Imaginary Friend

by Stephen Chbosky

  “But she was a baby once. Where did she come from?” Christopher asked.

  “She was born here.”

  “I don’t think she was. Look at her.”

  Christopher pointed to the hissing lady again. Her eyes seemed filled with agony. Not rage. Not madness. She crawled desperately over the street. Trying to get to the lawn. And for some reason Christopher couldn’t understand, no one would help her. No mailbox people. No deer. They seemed frozen in the light of the fire.

  “Christopher, I know you feel sorry for her. But don’t be fooled. She tortured me for centuries, just like she tortured David. Just like she would have hurt you and your mother. But you stopped her. Only you.”

  Christopher looked at the nice man, smiling through his broken teeth. His skin and clothes torn apart from centuries of torment. There was something so kind about him. Something that reminded Christopher of his dad. Maybe it was the tobacco smell on his shirt. Christopher didn’t remember the nice man ever smoking, but it was there nonetheless.

  “We can’t let her get off the street until she’s burnt completely. Come on, son. You need to get that key,” the nice man said, putting his hand on Christopher’s head.

  The nice man’s hand felt so comfortable to Christopher. Like the cold side of the pillow. All of the screams around them fell away, and the air became fresh and clean. It didn’t smell like the nightmares anymore. It smelled like the forest in winter. It smelled like…like…

  Like Heaven.

  The nice man smiled and led Christopher across the street. The hissing lady stretched her fingers to the lawn. Christopher knelt down, blocking her path. She groped at him wildly, her scarred fingers coarse against his skin.

  “STOP HELPING HIM!” the hissing lady screamed at the nice man.

  “Don’t let her leave the street, Christopher,” the nice man said calmly.

  “She’s still too strong. I need your help.”

  “No, son. It has to be you. Only you. You’re God here.”

  Christopher held the silver blade. The hissing lady burned, her eyes wild with fear. She tried to crawl around him, but her body crumpled. Christopher knew she would never make it to the lawn.

  The hissing lady was going to die.

  “You saved us, Christopher,” the nice man said. “Your father would have been very proud of you. Now, get the key, son.”

  Christopher felt the nice man’s hands on his shoulders. Rubbing them. Christopher smiled. He moved the silver blade to her throat. He was just about to carve the key out of her scarred, burnt skin when something caught the corner of his eye.

  A shadow figure.

  Walking out of the woods.

  It shuffled its feet through the field, dazed and delirious. Its hands and legs shaking. Christopher looked as the shadow figure stepped into the streetlight.

  It was David Olson.

  He was ashen. Christopher could see the scratches on his neck. The gash across his cheek. The blood pouring out of his nose. The bruises on his arms.

  “David!” Christopher screamed in triumph. “It’s over! You’re safe! You’re free! Look!”

  Christopher pointed to the hissing lady burning on the street. David opened his mouth and unrolled his serpent tongue. What followed was a cry of such anguish that it made Christopher shudder. David ran to the hissing lady. He took one of her hands and desperately tried to drag her off the street with his battered body.

  “David? What are you doing?” Christopher asked.

  David pulled with all of his strength, but he was too weak. Christopher looked into the hissing lady’s eyes, illuminated by the streetlight. For the first time, he realized her eyes were filled with tears.

  “Stop helping him,” she pleaded.

  Christopher suddenly realized that the hissing lady wasn’t talking to the nice man.

  She was talking to him.

  Christopher felt the nice man’s hands on his shoulders. Rubbing. His ears went flush. His heart began to pound. He turned around. The nice man was in a grey suit. He looked flawless. Not a mark on his skin. Not a scar on his body. He smiled a kind smile, his teeth perfectly intact. He wore a bow tie. And he had green eyes—sometimes.

  “hI. Christopher.”

  His voice was so pleasant. Like a warm mug of coffee.

  “Your mom is going to be safe, and everything iS going to be okay now, son.”

  The hair stood up on the back of Christopher’s neck.

  “Who are you?” Christopher asked.

