Imaginary Friend

by Stephen Chbosky

  “thiS iS whaT iT reallY iS!”

  Christopher looked up in horror as the white clouds burned with souls crying out for murder and blood. The clouds twisting into the faces of the damned. The people there were not screaming, “Make it stop!” The people there were screaming, “More! Give me more!”

  “i wilL pasS yoU arounD tO thE reallY baD peoplE anD telL theM thaT yoU arE a gifT froM heaveN whilE youR motheR watcheS theM. i wilL leT theM torturE yoU untiL yoU arE unrecognizablE tO goD.”

  The nice man curled his lips and turned to Christopher. The little boy looked into the nice man’s eyes and saw them burn in different colors. Mountains melted. An eternity of warfare. It would spread and rage on and no one would ever die. They would just kill and watch helplessly as every square inch of the earth was covered with people stuffed like cattle on a train. The door locked. The fever burning inside their skin. Forever.

  “i gavE yoU thE poweR oF goD tO kilL heR. usE iT anD geT mE ouT oF herE!”

  “But I can’t kill the hissing lady, sir. I don’t have the power anymore.”

  “whaT diD yoU dO?! wherE diD yoU puT iT?!”

  “I gave it away, so you couldn’t get it,” Christopher answered defiantly.

  “wherE iS iT?!?!?! wherE diD yoU hidE iT?”

  “I didn’t hide it. I used it to make something far more powerful than you.”

  The nice man laughed.

  “morE powerfuL thaN mE. whaT iS thaT?! goD?!”

  “No, sir,” Christopher said. “God’s mother.”

  Christopher saw the nice man stop, sensing the presence behind him. He turned and saw her.

  Christopher’s mother.

  Her eyes glowed with the light of one hundred billion stars. Her voice boomed.

  “GET AWAY FROM MY SON!”

  Chapter 126

  When I was a little girl, I was so angry I thought I could close my eyes and destroy the world.

  Kate ran at hiM.

  Her instinct had taken over, like the women she heard about who turned over cars that trapped their children. But what she felt was more than adrenaline.

  This was omnipotence.

  She launched herself through the air. Their bodies collided. The nice man fell back, dropping Christopher.

  “Mom!” he yelled out.

  “Run!” she commanded.

  The nice man tackled her to the street. They fell down into the river of blood. Scratching. Clawing. All the fury of a mother lion surged through her. A lifetime of bastards. Beating her. Leaving her. Everyone who ever put her down. Everyone who left her behind. They all had one face now.

  “Come on, fucker,” she said. “Pick on someone who KNOWS who you are.”

  She threw her body at him. There were no words anymore. Only instinct. She opened her hands, nails sharp as knives, and tore through his face like a farmer plowing a field. The nice man screamed. Blood gushing down his neck. He moved back to her, swinging wildly. His fist landed on her jaw, knocking teeth loose. But she had learned to take a punch a long time ago.

  Now she was learning how to throw one.

  *

  Christopher moved to help the hissing lady just as a terrible whisper ran through the streets like a leaf floating on a breeze. It was the nice man. His body was fighting Christopher’s mother. But a little piece of hiS voice whispered through the wind.

  wakE uP…

  Christopher looked as the man in the Girl Scout uniform stopped stabbing himself.

  wakE uP, everyonE…

  The couple stopped kissing. The little children put down their ice cream and deer legs. The man stood at the door, having just learned about his dead child. A woman looked down at her watch, waiting for her blind date. The clock had only moved a second in seventy-five years.

  dO yoU wanT iT tO stoP?

  “YES!” they cried.

  Christopher tore at the ropes binding the hissing lady’s hands. She was terrified.

  “You’re on the street!” she warned.

  dO yoU wanT thE tormenT tO stoP?!

  “YES! PLEASE!” they begged.

  dO yoU seE thaT littlE boY oveR therE?

  Every eye turned to Christopher. The hissing lady cried out, pulling at the rope frantically.

  “Get off the street!” she commanded.

  hE iS thE onE whO tortureS yoU.

  “Run, Christopher!” his mother screamed.

