“What happened?”
“They tried to eat me alive.”
The nice man approached David Olson’s old house on the corner. There was no one inside it. No hissing lady. No David. No mailbox people. Just words written in blood on David’s bedroom window.
TICK TOCK
The nice man stared at the words bitterly. Christopher gazed at the same window where the hissing lady had led David Olson fifty years ago. He could almost see the boy sleepwalking into the woods. Never to return again. The nice man was quiet, but Christopher could feel some of his thoughts leaking out of his skin like a dripping faucet. Words laced with guilt and sadness. The last time the nice man tried to kill the hissing lady, David Olson died. Christopher could feel the burden weighing on the nice man’s shoulders like a cross.
I can’t let…
I can’t let…this happen again.
The nice man looked at the sun getting higher in the sky. The clouds were getting darker and moving closer to the ground.
“Christopher, we’re going to run out of daylight. You’re God here. You have to quiet your mind. You have to find her.”
Christopher tried to locate the hissing lady, but each time he closed his eyes, all he could feel was the real side’s growing madness. With every blink, the picture changed like a vacation slide. He could hear the clown’s bullet hit his skull. He could taste the paint going down Mrs. Collins’ throat. He could feel Mrs. Henderson’s blood-soaked nightgown as she drove the sheriff’s car, listening to the radio. No police left to pick her up. The sheriff’s blood dripping in surgery. Warm and sticky like the blood from the bullet wound in the clown’s head. The bullets rolled to Special Ed. He is loading the gun. He is preparing for war. His friends were in danger. He had to get out. Christopher felt the nice man’s hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t let the real side distract you. Just breathe.”
Christopher took a deep breath and finally felt the hissing lady’s presence. But she wasn’t in one place. She was everywhere. Whispering inside everyone’s head. For a moment, Christopher thought she was hissing into his mother’s ears. He could smell his mother’s perfume and feel her warm hand on his chest. His mother was there. Somewhere. The hissing lady poisoning the town around her. If he didn’t get out, she would be surrounded by them all.
“I have to get out of here and save my mother,” Christopher said.
“Follow that thought,” the nice man said. “Follow your mother.”
Christopher did as he was told. He closed his eyes, and the light danced behind his eyelids like stars. The thought brought a memory, warm and soft as bread. His mother was driving him to the first day of school. They were in the old land shark. They pretended their address was different, so he would go to a great school. That’s how much she loved him. She would do anything for him. She would die for him. Christopher’s eyelids fluttered, and he saw the school in his mind’s eye. Big and bright.
“Your eyes just twitched. What did you just see?” the nice man asked anxiously.
“My school.”
“Come on,” he said.
“Is that where the hissing lady is?” Christopher asked.
“I don’t know. I just know we have to go there.”
The nice man began to move down the street. Quickly and quietly. Always on alert. Always listening. Hunting her. Or being hunted. Christopher watched him crouch behind trees and bushes, studying every inch of the road, looking for a trap. But no trap came. Just two words written in blood on front doors and highway pavement. Two words scratched into cars.
TICK TOCK
The nice man led him up the hill to the school. They went to the boys’ bathroom window. The nice man put his ear to the glass and listened to the sounds inside the school. Christopher thought he felt something inside. Cold and evil.
“Stay behind me,” the nice man said. “If it’s an ambush, you can still get away.”
The nice man opened the window with a crrreak. He climbed down from the window and landed on the cold tile. The nice man studied the darkness like a soldier. Listening with his eyes. Seeing with his ears. After a long minute, he looked up and gave Christopher the nod that it was safe to follow.
Christopher climbed down, and the two walked through the boys’ bathroom. Dark and dripping with water. The nice man opened the door and peeked down the hallway. Empty and quiet. They tiptoed past the metal lockers. Still and cold. Like vertical coffins in a mausoleum. Christopher remembered that first nightmare. The children coming to eat him alive. Christopher saw a familiar sight at the end of the hallway.
