The day had moved on without him noticing. The clouds had disappeared and the sun was now sinking behind the swimming pool. Shadows were creeping across the tarmac. As long as he stood in the car park the things that had happened there played in his head like a film. He had to get away. If he was to think straight, if he was to come up with a plan, if he was to work out what to do next, he needed to put the car park behind him.
And so, because he had to do something, and because he didn’t know what, Rudger ran.
He jogged past the last few cars and ran between the last swimmers leaving the pool. (They didn’t see him, but felt the rush of wind curl between them as he ran by, and wondered at the faint grey gunpowder smell in the air.)
He ran down the path at the side of the big building. His lungs were fiery and his legs ached, but he kept running. The spiral tube of the water slide passed by overhead, and neat flowerbeds passed by on the other side. Gravel crunched under his feet. He dodged a pothole, jumped a puddle and suddenly he was running on grass.
Behind the swimming pool, at the end of the path he’d run along, was the town park.
It was green and wide and the sight of such a fresh open space lifted him for a second. It was just the sort of place Amanda could have, and would have, dreamt into becoming a whole new huge world. He stopped running and leant on his knees. No matter how hard he looked at the park, no matter what he wished it to become, it stayed a park. He didn’t have the spark in his head that she’d had in hers. He didn’t have the imagination needed to imagine new worlds.
In fact, he thought, feeling a strange faint tingling, he didn’t even have the imagination to imagine himself.
He held his hands up and saw the outlines of trees through them. He saw the greens of trees through them too, faint, greyish greens, but greens nonetheless. He was fading away. Without Amanda to think of him, to remember him, to dream him, to make him real, he was slipping away.
Rudger was being forgotten. He was disappearing. Evaporating.
He walked into the shade of a tree and touched its thick patchwork bark with his fingertip. It looked rough, gnarled, hard, but it was like marshmallow. His faint fading finger hardly felt it at all.
He slumped on the grass with his back to the tree trunk. It was comfortable. It was like resting on a pillow.
He was fading all over now.
He felt sleepy and sleepier.
He shut his eyes.
What would it be like to fade away? To vanish entirely?
Time would tell, he thought, soon enough, time would tell.
‘I can see you,’ said a voice.
Rudger looked up.
Who’d said that?
At first he didn’t see the black shape. It had grown dark under the tree. Night was falling, and the cat was simply a darker cat-shaped shape in the darkness.
A cat?
Had a cat just spoken to him?
He said nothing, unsure of what one should say to a cat.
‘Little boy,’ the cat said. ‘I can see you.’
At Rudger’s back the tree was suddenly uncomfortable. The cushioniness of it had snapped back into the usual expected rough barkiness. He lifted his hands. It was hard to tell in the half-light of the evening, but they looked, and they certainly felt, like real fingers again. They’d lost their wispiness, their haze.
‘You can see me?’ he said, feeling a little foolish.
‘Oh, I see you,’ the cat said.
‘But no one ever sees me.’
‘Someone must do. Someone must have. I know your sort. I know what you are.’
‘Who are you?’ Rudger asked. ‘What are you?’
‘Me? I’m Zinzan.’
‘Zinzan,’ Rudger repeated, trying out the unfamiliar name.
‘Yes,’ the cat said. ‘And do you have a name? I could just call you “boy”, but there are so many boys in the world it would become confusing.’
‘I’m called Rudger,’ Rudger said.
‘Hmm.’
Rudger wished he could see the cat’s expression. It was too dark to make anything out. Its voice sounded haughty, a touch bored, as if it wanted to be somewhere else, as if it had something better to be doing. He didn’t know if the cat was bored, if it did have somewhere better to be, or whether that was just how cats sounded. He’d never heard a cat talk before. As far as he knew no one had.
He wondered if someone was playing a trick on him, but then who could play a trick on him? You’d have to see him first, and the only person who’d ever seen him had been Amanda. (And, he remembered with a lurch, Mr Bunting.)
