A Hollow Dream of Summer's End Read Online Free PDF

was a good ten feet, maybe more. He was probably in shock right now, mangled or worse, and at any second the pain would jar him to his senses.
    He had landed sideways on the dry creek bed, among stones big and small, sharp and smooth. Yet none were under him. Lucky, he thought. A few feet further and his brains might have been all over those rocks.
    Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick...
    That sound—he recognized it. It was close, closer than it had been earlier. For some reason not entirely clear to him that sound served as an anchor, a great chain that pulled him back to the present, clarifying all. And the present situation was serious. He had slid, rolled, and fallen down the sharp incline of a hill and into a creek bed fifteen feet deep. He had fallen, hard. And if something was broken, he needed to know whether to scream for help or not.
    "Please..." he said, lifting himself up and waiting for the scream of pain, the crack of shattered bone, the blinding shock. Nothing hurt, not yet, but that didn't mean nothing was hurt. There had to be something. Yet as he pulled himself up he found his wounds were superficial. A scrape here and there, a bruise perhaps, but nothing worth worrying about. Nothing worth fighting back tears over.
    Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick...
    His gun, he suddenly thought, realizing it wasn’t in his hand. The fall had sent it flying from his grip. A somersault, and then it had been wrenched from his fingers. The gun itself probably cost a hundred bucks, perhaps more. Sure, his dad had money now, but they’d spent a decade eating cheap and saving coupons. Somehow he knew his dad would give him an earful if he’d lost it or broken it in the first hour.
    Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick...
    He pulled himself together, scoured the dry creek bed for the green and orange blaster. The sunset shadows were long, the light in the ravine sparse, dabbled, deceptive.
    Please, he thought. Please be around here, somewhere. That's not too much to ask, is it?
    A glimmer. Something flickering. There it was, his gun! It lay on the ground near the edge of the ravine where the two banks came together in a V. At the meeting of those two embankments a strange structure poked out from the earth like a half-buried ruin. It was a confusing sight, ancient and absurd, and for a moment he wondered if he hadn't stumbled upon the ruin of a forgotten civilization a thousand years old.
    No, he realized. It was a drain. It was a large tunnel that formed the outlet of a great drainage channel. It was built of concrete, though the years had turned it to an almost muddy ruin. Iron bars that had once blocked it off were now little more than bones in the concrete, eaten by time and rust. Moss and mushrooms sprouted along the cracks. A few wet webs clung to the dark spots and the shadows. Even the mouth of the drain was slanted, more of an oval than a perfect circle, as if the weight of the hills above had compressed it over the years.
    He walked over, bent down, and picked up his gun. It worked, and when he squeezed the trigger an electric blast went off. Lucky, he thought. He had dodged two bullets (or lasers) and didn't want to press his luck any further. Now he just needed to get out of the creek.
    Somewhere, not too far off, that bird clicked and called out. Hwack! Tick-tick-tick-tick...
    He studied the drain, that large hole disappearing into the wet earth; a diseased orifice. Dark, ill boding. In the winter and spring showers the creeks ran a dozen feet high, but it was the end of summer and Aiden couldn’t remember a single wet day after early May. The drain hadn’t seen a drink in months. Yet there was a dampness to it, a wetness. All around it were brambles and branches, leaves and runoff from some forgotten spring shower. Detritus and decay, as if swallowed.
    Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick... Hwooock!
    And a jacket, he realized. A mud-covered jacket lay nearby the drain, its color long ago washed away. Not just one jacket,