The library.
They walked toward it. Christopher could feel his heart in his throat. The nice man put his ear to the library door and listened. No sound. He opened the door slowly. The room was dark and seemingly empty. Christopher remembered talking with Mrs. Henderson in this room. She told him about David Olson’s favorite book, then went home and stabbed her husband. Christopher tiptoed over to the stacks. To that one familiar shelf. To that one familiar book.
Frankenstein.
Christopher opened the book, and he smiled when he saw what David Olson had left them on the imaginary side.
Another Christmas card.
The two stared at it in silence. It was another message. Another clue from David. The front of the card was a picture of a beautiful home with a white picket fence covered in snow. Christopher opened the card, but there was no personal writing from David. Only the card’s original inscription.
Over the river
And through the wood
To grandmother’s house we go.
Christopher looked at the message again. He was puzzled by it. It didn’t mean anything special to him. He studied the front picture. The white picket fence. The red door. Then, he turned to ask what it all meant. That’s when he saw the nice man’s expression. It curled Christopher’s toes.
The nice man was terrified.
“What’s wrong?” Christopher asked.
“I know where she’s going.”
“Tell me,” Christopher said past the lump in his throat.
The nice man took a moment, then he whispered,
“Christopher, have you ever woken up from a nightmare that was so terrifying you couldn’t remember anything about it?”
“Yes,” Christopher said, already dreading where this was going.
“That’s a place here. It’s where she took you for six days.”
Christopher took a long, hard swallow, trying to summon his courage. He tried to remember what happened to him. He could see nothing.
“So, we know where she’s going,” Christopher said, trying to sound a lot braver than he felt. “We can still get the key. We can still kill her.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t just walk up to the path. It’s surrounded by her guards. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.”
“I’m invisible. I can do it. I can surprise her.”
“That’s just what David said,” the nice man replied soberly. “Until she turned his tree house into the back door to this place. Her own sick little joke. And a warning to the rest of us.”
“David wouldn’t have left the clue for us if he didn’t think it was possible to kill her there,” Christopher said. “We need to get that key. What other choice do we have?”
The nice man nodded. There was nothing to argue.
“Come on,” he finally said.
The nice man led Christopher outside. The clouds had cut off the sunlight, turning the day blood red. The temperature had dropped. And a great scream rose from the horizon, hitting the sky like a cue ball on a perfect break, scattering the clouds. It sounded like a thousand people thrown into a fire and burned alive.
“What is that?” Christopher asked.
“Her army.”
He quickly led Christopher to the school playground. Christopher looked at the four-square court and the baseball field. The nice man got down on one knee.
“Christopher, listen to me c
arefully, because this might be the last chance I have to tell you this. The imaginary world is like a dream. And you can do anything in a dream, right? Just close your eyes, calm your mind, and use your imagination. That’s how it works here. If you can see it in your mind’s eye, you can do it. You can fly like Iron Man. Be stronger than the Hulk. Braver than Captain America. More powerful…”
“Than Thor?” Christopher asked.
“Than Thor’s hammer,” the nice man said. “So, if we are going to sneak into the gate, we have to do it quietly. Can you try?”
The nice man stopped speaking, but he didn’t stop thinking. Christopher could feel the words tremble on his skin.
You can fly like Iron Man.
Christopher nodded. He closed his eyes and quieted his mind. He felt the itch crawl over his body like an army of ants. The fever broke out on his forehead. The heat felt like the fire under a hot-air balloon. He looked into his mind’s eye and imagined himself floating like the balloons from the Balloon Derby. The air suddenly growing thinner. He imagined the world from ten feet above the ground. Twenty feet above the ground. Flying like a beautiful balloon.
Jerry found the balloons!
Jerry is going to kill my mother!
The voice came crashing through his mind. Christopher opened his eyes and saw that he was twenty feet above the ground. He panicked and fell, landing on the ground with a thud. The nice man picked him up.