  “What do you mean? I’m your friEnd.”

  “But you don’t look right.”

  “Don’t worry about my clothes. You broke her curse. That’S all. As she gets smaller, I get bigger. It’s always been like that.”

  The nice man walked closer, his perfectly polished shoes leaving footprints in the blood on the street. Each footprint was a different size. A little girl. A grown man.

  Do you know where you are?

  Christopher started to back away from the nice man. He felt the screaming of the world break his eardrums. The man in the Girl Scout uniform being pulled into the bushes. The couple kissing so hard their faces began to bleed. The mailbox people held together with string like men on a chain gang. And that screaming. It never ended.

  This wasn’t the imaginary world at all.

  “Where are we?” Christopher asked, terrified.

  “It’s just a dream, chrIstopher,” the nice man said calmly.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “It’s a nightmare. A nightmare is nothing but a dream gone siCk.”

  “This is no nightmare.”

  Christopher felt the fever on his skin. The heat of the flu inside everyone. It wasn’t a fever. It was a fire.

  “This is Hell. I’m in Hell.”

  Christopher remembered the six days he spent in the woods. The six days he lay on that tree, being whispered to by the nice man. “Chrisssstopher. Chrissstopher.” Soaking in as much knowledge as his little brain could take. Being made powerful. Being turned into God. Or a soldier. Or a murderer. For one purpose. To kill the hissing lady. To get the key. To free the nice man. He thought he was asleep. He thought he was dreaming.

  I was in Hell for six days.

  “Of courSe you weren’t,” the nice man said, climbing out of Christopher’s mind. “This is just a nightmare. A nightmare is just a few hours in Hell. So, we need to get you out of here. Now go get that key.”

  The nice man smiled, so calm and reassuring. But his eyes weren’t smiling. Christopher backed up toward the hissing lady and David Olson. The nice man spoke in a measured voice.

  “Where are you going?” the nice man asked.

  He walked toward Christopher with calm little steps.

  “We need the key, son. Do you want the mirror between the worlds to shatter? Do you want the hisSing lady to get out?”

  Christopher saw the thoughts playing hide-and-seek between his words. There was no mirror between the worlds. There was no glass that could shatter. The nice man only wanted to escape through his tree house. He only needed the hissing lady dead and the key buried in her flesh to open the door.

  “She doesn’t want to get out. You want to get out.”

  The nice man took a step closer. The smile frozen on his face. Christopher looked at David Olson, desperately pulling on the hissing lady’s hand. He looked into the hissing lady’s eyes, filled with tears, delirious with pain.

  “Stop helping him,” she wept.

  Christopher took her right hand, coarse from centuries of torment. He felt the truth move like a whisper from her hand to his. He saw how the nice man tortured her. How the nice man turned all of her words into terror. This whole time, she wasn’t trying to scare Christopher. She was trying to warn him. The light inside of the tree was not death. The light inside of the tree was life.

  She was trying to save his life.

  Christopher tried to pick her up, but she was as heavy as the world she protected. It didn’t matter how hard
he strained, he was never going to be able to carry her back to the lawn by himself. So, he moved side by side with David Olson, and the two little boys began pulling her off the burning street.

  “Don’t do that, christopHer. Please dOn’t.”

  The nice man smiled a frown gone sick.

  “Attack!” the hissing lady screamed.

  Upon her command, hundreds of deer rushed at the nice man. Their fangs exposed. Charging like an army. Ready to rip him to pieces.

  The nice man did not move.

  He simply held up his hand. The deer instantly stopped and moved to his side. One by one. Their teeth bared. But they weren’t biting this time. They were bowing to him. Rubbing on his legs like house cats. Christopher saw the hissing lady’s expression change from hope to horror.

  “They aren’t your army, dear. They’re mine. Did you forget tHAt?”

  The nice man calmly walked across the street. The deer turned around and walked behind him, baring their teeth. Christopher and David strained against the hissing lady’s weight.

