A Hollow Dream of Summer's End (13 page)

"Pwease... Pwease heb me," came a shrill voice below. "Oh God, Mama, someone heb me pwease..."

Aiden untangled and lowered himself, felt the damp ground beneath his feet. Damp, but still hard enough to break the body of a twelve-year-old boy.

"Oh Mama, pwease, Mama, pwease..."

A dark pile lay in a twisted heap a few feet from the flashlight. Freddie, he realized. The fall had transformed him, wiped away almost all human features and turned him into a broken pile of pain. On the ground, at that angle, the flashlight acted like a stage lamp illuminating a sight that broke Aiden's heart.

Bone jutted through flesh. A shoulder was distended, dislodged and pushed clear up to an ear. A leg, a knee or perhaps a thigh, had been snapped back the wrong way. His face was pressed into the ground, leaving a small crater like some wretched cartoon. Bloodied lips gasped, fish-like, sputtering whimpers past broken teeth.

"...heb...meeeee...oh pwease heb me...Eeeeeh-din, Eeeeeeeh-din...Ma-ma...Ma-ma!"

Heb me, Eeh-din, he was saying. Help me, Aiden.

And he did try to help him. Despite the fact that, moments ago, Freddie had tried to throw him from the treehouse, Aiden started for that tortured pile. Freddie needed him, and he couldn't leave his friend.

Tick-tick-tick-tick
, came the sound from the woods.
Hwock! Tick-tick-tick!

"...oh God...oh Ma-ma....Eeh-din, puh-wease...don-duh leave me...Eeh-din..." Freddie's lips sputtered as his body shook.

He's trying to get up, Aiden realized. He's trying to get up on a body of broken bones. Don't just stand there, help him!

But that terrible sound stopped him in his tracks and turned his blood cold. At the edge of the dark woods a shape crashed forth from the bramble. Freddie didn't see Mister Skitters, but he didn't need to. The sound it made was one of cruel delight, of malice and surprise. If creatures could make a more wretched sound, it was one Aiden was incapable of imagining.

Hwoooooock! Tick-tick-tick! Hwoooooock!

Freddie's eyes rolled upward, blinking at Aiden with a thousand questions, a thousand hopes. This friend, this kid who he had shared three summer adventures with, had just tried to kill him. And now he was begging for his help.

Hwock!
came the sound, closer now.
Hwock! Tick tick tick!

The tattered thing was upon the lawn, bounding five feet at a time. God, it was big, bigger than it had seemed from above. Down here, at its level, it was the size of a bear.

"...Eeeeeeh-din...Eeh-din, heb me...heb me," Freddie begged. His fluttering eyes followed Aiden's hand as it reached out toward him. “Eeh-din, heb me pweeease."

But Aiden's fingers closed around the flashlight and he took it. The beam left Freddie's broken form and sent it back to shadow.

"I'm so sorry," were the final words Aiden said to his friend.

Then he turned and ran.

"Eeeeh-din!" Freddie called out. "Eeh-din! Help! Help!"

Aiden gave one last glance back. It was all he could bear. Three things stood out, clear as stars among a sea of black: the treehouse, his friend, and the bounding shape that was bearing down upon him.

Gweeeeeee!
it screamed.
Gweeeeeee!

Run, he thought with curious familiarity. Don’t think; just run.

It was only four weeks ago at summer camp that the three friends had all lined up for the fifty yard dash. Freddie and Aiden and even Brian, all shoulder to shoulder with a dozen other kids. The sun had been hot that day, so hot. There had been games, the final day of a week worth of competition. That morning they'd lost the water balloon toss contest when Brian had thrown his overhand at Freddie instead of underarm. The rest of the day didn't fare any better. What had started as a sure shot at first place that morning had become a lost cause by midday. They didn't have enough points to win, even if Aiden aced the fifty yard dash. Instead, they decided to have some fun.

"You just run like hell, we'll take care of everyone else," Freddie had said to Aiden. "Your job's to get across that line."