“I’m sorry,” Christopher said.
“Don’t be. You haven’t had enough training. That’s my fault. We’ll find another way.”
The two of them were silent for a moment. Christopher looked at the horizon. He saw a bird flying into the clouds. Another bird dropped out of them. Christopher turned to the swing set. He thought about that day when he first saw the cloud face in the sky. He was swinging. He jumped and the Pirates won the World Series. He couldn’t fly like Iron Man yet.
But maybe he could land like him.
“What about the swings?” he asked.
The nice man looked at the swings and their trajectory.
“Those will work,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Christopher jumped onto one swing. The nice man took the one right next to him.
“Get to the hissing lady while it’s still daylight.”
Christopher nodded. The nice man reached into his pocket and placed a loose, leather sheath in Christopher’s hand.
“My father gave me this,” the nice man said. “Now, it’s yours.”
Christopher unfolded the leather to reveal a dull, silver blade. This was not a gleaming sword from the movies. It was common. Just like him.
“Use it wisely, son.”
Christopher nodded, and they started to churn their arms and legs. Swinging higher and higher like he did with Lenny Cordisco a hundred times back in Michigan. Back then, they would swing as high as they could. Then, they’d let go and jump five feet into the sand. But this was more than five feet.
This was the horizon.
Christopher looked over at the nice man. He had never seen such a serene look on anyone’s face before. It was a father’s pride, but he wasn’t a father. Other than his own mother, Christopher had never had someone look at him with so much love before.
“Close your eyes. Quiet your mind,” the nice man said.
Christopher did as he was told. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, losing himself behind the eyelids. Christopher imagined himself gripping the chains, whipping his legs, and swinging himself once. Twice. Three times.
Go.
With his mind’s eye, Christopher saw himself let go of the chains and launch like a slingshot through the air next to the nice man. He imagined the world slowing down as they rose toward the clouds. Higher and higher. The school small as a child’s model beneath their feet. He saw it all in his mind’s eye. The baseball field. The highway on the real side. The overturned cars. The dead deer. The path of destruction was almost complete.
He saw his body hit the cloud before he felt it.
The cloud wasn’t soft and pillowy. It felt like cold water vapor in the humidifier that his mother set up when he got sick. Christopher didn’t know why he was thinking of her now. She must be in the hospital with him. Rubbing his hair and telling him it would be okay. He couldn’t wait to get out and tell her about the clouds.
“They taste like cold cotton candy without any sugar, Mom.”
They drifted higher and higher, their bodies rising above the cloud line. Christopher looked down and saw them, big and beautiful, moving slowly over the town. The clouds bumped into each other like a pillow fight. They cracked together, making lightning. Within a few seconds, there was a rush of warm soft ozone and the sound of thunder. A snow began to fall. A gentle snow washing away the fear.
In floods.
Christopher imagined moving up into the sky. The stars twinkling like snowflakes in the twilight. For a moment, he thought this must be what Heaven is. Sitting on a cloud. Looking at stars. Feeling his mother’s warm hand on his forehead. Forever. He remembered when Father Tom explained that the Holy Trinity was God in three forms. Just like water can be water, ice, steam.
Or clouds.
They weren’t flying so much as swimming through water in the sky. It was all the same now. His imagination was the limit of his power. For a moment, he thought that’s why the hissing lady needed children. Adults are bad at remembering how powerful they can be because somewhere along the line, they were shamed for their imagination.
To think it is to do it.
“Get ready,” the nice man said.
He felt them begin to fall, hitting the clouds again at a much faster speed. Christopher had no idea how far they’d flown. How long they had been up there. Time was lost in his imagination. He dropped faster and faster. He came out of the clouds and looked down. They were all the way across town.
Above the Mission Street Woods.
But the woods looked different. Bigger and meaner somehow. The sun had melted the snow on top of the trees, but the clearing was still covered in white. The tree sat in the middle of the clearing like a black dot. It took Christopher’s mind a moment to realize what he was looking at.
