A Hollow Dream of Summer's End (6 page)

He turned back to the woods behind him, to the hill he'd climbed. Something should have been there, he thought. Something had been inches from him, reaching out. Something that scared him so immensely he wanted to wipe the thought out entirely, to go blank, deny it. Something wicked and wrong and terrible...

Yet only emptiness lay back that way. Only the broken branches and twigs he'd clattered over, pushed through. Only the lingering feeling that something had been there, awakened. An entity, a chattering, gnashing
thing
that had reached out for him all the way from the drain and...

"Dude," Brian said. "You were ru-running fast."

"I thought..." Aiden said again, but stopped himself from finishing. Thought what? he wondered. Thought the boogeyman was behind me? Thought some silly monster had slithered out of an old storm drain? "I thought you were behind me," he said to Freddie.

"I doubled back, picked off Brian when he chased you by that fence," Freddie said. "He's a big target."

"Come closer, I'll show you what a big target does to little targets," he said, reaching out for Freddie.

The lanky kid ducked, twisted, and danced off. "I'll take your word for it," he said. "Come on, let's get some more pizza."

Freddie fired off a final shot, the blaster emitting a warbled bleep. Then he powered down, the lights of his vest flashing a final time before going offline. Aiden and Brian followed, disconnecting their blasters and powering down as well.

There, in the amber glow of the setting sun, the three friends made their way back home, laughing and reenacting the best moments of the game they'd just played. It was a walk that took twenty minutes, half of it spent trying to find the trail toward the house. Once back on the path they took it slow. Jagged shadows stretched across the dirt path. Horseshoe prints and potholes spotted the packed earth, a few deep enough to twist an ankle. Somewhere, a single cricket called out. They talked about autumn, about the homework they had yet to do, the books that had yet to read.

"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 writing 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."