The nice man screamed, his skin burning.
The dominoes fell. The mailbox people followed Christopher’s father, running full speed at the nice man. They jumped on his back like fleas on a dog and burst into light. Floating up to the sky like embers from a campfire. The message spreading to everyone.
“We are free!”
The mailbox people kept coming. Trampling the damned in a stampede. The nice man hit back. With each swing of his powerful arms, dozens would burst into sparks. But they kept coming. Faster and faster. The light inside cracked them open and pulled them into the sky. Forever free. He swung his fists, but there were too many. They jumped onto his body, burning him with light. Filling the sky with shooting stars.
The nice man got weaker with each soul. With each sun. Son. Daughter. Father. Mother. Emily Bertovich smiled at the sheriff, then ran straight at the nice man’s heart, breaking into a million pieces of light. The sky burned so brilliantly that the deer froze, staring into this massive headlight. The bodies piled on faster and faster until they couldn’t see the nice man anymore. He was screaming in pain, buried in a pile of light.
Christopher looked up into the sky. He saw a cloud begin to gather.
“Mom?” he said, terrified.
The sheriff saw the deer blink and adjust to the light. They began hissing as the damned staggered to their feet. Ambrose felt his little brother tug at his sleeve.
“What is it, David?”
David pointed to the sky. Ambrose looked through the halos in his eyes at the clouds that were forming into a face. It looked like it was smiling. With big teeth. The man in the grey suit.
“MOM! WE HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW!” Christopher screamed.
Before he could finish his sentence, Christopher’s mother picked up her little boy and took off running back to the woods. The sheriff followed. David and Ambrose ran with the hissing lady as dark angry clouds began to twist behind them.
“chrisSstopheR!” the voice boomed.
Christopher looked behind his mother’s shoulder and saw tornadoes of fire, spinning at impossible speeds. Each tornado looked like a fang in the nice man’s mouth.
“yoU wilL neveR leavE mE!”
A wall of fire rolled in a tidal wave. Burning through the neighborhood like a house made of straw. There was a grinding sound, then a fantastic BOOM as the nice man stood up, scattering the bodies of the mailbox people like fireflies into dusk. He saw Christopher, his mother, the sheriff, David, Ambrose, and the hissing lady run into the woods. He put his feet down on his beautiful street and climbed down into his tunnel.
Into the passage that no one else knew.
Chapter 133
Christopher’s mother ran with her son in her arms. The deer and the damned behind them. Christopher felt the panic in the hissing lady, her eyes darting down each path. Something was wrong. She knew it. The woods were different.
Where is the door?
Christopher felt David’s terror. In fifty years, he had never seen the woods like this. The trees woke up. The branches reached out. Violent arms trapped for centuries. He could sense David trying to quiet his mind and fly Ambrose above the tree line, but the branches locked arms above them, creating a tunnel. They were being herded like cattle through a slaughterhouse.
Christopher looked back. The clouds were not just clouds anymore. They were smoke from one horrible fire. He felt the heat coming for them. He tried to find his mind’s eye, but the string and the mailbox people left him drained, helpless in his mother’s arms. He felt her, weakened by her battle with the nice man. Only her maternal instincts kept her legs moving as fast as they did.
“WHERE IS THE DOOR?!” his mother screamed.
Christopher looked down the path and saw a wall of trees up ahead. The woods had closed in on them. They were running into a dead end. He felt the ground tremble beneath them.
“dOoo yOuU knOw wHy wE burY bodIes siX fEet deEp?” the voice asked.
Christopher saw the dirt moving under his mother’s feet.
“sO wE doN’t heAr theM whEn theY wAke uPpp, chrIstopheR. theY’re aLl wAkIng uPpPpP nOwwww! theY aRe cOminnnng!”
He could feel all the people under the earth. Roots tilling the soil.
“WHERE IS THE DOOR?!” his mother repeated.
Christopher quieted his mind. And found the memory. He had been here before. He had been here for six days. He knew this place.
“Keep running,” he said.
