Imaginary Friend

by Stephen Chbosky

Then, feeling sorry for her, she studied Christopher’s vitals through the window with a trained eye.

  “Mrs. Reese, I know his temperature is high, but don’t worry. He won’t die.”

  “How do you know that?” Christopher’s mother asked.

  Nurse Tammy dropped her voice to a whisper, making sure that none of her colleagues could hear her.

  “Because no one has died in over a month. And I can’t imagine God will start again with yours.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. No one has died since they found that little boy’s skeleton in the woods. It’s a Christmas miracle.”

  “Jesus,” Ambrose said.

  The word was right, but Nurse Tammy’s expression seemed to indicate she found the old man’s tone rather odd.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Praise Jesus.”

  With that, Nurse Tammy went into Christopher’s room, leaving the two in the ICU. Their silence had its own pulse. Kate Reese’s mind instantly moved from her son’s struggle for life to something far bigger in scope. She gripped Ambrose’s wheelchair and began to walk them around the ICU. The feeling was palpable. In the hours that they had been reading David’s diary, the number of people crowding the rooms had tripled. There were no more gurneys. No more beds. Just screaming and illness. So many sick people. So many angry souls. Sweaty faces. Itchy. Feverish. The itch wouldn’t stop. The hospital was on the verge of mutiny.

  “Does it look as bad as it sounds?” Ambrose asked from his wheelchair.

  “Worse,” Kate Reese said. “She’s everywhere.”

  Be a victim or be a fighter, Kate.

  She shook off her own fear and focused. Fear did Christopher no good. Action did. Answers did. No one had died since they dug up David Olson’s skeleton. Maybe there was an answer in the diary. Maybe there was an answer in the woods where they found him. And nobody knew those woods better than Christopher or…

  The sheriff.

  She didn’t know if the words led her eyes to his room or the other way around. But Kate Reese found herself looking at the sheriff in his room in the ICU.

  “The sheriff,” Ambrose said, as if his own mind were on a three-second delay from hers.

  Kate Reese looked down at Ambrose. He might have been blind, but he was sharp as a tack. She pushed him into the sheriff’s room. The sheriff was terribly pale. His lips shivering. Even in his sleep. She moved to his bedside and took his hands. The same hands that sweated on their first date. His hands were now freezing. Not from cold. From blood loss.

  “How is he?” Ambrose asked.

  She looked at the wounds in his chest, stitched with a practiced, if hurried, hand. He had been shot point-blank in the chest. One of the bullet wounds was right above his heart. But it was still beating.

  “Alive,” she said.

  She looked at the IV bringing morphine into the sheriff’s arm. The same arm that had been scrubbed within an inch of its life by the surgical team. But she could still see little impressions of words left behind by permanent ink.

  “There’s a message on his arm,” she said.

  “What is it?” Ambrose asked.

  She moved her hands over the words like Braille as she spoke them aloud to Ambrose.

  David Olson—boy. Don’t—sleep. Call Carl—NOW. Tools—children. Stone—wood. Whole city—the flu. The last flu—ended—David disappeared. Did David—stop the flu? Did he save us?

  Suddenly they heard screaming down the hall. A man was hungry, and he didn’t understand why the meals were only for patients. They could hear shouts of “Calm down, sir,” from the nurses and shouts of “Help my wife!” from the man. Eventually, there was the sound of metal crashing on the floor, and the man being pulled out by security, kicking and screaming.

  “That will be us soon,” Ambrose cautioned. “Keep reading.”

  Kate Reese found the other arm, deciphering each faded word.

  Call Ambrose! Stop listening—the voice—is lying to you—making you forget. You know what the tools were for! Run to Kate. What happened to David—happening to Christopher. Run now! Too late, Sheriff. I just hit them with a car.

  “You have to get out of here,” a voice whispered.

  Kate Reese almost screamed. But the voice belonged to the sheriff. He was forcing himself awake. Barely audible.

  “It’s not safe here. There are no police left.”

  The sheriff tried to sit up, but he was too weak. Kate put a loving hand on his forehead and brought him back down with a soft shhh.

  “Christopher is right next door. We’re not leaving you,” Kate assured him.

  The sheriff let go and allowed himself to melt back into bed. The morphine falling like raindrops on a glassy pond. Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “Bobby,” she whispered. “What were the tools for?”

  “Huh?” he said, his voice as high as a kite from morphine.

  “The tools,” Kate repeated desperately. “What were they for?”

  He took a hard, dry swallow and pushed through the pain.

  “The construction crew found tools and petrified wood. My friend Carl ran the tests. There are dozens of tree houses out there. Kids have been making them for hundreds of years.”

  “What does that mean?” Ambrose asked.

  “It means David and Christopher are not alone in there,” Kate Reese said.

  Kate settled back in thought. There were other children. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Ambrose’s voice broke the silence.

  “Were the tree houses all in the same place?” Ambrose asked.

  “No,” the sheriff said. “They were spread all over the woods. Why?”

  The old soldier wrinkled his brow under his bandages. “Maybe they’re all linked,” Ambrose said. “Maybe she’s using them to build something bigger.”

  106.3 degrees

  beEp.

