“What happened? What did they want?”
“They want to know where the nice man is.”
“Where is he?”
Christopher’s mother turned the corner. Following the signs for the exit. She made a hard right, running through the emergency room. Christopher saw Mary Katherine being wheeled into the ER from the parking lot on the real side. She was covered in blood.
“Where is the nice man?” his mother repeated.
“I don’t know. He escaped.”
Christopher looked at the next gurney being brought into the ER. He saw himself lying unconscious. He had a terrible gash on his arm. A bruise on his temple.
“Where are you supposed to meet him?!” she asked.
“I don’t know!” he said.
“CHRISTOPHER! WHERE CAN WE FIND THE NICE MAN?!”
Christopher watched an EMT driver push the last gurney into the hospital. What he saw confused him. His mother was on the gurney. She wore the same clothes she wore while driving. She had a cut on her forehead. She had pieces of windshield in her hair. The memory of the car crash came rushing back. The shattering glass. The buckling metal. His mother’s screams as he slipped away into unconsciousness.
That’s how I got here, isn’t it?
Christopher had refused to take the pill and sleep. He wouldn’t go into the tree house. So, the hissing lady used a third way to get him back to the imaginary side. And this time, she brought his mother with him. They were both in the car. They were both in the accident. They were both unconscious in the hospital. But if that was true…
Why is my mother awake on the real side?
He saw her. Weak. Bloody. She was reaching out to Christopher, trying to will her broken body to get to him. Then, as she finally collapsed against the pain, a terrible question turned his blood to ice. If his mother was awake on the real side, then who was behind him on the imaginary?
“Mom?” he said, his skin suddenly crawling with fear. “How did you get here?”
Christopher craned his neck back and saw her.
The hissing lady. Smiling.
“I guess we’ll have to cut out your tongue after all,” she said.
Chapter 66
Christopher’s mother opened her eyes. At first, she couldn’t see anything clearly. There was a bright light above her head. Her vision was blurry. She blinked a couple of times until she realized she was in a hospital bed. There was a life monitor clipped to her index finger. She had an IV spike in her arm. She felt a little groggy from the painkillers they had given her.
Slowly, she sat up. Waves of nausea forced her stomach to her throat. She felt faint, but she didn’t have time for that. She had to get to Christopher. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood on wobbly legs. She could instantly feel the cold air on her backside from the open hospital gown. She reached out to steady herself. That’s when she felt the pain.
The memories came back to her in puzzle pieces. Her body slamming against the driver’s-side door. Her ribs cracking. The jaws of life ripping them out of the car. Her son unconscious in the ambulance as it screamed its way to the hospital.
“Please sit down, Mrs. Reese. You were in a terrible accident,” a voice said.
“My son. Where’s my son?!” she said to the nurse.
“He’s in the ICU. But you need to rest.”
“Where’s the ICU?!”
“Second floor, but Mrs. Reese, you need to—”
Without a word, Christopher’s mother pulled the IV out of her arm, swallowed the pain in her side, and walked into the hallway.
“Mrs. Reese!” the nurse called after her.
Christopher’s mother found the elevator and made her way to the second floor. When the elevator doors opened, she was shocked. The ICU was beyond packed. The waiting room alone had enough seating for ten. There might have been forty-five people in there.
“Christopher Reese,” she said to the admissions nurse. “I’m his mother.”
“Room 217,” the nurse said while scratching her arm.
The security door buzzed like an angry wasp. Christopher’s mother opened the door and moved down the hall. She saw that all of the beds were taken. Stabbing victims. Shooting victims. The madness or anger or whatever this was had been busy while she was asleep. She dragged herself to room 217 at the end of the long hallway. She opened the door without knocking.
And that’s when she saw him.
Her little boy was lying on the hospital bed. He had a terrible gash up his arm. His body was covered in a hundred cuts from the explosion of glass. His eyes were closed. He had a huge tube sticking out of his mouth, connected to a jungle of monitors. Machines were breathing for him. Eating for him. Monitoring everything from his heart to his brain. Christopher’s mother saw an ICU nurse enter numbers into Christopher’s chart, stopping only once to scratch her shoulder.
“What’s wrong with him?” Christopher’s mother asked.
The nurse turned to her. Startled. Christopher’s mother instantly flagged the look on the nurse’s face. There was a moment of the nurse wondering who this woman was. Once she realized it was the mother, she plastered on a poker face and spoke like she was in church.
“Let me get the doctor, ma’am.”
The nurse quickly left. Christopher’s mother moved to the bed. When she took Christopher’s hand, it felt like touching a hot stove. She moved her hand to his forehead. She figured he must have a fever of 106 degrees. She looked at the monitors and found his temperature buried in all of the numbers and lights.
According to the monitor, he was 98.6.
Christopher’s mother grabbed a cup of ice chips from his bedside table. She shook the ice out on her hands and gently put them on his forehead. The ice melted rapidly, as if it had been left on hot asphalt. His skin turned the ice to water and quickly to vapor. She grabbed more ice and packed it under his armpits, neck, and chest.
“Mrs. Reese,” the voice said.
Christopher’s mother turned to find the doctor in the doorway. His face was covered by a surgical mask.
