Imaginary Friends

by John Marco

  The two girls exchanged a glance, then Rose nodded again.

  “Rose, Molly! Come on, we’re going!”

  At the sound of Tanya’s voice, the two girls gave him identical waves of farewell, then headed for the Pontiac at a dead run. George watched Daniel open the back door for them, then close it once again after both girls were safely inside.

  He found Brandon and Fred leaning against the funeral home’s front door railing having a cigarette. He frowned at both of them, and Fred grinned back at him.

  “You cashed that check yet?” the younger man demanded.

  George shook his head absently, watching the Pontiac pull out of the funeral parlor’s gravel driveway with a frown.

  “All of Charlie’s life was an illusion,” he observed quietly.

  Fred gave a careless one-shouldered shrug much like his grandmother’s, and George shook his head at him.

  “You don’t think that it was a little unhealthy?” he demanded.

  “Nope.”

  “He lived all alone for years and years with no one in his life, living an illusion, living a lie, pretending his wife and sons had never died, and you don’t think that was unhealthy?”

  Now it was Brandon’s turn to shrug. “Made him happy,” he said simply.

  “But it wasn’t real.” George shivered slightly as the Mynaker Sight prompted another thought to occur to him. “How much of the life the families live is actually real, Brandon?” he asked suddenly.

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. How much is real, and how much is a powerfully crafted Geoffries’ illusion? How many of the people listed in the family tree on my computer, or the people that came to George’s visitation for that matter, are actually real?”

  Brandon took a long draw on his cigarette before answering. “I could tell you they’re all real,” he said. “Or at least most of ’em were real once.”

  “How many are imaginary?” George pressed.

  “A few here and there over the years. A kid dies too young or a kid’s never born. Someone goes to some war an’ never comes home. Someone else rolls a tractor or crashes a car or swamps a boat. The people left behind can’t cope, so they bring ’em back. It happens. It’s the way. It’s our way.”

  “I need to know who,” George insisted. “It’s one thing for the families to use their abilities to cheat at bingo or levitate their cars into tight parking spaces; it’s quite another to use them to deny reality.”

  Brandon tipped his ball cap up to scratch at a faint scar on his forehead. “Okay, George,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal. You cash that old age pension check, an’ I’ll tell you who’s been imaginary down through the generations all the way to the beginning. Deal?”

  George glared at him.

  “Hey, you can’t expect us to accept the reality of death and loss if you can’t even accept the reality of bein’ sixty-five.”

  “Good point. Very well, deal.”

  “Good.” Brandon tossed his cigarette to the ground, gesturing at Cheryl, standing by the Buick with their daughter Kaley in her arms. “Now we should all get back; it looks like it’s gonna snow again.”

  Together, the brothers headed for the parking lot and their own families, and, after a long moment, George followed them.

  IMAGES OF DEATH

  Jim C. Hines

  DEATH reminded Dierdre of Gonzo from The Muppet Show. She moved her hand to block the sun’s glare as she peered more closely at the framed sketch within the dusty display case.

  Most of the characters were as familiar as her own pale reflection, though she hadn’t seen them in years: Libon, the green three-tailed philosopher; Seeblu, the waterbound clown with rippling fins; Dorg the trickster, a furry blob whose crossed eyes gave him away no matter what shape he assumed.

  They were family, conceived in her father’s studio in this very house and birthed through the tip of his gold-trimmed mahogany fountain pen.

  And then there was Death, who was always smiling. Death with his round head, bulging eyes, and potato nose. Disheveled blue fur covered his body. His arms were long swirls, branching and splitting into fractal shapes that poofed around him like dandelion fluff.

  Death, who had found her little boy.

  She grabbed her cigarettes from her purse, tapped the pack, and slid one into her mouth. “What are you?” she whispered.

  An older woman behind the desk cleared her throat. “You know you’re not allowed to smoke here?” Her disapproving voice carried clearly through the empty museum.

