Imaginary Friend (ARC)

by Stephen Chbosky

  “Mom, I’m a virgin. Like Mary.”

  “Blasphemy!” the congregation shouted. “Confess!”

  “Just give them a name, Mary Katherine!” her mother cried.

  “Mom, don’t make me lie in church. Please.”

  “CONFESS TO US! NOT HER!” Mrs. Radcliffe shouted.

  Mrs. Radcliffe wrenched her head back to the altar. Mary Katherine knelt in her hospital gown. Her back exposed to the church. Freezing like Mary in the manger. Nothing but a slip of underwear. She heard the congregation rise out of the pews and stand behind her. The basket being passed down the row. Stones being picked like apples.

  “Oh, Jesus. Help me,” she prayed.

  “Confess!” Mrs. Radcliffe shouted, throwing the first stone.

  The stone shattered a stained-glass window in front of her.

  “CONFESS!” the congregation echoed.

  The words chanted over and over. Confess. Confess. Confess. Mary Katherine held her hands up above her head in surrender. She faced the congregation. The stones in their hands. Father Tom outside caked in blood. The flock had taken over. The lunatics were in charge of the asylum. Ready to stone her to death.

  “OKAY! I’LL CONFESS! I’LL CONFESS!” Mary Katherine screamed.

  The congregation went silent. Waiting. Mary Katherine turned to her mother.

  “Mom,” she said, her voice quivering. “I was going to be late that night.”

  When the truth came out of her mouth, Mary Katherine burst into tears.

  “What?” her mother asked.

  “The night I found Christopher. I wasn’t going to make it home by midnight. I lied to you and Dad. I just didn’t want to lose my license, so I lied. But it was wrong. I am being punished for it.”

  “That’s not your sin. Who’s the father!?” Mrs. Radcliffe screamed.

  “Mom, if I hadn’t lied about being late, you would have taken my license. And I never would have been on the road. I never would have turned away from the deer and hit that little boy with the car. I hurt a little boy because I was afraid of going to Hell. I was selfish. THAT is my sin. But I swear…I don’t know who the father is. I swear on my soul that I am a virgin. Do you believe me?”

  She looked at her mother through her tears. Her mother’s face softened as if remembering the little girl she raised. She nodded.

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Daddy?” she said.

  “I believe you, Mary Katherine,” her father said.

  The dam inside her broke as the congregation moved closer, the stones raised for death.

  “DAN!” her mother screamed.

  Her father’s instincts returned in an instant. He ran to protect his little girl, but the congregation jumped on him and beat him bloody.

  “Leave my family alone!” her mother screamed as the congregation wrestled her to the ground.

  Mary Katherine ran to help her parents, but Mrs. Radcliffe and Debbie Dunham grabbed her. They stood her up in front of the cross.

  “Doug,” they hissed. “It’s time.”

  Doug rose from the pews. His eyes were black and distant. Insane. He held two stones in his hands.

  “Doug! Please help us!”

  Doug said nothing. He just walked to her. Mary Katherine looked at her boyfriend with tears in her eyes. That face she had loved since they were eleven years old. She saw the marks around his mouth. Little pieces of yarn hanging out of his skin. He covered his mouth self-consciously until he realized she wasn’t looking at him like a monster.

  “What did they do to you, Doug?” she asked, concerned.

  “Don’t listen to her. She made you look like a fool, Doug,” Debbie Dunham said.

  “Stone her, Doug,” Mrs. Radcliffe hissed. “Stone the whore!”

  The congregation spoke as one. “Stone her. Stone her.” All of his friends from CCD and youth group chanted his name. Doug held the stone and looked Mary Katherine in the eyes.

  “I love you, Doug,” she said. “I forgive you.”

  He looked at her with tears in his black eyes. He raised the stone above his head and threw it as hard as he could.

  Right into the middle of Mrs. Radcliffe’s forehead.

  “RUN!” he screamed.

  Doug threw his car key into her hand and turned to block the mob. Mary Katherine raced into the parking lot from the side entrance. The lot was so packed, she couldn’t find Doug’s car. A terrifying scream rose up from inside the church. She heard stones shattering the stained glass. She hit the panic button. Doug’s car flashed to life on the far end of the parking lot.

