‘Snakes,’ she said to herself. ‘Why did it have to be snakes?’
She hated them. The way they coiled, the way they moved, magically sliding with hardly an effort, as if it was their sheer malevolent will that carried them forward. Even Oven ran when she found a slow worm in the garden, and that’s not even a real snake, just a legless lizard.
This was mad. This was unreal, bizarre. But she didn’t panic, she wouldn’t panic, no matter how much she wanted to.
If snakes were what was pinning her daughter down, she thought, if snakes were the thing that was keeping her daughter from her arms, then she would deal with them. It was as simple as that. And then she smelt Fridge again, far off, somewhere way beyond the room, but the smell tickled at the back of her brain, and the familiar scent of his damp shaggy fur was enough to calm her.
Unafraid, she wrapped her fingers round the thick python curled around Amanda’s neck, carefully uncoiling it. It was strong and fought against her and she could only move it slowly, but soon she’d created enough space for Amanda to take her first deep gulps of fresh air.
She heard the boy’s voice again. She looked round and saw him, saw Rudger, for the very first time. She recognised him, as if she’d seen him before, though she knew she hadn’t. He was familiar, a friend and he was struggling desperately, wriggling and grimacing in the grip of something she couldn’t quite make out. It was a dark cloud, a shadow without shape, something dreadful, something, she had a clear feeling, even worse than snakes.
The boy caught her eye and the panic in his face subsided for a moment when he saw she was looking at him.
‘Fridge remembers you,’ he shouted. ‘He called you his Lizzie. I think he’s waiting.’
And as she watched, the shadow around him stepped back and the boy staggered towards the man in the Hawaiian shirt. He had his back to the bed now, hunched over and she knew something was wrong.
Rudger stretched out, began to drip in drops towards the bald man’s mouth. It was as if she were watching a waterfall running in slow motion upwards into a sewer pipe.
She didn’t know what to do.
‘Help him, Mum,’ Amanda said pleadingly behind her. ‘Help him.’
Fridge woke up.
It was lunchtime in the library. There were real people milling about all over the place, but it wasn’t their noise that had woken him. That hadn’t been it. It hadn’t been the beeping of the machine that checked the books out or the rattle of the automatic doors either. He was used to all that. It was something else.
He looked up at the notice board.
He’d been looking at it for years. Sometimes he’d gone off and had adventures, but recently he’d just stared. He was tired. He was old. He was frayed round the edges and Fading bit by bit.
One last job, he’d told himself. One last job and that would be it.
He looked up.
And he saw a picture that shouldn’t have been there. A picture that couldn’t have been there. In all his time he’d never seen a face like that up there. Never. But the photos that appeared had always been of kids who needed a Friend, for one reason or another, and this photo was, really, no different. It was what he’d been waiting for. He’d known if he waited long enough it would come.
Fridge snatched the picture in his mouth and ran for the Corridor, lined with its forget-me-not wallpaper, in great loping lolloping wheezy strides.
Amanda half-sat up, half-lay on the bed. She was getting her breath back from the throttling snake, and, although she could breathe freely again for the moment, her hands and legs were still trapped.
But Amanda didn’t care about the snakes. She was watching Rudger and Mr Bunting. She hadn’t seen it before, hadn’t seen the open mouth, the slurping up of an imaginary. In the car park she’d interrupted him, coming at him from behind. This was what she’d stopped then.
There was no way she could stop it now.
The fight with the serpents had drained her of so much strength. She was exhausted and on the edge of passing out. She couldn’t imagine how to save Rudger this time.
‘Help him, Mum,’ she gasped, tears stinging her angry eyes. ‘Help him.’
Rudger was stretching further and further. Beside him the girl watched, a step back, out of the way, a thin, pale, sad half-smile on her face.
And then, just as she thought he was gone, just as Mr Bunting had leant back and begun sucking harder than ever, just as Rudger began to elongate beyond endurance, to stretch out to infinity, with little blobs of him breaking off and falling up the fiend’s throat, something happened.
Her mum stood up, walked over to Mr Bunting and said, ‘Stop it. Leave him alone. I want you to leave the boy alone. He’s with us. He’s our Friend. You can’t have him.’
Amanda was so proud of her. She loved her.
Mr Bunting was less impressed. Without turning around he flung his arm out and pushed her mum away.
She stumbled, slipped, fell back on to the bed and as she did so, as she swore and grabbed hold of the metal bedstead to stop herself from falling further, from out of the wardrobe burst the most unlikely thing.
A big black and white dog came running from nowhere, its tail wagging and its tongue lolling from the side of its mouth.
‘Lizzie?’ it barked. ‘Lizzie?’
And, without looking where it was going, it banged into the back of Mr Bunting’s girl, and sent her flying.
