Imaginary Friend

by Stephen Chbosky

  Except the family dog.

  The sheriff rushed over to the woman. He pushed the dog, all skin and bones, away from the snack he was making of her legs. Then, the sheriff lifted her out of the cereal bowl. He quickly checked her pulse to confirm the woman was dead.

  There was a sound in the bedroom. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

  The sheriff stood up. Gooseflesh crawled across his body.

  “Hello?” he said.

  The sheriff walked to the bedroom door.

  Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

  “Hello?!” he said.

  The sheriff opened the door slowly. He peered into the room and saw her. Her hands and feet were each bound with a neck tie to an old rusty bed frame. She was filthy and starving to death. She might have been fifty-five pounds. She had struggled so much that her wrists and ankles were caked with blood. But somehow, her hands and feet were still clean.

  It was the girl with the painted nails.

  At first, he thought she had been kidnapped, until an old photograph made it obvious that she was the daughter of the dead junkie in the kitchen. The sheriff didn’t need to do a lot of work to guess that she had been sold to perverts to pay for the needle in her mother’s arm.

  The sheriff rushed over to the little girl. Her pulse was faint. But she was still alive! He could save her this time! Had he been here before? He reached for his radio, but it was gone. He looked for a phone, but there was none. There was no way to call 911. He untied her hands and bent down to untie her feet. Suddenly he felt her little hand on his arm.

  “Daddy?” she whispered.

  The sheriff looked back up. He looked outside the bedroom window and saw the little Charlie Brown Christmas tree through her window in Mercy Hospital. Something was wrong. They were in her bedroom. Or was this a hospital room? Where were they?

  “Daddy?” she whispered.

  “No, honey. I’m a police officer. I’m the one who found you.”

  “You can’t fool me. I always knew you’d rescue me, Daddy,” she said.

  He untied her feet and picked her up. She was a rag doll in his arms. He laid her back on the hospital bed and tucked her under the covers. She smelled so warm and clean.

  “Will you read me a story? No one has ever read me a story,” she said.

  The sheriff picked up a worn copy of Little Red Riding Hood that had been left in the hospital room. As he began to read, the little girl looked up at the television on mute. She asked him why the picture was so clear. She had never been outside of her apartment. She had never gone to school. She had never learned to write her name.

  He heard the morphine going into her arm.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  He reached the last page of the story. What big teeth you have.

  “Daddy, can you get me some milk?”

  “No, honey. I can’t,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s when you died,” the sheriff said.

  “I won’t this time. I promise.”

  “But you have to hear the end of the story. You have to know that the wolf doesn’t win.”

  “Please, get me some milk, Daddy.”

  The sheriff looked down into those big beautiful eyes. He heard the morphine fall like raindrops.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  The sheriff handed her the book and walked into the hallway. He quickly found a nurse and asked for a carton of milk. While he waited, he decided what he was going to do. The sheriff was the first grown man the little girl had ever met who didn’t hurt her, so she thought he was her daddy. So, why couldn’t he be? He wasn’t a praying man, but this one time, he could make the world right. He could bring her home in time for Christmas. He could get her presents. He could adopt her. After everything she’d been through, she was still innocent. She was the best little kid he had ever seen.

  “Here is the milk, sIr,” the nurse said.

  The sheriff looked at the little carton of milk. Emily Bertovich was there, smiling in her second-grade picture.

  The sheriff walked back into the room.

  “Okay. Let’s finish that story now, honey,” he said. “Honey?”

  The little girl was lifeless on the bed.

  “NO!” he yelled.

  He ran over and held her in his arms. He screamed for the nurse, but no nurse came.

  “PLEASE!”

  He began to sob. Suddenly, the sheriff remembered everything. He had already been here. He had done this. He had already seen her die fifty times tonight.

  “MAKE IT STOP!”

  The sheriff ran to the door. He knew what came next. He would run out into the hallway to get the doctor to save the little girl. But instead, he would open the door to the tenement building. He had done this fifty times already. But this time, he promised himself he would remember. Christopher was in terrible danger. So was his mother. So was Ambrose. He had to help them. He had to get to her faster. He had to save her this time. To get out of here. He couldn’t watch her die again.

  but god iS a murderer

  Daddy.

  The sheriff opened the door.

  He looked down the hallway of an old tenement building. For a moment, he wondered why he wasn’t in the tree house. He was sure he opened the door to the tree house, but this was definitely an old tenement building. The door closed with a heavy click behind him.

  The sheriff turned back to leave the building, but the door was locked.

  Ding.

  Chapter 123

  Ambrose turned on the light. He looked around, expecting to see the tree house. But he wasn’t in the tree house anymore.

  He was in his old house.

  The basement.

  Something was terribly wrong. Ambrose knew it instinctively. He was behind enemy lines. He looked around the basement. Something was in here. He couldn’t see it, not even through the halos in his eyes, but he could feel it. There was something too familiar about it all. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up like antennas.

  Ambrose moved to the stairs.