“Doctor, you have to wake him up!” she said.
“Mrs. Reese, please have a seat.”
“No!” she said. “He needs to wake up! You have to wake him up now!”
The doctor took down his surgical mask. His poker face was not as good as the nurse’s. Whatever the news was, it was not good.
“Mrs. Reese, I’m sorry, but we’ve already tried everything. I’m afraid nothing has worked. We can’t revive your son.”
“Why not?” she asked, panicked.
“Christopher is brain-dead, Mrs. Reese.”
The words landed on her chest, taking away her breath for a moment. Then, she snapped back to anger.
“The hell he is! We need to revive him! WE HAVE TO DO IT NOW!”
“Mrs. Reese, you don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t understand! Somebody has my son!”
The doctor gave a quick glance to the orderlies in the hallway. They entered the room quietly.
“Somebody has your son? What do you mean, Mrs. Reese?” the doctor asked calmly.
She was about to talk about the hissing lady wanting her boy to sleep. And his imaginary friend, the nice man, who was disguised as a white plastic bag. Then she noticed that the doctor was obsessively scratching his ear. His face was sweaty with fever. She could feel the orderlies standing behind her. Security would come next.
You will sound like a crazy person, Kate.
She thought it again to make sure it was her voice and not the false one.
You will sound like a crazy person.
It was her. And she was right. She looked at the faces in the room. She had seen her husband get this reaction before. That strange mixture of calm and tense. That watch-spring ready to pounce if the patient is deemed unstable or dangerous. They were all scratching their skin, as if this were an opium den. Doctor. Nurse. Orderlies. Security. All waiting for her to give them an excuse t
o pounce.
She realized that Christopher was back in the hospital. Unconscious. Right where the hissing lady wanted him. And if the hissing lady was powerful enough to arrange that, then she could easily manipulate a doctor into locking up a grieving mother for a psychiatric “evaluation.”
“Who has your son, Mrs. Reese?” the doctor repeated.
“No one. I’m sorry. I just…I’m just…” She feigned speechless grieving.
The room instantly relaxed as if some invisible sergeant said “At ease.”
“We understand, Mrs. Reese,” the doctor said gently. “I know how difficult this is. Please, take all the time you need. Then, we can discuss next steps.”
Christopher’s mother knew what he meant by “next steps.” He meant a grief counselor, a lawyer, a piece of paper, a pen, and a funeral. Once she signed Kate Reese on the dotted line, Dr. Feel Bad would pull the plug on every machine keeping her son alive. Never believing her that Christopher was not brain-dead. Never believing that her son was simply lost. Right where the hissing lady wanted him.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” she said contritely. “I know you’ve done everything you can.”
“No need to be sorry, Mrs. Reese. We understand. We’ll give you some privacy. Take all the time you need.”
The peanut gallery left the room, including a burly security guard, who scratched his thigh with his nightstick and looked at her like she was a ripe piñata. When she was alone, she kissed her son’s hot sweaty forehead and whispered in his ear so no one—not even the hissing lady—could hear.
“Christopher, I’ll get you out of there. I promise,” she said.
Chapter 67
Ambrose opened his eyes. For a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he had. Several times. Why the hell was he sleeping so much? Of course, he was used to taking catnaps. That was normal for a man his age. But this Rip Van Winkle shit was ridiculous. The last thing he remembered was sleeping all the way through the Christmas Pageant. He woke up a few hours later for dinner. But when he arrived in the dining room, nobody was there. The clock read 2:17 a.m. And somehow, the calendar on the wall had one additional X, taking away an entire day.
Ambrose had slept for thirty-six hours.
“Good morning, Mr. Olson,” a voice said. “Welcome back from the dead.”
Ambrose turned to find the night nurse adding another X to the calendar.
Make that sixty.
“Good morning,” he said. “I seem to have missed dinner.”
“And breakfast. And lunch. And dinner again,” she joked. “No worry. We put a mirror under your nose to make sure. I’ll fix you a plate. Why don’t you get warm in the parlor?”
The nurse fixed him a bowl of leftover beef stew and brought it to him in his favorite chair in front of the parlor TV, all the while chatting away with the Shady Pines gossip, starting with the Christmas Pageant. It seemed Ambrose had missed quite a show. In addition to the usual favorites of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” this year’s pageant must have been sponsored by a new children’s division of the WWE. There was an epic brawl that ended with Kate Reese’s son being attacked by Mrs. Keizer. The boy’s nose bled really badly, and his mother took him to the hospital, but that wasn’t the half of it.
“What happened next?” he asked.
“Mrs. Keizer…she stopped forgetting,” she said in her broken English.
“What do you mean?”
“She no have Alzheimer’s anymore. It is a Christmas miracle.”
Or was it?
He ignored the thought and the wind outside as he opened his brother’s diary.