  “He did,” Dierdre said, jabbing her cigarette at a self-portrait of her father. When she was growing up, peeling sunflower wallpaper had covered the living room walls. Today, those walls had been stripped and repainted a neutral beige. Her father would have hated it, just as he would have hated the pale wood floors and fluorescent lights. “He smoked in his office upstairs. He set fire to his desk at least twice when I was growing up.”

  Bill Hammerberg had drawn the Sunday strip “Dreamscapes” for almost thirty years. His work had been described as a bizarre hybrid of Seuss and Picasso, mixed with the smallest pinch of Schulz. It was as good a description as any for the rubbery landscapes and the strange Wonderland creatures who populated them.

  Dierdre stepped through the arched doorway into what had once been the dining room. Beneath a sign pointing to the restrooms, a large print showed twenty-four years worth of characters crowded together on an island of purple cliffs and blood-red whirlpools. Death floated above them on a blocky green cloud as he stuffed Coylee the spider into a burlap sack.

  An unfinished companion piece showed Death carrying the bulging sack off of a blank page. The un-inkeddrawing had a sad, empty feel. Dierdre shivered as the image triggered memories of childhood nightmares.

  The grandfather clock in the far corner chimed three, each ring driving guilt deeper into her chest. She was already late picking Paul up from the sitter. If she didn’t leave soon, they would miss his doctor’s appointment.

  But instead of moving toward the door, Dierdre walked to the stairs and sat on the bottom step. After checking to make sure the receptionist wasn’t looking, she pulled a folded piece of yellow construction paper from her purse.

  She had found the drawing two days earlier, while changing Paul’s bed. He had stuffed it into his pillowcase, along with a Spider-Man action figure and a Canadian two-dollar coin he kept for good luck.

  Dierdre had never taken Paul to the museum. He was too young to understand his grandfather’s work, and she had never bought any of his collections, unwilling to reawaken old nightmares. When she asked Paul if he had ever seen “Dreamscapes,” he had simply stared at her.

  Yet the marker-drawn figure, with its oversized nose and blue wing arms, was a crude twin to her father’s Death.

  “I remember you,” she whispered, blowing a stream of smoke at the drawing. She pulled out a pen and began to sketch a crude chain-link fence. The pen tore through the paper before she could finish.

  “I won’t let you take my son.” She jammed the pen back into her purse, then pressed the tip of her cigarette onto the paper.

  The ashes crumbled away and the cigarette died, leaving Death untouched.

  Paul’s drawing was like a glowing coal, burning Dierdre’s leg through the worn leather of her purse as she dragged her son through the endless hospital corridors. The walls of the children’s wing were covered in bright handprints, with photos of recovered patients smiling from the bulletin boards. The cheerful decor was a sharp contrast to the smell of vomit and disinfectant.

  Dierdre dodged past a girl in a wheelchair and pulled Paul into the waiting room. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said as she dug out her license and Medicaid card.

  Paul sat down in a chair and began to play with his battered, bald Superman action figure. He had used sandpaper to scrape away the toy’s painted hair after his first round of chemotherapy. “I don’t understand. I thought the leukemia was in remissio
n.” The words were far too adult for an eight-year-old boy. “I’m not supposed to see the doctor until next month.”

  Dierdre forced a smile. “I thought it would be better to get it over with before school starts.”

  “But I wanted to—” Paul cocked his head, his eyes briefly focusing on something beyond her. “You’re still scared I’m going to die.”

  “No!” The waiting room went silent. Face burning, Dierdre stepped away from the receptionist and lowered her voice. “You’re not going to die.”

  “Whatever.”

  She reached out to squeeze his shoulder, but he pulled away. That was how most of their conversations ended these days.

  He looked so thin. His Transformers T-shirt hung loose on his shoulders, like a sheet on a clothesline. He wore his Detroit Tigers cap with the brim pulled low over his eyes.

  “Paul?” A young nurse smiled as he spotted them. After the past year, most of the staff recognized them both on sight.

  Dierdre tried not to fidget as she waited for the nurse to weigh her son—only forty-four pounds—and check his vitals before escorting them to an exam room.