  Christopher’s mother jumped on the nice man. She put her hand over his mouth to silence him. He bit into the flesh of her hand.

  hE iS thE onE whO won’T leT yoU leavE.

  Christopher saw the adulterous couple turn to him.

  “hI, christopheR,” they said.

  Christopher’s mother wrapped her legs around the nice man and squeezed. The nice man screamed, blood pouring out of his mouth. But the whisper kept coming.

  becausE goD iS a murdereR!

  The man in the Girl Scout uniform came out of the bushes. Knife raised.

  “hI, christopheR,” he said.

  sO yoU havE tO kilL hiM noW!

  Christopher loosened the knot around the hissing lady’s hands. She tore herself free and went to the ropes around her feet.

  thE firsT onE whO killS goD iS freE!

  The man in the Girl Scout uniform pushed the cheating couple out of the way.

  “coMe hEre, christopheR. i wanT tO shoW yoU soMething.”

  The nice man looked Christopher’s mother dead in the eye. His whisper was gone. He opened his mouth and howled so loudly the ground shook.

  “kilL goD anD you’rE freE!”

  With a wave of his hand, the nice man turned the blue moon a fire red. The street boiled over with blood. The frogs jumped out of the pot and turned to Christopher, their eyes furious. Screams came from inside the houses. Hands shattered windows. The doors of the houses opened. All of the damned rushed outside.

  “hI, christopheR,” the voices said. “caN wE talK tO yoU?”

  They started running at him. Fighting each other to be first.

  Christopher’s mother raced to save her son. The nice man tackled her to the ground. She turned and bit a chunk out of his shoulder. The nice man yelled in pain and ecstasy. The deer poured out of the woods. The damned ran at Christopher. There was only one group not moving.

  The mailbox people.

  They stood still like a fence surrounding the street. Their eyes sewn shut. Their mouths frozen. Each holding the string that kept the next in place. The street was completely blocked in.

  Christopher was surrounded.

  The hissing lady finally ripped the ropes from her body. She stood in front of Christopher as the nice man’s army moved toward him. Her eyes darted, looking for any means of escape.

  There was nowhere to go.

  But down.

  The hissing lady bent and grabbed the sewer grate. She planted her foot on the side of the street, her shoulder muscles ripping in tiny fibers as her foot sizzled. The sewer grate gave. She pried it open, the metal scraping. The air poured out. Rotten air. Christopher looked down into the sewer. It was pitch black.

  “Off the street!” she said, pushing him into the darkness.

  Christopher’s feet hit a puddle of blood with a squish. Immediately he realized that the sewer was not a sewer at all. It was the coal mine. Running underneath the street like veins through a cadaver. He looked up as the hissing lady turned and the nice man’s army grabbed her. He saw the deer and the damned striking. Biting. Clawing. She fought back with everything she had. She wouldn’t let them anywhere near Christopher. But there were too many of them. They swarmed her. Christopher watched as the hissing lady used her last ounce of strength to drag the grate back into place with a clank. Just before hands groped into the darkness and dragged her away, screaming.

  Christopher ran down the coal mine. His legs almost buckled under him. He listened for any sound, but all he heard was the shuffling of feet. He was in complete darkness. What was down here? He reached into the blackness
like a blind man without a cane.

  He stopped when he touched the hand.

  Christopher screamed. His voice echoed off the cement walls.

  “he’S dowN therE!” the voices screamed above. “liSten.”

  Christopher groped into the darkness. He felt another arm. Another hand. He turned back around. A hundred feet behind him, he saw the dust kick up as the damned dug their way down. A shaft of moonlight lit the tunnel. He saw shadows of the damned running through the coal mine.

  “hurrY! he’S dowN herE somewherE!”

  Christopher ran deeper into the tunnel, his hands reaching out. He heard bodies stirring. A bare leg rubbing against the wall like a cricket. A finger reached out and touched his hair. Another grabbed his hand.

  More digging behind him. More digging below. The tunnel was filling with the damned. Deer hooves clacked and squished in the bloody street above him. Christopher felt more hands on him. Moaning. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. And he finally saw what was reaching out and grabbing him.