As he thought of Amanda he felt himself begin to fade again.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ Zinzan said. ‘I believe in you, Rudger. And I’m not going to have you Fade on me.’ Rudger noticed the way the cat said the word, with a capital ‘F’ as if it were a medical condition. ‘It’s tricky, isn’t it, these first few days? Being forgotten? But it happens to you all, sooner or later. Come with me. Come on.’
‘I’ve not been forgotten,’ Rudger answered, half-angry. ‘Not forgotten.’ He softened his voice. It wasn’t the cat’s fault and besides his heart was weighing the words down. ‘There was an accident. Amanda got knocked down, she was…’ He paused before he reached the word he meant to say, and then said a different one. ‘…hurt.’
The cat said nothing.
‘I think…’ Rudger went on haltingly, finding the words hard to say, but wanting to say them, needing to say them all the same. ‘I think she’s…dead. They took her away. And I was left on my own.’
‘No,’ said Zinzan casually. ‘I’ve seen what happens when someone dies, seen what happens to someone like you. They die; you vanish, like shutting a door. Gone in a second. No, you…you’re just Fading, boy, and Fading means you’re being forgotten, that’s all.’
Rudger’s heart began to beat again. ‘She’s alive?’
‘Evidently so, or I wouldn’t be speaking to you.’
‘Then I’ve got to find her. I’ve got to go to her.’
‘And how will you do that, little Will-o’-the-wisp? Five minutes on your own and you’ll blow away on the breeze. I’ve no time to look for your girl, but I won’t leave you to Fade. I’m not heartless. I’ll take you somewhere safe, somewhere useful.’
And with those words the cat turned and trotted off through the long grass, away from the tree and didn’t once look behind to see if Rudger was following.
What choice did Rudger have?
No choice.
He scrambled to his feet and followed.
Rudger followed the cat through the park, out of the gate and down the street.
‘Hey, slow down,’ he called.
The cat didn’t slow.
It padded along the street, weaving unnoticed through the legs of passers-by, before sidling into an alleyway opposite a garishly lit kebab shop. Purple lights reflected in puddles at the alley’s mouth.
Rudger hurried after the cat, afraid that it would be gone when he got there, that he’d be stranded in an alley with no clue as to what to do next.
But there it was, sat on top of a dustbin, rubbing its ears with its wrists.
A flickering streetlight cast a pale glow over the bin and over the cat. This was the first good look Rudger had got at his…at his what? His new friend? His saviour? His new problem? It was hard to say.
From the ring of Zinzan’s voice Rudger had assumed he was dealing with a cat of refinement, a gentleman, an aristocrat. If he had known anything of cat breeds, which he didn’t, he would’ve pictured a Siamese or a Burmese. But what sat on the bin before him looked more like a cat put together from the leftover parts of several other cats who’d been in a war, all on the losing side.
Its fur was matted in places and missing in others. Its tail bent at a right angle halfway down. Its right eye was red and the left was blue. Parts of it were brown and parts were white and some parts Rudger couldn’t begin to guess the colour of without first offering the cat
a bath. And Zinzan didn’t look the sort of cat you could bathe without a great deal of effort, soap and courage.
Zinzan looked like nothing less than a boxer, a bruiser, a brute. A dangerous person to know.
And he was, Rudger also realised, in fact hadn’t stopped realising as he took this all in, the only person Rudger knew. Until he got back to Amanda, that was.
‘What happens now?’
‘I take you somewhere you’ll be safe,’ the cat replied, its tone suggesting that this was obvious.
‘Where?’
‘Oh, hereabouts,’ the cat said slowly, gazing round the alley as if looking for something. ‘It’s just a case of finding the right door at the right time.’
‘What does that mean?’
The cat yawned. Its teeth glinted yellowly (the ones that weren’t missing).
‘So many questions,’ it said, before yawning again. ‘I’m merely a helper, Rudger. A Good Samaritan. If I had the answers, well, do you think I’d look like this?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rudger said. ‘That’s why I asked. Amanda always asks questions.’