  “Doctor McCarthy will be right with you,” the nurse said, leaving Paul and Dierdre to wait in silence.

  Paul’s symptoms had begun when he missed a few days of school with a fever and sore throat. His doctor prescribed antibiotics and Children’s Tylenol and sent them home.

  Two weeks later, Dierdre was carrying her sweat-soaked son into the emergency room. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel his fingers digging into her arms as he groaned and begged her to make it stop. His heart had been pounding so hard she could see his chest trembling beneath his shirt.

  Leukemia had driven his white blood cell count to eighty thousand, four times the healthy range. His bone marrow had been full of leukemia blasts: immature, abnormal cells that ravaged his system.

  After months of transfusions and chemotherapy, Paul slowly began to recover. His white blood count improved, and Dierdre dared to believe she and her son might finally get their lives back.

  She squeezed her purse, hearing Paul’s drawing crinkle within. The clock on the wall showed that only seven minutes had passed since the nurse left. She clenched her fists and forced herself to wait, mentally bracing herself for the news she knew was coming.

  Paul lay back, and his sneakers tore the paper rolled out over the exam table. He mumbled to himself as he stared at the ceiling. No, not at the ceiling, but—it.

  An unwanted memory forced its way to the forefront of Dierdre’s mind. She saw her father as he had been during the last years of his life. He sat staring at the blank paper on his desk. His hand trembled, and the fountain pen clutched between his fingers peppered his sleeve with ink.

  Looking at her son, Dierdre saw her father’s vacant gaze. What did he see?

  Footsteps approached. Dierdre held her breath as the door opened and Doctor McCarthy stepped inside. She braced herself, the drawing in her purse burning hotter than ever.

  When he smiled—a real smile, not the expression of sad sympathy she had come to know so well—her relief was so great she nearly collapsed.

  “Your labwork looks good, buddy. Your white blood cell count is almost normal.” He tossed the thick green folder with Paul’s paperwork onto the counter and pulled up a stool. “How’s your stomach? Any more diarrhea?”

  Paul rolled his eyes. “It’s fine. My mouth has been hurting a little, but that’s all.”

  Dierdre bit her lip. Paul hadn’t mentioned any mouth pain. But then, why would he tell her? Every time he complained, the result was another trip to the hospital, another round of exams and shots and worse.

  Doctor McCarthy checked the inside of Paul’s mouth, then palpated his throat. “Swallow for me.” He grunted, then glanced at Dierdre. “Have you noticed anything unusual?”

  My son has been drawing Death.

  “You’re sure . . . all of his tests were okay?”

  “At the rate he’s improving, he’ll be healthier than either of us.” He gave his gut a rueful slap. “I don’t see any reason he can’t go back to school.” He double-checked the catheter in Paul’s chest for signs of infection. “If all goes well, we should be able to yank this sucker out by the end of the year.”

  It took all Dierdre’s strength to keep from crying. That catheter had haunted her for months. Without it, medicating her son would have required countless injections, leading to massive bruising and blown veins. But every time she saw that alien bit of rubber and plastic protruding from her son’s chest, she wanted to rip it out with her bare hands.

  She twisted her purse strap around her hands. If Paul was okay, then why had he drawn Death? “Are there any other tests we could run? To be sure?”

  “I understand why you’d be afraid,” Doctor McCarthy said gently. “We checked his results twice to be safe. He’s getting better.” He hesitated. “If you insist, I suppose we could repeat the tests again. It’s only been a few days since the last blood draw, so the results would be the same, but—”

  Paul’s tired sigh was so quiet she barely heard. A year ago, he would have whined and argued at the thought of more bloodwork and doctor’s visits. Now he just seemed to shrink a bit more.

  “No.” Dierdre pulled the purse strap so tightly her fingers began to throb, but the relief on Paul’s face was worth it. And Doctor McCarthy had checked twice. Paul’s drawing was wrong. He was getting better. “Thank you.”

