"SUMMER OF NIGHT is a book written by Dan Simmons in 1991.
1960. Elm Haven, Illinois. Duane, Mike, Dale, Kevin, Lawrence and Jim, all 12 years old boys, have just finished school. In this little town lost in the middle of corn fields, there is nothing peculiar to do during the summer holiday. So when Tubby, the little brother of one of their classmates, disappears, the young boys begin their own investigation. Convinced that Tubby has never left the Old School, Jim tries to enter the monumental building by climbing the facade. Looking through his classroom's window, he sees his teacher, Mrs Foggett, in company of an old teacher who has died of cancer some 6 months before. Horrified by this vision, Jim falls from the outside window and breaks his arm. In the meantime, Dale and his brother Lawrence, remark that something black is hiding in their closet. The thing disappears under their beds before their mother can actually see it. The next day, Dale must go down into the cellar that has been flooded during the night. He encounters there Tubby's corpse which also disappears after a while. Duane, the smartest of the boys of the group, discovers by reading old newspapers that strange events happened around the Old School some sixty years before. A bell, brought from Italy by the local millionaire, had been installed in the school steeple. This bell belonged to the Borgia family during the Renaissance period and was believed to have supernatural proprieties. Later in the week, a strange truck nearly kills Duane in the middle of the corn fields. Art, Duane's uncle, just before he could give some important information to his nephew, is found dead two days later after having hit a bridge at 100 miles per hour with his car. The boys also begin to see apparitions, mainly a soldier from WWI, wandering near their houses.
The boys understand that something is after them as the apparitions and the attacks happen more an more often. They decide to counterattack by using the help of religious symbols such as sanctified water that can hurt some of the apparitions. But new monsters appear, coming from tunnels dug into the ground from the Old School. As one of the children is savagely killed, the others decide to attack the school that seems to be the home of the monsters.
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Daniel Staebler, Resident Scholar
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