.

"Nothing, I'm just... I think I've got an idea," Aiden lied.

"Really? What?"

You and me in a race, Aiden thought. Winner takes all.

Yet the idea repulsed him. His hands tightened, tensed, and he paced around the treehouse, trying to buy enough time to think up something less grim. There had to be something else.

"What is it? What's your idea?" Freddie whined.

Don't go there, he told himself. You've known each other since second grade. Three years at least.

But another part of himself chimed in that he'd known Brian longer, since they'd both fought off Rickie Rachbane by the handball court in kindergarden. Almost half a lifetime. And yet he'd watched Brian scream, watched him died. And what had he done to save him? Screamed back and flung rocks, that's what.

"Okay, it's kind of a stupid idea," Aiden said, trying to buy more time.

Yes, a stupid idea, but it would work. The thing came from the woods to the east, and the house was to the west. If they were down there, Mister Skitters would have to choose: a meal that ran, or one that didn't. A thirty foot drop would hobble Freddie, probably knock him out cold. It might even be painless.

Totally painless, he told himself. Totally.

"What is it?" Freddie asked again.

And then a sickening feeling rose in his gut. What kind of friend are you? he wondered. What kind of person are you?

The kind that lives, a voice answered. The kind that survives. Only half a day ago they'd hunted each other through the woods as enemies.

But that was a game, and this is real. That was for fun, and this...

So what? he told himself. Which would he rather lose: a game, or his life?

"Okay." Aiden walked to the window, scanning the yard theatrically. "It probably lives in the woods, right?"

"Okay, so?" Freddie asked.

"So, I've been thinking." Aiden turned and pointed to the hatch. "If we can lure it out of the woods, maybe get it to come out again."

"With what?" Freddie asked.

With you, buddy, Aiden thought as he walked over to the hatch. In a fair fight they were about an even match. Freddie was strong, but gravity was stronger. And if Aiden caught him by surprise, well, anything was possible. An open hatch, a shove, and the fall would take care of the rest.

"Come here, take a look down, okay? It's actually pretty simple."

Simple and quick. Just a little closer and you'll understand everything, he thought. Just a little closer, buddy.

"I've got a better idea," Freddie answered, and when Aiden turned to hear it he saw a flash of metal and glass in the darkness. Stars erupted—so many stars—and his legs went to liquid and the world bent sideways.

17.

THE FLOORBOARDS EMBRACED HIM.

Somehow, the treehouse had become an ocean. Somehow the world had gone to liquid. Warmth pooled around his ear, his face. Had he fallen, stumbled, tripped?

"I'm sorry," a voice mumbled in the darkness. "I'm so sorry."

Hands gripped him, pulled him, and suddenly he was moving across the floor. Something was dragging him.

And then the pain came, crashing in waves. With it a sudden clarity emerged, a sobering horror. He was on the ground, bleeding from his head. Not five feet away lay the shattered iPad, its screen cracked and broken. Broken, he realized, from when it had struck him.

"I'm sorry," Freddie said again, tugging on him. "I'm so sorry."

"Why..." Aiden coughed forth, trying to pull himself up again. "...are you doing... Why?"

"Because we both can't make it," Freddie said. "Like you said, it's faster than us. And I need to go to the hospital. I hurt so bad..."

Aiden felt his fingers tighten, tried to push himself up. Freddie's foot came down on his face, hard and fast. For a moment he saw the cross hatches and that familiar circle and star of Freddie's shoe-print. Then the stars multiplied to a million and all went sideways and white.

Please stop kicking me, he tried to say, but his tongue had forgotten how to form the sounds.

"Just lay still," a voice cried from within the light. "Please, just don't fight."

The brightness receded; shadows shimmered back into shapes he knew. The central trunk of the tree moved past the walls of the treehouse. He felt hands gripping him again, heard the creak of wood. His eyes rolled about, lazy and unfocused, and within the shadows he saw a square moving at an odd angle toward him.

Funny, he thought. That looks like a door. A door in the floor. A hatch, he realized with sobering fear.

Freddie had opened the hatch and was now fumbling with the rope ladder. "I'm so sorry," he said. "But it's you or me and I don't want to die."

Nobody wants to die, Aiden thought. And nobody wants to watch their best friend die. But when all's said and done, we have to look out for ourselves. In the end we're all playing a one-player game.

"Sorry," Freddie said, gripping Aiden beneath the shoulders and giving him another tug. The hatch was near, inches away. He felt the rope ladder and the wood rungs pass beneath those limp legs that hardly belonged to him. Freddie turned him, now pushing. Then he felt his feet drop through the hole and dip into nothingness.

Dear God, he thought. He was going to fall. His friend was going to throw him to the monster below. This was how he was going to die: fed to a demon in a broken heap beneath a treehouse on a night that never ended.

"No, no, no!" he screamed, fighting through the sideways shapes, through the pain. He reached out, found hands and fingers, cloth and skin inside that storm of shadows.

A hand emerged, an arm, and then a face that shouted: "No, don't—LET GO!"

But he didn't let go. He pulled. Pulled on those fingers and that fabric as hard as he could. Pulled until the shadows parted, the focus crashed back, and brought with it the shape of the world. Pulled until it all came forth. And there was Freddie at the center of it all, the pocket and collar of his hoodie held in two tight wads between Aiden's fingers.

And then he was through the hatch, falling, and the treehouse was above him. He tumbled, intertwined with rope and wood as Freddie's body crashed against his and they both screamed.

This is it, he thought. This is how I die. Darkness, a rapid descent, a sudden crash, and a cut to black.

And for a moment he was right about it all.

There was darkness, a descent, and a jarring crash. Yet the cut was not to black but white, blinding and rattling as every bone in his body clattered. He would have screamed but the air was knocked right out of him. His teeth snapped shut on wet skin and a taste of iron filled his mouth.

Had he fallen all thirty feet? Had he broken something, everything?

No, he realized. The world was upside down, the redwood bark swinging closer and further from him. He was swaying, hanging from legs entangled in the ropes. The ground was beneath him, but not for another five feet. For one glorious second everything was right and perfect; he had come within feet of death and had been saved by the rope ladder.