Free A Hollow Dream of Summer's End by Andrew van Wey

gasped. "Stop, Freddie."
    "What?!" Freddie asked, voice laced with fear. "What!?"
    "I think..."
    "Think what?"
    Nothing had moved: no sudden burst of speed, no shifting shadows. Yet his mind said something was there that didn't belong. Something was askew.
    "Think what?!"
    The sprinklers clicked and clattered, the dull hum of water on grass. And behind it...
    Tick-tick-tick.
    "What?!" Freddie whined. "God dammit, Aiden—"
    "Shut up!"
    Click-click-click , went the sprinklers.
    Tick-tick-tick came the sound, so close by it almost seemed...
    "Freddie! Come back! Come back now!"
    And with that the tree trunk shifted.
    "Oh my God, Freddie, come back!"
    A horrible black shape extended itself from the tree trunk. A living shadow that clutched the bark like a barnacle to the hull of a ship. It was beneath the treehouse, so close. Those wretched legs were dug into the fibers of the tree.
    It hadn't run away, Aiden realized. It had climbed into a dark spot and waited.
    The sound that came from Freddie's lips when that long arm snatched was a pitch so high Aiden's ears rang and his body tensed. Primal, he thought. Pure fear and terror. The sound any animal makes when cornered and fighting for its life.
    Freddie screamed and pulled himself up the ladder as quick as he could. Not quick enough, however. The creature latched on three rungs beneath his foot and pulled the rope ladder toward the trunk. The whole ladder bent, taking Freddie with it.
    "Freddie, climb!"
    Aiden reached out a hand, but his friend was still a quarter of the way down. And that arm, it pulled, hard. Alien joints and muscles curled, wet fingers flexed. Aiden's flashlight passed over it and all went to horror. The skin was patchwork stitching, rotten in some parts, fresh and new in others. Tendons and fibers flexed beneath a grey layer wrapped in torn fabric. A piece of Brian's jacket was tied to a bicep, a brown muck seeping out beneath it. And teeth. A hundred teeth in a dark maw. So many teeth all gnashing as it pulled his friend closer.
    At the sight of only a fraction of the monster, Aiden's mind did what he never thought it would do: it screamed out to him to slam the hatch. To shove his friend down into the darkness. To save himself, and himself only.
    And yet, he ignored it. "Reach, Freddie!" he screamed, hand out. "Reach!"
    Closer, Freddie climbed. Closer...closer...
    The ladder bent. The ropes creaked. Freddie screamed and climbed.
    Closer... closer.
    A loud crack pierced the air. Bones breaking, Aiden thought. Freddie's.
    Yet then the ladder swung the other way, away from the tree trunk. Away from the horror attached to it. Away from that grotesque arm that clutched a broken rung. Three inches of wood had been snapped like a child bending a toothpick.
    The momentum caught Freddie off balance, sent him spinning sideways. For a moment, brief and horrible, the rungs were jerked from his fingers, and he fell.
    Three rungs passed Freddie’s fingers. Then he grabbed the fourth, his body swinging around the side of the ladder. The whole rope structure spun awkwardly, a pendulum now rushing back toward what had set it free: Mister Skitters, and its snarling, gnashing maw.
    Aiden reached for the only thing he could think of and threw it. Didn't know if it was a good idea. Didn't even care. He sent the metal flashlight spinning from his fingers in the hardest overhand he'd ever pitched.
    The flashlight let out a meaty thump as it smacked into that tumorous face below. A cloud of dry skin and rot erupted. Tendrils of black ran from broken grey skin. A howl, wounded and furious. And then both the flashlight and Mister Skitters plummeted fifteen feet below.
    Freddie scrambled and crashed against the trunk, brushing up against the torn bark and indentations from where the creature had latched on. Seconds later he was back in the treehouse. Tears and snot covered half his face. His pants were wet, a dark patch puddling out from his crotch and down his left leg.
    But Aiden