  He climbed, the wooden stairs creaking with each step. He could feel something in the basement behind him. He quickly looked back, but he saw nothing. Just the wood paneling that he’d put up with his father one summer. His little brother begged the two men to help them. His father said no. Ambrose said yes.

  Ambrose opened the basement door.

  He walked into his mother’s kitchen. He saw the doorframe where his mother measured his height with pencil marks. Ambrose was 6 foot even. David was frozen at 3 foot 5. There was something boiling in a pot on the stove. Something that smelled like…like…venison.

  Ding dong.

  Someone was at the front door. Ambrose’s blood went instantly cold. He slowly moved to the door. He stood in his mother’s living room. The old RCA Victor was in the corner right next to the sewing machine.

  “Hello?” he whispered.

  That’s when the baby started crying.

  Ambrose quickly went to the window and pushed his mother’s old curtains down the brass rod with a squeak. He craned his neck to see who was at the front door, but all he saw was the baby carriage. Ambrose’s heart stopped when he realized what was happening. He didn’t know where he was. But he knew when he was.

  This was the night that David went missing.

  “David?” Ambrose called upstairs. “David, are you up there?”

  There was no answer except a…

  Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

  As a baseball slowly rolled down the stairs.

  Ambrose caught the ball. It smelled like David’s baseball glove. Ambrose began to run up the stairs as fast as his old legs would take him. He passed the family portraits and the wedding pictures. A hundred years of Olson family history decaying on the walls like faded Missing posters. There was no one left to remember. No one left but him. He reached the top of the stairs and moved to David’s bedroom. Ambrose opened the door and peered into the dark room.

  “David? Are you in here
?” he said.

  He flipped the light. The room was empty. The walls were covered in scratches left from madness when their father locked David in this room with nothing but his fear to keep him company. Ambrose saw a lump underneath the covers on the bed. It looked to be the size of a child.

  “David? Is that you?” he whispered.

  Ambrose studied the lump in the bed. Was it moving? Was it breathing? He moved to the bed and ripped off the covers before fear could talk him out of it. There was no one there. Just two pillows left under the covers to trick a grown-up.

  And David’s baby book.

  Ambrose picked it up slowly. The leather cover had the scent of old baseball gloves. It still smelled like his brother. He opened the book and ran his fingers over the little beads from the hospital. D. Olson. He studied the little footprint and the pictures that every family seemed to take.

  David laughing naked at the tub.

  David floating in a pool looking cranky.

  David opening his presents on Christmas morning.

  Ambrose had looked at the photos so often, he didn’t need to look at them again. He knew the last photo in the book. David with his big brother’s baseball glove. Ambrose stared at the picture, then turned the page.

  But this time, the album kept going. There were more pictures.

  David climbing out of the window.

  David running through the woods.

  David screaming in his grave.

  Ambrose turned to the window. He saw his brother’s fingerprints on the glass. The wind using an old tree branch to scratch the window. Ambrose threw the window open and looked down at the ivy scaling the walls. His little brother used it to climb down the night he went missing. This was that night.

  I can still save my brother.

  He climbed through the window and down the ivy walls. His feet found the mossy grass. Ambrose looked down and saw his little brother’s footprints in the lawn. He knew it could be a trick, but he had no other option. He followed the trail. He had to find his brother. He had to save him this time.

  Someone buried my brother alive.

  Ambrose quickened his pace. He could see nothing except his little brother’s footprints squished into the wet street. He thought he could hear David’s voice far off in the wind. David was crying. Ambrose raced after his brother’s footprints until he saw the cul-de-sac in the distance.

  And the Mission Street Woods.

  The old soldier braced himself and moved across the field. He could feel the woods come alive in front of him. The wind moving in and out through an invisible mouth. Making clouds.

  Ambrose followed the footprints into the woods.

  Immediately the path went dark. Ambrose would have been blind had it not been for the halos in his eyes. His heart was in his throat. This was where his brother was killed. This was where he was lured. David was in here somewhere.

  I can still save my brother.

  Ambrose searched for any sign of abduction. A hole in the ground. A trapdoor. But all he saw were his brother’s footprints. Leading into the old coal mine. Ambrose walked into the darkness, clutching to memories like a child to a night-light. He had heard stories about this mine. His grandfather’s grandfather had been a child laborer here. Hard work made for hard men. Not to mention families. Ambrose would be the last Olson. Unless he could save his brother.

  “David! Are you in here?”

  His voice bounced off the walls. He could feel something in the dark. A silent presence. Watching. Waiting. Slithering. Ambrose steeled himself against the darkness and walked until he reached the light on the other side. The path led to an overpass. A hidden clearing. Ambrose followed the footprints into a little garden. He looked up and stopped dead in his tracks when he finally saw it.

  David’s tree house.

  Ambrose looked through the dense fog and saw the shadow of a little boy carrying something to the tree house.

  “DAVID?!” Ambrose called out.

  The word was right in Ambrose’s mind. But when it left his mouth, it was silent.

  The little boy didn’t turn.