  The mailbox people.

  They stood side by side like bats hanging upside down in a cave. They held each other in place with one long string.

  The string.

  The thought came out of nowhere. Maybe he could follow the string out of here. Christopher saw it running down the tunnel in every direction. Tunnels that went into themselves. He was in a labyrinth.

  “christopheR?” the voices said behind him. “wE caN seE yoU! wE caN smelL yoU!”

  He looked back and saw the man in the Girl Scout uniform leading the charge. Christopher followed the string deeper into darkness. He ran past the smells. The decay. The earth, coal, and wood mixed together like cement. He looked up through the cracks in the tunnel and saw the bottoms of people’s homes. Pipes and basements. Crawl spaces hidden away for rats and glowing eyes. Then, the houses were replaced with tree roots hanging like stalactites on the ceilings of caves. He was under the Mission Street Woods now. Running deeper into the labyrinth. He saw what looked like an opening up ahead. He ran through it and saw a bedroom carved into the tunnel underground. It was filthy. Hateful. Pictures of naked ladies and men with cigarette burns where their privates would be.

  A man was asleep on the mattress.

  Next to a little kid’s night-light.

  Christopher saw a door at the other end of the bedroom. This man must be a guard. There was something on the other side of that door. He had to get to it. It was his only way out. He tiptoed past the mattress. He passed a mirror and looked at his reflection. But he didn’t see his face. He saw the back of his own head. The man in the bed began to stir behind him.

  “i’M huntinG thE sherifF noW, christopheR,” the man said in his sleep. “ambrosE iS burying hImselF alivE again. and Again. gueSs whaT wiLl happeN to yoU! herE i comEEEEEEEEEEE!”

  Christopher turned back and saw the shadows of the damned racing to become the first to kill him.

  He would need an army to escape.

  Christopher reached the door on the other side of the guard’s bedroom. He opened it, the thick metal squeaking on its hinges. He slammed the door shut and locked it with a heavy click.

  Then, he stepped into the darkest place he had ever been.

  The air around him suddenly changed. It felt like being inside an oven. He stood breathless for a moment, listening. He heard rustling like bugs on a screen door. He called out to get any perspective, but all he heard was the sound bouncing off the walls in a giant echo. It reminded Christopher of old war movies when men were far from the battlefield. Miles away, people were in agony. But for him, the world was quiet.

  Until his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  And he looked up to find the most horrible thing he had ever seen.

  A giant hive of mailbox people.

  The hive was as large as the clearing. Christopher looked above them and realized they were underneath the giant tree. These people were the roots. They guarded the only door to the surface. He was trapped. Christopher’s eyes followed the string that held the mailbox people in place. He had to find the first person who held the string. Where did it all start? It could take him out of here.

  Christopher walked down the line. Each person held the string. Their bodies swayed like trees, their arms branches dancing in a sick breeze. Puppets and strings. They were all connected. Christopher ran and saw the next hand holding it. And the person after that. And the person after that. Adults. Children. All ages. All genders. He had to find the master. The one holding all of the marionettes. He kept running. Faster and faster. Frantic for the exit. He heard banging on the locked door behind him and realized he was back at the entrance.

  It was a circle.

  A chain.

  There was no master.

  They were all holding the string.

  Christopher stared into the darkness. There was no life here. There was no death. There was only eternity. A life sentence after everyone stops dying.

  He was in the valley of the shadow of death.

  Christopher closed his eyes and fell to his knees. He clasped his hands together and prayed for deliverance. For his mother. And the hissing lady. And David Olson. And the sheriff. And Ambrose. The list of names stretched out as long as the line of mailbox people. Mrs. Keizer. Mrs. Collins. Mr. Collins. Brady. Jenny. Eddie. Mike. Matt. Even Jerry. Especially Jerry.

  “Please, God. You can have me if you need me. Just save them.”

  Suddenly a hand reached out from the darkness and held Christopher’s arm. Christopher screamed and turned quickly. The hand wouldn’t let go, so it took him a moment to realize there was something different about it. There was no ripping or grabbing. There was only a soft touch. Christopher found the hand and the wrists with the scars. He moved his gaze up the body until he saw the face of the final mailbox person in the hive.