  Chapter 89

  Christopher tiptoed down the path, bending his body to avoid every twig. Every branch. He was not invisible at night. He couldn’t make a sound. The hissing lady was in these woods. Somewhere. Christopher saw David a hundred yards up ahead on the trail. The little children surrounded him like a maypole. Skipping and clapping. Christopher saw the footprints David left behind. Muddy and bloody. Christopher remembered following footprints into the Mission Street Woods for the first time. The cloud had winked at him. He followed the cloud and followed the footprints and went missing for six days.

  What did I do here for six days?

  What did she do with me?

  SNAP.

  A twig cracked under Christopher’s feet. The children looked behind them. David used the distraction to take off running. The children turned and followed.

  “Daaaavvvviiid,” they hissed.

  David put his head down and ran faster. Trying to outrun their voices.

  “Dooo yooouuu knowwww wheerrrreee yoouuu areeee?”

  David broke into a sprint. Two little girls ran in front of him.

  “Oh, David. You’re back! We’ve been waiting for you! It’s almost finished!”

  David screamed and made a hard right. It was all Christopher could do to keep pace. David sprinted over the billy goat bridge and jumped into the cold water, trying to lose the girls. Three mailbox people rose from the water. Their zipper eyes open. Moaning and reaching for him. David jumped over their outstretched fingers. Rancid and rotting. He landed near the old hollow log. The man in the log popped his head out.

  “Hi, David! It’s almost finished!”

  David jumped over the man just as two deer came out of the woods. Three more deer hit the trail. David turned left again. Three more. David turned right. Five more. David stopped. He was surrounded.

  “Do you know where you are, DavId?!”

  Suddenly dozens of mailbox people came from the shadows. They opened their mouths, struggling against the stitching. The deer walked closer. Baring their teeth. Christopher picked up a rock. He didn’t care that it would gi
ve away his position. He had to help David. He wound up and was about to throw it at the leader just as the deer jumped for David’s throat.

  That’s when it happened.

  The moment lasted the blink of an eye, but Christopher could still see each step clearly. He saw David Olson close his eyes. He felt the boy’s mind go quiet. Then, he sensed a charge in the air as his mind was filled with imaginary thoughts. Suddenly the sound around him died as if the quiet of his mind had absorbed it like a sponge. And there was nothing left but imagination. Christopher could not hear David’s thoughts, but he knew what they were from the result.

  David Olson began to fly.

  It didn’t look like anything Christopher expected. David wasn’t flying around like Superman. He wasn’t a superhero. He was just a little boy who found himself in the air as if floating on a thought. An invisible cloud instead of a cape.

  The deer crashed heads into each other, locking antlers.

  You can fly like Iron Man.

  Christopher closed his eyes and calmed his mind. He didn’t have David’s level of training, so he didn’t think he could fly without the nice man there. But he tried to picture himself weightless anyway. He tried to see himself floating on the wind like a leaf. Or a feather.

  Or a white plastic bag.

  Christopher felt his feet lift off the ground for a second. He tried to gain his balance like a tightrope walker at the circus. But this tightrope didn’t go across.

  This one went up.

  With his eyes firmly shut, Christopher pictured himself moving past one branch. Then another. Climbing the tree with his imagination instead of his hands. He saw himself above the treetops. The trees standing under him like green fluffy clouds. The moon full and bright and blue. The sky above it filled with stars. Space reaching out as wide and deep as time is timeless. Deep space the ocean, and Earth a life raft. The stars not shooting. The stars still.

  The stars dying.

  In his mind’s eye, Christopher looked up ahead and saw David flying toward the clearing. Christopher pictured himself planting a foot on the tops of the trees. Running across them as if walking on water. Gaining speed. The leaves falling like petals under his feet. The fever breaking out over his body like whispers on his skin.

  David Olson is…

  David Olson is…terrified.

  Christopher could feel David begin to fall up ahead. He looked exactly like the birds Jerry used to shoot out of the air. But it wasn’t a bullet that brought David down.

  It was something in the clearing.

  Christopher opened his eyes and lowered himself under the treetops to hide. He moved quietly, branch to branch. He heard movement under him on the path. Running. Whispers. Christopher moved to the edge of the clearing and stopped. His eyes searched the ground for any sign of David, but there was nothing except one mark in the dirt where he fell. A few footprints. And then, nothing. Christopher looked up, trying to see if David had started flying again.

  And that’s when he saw it.

  For a moment, Christopher didn’t understand what he was looking at. He had come to the clearing so many times, he took for granted what he would find. There was the grassy path. The perfect circle. And the old withered tree that looked like an arthritic hand.

  The tree was still there.

  But it was gigantic.

  Like two skyscrapers standing on top of each other.

  At the base of the tree, Christopher saw there was now a door carved into the trunk. With a large doorknob and a keyhole. Hundreds of mailbox people stood on either side of it, standing guard. Keeping something in. Or something out. Was this a prison? What was this place?

  Christopher stood breathless. He found the tree house that he built with Special Ed, Mike, and Matt. But it wasn’t alone. There were hundreds of other tree houses hanging on the giant branches, each swinging like a body in a noose. Little birdhouses. A big angry hive.

