Summer depths.

Stepping out into the fetid swamp this place has become, under a waning Moon still bright as it slides across the sky, I hear the gulping belch of frogs across the way. The field that stretches away on the other side of the road now has a mystery to it, with a mist rising up from it like the moors in Basil Rathbone's Hound of the Baskervilles. High weeds and bushes are silhouettes of creatures clawing their way up from the ground, frozen in poses of final escape. There is a thick, mild stench of rotting plants and cordite, a mix of smells that comes from an endless stretch of 90-degree-plus days and the fireworks of the Fourth of July. The air is heavy. The night is deep.