  It was his father.

  Chapter 127

  His eyes were sewn shut.

  Christopher’s father stood in a porcelain bathtub. He wore hospital clothes. The bottoms of his pajamas were wet. Not from water. But from blood.

  youR daddY iS crazY

  Christopher took a step closer. His father’s wrist scars were still wet. Still dripping. Filling the bathtub forever.

  CLANK. CLANK.

  The metal door banged behind them. The damned were coming.

  “Dad?” Christopher said.

  Christopher reached out and took his father’s hand. He remembered the funeral. The viewing. The room with the ashtrays. He had kissed his father’s dead forehead. It was so lifeless. There was no electricity. His hand was so cold.

  But now his hand was warm.

  “Dad, is that really you?” Christopher said.

  His father twitched. Moaning through the stitches holding his lips together. Christopher felt the nice man’s warning burning his ears.

  I cut the yarn that held a little girl and her sister’s mouths shut.

  They tried to eat me alive.

  Christopher reached into his pocket, looking for something to cut the string. He found it, coarse and jagged.

  The hissing lady’s key.

  He stood on his tiptoes and brought the key to his father’s mouth. He sawed through the strings holding his father’s lips together. His father moved his jaw, frozen and stiff from years of bondage.

  “Christopher?” he asked weakly. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, Dad,” Christopher said.

  “You’re alive?”

  “Yes.”

  The man began to cry.

  “I’ve seen you die a thousand times,” he said. “You keep drowning in a bathtub.”

  “No, Dad. That wasn’t me.”

  His father thought for a moment. His brow furrowed until he found the memory.

  “Was I the one who died in the bathtub?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “I’m so sorry I left you.”

  “I know you are.”

  “Let me look at you, honey.”

&nbs
p; Christopher brought the key to his father’s eyes and sawed through the thick thread keeping his father blind. He pulled the thread out through his father’s eyelids and dropped it to the ground. His father opened his eyes, bewildered, as if this dark cave were the brightest sun he’d ever seen. He blinked like a newborn until his eyes adjusted to the light. He looked down at his son. Then, he smiled.

  “You’re so big now.”

  His father reached out to hold him, but the string held his arm in place. Christopher moved his hand to help him. When he finally touched the string in his father’s hand, he was surprised. There was nothing special about it. It wasn’t made of steel. It reminded him of the time he watched the old movie about the circus with his mother. He saw a baby elephant tied to a post with a steel chain. The baby ripped and scratched and tried to get free, but the chain wouldn’t break. Then, he saw a grown elephant tied to a post with nothing but a little piece of rope. He asked his mother how the little piece of rope held the big elephant in place. She explained that they chain the babies until they give up.

  The elephants think that little piece of rope is still a chain.

  Christopher thought. He didn’t know if it would work or not, but he had to try.

  “Dad,” he said. “I think you can put the string down now.”

  “I can?”

  Christopher gently held his father’s hand. He felt the moment of his death. The final second when his father changed his mind. He wanted to live. He couldn’t bear to be away from his family. But it was too late. But it wasn’t too late. It was never too late.

  Christopher’s father let go of the string.

  He stood still for a moment, waiting for a sky to fall. But it never did. He stepped out of the bloody bathtub. He knelt down and held his son with both arms. His shirt smelled like tobacco. Christopher held his father as he looked around the hive at hundreds of mailbox people. They were all connected. The town and the tunnels. All connected by an invisible string. No one was holding the mailbox people in place. They were holding themselves. The mailbox people weren’t the nice man’s soldiers.

  They were his slaves.

  Christopher heard the moaning. All of the mailbox people were actually asking for deliverance. Christopher finally understood the screams. The anger. The madness. All he could hear anymore were the words “Help me.” He felt the heat being turned up. The frogs stuck in a boiling pot not understanding that the fire was a fever under their skin. They were inside the valley of the shadow of death, but the valley was not a place outside of them. It was inside.