  Ambrose started to run to him, but his legs became so heavy, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He could only watch frozen on the ground. The little boy turned, and Ambrose finally saw his face. His beautiful face. And that perfect head of hair. It was David. My God. It was really him. He was still alive.

  And he was crying.

  Ambrose tried to scream, but the word was trapped in his throat like a marble. David could not hear him. David thought he was all alone. David wiped the blood from his nose with one hand and grabbed a hammer from a pile of tools near the tree house with the other. Ambrose watched as his little brother tore the tree house apart. Plank by plank. Throwing the wood in a pile like a dog stacking bones.

  Until there was nothing left but the ladder.

  The boy tried to move up the ladder by himself, but he was too weak. He lifted the hammer in his brittle hand and tried to pry one of the ladder rungs off the tree, but the hammer was too heavy. He finally lost his grip and fell to the ground with a thud. The little boy stood up and held his throbbing head.

  “Help me. Somebody,” he cried. “I have to destroy it all.”

  “DAVID!” Ambrose yelled. “I’M HERE!”

  Ambrose screamed until his throat burned, but there was only silence. He tried to get to his feet, but he could only watch helplessly as a man walked into the garden. The man looked so handsome. And clean. In his grey suit and smile. The only thing that looked off about the man was the fact that he only stood in the shadows. His voice the wind.

  “Hello, David,” he said. “What are you doing?”

  David backed up to the tree. Terrified.

  “I…I…” David stammered.

  “Don’t be afraid. We’re still beSt friends.”

  The man slowly moved to David, who hid the hammer behind his back.

  “What do you have behind your back, davId? Is that a hammer? Are you destroying the tree house?”

  “Yes,” David said, finally finding his voice.

  “But we built it together,” the man said. He seemed hurt. “The tree houSe is the we houSe. Remember?”

  David quickly wiped his tears and pretended they had never been there.

  “No one on the real side will ever know it was here,” David said defiantly.

  The man walked like a serpent on hind legs. Swallowing his smile.

  “But how can you destroy it? The tree house made you goD. I gave you that power to kill her,” the man said in a friendly voice.

  “I won’t kill the hissing lady for you,” David said. “I won’t let you escape.”

  Then, David walked to the tree and ripped the ladder out like a dentist pulling teeth. He threw the 2x4s on top of the woodpile. The man’s smile dropped. He followed David. Calm and dangerous.

  “You know the ruleS, david. Someone is going to die. It’s either the hissing lady or your brother. There iS no other choice.”

  “Yes, there is,” David said. “There is someone else who could die.”

  Ambrose watched his little brother throw the last 2x4 on the pile. Then, he picked up a shovel.

  “You’re on the real sIde,” the man said with a laugh. “You can’t even see me right now. I’m just in your mind. How are you going to kill mE with a shovel?”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” David said.

  Then, David turned the shovel down and jammed the spade into the dirt. The man’s laughter instantly stopped. The calm in his voice cracking.

  “WhaT are you doinG?”

  David said nothing. He just kept digging more and more earth. The man ran to him.

  “StoP thaT!”

  But David would not stop. The bones in his thin arms looked like they were going to break from the weight of the shovel.

  “If you don’t stop, I’m going to kill your brotHer.”

  “No, you won’t. If I die, so does the power you take from me. She wi
ll be stronger than you again. And she won’t let you get to Ambrose.”

  Ambrose watched helplessly. He could smell the scent of baseball gloves. It was getting weaker. The man walked up and put a kind hand on David’s shoulder.

  “Please, David,” the man said in Ambrose’s voice. “I will never find you. It will destroy me. How could you do this to your own brother?”

  “You’re not my brother,” David said. “You’re nothing.”

  The word fell like a bird from the sky. The man closed his eyes in rage. Light like fireflies danced through his skin. Constellations of stars crawled over him, and he took one finger and moved it into David like a needle.

  “This is what eternity has been for the hissing lady, and if you don’t kill her, thiS is what it will be for you.”

  David’s nose began to bleed. His eyes. His ears. He screamed as if he were being burned alive, but he wouldn’t stop digging. Not until the hole was complete. Then, he threw the shovel on top of the woodpile and pulled something out of his back pocket.

  Lighter fluid.

  He opened the cap and poured the liquid on the tree house’s bones. Then, he brought a trail of it back to the hole with him. The man screeched into David’s ear, and David fell to his knees in agony. All the boy could do was crawl, dragging his broken body into the grave.

  Then, David pulled out a book of his brother’s matches. Lucky Strike. He lit the match with a

  Hiss.

  The man looked at it. The flame the color of hIs eyes. He spoke like a policeman talking to someone on a ledge.

  “David, if you kill yourself, you will wake up here and never leave this place,” he said. “You will relive this night forever.”

  “So will you,” David said and threw the match.

  The trail crossed the garden to the tree house. The fire roared up, casting a glow, making his little brother look like he was lit by the sunrise.

  Ambrose watched frozen on the ground as David stood in his grave and pulled the dirt back in. Sacrificing himself. For the family who ignored him. For the town who would forget him. The man in the grey suit watched incredulously as the little boy put the world in front of himself.