The group looked ahead at the wall of trees. The branches like giant spears ready to impale them.
“It’s a dead end!” his mother said.
“No, it’s a trick. Trust me.”
Without hesitation, Christopher’s mother did. She ran straight into the wall of trees, ready to be torn apart by the branches.
But the trees weren’t there.
They were only reflections in a mist of water. An illusion inside the nice man’s maze. The group ran through the fog like a waterfall and reached the clearing on the other side. It glowed under the fire-red moon. They looked up and saw it.
The giant tree.
The tree of knowledge. Broken and tortured. The branches moving like marionettes. Each branch with a tree house. The shadows inside them scratching and clawing the doors. Little seeds in acorns squirming. Ready to be born.
“KEY!” the hissing lady yelled.
Christopher pulled the key from his pocket. She grabbed it and led them to the door carved into the trunk. The clouds descended. The faces moved in them like ghosts.
The wind blew the key out of her hand.
“NO!” the hissing lady screamed.
The key carried on the wind, swirling around the tree. Christopher watched as David Olson closed his eyes. He felt David push himself past the pain and find his mind’s eye. Picturing himself flying after the key. Jumping from branch to branch. The tree house doors opening behind him. The shadows crawling out of the tree houses and slithering up the tree, giving chase.
“davvvvvviiddddddd…”
More tree house doors opened. Shadows leaked onto the branches. Some of them moving up toward David. Others moving down.
“chrisstttopppherrrr…”
A fog bank crept in from all sides of the woods like camouflage. The deer and the damned playing hide-and-seek in the mist. The last of the nice man’s army. The man in the hollow log. The couple. The man in the Girl Scout uniform. All of their eyes glowing like coals from a fire. Christopher felt them descend from all sides of the clearing.
They were completely surrounded.
The adults made a circle around Christopher as the deer and the damned attacked. The two women turned back to back. Christopher between them. The deer swarmed, tearing the hissing lady’s flesh with razor-sharp teeth. The man in the Girl Scout uniform jumped onto Kate’s back. Licking her neck. Ambrose looked through the halos in his eyes as the shadows dripped off the tree onto the ground like sap. Creeping toward them.
“Sheriff!” he yelled.
The sheriff turned as the ground opened up. Little skeleton hands reached up from the soil. The missing souls that built the tree houses over centuries. The bones of children approached the sheriff.
“sherifffffffff…” the children giggled.
The children threw themselves onto him, biting, leaving their skeleton teeth in his skin. The sheriff fell to the ground as more hands broke through the earth and started pulling him down.
Christopher. Help!
Christopher felt David’s plea on the wind. He looked up and saw the key moving through the air faster than David could fly. Christopher needed to grab the key for him, but he was too weak to follow. He needed thousand-foot arms. He needed hands.
He needed the tree.
Christopher had given all of his strength to his mother.
But he still had his mind. Christopher closed his eyes and let the whisper take his body. He touched the tree, pulsing like a heartbeat. It didn’t feel like bark. It felt like flesh.
&
nbsp; I was here for six days.
Christopher pushed the whisper from his mind into the tree’s flesh. He spread his fingers, moving the top branches like fingers in a glove. Christopher watched the key flying up past the branches. David Olson behind it. The shadows chasing. Everything slowed down. The wind. The air. The tree branches above them. The key raced in the wind. It was almost at the top. It was now or never. Christopher reached out with the top branch like a fishing line.
Christopher snagged the key out of the air.
He held it for David, who snatched it away from the branch, the shadows right behind him. Christopher opened his eyes and saw David crest the top of the tree.
Where the nice man floated.
“hI, davId.”
He brought his hand down like a thunderclap, striking David Olson, who fell like a clay pigeon out of the sky. David crashed on the ground at Ambrose’s feet, blood pouring from his mouth and eyes.
“NO!” the hissing lady screamed in anguish as David dropped the key.
