Imaginary Friend (ARC)

by Stephen Chbosky

  Finally, Debbie thought. Finally, she had a nice boy to treat her right. Finally, Doug thought. Finally, he had a bad girl to treat him wrong. At midnight, they would belong to each other, and he could forget about Mary Katherine. Forever.

  “You’re next, Doug,” Mrs. Henderson said, finishing Debbie’s eyes.

  11:57

  Brady Collins led Debbie Dunham to the end of the line. He had never seen a naked girl before, but all he could think about was that she must be freezing. He had been cold in his doghouse so many times. Brady Collins took off his jacket and handed it to her. It was too small, but she wrapped it around her freezing legs. The beautiful naked girl patted the top of his head and tried to smile, but the stitches stopped her. Brady felt cold without his jacket, but he wasn’t worried. His mother was up in the tree house. He could hear her voice calling out to him. “Brady, come in from the doghouse. Mommy’s in the warm kitchen. Come in from the cold. Your mother loves you.”

  11:58

  Mrs. Henderson finished the final stitch on Doug’s eyes. Then, she put down her needle and thread. She looked around the tree and realized that their work was done.

  There was no one left but each other.

  The four of them locked eyes and smiled proudly. They had finished before midnight. Mrs. Henderson handed Ms. Lasko her own needle and thread. The young teacher barely screamed as she sewed her own mouth shut. But Mrs. Henderson wouldn’t have heard it anyway. She had to help Brady Collins and Jenny Hertzog with their stitches.

  Little hands make for sloppy work.

  Soon, the children were done, and Mrs. Henderson had no one left but herself. The needle sliced through her skin like the knife through her husband’s throat. Her screams sounded like their wedding night. Pain mixed with pleasure. Funny that her mother never told her how much it would hurt and how much she would love it.

  “I’m waiting for you honey,” her husband called from inside the tree house. “Let’s go on that trip now.”

  With her eyes and mouth stitched, Mrs. Henderson grabbed hold of the first 2x4 of the ladder. The first little baby tooth.

  And she started to climb the ladder to the tree house.

  With her congregation right behind her.

  It was one minute to midnight.

  One minute to Christmas.

  Chapter 99

  beEp.

  Ambrose sat in the wheelchair. He listened to the sound of the machines keeping Christopher alive.

  beEp.

  He had promised Kate Reese to never leave her son’s side, and he was a man hell-bent on keeping promises.

  Help him, David.

  The thought was quiet and solemn. He didn’t notice that the door behind him had opened.

  beEp.

  But he felt the temperature change.

  “Hello?” he said.

  Silence. Breathing.

  “Nurse, is that you?”

  beEp.

  “Doctor?” he asked. “The boy’s hand is hot as a skillet. What is his temperature?”

  There was a long moment of silence. Then…

  “One hundred seven,” the voice whispered. “But I’m not the doctor.”

  Ambrose furrowed his brow. He tried to remain calm.

  “His brain is beginning to cook,” Ambrose said. “Call someone.”

  “We have, Mr. Olson,” the voice replied.

  Ambrose listened to the voice. He couldn’t tell who it was. A man. A woman.

  “When is the doctor coming?” he asked.

  “Soon,” the voice replied.

  Ambrose could hear the person circling him. Little pit-pats on the balls of their feet. Then, a slight echo. There was more than one person in the room.

  “How soon?” Ambrose asked.

  “I’m not sure. The hospital is understaffed. Everyone has the flu,” the voice said.

  The voice was closer. More footsteps. Circling.

  beEp.

  “That’s okay,” Ambrose said calmly, gripping the side of Christopher’s bed. “I understand.”

  Suddenly Ambrose heard mocking laughter from a half dozen people.

  “He understands,” “That’s okay,” “He understands,” the voices cackled.

  “I guess you’re not that understaffed,” Ambrose said.

  The laughter stopped, revealing a familiar sound underneath it. Hissssssss.

  It was gas.

  “Mr. Olson,” the voice said.

  Ambrose’s blood went cold. He finally recognized the owner of that voice.

  “Yes, Mrs. Keizer?” he asked.

  “Death is finally here, Ambrose. You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said.

  Suddenly he felt a dozen hands on him. He held up his arms to defend himself, but the mob grabbed him. He felt the cold plastic of the gas mask cover his mouth. The gas hissed out of the tank like a serpent. Hissss.

  “Get the fuck off me!” Ambrose shrieked.

  The old soldier pushed back, flailing blindly. He grabbed one head of hair. He tore at another person’s eyes. The army of hands pinned him back. His wheelchair tipped, and Ambrose crashed to the ground. The mob was on him in seconds. He fought back with all of his strength, but there were too many. He felt his arms and legs give. He was an old man. Blind. Helpless. It took everything to push the gas mask off his face. But it was back within seconds. And there was nothing to do but wait for his lungs to cry mercy.

  “Now breathe deeply and count back from ten,” the voice said.

  It was one minute to midnight.

  As he took a huge drink of air.

  And heard Christopher flatline.

  beeeeEEEEEEE

  Chapter 100

  Christopher charged at the hissing lady.