The woods were a giant eye.
The eye looked up at heaven and watched the stars, shooting. A soul ascending or a sun dying. A son dying. The clearing was the white of the eye. The tree was its pupil. Its pupil. Its student.
They continued to drop. The nice man was heavier and fell faster. They were becoming separated.
“I’ll create a diversion! Get to her before nightfall!” the nice man said, dropping out of the sky. “Remember what you are!”
With his mind’s eye, Christopher saw the nice man fall hard on the street while Christopher flew to the side of the woods that Mr. Collins’ construction crew had already cleared. He saw great hulks of trees lying in piles around a freshly dug clearing. The trees looked like teeth pulled out of gums by angry hands. Tree stumps like gravestones. They surrounded a massive clearing of torn earth and mud and equipment.
That’s when he saw the hissing lady.
She stood in the middle of the muddy clearing, surrounded by a hundred deer. She didn’t speak. She just touched their heads, and they bowed like worshippers. Thousands of mailbox people stood around them. They each held the string that kept the next in line. The line stretched beyond the horizon.
It was her army.
Christopher opened his eyes and fell to earth. His body hit the mud with a tremendous smack. The force knocked the wind out of him. His chest felt crushed, straining for breath like a goldfish flopping outside of its tank. He thought for sure they would have heard him, but the mailbox people’s moans drowned the sound of the impact. Christopher looked up at the sky. The sun kissed the top of the trees.
Christopher was in the middle of the enemy’s camp.
The nice man was nowhere to be seen.
He had ten minutes of daylight left.
Chapter 81
/>
Christopher’s mother looked up as her son suddenly stirred on the hospital bed. His eyes fluttered underneath closed lids. She took his hand and hoped with all of her heart and soul that he would open them. His perfect eyes. His father’s eyes. But the hope faded with the sounds of the machines keeping his body alive with a cruel beep beep beep. She turned to the window and saw the sun beginning to set. A chill ran through her. Soon the terrifying night would come. And her son would be lost inside it.
Christopher’s mother turned to Ambrose. His eyes covered in bandages. She looked down at the diary in her hands. Everything David had gone through Christopher had gone through. The itching, the headaches, the fevers. Both boys knew all of the answers to all of the tests. Both were hunted by the hissing lady. So, she knew that whatever David had done, Christopher was about to do. A sinking feeling came over her as she turned the page.
It was David’s last entry.
The temperature in the room dropped. Her breath felt frosty in the air. She could almost feel her heart stop. The handwriting was now nearly illegible.
June 25th
Ambrose, I am going in to kill the hissing lady. If you read this diary, it means I didn’t make it. But I want you to know how it was on my last day. When I got out of bed this morning, I felt peaceful. I know that’s strange, but it’s true. I felt like my whole life was leading up to this moment. Like I had been alive for 8 years for this one purpose. I know what I have to do. I have to follow her into my tree house. I don’t know what’s waiting for me on the other side. The place that’s so scary that we don’t remember our nightmares. But if I don’t go there, I think everyone is going to die. I don’t know if I am going to be alive tomorrow. I wonder what that will feel like. Ambrose, after you read this, please don’t be hard on yourself too much. I understand you were just a 17-year-old kid. So, don’t blame yourself for not listening because I wouldn’t have believed me, either. That’s the thing about being God here. It makes me know things. I know if you’re reading this, it means you didn’t die. I know it means I kept her inside the imaginary world somehow and away from you. And that’s enough for me. I know you’re a good person. I know you will miss me every day. But I will be there, Ambrose. I will be watching you from the imaginary side. I will make sure no nightmares get anywhere near you. So, even if you feel sad, you will always have a break when you sleep. And every time you smell a baseball glove, that will be me, Ambrose. I will be looking out for you every day until you go to Heaven. I will always keep you safe. I love you big brother.
Imaginary Friend Page 46