"Ours is to play defense," Brian laughed. "Duh-duh... Don't think, just run."

And run he did. When the whistle blew Aiden didn't even look back, he didn't stop. He only heard the screams, the shouts, the counselors yelling. And behind all that he heard the laughter of his two friends.

"Run! Run!"

He coasted across the finish line, first by a good twenty seconds. When he turned around all behind him became clear. Brian and Freddie had linked up arms, becoming a pair of human bolas. They'd clotheslined several kids and simply slowed down others. Now the two lay on the ground, entangled with the members of the opposing team.

They didn't win that day, they knew they couldn't. But for fifty yards and thirty seconds Aiden had run faster than he'd ever run.

Until tonight.

The lawn and the lights at the edge passed in a blur, streaks and shapes like headlights in the rain. Somewhere behind, receding, he heard Freddie's screams reach a pitch of impossible frequency until it was consumed by that gleeful shriek:
Gweeeee!

Aiden's mind washed the sound out and tucked it away in corner of horrors he simply didn't acknowledge. One day he'd go there, he told himself. One day he'd open that box and remember Brian and Freddie and the night that should have never happened. One day he'd bring cops and guns and his father and they'd come back and hunt that horror until it screamed no more.

But that day lay ahead, in front of him, and he needed to run to it. Damp grass and earth beneath his feet, the lights of the house growing closer. Forty yards. Thirty-five. Thirty.

"Don't think; just run," Brian had said.

A squeal from behind him, a clattering. A sidelong glance revealed that clattering shape, those three legs leaping across the grass. A face spattered and wet, a maw and a hundred teeth stained crimson. Eyes, a dozen cruel pebbles fixated on him.

It had finished off Freddie and now it was coming for him.

Twenty yards.

Fifteen.

The light through the French doors of the kitchen glimmered across damp grass and slate rock. The back patio. Dew clung to the redwood banister.

Running, faster.

Ten yards.

Tick-tick-tick
, came the noise right behind him.

Seven yards.

He leapt up the steps, stumbled, and spilled across the deck. A backward glance revealed the tattered horror in mid-stride, that arm swinging like an awful phallus as it ran. A garden lamp snapped beneath its cloven foot.

Scrambling to his feet, up the steps. Faster. Reaching out...

He threw open the kitchen door, crashed in, and slammed it shut.

"Dad! Julie!" he screamed. "Dad, please help!"

And then Mister Skitters was there. The door buckled, shook, and then shattered. Wood and glass bounced across the floor as the monster crashed through.

Aiden circled around the table, a ten foot space between himself and the creature. Its legs slipped and slid on the hardwood floor, hooves fighting for traction. Then it found its footing and rose.

Over the years, light had always tamed Aiden's nighttime terrors. Scorpions or scaled horrors had been bred among the shadows, much as they often were by those with an active imagination. Yet the warm glow of a lamp or an overhead light had always turned them back to piles of clothes or jackets swaying from hangers. Light had always purged, purified, cast out evil.

But no longer.

Bathed in the glow of the kitchen light, the thing that clattered and rose to its feet was nothing like Aiden had ever imagined. It was construction of flesh and fur, warped skin and scales and a dozen mismatched parts growing out of each other. Tattered rags held soft skin and supple organs in like a dozen tourniquets. Three weak legs held up a tumor-lined body, a squat grotesquery of a thing with an ever-gnashing maw.

Funny, he thought. Funny that such a terrible thing should seem both fragile and fearsome. Funny that such a nightmare could even exist here, in this world.

Then it shrieked and lashed out that horrible arm and all his thoughts went to putting as much distance between himself and the terror as he could.

A second lash, the arm swung out, and a vase exploded to the right of his head. Freddie turned and ran backward into the hallway as a third strike tore a gash in the wall. Pictures flashed past. Empty frames and white photographs, pictures that had once shown a family. Then he came out into the entry way, shouting: “Dad! Dad! Julie!”

His words echoed off white walls, white stairs, and a white door. The entryway had been painted, a bleached bone color. Every single square inch.