  Her army circled him like a spiderweb. The deer snapping. The mailbox people blocking his path. Their bodies created a hurricane, and Christopher was the eye.

  “GET HIM!” the hissing lady shrieked.

  Christopher looked at the key buried in her neck. He held the silver blade and jumped through the air. He landed on one of the deer, planting his feet on its back. He jumped onto the mailbox people’s shoulders. They reached for him. He moved quickly. Running farther and faster. He could feel his body change with each step. The light from the tree had stayed with him somehow. The headaches were different. The fever was knowledge. He couldn’t believe how fast he was moving.

  “NOW! WE HAVE TO GET HIM NOW!” the hissing lady screamed.

  The deer closed in from every direction, but they were too slow. Christopher slid through their legs. Jumped over their antlers. He couldn’t believe how quickly the trees whipped by. He felt outside of his own body.

  But not the pain inside it.

  With each step, he could feel it growing. Like hands tightening around his throat. Blood began to trickle out of his nose. He thought of David, drained like a battery. How long did he have until the power was gone and the pain remained? Midnight was coming. He was either going to kill or die.

  He saw the hissing lady up ahead, her gaze tracing the blade in his hand. For a flash, he thought he saw fear in her eyes. She covered the key with her burnt hand. Then, she turned and retreated into the woods. Christopher raced behind her. He looked down and saw her tracks on the muddy, bloody trail.

  Christopher followed her footprints into the stream near the billy goat bridge. The water soaked through his boots and turned his feet freezing. For a moment, he thought he was cold in the hospital on the real side. Cold in a hospital gown.

  Do you know where you are?

  Christopher raced through the freezing water. The cold soon turned to numb, and the numb soon turned to heat. His legs were as hot as his forehead. He jumped out of the stream and back onto her trail. The streetlight far in the distance. Christopher saw a fork up ahead. He looked down to know which direction to turn.

  Suddenly the footprints were gone.

  Christopher stopped. Panicked. It was a trick. A trap. Another way to kill him by killing tim
e. He looked around him on all sides. All he saw were trees. The hissing lady could be anywhere. He was a sitting duck. Christopher listened for any sign of her. He heard nothing. Just the wind and the sound of his own breath.

  Crack.

  Christopher looked above him in the trees. He saw hundreds of mailbox people, waiting quietly in the shadows. Hanging on the high branches like icicles. Christopher turned to run, but all at once the mailbox people jumped into the path.

  Christopher was surrounded.

  The mailbox people swarmed over the woods. The deer rushed at him. Christopher grabbed a branch to climb his way out. He moved up one branch. Two branches.

  But the hissing lady was in the tree like a serpent.

  She grabbed his hand. Slithering.

  Christopher screamed and fell down onto the trail. But the deer were on top of him. Their teeth punctured his skin. They smelled like the hospital. Like antiseptic. Christopher was too tired to scream. He knew this was the moment of his death. He closed his eyes for the inevitable when suddenly, he heard deer being picked up and thrown. Christopher looked up.

  It was the nice man.

  “GET OFF HIM!” the nice man screamed.

  The deer snapped at the nice man. Taking chunks of flesh from his shoulders. Blood poured down his shirt. Down his arm. He grabbed Christopher’s hand.

  “COME WITH ME!” he yelled.

  “NO!!!!!!!” the hissing lady shrieked. “STOP HELPING HIM!!!!!”

  The hissing lady swooped down from the trees just as the nice man and Christopher took off running. The deer and the mailbox people giving chase.

  “How did you get away?” Christopher asked breathlessly.

  “David.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Bringing help. There are others who want to be free. Come on!”

  They ran together. Down the path. The streetlight was right in front of them. Blue like the moon. They jumped out of the woods onto the field. They raced toward the street. Christopher looked ahead and saw his neighborhood laid out like a circus.

  The imaginary world had gone completely mad.

  He saw clouds move over the town like a brushfire. Hundreds of people screamed. The man in the Girl Scout uniform pulled himself into the bushes. Another man pulled himself into a van. The couple couldn’t stop kissing each other. People he had never seen before. All of them were screaming the same thing.

  “Get us out of here, Christopher. Please!”

  Christopher and the nice man raced toward the street. The mailbox people fanned out through the smoldering yards, surrounding it. The hissing lady crashed through the trees with the deer and ran at them at a blinding speed.

  “GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!” she hissed.

  The hissing lady jumped on the nice man just as he threw Christopher over the mailbox people and into the street to safety. Christopher hit the cul-de-sac with a hard thud, scraping his body on the pavement. He immediately jumped up. He saw the nice man being torn apart by the hissing lady. Her burnt hands ripping at his flesh like two claws.

  “Stop helping him!” the hissing lady screamed.

  The nice man pushed her back and crawled to the street. The hissing lady slipped onto the pavement. Her foot started to smoke and burn. Leaving liquid skin on the concrete, which was carried away by the blood. She immediately jumped back onto the driveway, screaming and cursing.