  He stared at it, remembering somewhere in his belly that he had been here before. He had been in one of those little birdhouses for six days. Being scratched. Being whispered to. Being warmed like a baby in an incubator. An egg ready to hatch.

  Do you know where you are?

  Chapter 90

  106.4 degrees

  beEp.

  Christopher’s mother sat by the sheriff’s bedside, looking across the way at her son helpless on the bed. His brain less than a degree away from being cooked. The security guards and orderlies keeping her out. Or maybe keeping Christopher in. She didn’t know anymore.

  The sheriff and Ambrose sat with her inside this pregnant silence. Their minds raced. People had stopped dying. People were going mad all around them with the flu. That wasn’t the flu. It was her. There were other children in the imaginary world. The children were building something. They had been building it for hundreds of years. Their tree houses linked. Including David’s. Including Christopher’s. There had to be an answer.

  “What does the diary say?” the sheriff asked weakly.

  Christopher’s mother snapped it open, her eyes racing over the pages.

  “We already read it cover to cover. Nothing,” she said.

  “No word about people not dying, Sheriff. No word about other children,” Ambrose concurred.

  “May I see it?” the sheriff asked.

  Christopher’s mother handed him the diary. The leather binding cracked a little when he opened the brittle, faded pages. She heard the sound of the liquid morphine falling into his IV bag.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  The sheriff turned the pages, his eyes darting across the words in a way that only a trained professional would read. After a few minutes, he looked at Ambrose.

  “David was a smart kid, right?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Ambrose said.

  “Then, why is his handwriting so bad? It doesn’t make sense.”

  He handed the diary back to Christopher’s mother, closed his eyes, and drifted back to sleep. She looked at him. His body so weak and fragile. She had no idea what forces were at work right now, but she knew that the sheriff was here for a reason. So was Ambrose. So was she. Christopher’s mother opened David Olson’s diary again.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  She studied the diary over and over. Not reading the words. Just looking at the handwriting. That disturbing, terrified handwriting.

  afTEr aLL, i AM god.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “Mr. Olson, did David always have bad handwriting?”

  Ambrose thought, then furrowed his brow and shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “It only got worse as he started to lose his mind.”

  “But he wasn’t losing his mind,” she said.

  She flipped to the next page and studied that strange combination of capital letters, lowercase, cursive, and printing.

  BefoRe we kill the hissing lady, the sOldier said we needed to do Some rEcon…

  “What does it mean, Mrs. Reese?” Ambrose asked.

  Christopher’s mother suddenly felt a chill run across her skin. A whisper brushing against her ear like an insect. She flipped back to the previous page.

  afTEr aLL, i AM god.

  Flipped forward.

  BefoRe we kill the hissing lady, the sOldier said we needed to do Some rEcon…

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Christopher’s mother flipped back and looked at only the capital letters.

  afTEr aLL, i AM god. BefoRe we kill the hissing lady, the sOldier said we needed to do Some rEcon lIke They do in thoSe wAr movies ambrose loves … i followed her during the dayTime. i could see her ReAching into People.

  The letters spelled…TELL AMBROSE IT’S A TRAP

  Chapter 91

  Christopher approached the tree.

  Somewhere deep in his soul, he knew he had been here before. He had been kept in one of those tree houses for six days, dangling like a Christmas ornament on a massive branch. What did he do here? What did she do to him?

  Do you know where
you are?

  Christopher searched the tree, looking for David. His eyes darted from ground to branch. Tree house to tree house. A green one. A blue one. Different colors. Different styles. Different eras. A teepee next to a Craftsman next to a miniature barn next to…

  The one with the red door.

  It looked so familiar to him. Why? Was that where she took him? Christopher finally found David Olson, hiding in the shadows, perched on the roof of the red-door tree house. He looked exhausted. His nose bleeding as if his own imagination squeezed him out like a sponge. Christopher remembered all those times he had left the imaginary world. How each power on the imaginary side turned to pain on the real. The nice man’s warning came back to him.

  The power comes at a price.

  He looked at David Olson drained like a battery. To David, this was the real side. To David, this was the only side. David quietly moved to the window. The deer and mailbox people stirred below. Christopher watched as David opened the curtains.

  The nice man was inside the tree house.

  He was beaten and battered. Lying on the floor. Unconscious. David inched closer to him. Suddenly a terrible shriek shot through the clearing. The woods came alive around them. The stars shooting up above the clouds. The sky burned bright, and when the clouds moved aside, the moon lit the clearing with piercing white light. That’s when Christopher saw her.

  The hissing lady.

  She walked into the clearing surrounded by the little children. Squealing like piglets begging for milk. She led them to the massive tree. Christopher looked at the key twinkling in the moonlight. The key still buried in her neck.

  We have to kill the hissing lady.

  We have to get the key.

  “Davvvviiiiid!” she screeched.

  Christopher felt David Olson look back from his perch, suddenly terrified. Any thoughts of helping the nice man escape were quickly abandoned. David rushed away from the tree house with the red door and ran deep into the woods to hide.

  It was up to Christopher to save him.