Summer of Night

27 hrs. 17 min.

Language Russian

Author Dan Simmons

Narrator Andrey Pankrashkin

Description

In a small American town, Elm Haven, a boy disappears mysteriously inside the school. With the group of students who set out to search for him, truly terrifying events begin to unfold. Some of the children are being hunted by a truck clearly intent on killing the boy. Others watch their loved ones die, and around the town there appears a half-man, half-zombie figure dressed in ancient soldier’s uniform.

The Old Central School stood unshakably, stubbornly keeping its secrets and its silence. Gray chalk dust swirled for forty-eight years in the rare flashes of sunlight, and the memories of those who had left more than eight decades ago hung over the dark staircases and floors, coloring the stale air with a mahogany-sweet smell of coffins. The walls of the Old Central were so thick that it seemed they swallowed all sounds, and the light streaming through the tall old windows—with panes bent by time and their own weight—carried a slight sepia tint.

Time in the Old Central School moved, if it moved at all, slowly. The resounding echo of footsteps drifted along the corridors and hovered over the staircases, yet its sound was strangely muffled and did not match the movement in the dimness.

The first stone of the Old Central was laid in 1876—the same year General Custer’s army was crushed at Little Bighorn, a river far to the west, and the same year, for the nation’s centennial, the first telephone device was demonstrated in Philadelphia to those gathered there. The Old Central was founded in Illinois, right halfway between those two events, but off to the side of the road of history.

By spring 1960 the Old School had already become like the ancient teachers who taught there: too old to keep working, but too proud to accept retirement. In a word, it kept its lofty posture more out of habit and simple reluctance to bow. An empty old maid, bitter and alone, the Old School had carried other people’s children for decades.

In the twilight, the girls played with dolls in its huge classrooms and corridors, and, when they grew up, died in childbirth. The boys ran screaming through the recreation rooms and served punishment in dark, locked closets—then found eternal rest in places never mentioned in geography class: San Juan Hill, Bellviewood, Okinawa, Omaha Beach, Pork Chop Hill, and Incheon.