  The hissing lady motioned for the deer. They laid their bodies across the pavement like chips on a roulette table. The hissing lady jumped on them and moved to the nice man crawling on the street. She pulled up his head and sank her teeth into his neck. His throat crunched like a wishbone. She was eating the nice man alive. It was now or never. Christopher heard the gong of the church. It was ten seconds until midnight. Ten seconds until Christmas.

  10

  The deer jumped on the nice man. Snapping and biting. Christopher knew he had to kill the hissing lady now. He looked at her body. Shot. Stabbed. Burned a hundred times with fire.

  Her whole body was practically scar tissue. But nothing had been able to kill her. Yet.

  9

  Christopher gripped the dull, silver blade. He closed his eyes to summon his power, but all he heard were screams. The voices ripped through his mind. The people hurting themselves. Over and over and over.

  8

  He could feel the two worlds bleeding into each other. The glass cracking between the imaginary and the real. His mother was running into his bedroom.

  7

  Christopher suddenly felt the wind rustle down the street. “Christopher, look at me.” Christopher locked eyes with the nice man. The nice man was being torn apart, but he had a calm smile on his face. There were no words. But Christopher could feel the whisper scratch and the nice man’s thoughts on his skin.

  The street.

  6

  “Stop helping him!” the hissing lady screamed as she scratched his eyes.

  She will burn on the street.

  5

  The clouds parted ways and Christopher saw the key gleaming under the flesh of her neck. It sparkled like a diamond in the blue moonlight.

  4

  The nice man kicked the hissing lady back. More mailbox people rolled into the street to catch her fall. Her hand slipped into the street. It sizzled on the pavement.

  3

  Christopher looked at the hissing lady’s burnt hand. Then, he closed his eyes and quieted his mind. One second an eternity. God had built a river of salvation into this nightmare. And he was going to baptize her in it.

  2

  In his mind’s eye, he ran at the hissing lady, perched on top of the nice man. Christopher saw the deer charge at him. But it didn’t matter anymore. To Christopher, they might as well have been crawling. That’s how slow it all felt now.

  You can be smarter than Tony Stark.

  Christopher jumped over the deer.

  You can be stronger than the Hulk.

  Christopher jumped over the mailbox people on the ground.

  You can be more powerful than Thor’s hammer.

  1

  Christopher slammed the full force of his body into the hissing lady. He felt her bones shatter from the impact. She flew back through the air and landed in the street in a heap.

  “NOOOOO!” she screamed.

  Christopher watched as the hissing lady began to burn.

  Chapter 101

  The house was quiet and still.

  Christopher’s mother would have run through the house, but there was something wrong. She could feel it all around her.

  She started to walk up the stairs. Slowly. Don’t make a sound.

  Where are you going, Kate?

  Christopher’s mother cast the voice aside. She could feel her son. Fighting for his life. The air was cold as if the world had left a window open. It was in the house. It was everywhere. She had to help her son. He needed her.

  She reached Christopher’s bedroom.

  What are you doing, Kate?

  She looked at the old bookshelf resting in the corner. Wrapped in wallpaper the way that a child would wrap a Christmas gift. All tape and no corners.

  She walked to the bookshelf.

  You left your son in the hospital. What kind of mother are you, Kate?

  Christopher’s mother looked at the photograph of her late husband on the top of the bookshelf. His picture stared back at her. Frozen in time. She could barely breathe. The danger was closing around her son. She could feel it like the day when he swallowed a marble. She was in the next room, but she knew it. She ran to him. He would have choked to death. She saved her son’s life.

  Christopher is dying, Kate. You have to go back to the hospital!

  Christopher’s mother picked up the photograph of her late husband, then dumped the rest of the bookshelf on the floor. Books scattered everywhere. The clock struck. It was ten seconds to midnight.

  Christopher’s mother tore at the duck wallpaper with her fingernails. She ripped away the f
irst slab underneath the bookshelf. There she found three words written in David’s handwriting. There was no mixture of cursive and print. This was David’s real handwriting. Every letter was perfectly clear.

  DO NOT KILL

  What is that, Kate?

  THE HISSING LADY

  Stop reading, Kate.

  SHE IS THE ONLY THING KEEPING

  You should really stop now, Kate.

  THE DEVIL IN HELL

  Chapter 102

  Do you know where you are?

  Christopher watched the hissing lady burn, crying and screaming in what he thought was her rage and madness.

  But something felt terribly wrong.

  “Who is she?” Christopher asked.

  It was such a simple question that the nice man was taken off guard for a moment. He looked over at Christopher as the hissing lady screamed.

  “Who is she?” Christopher repeated.

  “She’s evil,” the nice man said. “We have to kill evil people.”

  The sky thundered. The clouds bumped into each other like koi in a crowded pond. The mailbox people tore at the stitches in their mouths, trying to say something at him, but all he could hear was their moaning.

  “Now, go get the key, son,” the nice man said gently.

  Do you know where you are?

  Christopher gripped the dull, silver blade. He looked at the hissing lady fighting to drag her shattered bones to the lawn. He saw the rope burns around her neck. The chemical burns on her skin.

  “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.