  “Come back here before I get upset, soN.”

  Christopher dragged her over the river of blood in the street. The river of blood in his nose. The clouds bumped together. Lightning ripped the sky. The nice man inched toward them.

  “Come back here before I have to hIt you.”

  Christopher’s heart raced. The nice man stepped closer. Christopher looked down. The soldier’s legs were wrong. He had deer legs.

  “I don’t want to do that. Don’t maKe me do that.”

  Christopher’s feet reached the lawn. The hissing lady closed her eyes. She was seconds from death.

  “If you pull her off the street, I will hurT you.”

  One more step.

  “If you save her, I’ll kill your motHer.”

  Christopher and David Olson pulled the hissing lady onto the lawn. Her skin instantly stopped burning. She got up, her legs shaking, her body still broken. She stood between the two boys and the nice man. A mother lion protecting her cubs. The nice man walked toward them, shaking with rage. The deer stalked behind him. Christopher saw their shadows in the moonlight. They weren’t deer anymore. They were hounds. With glowing eyes. The hissing lady turned to the boys. She ripped the key from her flesh and put it in David’s shaking hand. Then, she screamed.

  “Get him out!”

  Chapter 103

  Mrs. Henderson crawled up the ladder to the tree house. The bullet wound in her side made the climbing slow. Each step excruciating. She would have stopped climbing, but her husband was calling to her from inside the tree house.

  Come on, honey. Let’s go on that weekend trip. I want to show you how much I love you.

  Ms. Lasko put her hand up to help the old woman climb faster. They had to hurry. She had to help her because it was waiting for her inside the tree house. She could taste it, cold and sharp and burning on her lips. That beautiful buzzy butterfly feeling in her belly and blood. The flush on her face.

  You can feel drunk again. It’s waiting right in here.

  Brady Collins felt so thankful. Mrs. Henderson said he did such a good job keeping the mailbox people in line. And now it was his turn to climb up those stairs to the tree house. He heard his mother in there. She was standing inside the warm kitchen, surrounded by the smell of hot soup and bread.

  Come in from the doghouse, Brady. Mommy loves you. You’ll never be cold again.

  Through the stitches on her eyelids, Jenny Hertzog watched Brady climb the ladder. He passed the first branch, where her stepbrother Scott was still twitching. Jenny was happy, but she still wondered why Scott didn’t die. Jenny looked up at the tree house and realized that she could hear her mother’s sweet voice calling down to her. The woods smelled like her mother’s old room. Sweet perfume and buttery popcorn.

  Come inside, Jenny. We will have a slumber party together.

  We’ll make popcorn and kill your stepbrother and watch movies.

  And no one will come into your room again to hurt you.

  We’ll drown Scott together in Floods. Floods.

  Forever and ever and ever.

  The four souls climbed past the branches, sagging from the weight of all the bodies hanging like Christmas ornaments. They just had to get to the tree house. They just had to walk into the light.

  Then, they would be free.

  Chapter 104

  The hissing lady blocked the nice man as David and Christopher ran toward the Mission Street Woods. The nice man smiled, his teeth little daggers. The hissing lady squared off, burnt and bleeding. A coiled animal. Ready to strike.

  “I’m off the street,” she smiled through broken teeth.

  “He made me strongeR,” the nice man smiled back.

  The two circled each other. The hissing lady felt the deer crawl toward her. She knew the window was closing. She launched herself at him, screaming at the top of her lungs, her fingernails ready to gouge out his eyes.

  The nice man did not blink. He simply stood and waited for her as if she were a leaf falling in slow motion. He pivoted his body and hit her like swatting a fly. She flew back a hundred feet and crashed through Christopher’s front door. The splinters flew like shrapnel. Within seconds, the deer were on top of her, biting and scratching.

  And the nice man chased the boys into the woods.

  *

  Christopher ran down the path with David Olson. The key in David’s hand. The silver blade in his own. They passed the billy goat bridge. Christopher knew the clearing was right in front of them. He felt David’s hand on his. Moving him off the path.