‘And does she always get answers?’
Rudger thought.
‘No, not always.’
‘And when she doesn’t get answers?’
‘She makes it up, usually.’
Zinzan laughed. It was a strange laugh, somewhere between a purr and a cough, but it wasn’t cruel.
‘That’s probably why she thought of you,’ the cat said. ‘As the answer to a question she got no other answer to.’
It licked its shoulder, twitched its whiskers and jumped down from the bin.
‘Come,’ it said. ‘I smell a door opening. Follow me.’
And with that it ran further into the alley, off into the dark.
One alley led to another alley and that alley led to a third and the third led on to a fourth.
It was hard to see Zinzan up ahead, but the cat said, ‘Come on,’ and, ‘This way,’ and, ‘I see you,’ just often enough for Rudger to not lose track of it.
He had the most peculiar feeling that they’d run down too many alleyways. An alley had to lead somewhere, lead you back out to a street, surely? With Zinzan, however, alley led to alley led to alley. But it was dark and it was late and Rudger was tired and today had been dreadful, so he just followed the cat and pushed any doubts he had to the back of his head.
One thing he knew though, for sure: if he had been lost before, he was impossibly lost now.
‘Here we are,’ Zinzan said, stopping suddenly.
‘Where?’ asked Rudger. It looked exactly like the alley they’d started in. It even opened out on to the same road they’d come in from. Rudger could see the neon sign of the kebab shop opposite.
‘At the door to your new life,’ the cat replied, licking a paw and rubbing it across its nose.
‘What door?’ Rudger asked, looking round. ‘I don’t see it.’
‘Ah,’ Zinzan said, between licks of its tail. ‘But I see it.’
As the cat spoke a light flickered into life on the wall beside them. It lit a plain wooden door. The door stood slightly ajar but Rudger could see nothing of what was on the other side.
‘You should go in,’ Zinzan said. ‘I can’t look at you forever. I have things to be doing. Important things. I smell mouse. I’ve got work to do. Go on. Get.’
Hesitantly Rudger pushed the door.
Rudger was in a passage, like you’d find in an old house, lined with wallpaper patterned with tiny blue flowers. The floorboards creaked and groaned under his feet. Although there was a cool draught from the open door behind him, the corridor was warm and musty. He thought it smelt of old things, furry things, smelt like a damp dog snoring in front of a fire.
At the other end of the corridor was a second door. It too was ajar and he could hear a faint tinkle of music coming from it. Rudger walked forwards. It was either that or go back to the alley, and the cat had made it clear it wasn’t going to hang around waiting.
He went on.
He could definitely hear music, though it was still faint, and there were other noises too. He could hear voices, distant voices. He couldn’t make out any words, but there were people somewhere round here.
He sat down on the floor with his back to the wall and listened.
Rudger was afraid.
Amanda had always seen him, but none of her friends did. Her mum didn’t see him. The neighbours who lived either side of Amanda’s house had never seen him. He’d had to climb over their fences on more than one occasion to get a lost ball or Frisbee or fizzing stick of dynamite, and they’d never said a word to him. How would he feel if he went through that door and found a whole roomful of people to ignore him? Or worse, a room of Mr Buntings who could see him?
Zinzan had said he’d be safe here, but Zinzan was a cat. What do cats know?
But, Rudger argued, the cat had seen him. The cat had stopped him from Fading. The cat had told him about Amanda, about her still being alive. Maybe he should trust the cat.
He stood up. He could do this. What would Amanda have done if she’d been in his shoes? Probably complained that her shoes were too big, but after that she’d’ve gone through the door and faced whatever was on the other side. Rudger took a leaf from her book, a lesson from everything they’d shared together, and he pushed the door.
It shut with a click.
He pushed again and it didn’t move.
So he turned the handle and pulled it and the door opened to reveal almost the last thing he’d thought to find.
Rudger was in a library.
Amanda had told him about them, but he’d never seen one before. She’d said, ‘It’s the best sort of indoors there is for a rainy day. Every book is an adventure,’ and she loved adventures.