  Mary Katherine ran to the car, her bare feet cut on stones and gravel. She opened the car and turned the key in the ignition. The motor froze in the cold. The congregation crashed through the main doors into the parking lot. They raced toward her. Screaming. She turned the key again. The engine roared to life. She threw it in drive and hurtled through the parking lot. The congregation threw stones, shattering the windshield. Mary Katherine turned onto the road. She saw the congregation in the rearview mirror. Car doors opened. Headlights came to life like sick, glowing eyes.

  “Please, Jesus,” she said. “Help us.”

  Chapter 113

  Ambrose and the sheriff ran down the hall. Christopher limp in the sheriff’s arms. Ambrose could hear the people locked in the morgue behind them. Banging on the doors. Breaking glass with their bare hands. The sheriff held on to Christopher a little tighter as they ran faster than Ambrose had ever run in his life. It was more than fear. More than adrenaline. He had run for his life before. But this speed didn’t come from him.

  It came from Christopher.

  An hour ago, the sheriff had been in a hospital bed with a gunshot wound in his chest. Ambrose had been crippled and blind on a slab in the morgue. Now, Ambrose was moving like a man half his age, and the sheriff was sprinting like a man who had never felt better. The only thing they had come into contact with was Christopher’s hand. One touch, and they looked like they could take on an army by themselves.

  But Christopher looked like he was dying.

  “We need a car! Follow me!” Ambrose yelled.

  Ambrose ran ahead, opening the door for Christopher and the sheriff. He still couldn’t believe what was happening. The last thing he remembered was a plastic mask thrown over his mouth. The next thing he knew, he felt a child’s hand on his own, generating heat that moved down his arm to his neck, finally settling

  On his eyes.

  There had been no surgery. But he still saw halos around lights as bright as an eclipse. He felt like a soldier again, dissecting the hospital like a battlefield in war. He never thought he would be grateful for all those trips to the eye surgeon, but he may as well have been a spy for how well he knew this place. The back doors. The shortcuts. The basement corridors that led to the laundry. His men were outnumbered, but he could force the enemy into a bottleneck.

  He had done it before.

  Ambrose led them to the back staircase. They sprinted up the stairs toward the garage floor.

  Click went the door above them.

  Mr. Collins stood there, holding a nail gun from his construction site. At least two dozen people behind him.

  Click went the door below.

  The people from the morgue looked up the stairs. Their hands torn apart from breaking through the glass.

  Ambrose led the sheriff up. They had to get to the garage floor first. A terrifying screech echoed off the staircase as Mr. Collins began running full speed down the stairs with the people from the morgue running up.

  Ambrose reached the garage floor and ripped open the emergency door. The alarm shrieked through the hospital. They ran down the empty hallway, the two mobs narrowing into a single file behind them. Two fronts now one. The perfect bottleneck. Ambrose led them to a fork in the hall. He was about to turn right when suddenly, Christopher whispered,

  “Go left.”

  The sheriff made a hard left, and Ambrose followed. He looked back, seeing t
he ambush crash into the hallway behind them. Somehow, the boy had known. Ambrose turned to Christopher. Blood dripping from his nose and eyes like tears. They came to another fork.

  “Go right,” he said weakly.

  Ambrose turned right. Christopher led them down a labyrinth of back hallways and side doors. Putting some distance between them and the mob behind them. They finally reached the back entrance to the parking garage. They closed the door behind them.

  The parking garage was empty.

  The silence was eerie. Their footsteps echoed off the cement walls. The sheriff instinctively began to run down the ramp toward the exit.

  “They’re waiting for us down there,” Christopher said.

  “Then go to the roof,” Ambrose said.

  “They’re up there, too,” Christopher said.

  “We need a diversion,” Ambrose said. “Follow me.”