  On the way out, as Dierdre stopped to give the receptionist her copayment, Paul’s hand darted into her purse.

  “Why did you take this?” he asked. His Superman toy dropped to the floor, and he clutched the drawing with both hands. “You ripped it!”

  Neither her aborted scribbles nor the smear of cigarette ash obscured that too-cheerful grin or the golf ball eyes that followed you no matter how you looked at the picture. “I’m sorry about that,” Dierdre said. “I found it when I was cleaning.”

  Paul crumpled the drawing into his pocket.

  “Does he have a name?” Dierdre asked, fighting to keep her voice casual. Her father had never named Death in his strip. Only after his death had she realized who the strange creature was.

  But she had been wrong. This was nothing but another of Bill Hammerberg’s mad sketches, and Paul was going to be okay.

  “I dunno.” Something in Paul’s tone chilled her in a way she hadn’t felt since her father died. “He hasn’t said.”

  Three weeks passed before Dierdre found the next drawing piled with Paul’s coloring books. Long enough for her to truly begin to believe the worst was behind them.

  Paul had drawn a battle between small, blocky tanks and triangular jets. Death floated down from the clouds, using his oversized arms as a parachute.

  She held the drawing in both hands as she moved through her father’s museum, searching. Her sneakers slapped the wooden floor as she moved into what had once been the kitchen, now cleared of cabinets and appliances.

  Bill Hammerberg’s very first illustration of Death had been done in black marker on the back of an orange hospital tray. The hospital had displayed it in their lobby for several months after he recovered from his first stroke. Four screws now secured it to the wall next to the kitchen window.

  Seeblu the fish-man took center stage. He wore an obscenely immodest hospital gown as he munched on a stethoscope. Dorg was dressed as a nurse. He carried a long, rubbery thermometer that looped about like a garden hose. Seeblu’s thought-bubble read: You want to put that where?

  Behind Dorg and Seeblu, a crudely drawn door swung inward. Only one of Death’s featherlike arms was visible, but it was definitely him.

  Dierdre stared at the drawing. Her father had survived Death’s initial visit, recovering from that first stroke with minimal damage. In fact, he had spent more time drawing after that first stroke, until he was working nearly six months ahead of his deadlines.

  Only Dierdre had seen her father’s final drawing, years
later. He had sketched it on a napkin. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the jagged pencil lines, a result of stiff fingers and useless nerves. The tip of the pencil had torn the napkin in several places.

  A shaky caricature of her father lay on a bed, eyes closed. Instead of a blanket, Death’s infinite arms reached out to cocoon her father’s body, squeezing the life out of him.

  Even back then, before she had named Death, the strange character and his moronic smile had frightenedher. She remembered tearing the napkin from her sleeping father’s hand and flushing it down the toilet.

  Destroying the drawing had done nothing to stop Death. Bill Hammerberg had died the following morning.

  She stared at Paul’s drawing, then looked back up at the tray. His grandfather had died before he was born. Paul still insisted he had never seen another picture of Death, and he was too poor a liar to fool her. So how could he draw these things? What did they mean? Doctor McCarthy said he was getting better.

  Death floated above the earth in Paul’s picture. He hadn’t yet landed. Just as he hadn’t entered the room in her father’s first drawing. Paul still had time.

  She tore the picture to pieces and tossed them in the trash as she hurried out of the museum.

  “I don’t understand,” Paul said for the third time as he crossed the parking lot with Dierdre, heading for the playground. Just one year earlier, he would have been holding her hand. “Why can’t I draw anymore?”

  “Because I told you not to!” Guilt made her cringe. What kind of mother shouted at her sick child? In a way, she was relieved to see him energetic enough to argue. But why did he have to choose this to argue about? “You’re getting better, remember? You should be outside getting some exercise, not hunched in your room.”

  “It’s him, isn’t it? That funny-looking guy with the big nose and the arms.” He stopped talking long enough to try to blow a bubble with his gum. One small bubble popped, but then he blew too hard, and the gum flew from his mouth. He scowled. “Why does he scare you?”