“What the heck?” he asked, taking in the enigma before him. The entrance to the house was utterly and completely empty of detail. Only a sea of white...

No, not painted, he realized. It had been erased. Scrubbed clean of pictures and color, scrubbed clear of every detail.

And then the thing was crashing, squeezing down the hall, coming for him. Plaster tore and pictures cracked.

Aiden threw open the front door, hoping to find a car, something to put more distance between himself and that clattering, chattering horror. The front yard was a void, a sea of white beneath ashen clouds. There was no gate, no fence, no mountains or trees. There was only a vast white world scrubbed of color that receded into a thousand miles of emptiness.

Erased, all of it. He had only a moment to think, to wonder: video games sometimes glitched and rendered impossible landscapes. Could his mind be doing the same? Or the world itself? Had he somehow slipped beyond the borders of reality?

Then those thoughts were washed away as fast as they arose, and only this reality mattered: that something horrible was coming for him.

Run, he told himself. Run and don’t look back.

But run where? Outside there was only emptiness, an unformed landscape stretching for a thousand miles. Were there colored hills beyond the bleached horizon? Or only emptiness and oblivion?

He turned in time to see Mister Skitters come crashing out of the hallway, shattering the doorframe and sliding sideways. He raced up the stairs, the creature leaping at his heels. He smelled rot and felt heat from the beast as it stumbled and tried to climb the hardwood steps. Its legs were unbalanced, unsure, and for every two steps it took up the wood stairs it lost one and swayed back.

A great crack echoed out as it stumbled into the banister, half snapping it. Then it leapt forward, a tremendous pounce that brought it to the landing and only a few feet behind Aiden.

Gweeeeee!
it shrieked, putrid breath tainting the air.
Gweeee!

Six furious steps brought him to the top of the stairs, the second floor and its separate bedrooms like an unrendered purgatory of colors and pure whites. At the end of the hall, the master bedroom where his father and Julie slept was a void of space; white walls and white furniture and white floors and white light. The other end the hall was dissolving, color bleeding out.

Only his bedroom held color, familiarity, and the suggestion of safety. He rushed down the hall, feet sliding on the hardwood floor as he threw the door open then slammed it shut and locked it.

He took in the room, the familiar surroundings, the posters and the bed. It was all the same as it'd been a half-day ago, all identical to how he remembered it.

Yes, he thought. It was exactly as he remembered it. Exactly. But he'd never been to the other parts of the house, never filled in the gaps in his mind. For all he knew they had always been white, unrendered, and empty.

The door rattled and shook as Mister Skitters crashed against it. Another terrible thud and the door grew a dozen cracks. Plaster cracked along the ceiling, little waterfalls filling the air with white dust. A third crack buckled the door, a broken bulge blooming out from the center, and from within it that arm flailed about, thrusting and tearing at the splintering wood. Beyond the cracks those horrible eyes, those abyssal pupils all focused on him. Beyond, teeth ground and gnashed.

For a moment, brief and beautiful and soothing, Aiden felt his sanity slip sideways and a giggle seemed to rise from within.

"Sometimes I wonder if our life's a big video game," Brian had once said. "And we get déjà-vu 'cause we've messed up and had to restart."

A game, he told himself. That's all it was. That's all it had ever been. Twelve years of life, twelve stages to the game he was in.

A game. And perhaps this was the final boss. Perhaps it had even been a three-player game but Brian and Freddie hadn't made it to the big battle. After all, Aiden had always been the best, but he never beat anything on the first try. And if that was the reality beneath it all, if that was the final layer, then perhaps all would be right in the end.

Perhaps he would get a retry, a do-over.

A continue.

Then the door shattered and with it went any idea of save points and continues. Perhaps the world was all a game or perhaps he had woken a true horror, but neither mattered in that moment. There was only this: the acrid stank of a tumor-covered horror, a dozen eyes, a hundred teeth, and the sheer desire to fight on. To put as much distance as he could between that thing and himself. To run to the ends of the Earth if he had to.