Chapter 134
The key lay on the ground. Ambrose watched in horror as the clouds descended. He saw the nice man through the halos in his eyes, hidden in the fog. The nice man jumped through the air and landed quietly on the ground. He reached for the key. Ambrose hit back with all of his rage at the man who took his brother. The man who tortured him for fifty years.
But he was no match.
The nice man grabbed his arms and drove his thumbs through the old man’s eyes. Ambrose felt his body go. His fingers shriveled with arthritis. His back. His knees. His feet numb from the trenches. Whatever Christopher had healed was gone. He was an old man again, blind and helpless.
The nice man reached for the key.
Ambrose heard the hissing lady throw off the deer and tackle the nice man to the ground. The two battled, her screams filling the night with red. All he could do was listen helplessly as the damned attacked Christopher and his mother. The giggling skeletons of the children dragging the sheriff to his grave.
Ambrose reached blindly for the key. His hands digging through the dirt until he found it buried in blood. He picked up his little brother’s body and moved to the door on brittle knees. He held the key in his arthritic hand and searched for the keyhole with the clouds in his eyes.
“yoU wilL neveR finD iT, olD maN,” the wind taunted.
“I know how to be blind, motherfucker,” Ambrose said.
Ambrose’s hands found the keyhole. He put in the key and turned it with a click. Ambrose opened the door to…
Light.
“Come on, David!” he yelled.
Ambrose held his little brother and rushed into the light. With every step, the halos in his eyes returned. Along with the joy. He had found his brother. He was going to rescue him. He was going to get him out of this horrible place. Suddenly Ambrose felt them hit an invisible wall. An invisible fence. His brother dropped from his arms. He turned around and found David, staggering to his feet. Desperate.
“Come on, David!”
David shook his head. No.
“You can’t leave?” Ambrose asked.
David nodded yes. He pushed against his brother. Pushing him into the light to save him.
“It took me fifty years to find you. I’m not leaving you,” Ambrose said.
David began to cry. He pushed on his brother like an oak tree, but Ambrose wouldn’t budge.
“David, stop. I’m never leaving you again.”
Gently, the old man lowered David’s hands until the little boy stopped pushing. Ambrose knelt down and put his hand on David’s shoulder. He felt the light inside him. He looked through the halos in his eyes.
“David…can you go to Heaven?” Ambrose asked.
David nodded. Yes.
“Then, why aren’t you there already?”
David looked at Ambrose.
“You stayed here for me?” Ambrose asked.
David nodded. Yes.
“You were protecting me?”
David nodded again. Ambrose looked back at the clearing. He saw the hissing lady being torn apart by the nice man. The shadows and skeletons crawling on the sheriff. The damned ripping Christopher from his mother as the deer attacked. All was lost.
“David, do you want to see Mom and Dad?”
David stopped. He knew what Ambrose was asking. The little boy nodded. Yes.
“Come on, David,” Ambrose said. “Let’s go home.”
He took David’s hand, and they ran at the nice man. With every step, Ambrose’s body felt like it did on that night when he was seventeen. His bad knees. Arthritis. The scars from the wars. All the little aches and pains. They all melted away. There was no more pain because there was no more flesh to hold it.
The two Olson boys raced through the clearing.
And then…impact.
They hit the nice man, who fell to the ground in agony. Their light spreading like buckshot through his skin. It was so bright that the shadows were vaporized. The deer attacking Christopher’s mother were blinded. The skeletons and the damned were knocked away from the sheriff and Christopher like a house made of cards.
Time seemed to slow. Ambrose opened his eyes. There were no halos. It was all a halo. All of the grief. The worry. Fifty years of an empty room. It was gone. He finally found his little brother. He could stop being lost now. In a blink, he saw David turn to the hissing lady. His protector. His guardian. The woman who kept him safe for the half century Ambrose could not. He waved goodbye to her and smiled with his missing front teeth. She cried in joy as she watched him leave this place forever. Her David was finally going home. The two Olson boys rose up. Two sons. Two suns. The light was brighter than anything Ambrose had ever seen, but it didn’t hurt his eyes. The lights came on in his bedroom. Ambrose looked up from his bed and saw his little brother at the light switch.
