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

but several. A few were buried, torn, reclaimed by the earth and the elements. Others made of hardier fabrics, jeans and synthetics that had yet to decay. They lay at the base of the drain, as if they'd been carried by some long gone current.
    Funny, he thought, the water should have pushed the old clothes away from the drain. Not toward it. Funny too, that such a thing would even exist out here, now that he thought of it. There was something old about the drain, ancient and terrible. Perhaps even older than the earth and the trees that surrounded it.
    Something stirred in the darkness. A rattle, a glisten, and the feeling that something had been displaced. That something had changed.
    Hwock! Tick-tick-tick... Hwoooock!
    That sound. That congested clearing and clattering, as if from some parched throat, it had not come from the trees. It had not come from some bird. It came from the shifting darkness deep inside that drain.
    No, something hadn't changed about the shadows, he realized. Something had moved.
    Run, his mind whispered. Run.
    Hwock!
    But from what?
    Tick-tick-tick...
    Doesn’t matter, his mind said. Run and don't look back.
    Hwock!
    A faint clattering, rattling, as if a thousand buttons were dragged across metal deep inside the drain. Louder. Closer. The shadow glistened.
    He turned and ran as fast as he could.
    Trees passed in a blur. Branches snapped beneath his feet. Leaves slid.
    He ran faster than he ever had before. Up that damp hill, the sun a sideways glow through the trees. His heart banged like a drum, pushing him forward, upward, ascending. Moss slapped at his face. He ran through a spiderweb, the silk glistening at the last second, and he would have screamed if it weren't for the feeling in the pit of his stomach that something far worse than a spider was behind him. A thousand teeth and a dozen eyes, wretched limbs and fingers all clattering, rattling, and reaching out for him.
    Up the hill, faster. His feed pounded, his heart raced. He could feel it, on his back, closer, reaching out for him and—
    His chest vibrated, his heart leapt into his throat. Sounds exploded and a gasp flew from his lips.
    Zap!
    He spun, went sideways, and his ankles buckled. His gun let out a synthesized warning: "HEALTH CRITICAL!"
    Zap! Zap!
    His chest shook violently, the vest pulsating with the impact of the blasts. That electric voice warned: "PLAYER TERMINATED! WEAPONS NOW OFFLINE!"
    And then he saw them. Freddie was on his left, fifty feet and still firing at him. Brian was on his right, his vest flashing, signaling that he'd been fragged as well.
    "And then there was one!" Freddie shouted, pumping a fist in triumph. "G G, losers."
    G.G., Aiden realized. Good Game, indeed. He had run right into Freddie.
    "I... I thought..." Aiden said, taking a knee and panting as his vest vibrated, lit up, and dimmed. In the dying light of the day he looked like some jogger who'd just finished a midnight marathon.
    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