  “No! We have to go to the clearing!” Christopher yelled.

  David shook his head no. He grabbed Christopher’s hand and made a hard right through the thickest tree branches. Christopher looked back at the path just as the deer poured out from the clearing like fire ants from a hill. It was an ambush. David knew it. David knew every hiding place. Every shortcut. David had been here for fifty years.

  The deer spread out behind them like dogs chasing mechanical rabbits.

  Christopher followed David through the trees until the path was so thick that only children could move inside it. The deer slowed behind them. Their bodies too big to follow. But they did not stop, pushing themselves through the thickets until their skin scraped on the branches.

  Suddenly the sky grew dark. Christopher heard branches snap like twigs behind them. He turned and saw murderous green eyes in the distance. It was the nice man. Tearing the trees apart to find them. Christopher felt David Olson’s hand grab his. The itch moved from David’s skin to Christopher’s. Along with the fever. Christopher felt every hair on his body stand up like pine needles.

  The boys closed their eyes and quieted their minds. They pictured themselves beginning to fly. The deer screaming behind them. The nice man tearing the path apart with his bare hands to get at them. They imagined flying higher and higher. Farther and faster. Up through the clouds. The wind in their hair.

  Two rockets heading to the moon.

  Until David began to sputter. The blood trickled out of his nose like a plane leaking fuel. He barely managed to put the key into Christopher’s hands.

  The power comes at a price.

  Christopher could feel the pain through the boy’s skin. The cuts and lashes on David’s neck. Christopher felt it all unfold from David’s point of view. The nice man breaking out of the tree house. The nice man savaging the boy to keep him quiet. They weren’t cuts on his neck. They were bite marks.

  David began to fall.

  Christopher used all of his strength, but he could barely keep himself afloat. Let alone both of them. He curled himself around David’s body to cushion the blow, and the two boys dropped like children playing cannonball in a swimming pool with no water.

  They fell out of the clouds and into the sky right above the clearing. Christopher looked down and saw the angry eye cut in the middle of the Mission Street Woods. The giant tree stood in the middle like a dem
ented pupil. Staring. Furious with rage. The deer poured into the clearing. Little veins turning white snow into a bloodshot eye.

  The boys landed, the wind knocked from their bodies. They were a hundred feet from the tree. A hundred feet from the door. A hundred feet from life. Christopher jumped up, pulling David to his feet. The boys raced across the clearing to the tree. The nice man crashed through the woods, cracking the branches like bones. He reached the edge of the clearing.

  “Hi, boys,” he said.

  The boys turned. David Olson opened his mouth to scream. Christopher froze. The nice man smiled. So gentle.

  “Christopher, I’m sorry I lost my temper. I didn’t mean to. I just need to get out of here. Please.”

  The nice man’s voice sounded so desperate. It was as soft as thunder.

  “I’ve been here for millennia. I don’t get to wake up from this nightmare. I’m here. Every day. Every night. I never sleep. So, give me the key, and I promise I’m not going to hurt anyone. I just need to get out.”

  He moved toward Christopher. Little baby steps.

  “You know me. I saved you over and over, Christopher. I gave your mom a house. And I did it because you are a good boy with the kindest heart. I have never seen anything like you. You can save the world from itself. Please, Christopher.”

  His voice sounded so sincere. Everything he said sounded right and true. The nice man did save Christopher. He did give his mother a house. He was the only man Christopher ever knew who didn’t leave him.

  “You are my best friend,” the nice man said.

  Christopher felt out of his body. Like the dreams he used to have after his father died when he would fall down in the street and not be able to move. He held up the key with one hand. The dull, silver blade with the other. The nice man took another step. Smiling.

  “That’s it, Christopher. That’S it, son.”

  Just then, David Olson grabbed the silver blade from Christopher’s hand. He cut an invisible string and threw Christopher back to the tree. The bark like flesh. The world’s flesh.

  “No!” the nice man yelled and began to charge.