“Hey, Ambrose. You want to have a catch?” David asked.
Chapter 135
Christopher watched as the last of their light flickered in the wind, and then, darkness descended. The woods were coming back to life. Christopher ran to his mother, bleeding on the ground. He helped her to her feet. She put her weight on her leg, bitten to ligaments by the deer. Christopher helped his mother over the graves left by the skeletons as the hissing lady grabbed the sheriff and threw his arm over her neck like a soldier.
The four limped to the tree.
The door opened to light. The hissing lady threw the sheriff into the trunk. Back to life. Back to the real side. She turned to Christopher’s mother. One look a lifetime.
“Go!” she said.
Christopher’s mother moved her son into the light. Christopher looked back at the hissing lady when suddenly, he saw the nice man charging them. Christopher knew both of them couldn’t get out. It was either him or his mother. He threw his mother into the light.
“No!” she screamed.
The nice man grabbed Christopher and yanked him back into the clearing. The hissing lady rushed at him. In his fury, he threw her down like a chew toy for the deer.
“chrisssStopherrrrr,” hE said. “iF i can’T leavE, yoU can’T leavE.”
The nice man shoved Christopher against the tree.
“yoU tooK alL oF mY petS.”
The nice man locked the door, then held the key in front of Christopher’s face.
“i wilL starT oveR witH yoU.”
He put the key in his mouth and swallowed. Christopher saw the metal poking inside the skin of his throat. The door was locked. The key was gone. Christopher was trapped.
“yoU wilL neveR leavE mY sidE.”
Christopher looked for an escape, but there was nowhere to run. He had given all of the power to his mother. David was gone. The hissing lady was passed from deer to damned. The man in the Girl Scout uniform pulled out a knife. The kissing couple regrew their teeth to twice the normal size. The man in the hollow log giggled like a child. They stood, waiting for their turn.
Christopher looked to the hor
izon and saw soft light begin to break above the trees. The sun was rising. Something would change in the dawn. He felt it all around him. The voices chanting.
Death has come.
Death is here.
You die on Christmas Day.
Christopher saw the sun break over the horizon. Suddenly, he felt a voice. A little voice cutting through all of the others. He would have known that voice anywhere.
It was his own.
“I forgive you,” he said.
“whaT?” the nice man asked.
Christopher looked at the nice man in the light of dawn. He realized he was a magician. He always had people looking in one hand while he moved things in the other. That was his only real power.
Christopher looked down into his hand. He saw a string. Invisible. He had carried it his whole life. He never knew it was there. He hadn’t given all of his power to his mother, because the power of God was not omniscience. The power of God was not omnipotence.
The power of God was love.
“I forgive you,” he repeated.
Christopher knelt down in front of the nice man. He loved everyone. All the people above. All the people below. He knew it was his destiny to die in these woods. To keep the nice man unaware of the fact that to get out, he only needed to look in. Because in was out. To keep power you give it away. It doesn’t take violence to kill evil. It takes good.
“I forgive you,” Christopher repeated.
The nice man ran at him like a howling dog.
“sssStoP sayinG thaT!” he hissed.
“You can kill me,” Christopher said. “I will take all of their places.”
Christopher lowered his head, ready for death.
“i won’T leT yoU diE! yoU wilL neveR escapE! i havE lockeD thE dooR.”
“You can’t lock the door,” Christopher said.
“whY?!” the nice man laughed.
Christopher looked at the hissing lady and smiled. All was quiet and calm.
“Because there is no door.”
Christopher reached up and felt his eyes. It was so easy to see in everyone else, and so hard to see it in himself. His eyes were sewn shut. Christopher reached up and tore the stitches from his eyes. He looked at everything in the plain light of day. The clearing. How small it seemed now. Like going back to his old school and seeing the tiny lockers. The shadows were not terrifying. They were the proof that light exists. The fire and brimstone were all a mirage. The clouds nothing but steam inside a bathroom. All he needed to do was wipe away the mirror.
Imaginary Friend Page 66