June 7th
We dissected frogs in school today. I put my hand on the frog and I felt that strange itchy feeling again. The teacher said the frog must have only been sleeping because it woke up right there on the table. I pretended that was true, but when I left the tree house yesterday, I saw a bird on the trail going back home. It was dead on the ground. It had a broken wing and a snake was eating it. I chased the snake away and picked up the bird. I closed my eyes and had that itchy feeling from the imaginary side. I brought the bird back to life. It made my nose bleed real bad. It terrified me. Because I know the power on the imaginary side equals pain on the real side. You can’t have one without the other. So, the more things I make live, the more I am going to die. So, when my nose bleeds, it’s the world’s blood.
A chill ran down Ambrose’s spine. He thought of the nurse’s story of Christopher’s nose bleeding after he touched Mrs. Keizer, just like David’s nose bled after he touched the dead bird. Ambrose made a mental note to call Mrs. Reese in the morning, then went back to the diary. But he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He felt like he was being drugged. As if something didn’t want him to read. It reminded him of the time his buddies threw a pill into his whiskey and laughed when he threw off his clothes and stole a jeep. That time, he woke up to the sergeant’s wrath and a month of KP duty.
This time, he woke up to terror.
Ambrose heard a noise outside. The beef stew was cold and uneaten in front of him. An hour had passed. The TV was still on and turned to the local news. Talking about the flu epidemic and the rise in violent crime. He looked out through the window and saw deer running down the road. He took a quick breath. Something was here. Something evil. He turned his magnifying glass around and adjusted his bifocals. His eyes were dry and tired, but he had to decipher David’s handwriting. He had to get to the truth.
June 12th
The soldier is worried about me. I am pushing myself too hard. I am bleeding too much. He says that people on the real side aren’t supposed to have this much power, so I need to slow down. But I can’t. I was walking into school, and I touched Mrs. Henderson’s arm. My brain cooked, and my nose bled. I knew everything about her in 2 seconds. But it was more than the things that happened to her. I knew the things she was going to do someday. I knew she would stab her husband. I could see it over and over again. They were older people, and they were in the kitchen, and the hissing lady made her grab the knife and stab him in the throat. I screamed, and Mrs. Henderson asked what was wrong. I lied because if I told her the truth, she would have put me in a nut house.
Ambrose stopped reading. He knew that name. Henderson. He couldn’t place it. Where did he know the name Henderson? It took him a moment to finally turn to the television, where Sally Wiggins read the local news.
“…the ongoing investigation of Mrs. Beatrice Henderson, who stabbed her husband in the kitchen. She worked at Mill Grove Elementary School as a librarian…”
The hair rose on the old man’s arms. Ambrose turned quickly. He thought he felt someone watching him. But the parlor was empty. He turned back around. He turned the page. The voice was trying to lull him to sleep again. He fought it off and read.
June 15th
I couldn’t sleep last night because my mind works too hard. I was so restless, I got up and started reading the encyclopedia. I started with the A volume at 10:30 p.m. By 5:30 the next morning, I finished Z. The scariest part was knowing the mistakes the men who wrote the encyclopedia made. It’s funny when people don’t realize knowledge does not end in a particular year. People thought the sun revolved around the Earth and that the Earth was flat. There was a time before Jesus that people thought Zeus was God. Men were killed for thinking otherwise. They didn’t know the hissing lady was there making them afraid of new knowledge. They didn’t know that she’s always been there making them hate other people for trivial things.
“…sad news out of the Middle East tonight as four Christian missionaries were attacked trying to deliver much-needed food and supplies to the refugees…”
June 17th
The nose bleeds will not stop. My mother keeps taking me to doctors, but none of them know what’s wrong with me. The soldier and I are trying to figure out a way to tell Ambrose the truth that will make him believe me. I
need his help. I need him to fight her if I fail. But he never believes me. He thinks I am talking to myself when I am talking to the soldier. He thinks I am insane.
Ambrose took off his glasses and rubbed his burning eyes. He suddenly felt sleepy, but he slapped himself across the face like he did in the army during guard duty. Nothing was going to stop him from reading this. He felt as if the world depended on it.
June 21st
I don’t really know where I am anymore. I don’t know what’s real or what’s imaginary, but we can’t wait any longer. The hissing lady is everywhere disguised as the flu. We have to complete the training now before she takes over the tree house. I asked the soldier why the hissing lady wanted it so much, and he explained what it is doing to me. The power that she wants for herself. It was so simple. It explained everything I was going through. I wanted to tell Ambrose what was really happening to me, but I couldn’t have him call me crazy again. So, I waited until he was asleep, and I got into bed with him. I whispered really quietly in his ear just in case the hissing lady was listening.
“Ambrose. I have to tell you something.”
“What?” he said asleep.
“I have to tell you what the tree house does.”
“Fine. Go ahead,” he said in his sleep. “What does the tree house do?”
Ambrose turned the page.
And that’s when it happened.
At first, he didn’t understand. The pages were so blurry that they looked almost grey. He squinted his eyes harder, but there were no more shapes. No more outlines to the letters. He held the magnifying glass up to his eyes. It changed nothing. He took away his bifocals. Nothing again.
He had finally gone blind.
“NURSE!” he yelled out.
Ambrose heard the floor creak near him. Little tiny baby steps. There was only silence. He thought he heard breathing near his ears. He didn’t know what it was, but he could feel it. Something was in here. A little whisper that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Imaginary Friend Page 38