The music he’d heard was louder now. It crackled and popped as if it were being played on an old gramophone, but it was lively, happy, cheering.
He couldn’t see where it was coming from because there were bookcases in the way. They were all over the place. The library was a maze, he thought, a labyrinth built of books.
He looked around. Ten metres away, up the aisle to his right, a yawning woman was pushing a little trolley piled high with books.
As he watched she stopped, pulled a pair of hardbacks off the trolley, looked at them, then at the shelf, and then slid them carefully into their right places.
‘Hello?’ Rudger said.
She ignored him, pulled the trolley back a few steps and shelved some more books. She didn't hurry, even though it was late and she should probably have been getting home, but carefully put them exactly where they belonged.
‘What are you talking to her for?’ a little voice said from somewhere above him. ‘She’s real. She can’t see you.’
Rudger looked up.
Peering over the bookcase was the huge-toothed head of a dinosaur, possibly a tyrannosaur of some sort. Rudger was no expert, but he could tell at the very least that it wasn’t a herbivore: its teeth were huge, long, yellow and pointed. It snurfed through its great dark nostrils, licked a thick glistening tongue over its lipless lips and blinked its tiny eyes before speaking again.
‘Have you just arrived?’ it asked. Its voice was quiet, high like a child’s, not a monster’s, although its teeth clattered unnervingly each time it spoke.
Rudger wasn’t sure what to say.
It wasn’t that he was scared. Not really. But he was surprised.
Three things made the encounter less frightening than it might otherwise have been. Firstly, the dinosaur had to duck awkwardly to fit in under the library’s ceiling, which looked funny. Secondly, its tiny arms were resting on the top of the bookcase it was looking over, and a tyrannosaur’s tiny arms always look funny. And thirdly, it was pink.
‘Um,’ Rudger said. ‘Yes, I’m new here.’
‘I knew it. I knew it,’ the dinosaur said, trying to clap its small hands together and failing. ‘Come round here, you need to meet ev
eryone.’
It was like walking into a cartoon after spending a day in a subtitled black and white French film, Rudger thought. The dinosaur, with its startling colour, wasn’t the only oddity there.
In the middle of the library, where the bookcases gave way to tables and chairs, ‘people’ were gathered. Rudger used the word ‘people’ loosely as he looked at them, and left the word ‘real’ out of his thoughts entirely.
He was in a room full of imaginary people. There were some who looked like ordinary kids, like he did, and there were others who didn’t. There was a person-sized teddy bear and there was a clown and there was a man who looked like a Victorian schoolmaster, lean and pale and severe. There was a drifting patch of colour the exact shade of a summer’s sky and there was a tiny gnomish fellow hiding behind another tiny gnomish fellow who was trying to hide behind the first one and there was a ragdoll slumped in a chair (which Rudger learnt later was just a ragdoll some kid had lost in the library earlier that day).
Even the gramophone from which the music drifted was an imaginary person. It had short arms and legs sticking out of it and a pair of eyes that span round on the record, blinking each time they went under the stylus. When it saw Rudger the music crackled to a halt. It coughed politely, lifted its stylus arm up and blinked several times.
For a moment Rudger just stared at them all. He’d only ever seen one imaginary person before, and she’d tried to drag him out of the window and feed him to Mr Bunting. Now he was faced by a throng of them he felt overwhelmed.
‘You look lost,’ said a teenage girl.
She was wearing dungarees. Rudger had never seen dungarees before. He was very good and didn’t giggle.
‘He’s just come in,’ said the dinosaur, turning round with difficulty under the low ceiling. ‘He came in from the Corridor.’
‘Come over here,’ said the girl, taking his elbow and walking him away from all the others. ‘Have a seat. You’re probably confused. Your first time here?’
‘Yes,’ said Rudger, sitting on a sofa next to a rack of children’s picture books. ‘Where am I? Who are all those…um…people?’
The Imaginary Page 5