  He began to sprint. Legs and lungs straining. Ambrose ran through the garage, kicking cars, setting off alarms. How many times had he set off munitions to serve as a diversion? He never thought he would do it again. Especially with a Ford. He led them into the maternity ward entrance, leaving behind a half dozen blaring alarms. The three ran down the hallway. Past the nursery. All of the babies were crying. They reached the first fork.

  “Which way, Christopher? Left or right?”

  * * *

  Christopher closed his eyes. He didn’t need to use them anymore. He just felt the people’s rage like white-hot fever on his skin. The screaming tore itself through his mind as the mob tore apart the shrieking cars in the parking lot looking for them. The headache pounding like blood trying to claw its way out of his veins. The imaginary world and the real were the same to him now. He didn’t know where he was.

  “Which way, Christopher!?” the sheriff screamed.

  Christopher opened his eyes and saw nothing but dark angry space. There were too many voices now. Bodies running through the parking lot. Others scattered through the hospital. The mobs like tumors in the hallways all around them. There was so much darkness, he didn’t know which direction to run.

  “He’s slipping,” Christopher heard Ambrose say.

  “Christopher, can you hear us?” said the sheriff.

  Christopher could say nothing. There was too much rage to guide them through it. They were enveloped by darkness. There was no light left in the world.

  Except one.

  In the middle of all that hatred, he felt a light. Warm and kind. It was racing to the hospital.

  It was his mother.

  He could follow his mother’s light.

  “My mother is coming for us. Go to the ER,” Christopher whispered.

  “But—” Ambrose cautioned.

  “Trust me,” Christopher said.

  So they did. They made a hard turn back into the belly of the beast. Christopher felt the light getting closer. His mother was coming. He could feel Mr. Collins crash into the maternity ward behind them. They turned the corner into the ER. It was flooded with people, angry after waiting a week for a bed that would never be empty again. The vending machines were now debris on the ground. People sifted through the rubble. Looking for food. Looking for drink. Looking for vengeance. When they saw Christopher, the ER opened into a primal scream and joined the chase.

  The three rushed outside into the icy parking lot. The storm swirled above them. A big angry sky filled with clouds. Giant faces moaning.

  “Mr. Olson! Look out!” Christopher screamed as Mrs. Keizer rushed at them.

  “Help my daughter forget her name!” she screamed.

  The old woman raised a scalpel. Ambrose reached out and grabbed her before she could stab Christopher. Mrs. Keizer slipped on black ice, landing on her hip, which cracked like a wishbone. A scream rose from the other direction. Mrs. Collins wheezing through her paint-coated lungs.

  “Look what you did to my mother! Give my mother back her name!”

  The sheriff turned as Mrs. Collins charged from the other direction in a wheelchair. She ran her hands quickly over the wheels, then jumped up onto her feet and broke into a dead sprint. She raised a scalpel. The sheriff winced as the scalpel sliced into his side. He dropped Christopher and fell to his knees. Bleeding profusely. Mrs. Collins inched toward Christopher. Coughing and hacking white sludge. Nothing could stop her.

  Except Christopher’s mother.

  Kate Reese reached over and turned Jerry’s truck on the black ice. The truck slammed into Mrs. Collins, who flew backward across the icy parking lot. Christopher’s mother threw open the passenger door and rushed to her son.

  “Help me, Jerry!” she screamed.

  Jerry left the engine running and jumped out of the truck. He ran behind Kate. Gun reloaded and drawn. Firing at everyone to save Kate Reese as she ran to save her son. She grabbed Christopher and raced him back to the truck. Ambrose and the sheriff behind her. She laid her son in the passenger seat and jumped into the driver’s just as the sheriff and Ambrose climbed into the flatbed with Jerry. Mr. Collins led the mob out of the hospital and ran at Christopher in the passenger side, his nail gun raised.

  Bang.

  The last bullet left the sheriff’s gun. Mr. Collins fell backward next to his wife and her mother. The truck powered through the black ice, and Christopher’s mother raced her son away from the hospital.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Christopher looked up and smiled at his mother, who didn’t know she was covered in the light from one hundred billion stars.

  Chapter 114

  The sheriff looked back as the hospital emptied itself into the parking lot like a rattlesnake uncoiling. He turned and saw Kate Reese hold the wheel with her left hand. Her son with the right. She looked down at her little boy, sick and pale.

  “You hang in there,” she said.

  Kate reached into the glove compartment and found a box of ammunition. She handed it back to the sheriff in the flatbed of the truck. She said nothing. She merely nodded to him through the rearview mirror. The sheriff nodded back and watched as she returned her eyes to the road.

  He promised himself that if they lived, he would ask that woman to marry him.

  Suddenly, the sheriff felt Ambrose Olson tighten the field dressing for the scalpel wound in his side. The sheriff winced. His teeth chattered.

  “Are you cold?” Ambrose said.

  “No. I feel warm actually,” the sheriff said.

  “You’re going into shock.”

  Ambrose quickly rummaged through Jerry’s pickup and found coveralls and an old construction jacket.

  “What about you?” the sheriff said.

  “I’m fine.”

  The sheriff knew the old man wasn’t lying. Ambrose should have been freezing in those hospital clothes, but somehow he felt no cold. Somehow as the world went insane around them, he and Ambrose were both immune to the madness. He didn’t know if this protection was from Christopher or David.

  Or maybe both.

  Whatever it was, he only felt the warmth from the fresh clothes and a sense of loyalty to the little boy in the passenger seat and his mother in the driver’s. Ambrose did not speak of the brother he could not save. The sheriff said nothing of the little girl with painted nails who called him Daddy. But he knew the two men understood each other.

  For all of their failures, they were going to save Christopher and his mother.

  Or they were going to die trying.

  “Hi, Christopher,” the voice said.

  The sheriff watched as Christopher looked up at Jerry, crouched in the back of the flatbed. His chin on the small window partition. The gun in his hand.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he said, laughing. “Don’t worry. I’ve already worked it out with your mom. We are going to be a family. Her, me, and you are driving to Michigan now. Right, Kate?”

  The sheriff saw Christopher choke down a swallow.

  “Right, Jerry, we’re going to Michigan,” she said, her body tensing.

 
Jerry smiled. He looked back at the descending mob trailing in their cars. He turned to the sheriff shivering under the blanket and Ambrose in the hospital gown.

  “Hey, Kate, who’s that?” Jerry asked.

  “Mr. Olson,” she said absently.

  “No. Not the old man. Who’s that?” he said, gesturing to the sheriff with his gun.

  “The sheriff.”

  “Huh. How do you know him?” Jerry asked.

  “He helped us.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s his job.”

  “Hmmm,” Jerry said with a coiled smile. “Does he come over a lot?”

  The sheriff could feel the silence. Eerie and black.

  “No, Jerry,” she said.

  “Christopher, does the sheriff come over to your house a lot?” he asked.

  “Leave him out of this,” she said.

  Jerry nodded. Smiling. Silently. Then, he turned to the sheriff and Ambrose.

  “Great family, right?” he said.

  The sheriff and Ambrose nodded to the man in the flatbed with them. The sheriff instantly recognized the face. He remembered researching this man as a suspect when Christopher first went missing back in September. He remembered the domestic abuse. The violence. This was the animal who hit the woman he loved. The sheriff looked at the gun in Jerry’s right hand. The sheriff’s gun was still empty.

  “The best,” the sheriff said. “Who are you?”

  “Jerry. I’m Kate’s fiancé.”

  The sheriff offered his hand. Jerry moved the gun from his right hand to his left. The two men never taking their eyes off each other. Never blinking.

  “And who are you?” Jerry replied suspiciously.

  “Ambrose Olson,” Ambrose said, shoving his hand into the mix like a salesman’s foot in the door.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, old man,” Jerry said. “I was talking to him.”

  “I’m Sheriff Thompson,” the sheriff said.

  Then, he took Jerry’s hand. The two men shook.

  “Are you fucking her, Sheriff?” Jerry said.

  Before Jerry knew what hit him, the sheriff did. He planted the butt of his palm in his throat. Jerry landed in the flatbed. Writhing in pain. Furious, he grabbed his gun and rose up.