She in turn banged into Rudger, knocking him out of the way of Mr Bunting’s voracious mouth.
Rudger snapped, like a stretched elastic band let go, back into the shape of a boy. He rolled across the floor and shuddered with relief.
(‘Lizzie, is that you?’ barked the dog.)
The girl, on the other hand, staggered into the exact space where Rudger had been. Mr Bunting, in the middle of feasting, didn’t seem to notice the interruption. He kept on sucking.
(‘Lizzie. My Lizzie,’ the dog said, running to Amanda’s mother.)
Amanda watched in horror. The girl stretched out, stretched thin, and screamed with a high wailing screeching hiss like the kettle at Granny Downbeat’s house, but from far away, from some far great distance.
(‘Oh, Lizzie, there you are!’ snuffled the dog at the foot of the bed, burying his head in Amanda’s mum’s arms.)
And in a moment the girl was gone. Vanished.
Mr Bunting had his eyes shut. This was his favourite moment of all. He savoured the feeding, the flavour, the taste of the imaginaries as he swallowed. They wriggled as they went down. Their fear and panic added spice. It made him feel whole, complete, satisfied.
He relished the moment. It was exquisite, like a liquid jewel sliding down his throat.
And then it was over.
He’d swallowed the boy in one last quick slurp, but…
…but something wasn’t right.
The boy tasted rank, tasted rotten. Like old meat left out on the countertop too long. Like bread six months in the bread bin. Like dust.
But he’d looked so tasty, had smelt so good…
Rudger had been knocked to the floor as something banged into him from behind, and he’d rolled away, free from Mr Bunting’s hunger.
He looked back from where he landed and with a gasp of shock and surprise saw the girl vanish up into Mr Bunting’s gullet, swirling round like dirty dishwater down a plughole and then, with a sickly pop, she was gone.
Somewhere Rudger smelt damp dog.
Mr Bunting clutched at his throat. His mouth snapped shut, his moustache settled back in place. He coughed as if he had a fishbone caught. His eyes bulged. He coughed again. Banged on his ribcage.
Rudger watched, fear, worry and hope beating inside his heart, unevenly.
‘Uh,’ Mr Bunting said, a hand on his chest. ‘Uh, uh, uh,’ as if it were a sentence that meant something. And then he began to shrivel.
Mr Bunting, a big man with a shining bald head and bright clothes, began to shrink. His skin grew saggy and baggy and wrink
led with lines, blemished with spots. His moustache thinned and grew grey, then white. He got shorter, his nails cracked, his knees buckled, he bent over. He wheezed, he coughed. His eyes dimmed, grew misty. His skin grew grey and blotchy. Cobwebs spread across the dark glasses perched on his now pockmarked forehead. Even his gaily patterned Hawaiian shirt dimmed, dulled, grew patchy and threadbare.
Rudger remembered the stories he’d heard at the campfire and made his own guess as to what had happened. All the years Mr Bunting had stolen, the extra year of life he’d been granted each time he ate an imaginary, now that he had eaten his own imaginary, well, it was all catching up with him, centuries of it. He was becoming old, becoming his true age.
Mr Bunting opened his eyes. He looked around the hospital room. It was dimmer than he remembered. It was growing dark.
He knew what he’d eaten. Knew who he’d eaten.
He coughed, hacked, chokingly.
‘Where are you, boy?’ he gasped, looking round for Rudger. If he could just eat one more time, he thought, he’d feel better. ‘Where are you?’ But he couldn’t see the wretched boy anywhere.
There was just the girl in her bed and her mother kneeling on the floor in front of it.
The boy (Roger, was it?) had vanished.
Rudger shuddered as Mr Bunting looked straight at him.
‘Uh, uh, uh, uh,’ the old man said, before looking away.
He didn’t see Rudger. Couldn’t see him any more.
Rudger breathed a sigh of relief.
The hunger was awful. It felt like his insides were hollow, like he was nothing but a great empty hole.
Swallowing her had destroyed him. They’d been together so long, she was a part of him and he was a part of her. Would he live without her? Could he live without her? He didn’t know.
He couldn't recall the exact terms of the bargain he’d made. It had all been so long ago.
All he knew was the hunger.
Just as the imaginaries needed to be believed in to go on, so he needed to eat that belief to keep himself going. He had lived so far beyond the ordinary lifetime that it was the only thing that sustained him any more. Oh, he liked the taste of a nice cup of tea, Earl Grey if you’d be so kind, but it passed straight through him. It was only the slick slippery slither of fresh imaginary that filled him up.
But eating her had been like eating his own hand. Once you start you find you’re chewing on your wrist, and then your arm, and then your shoulder, and soon enough you’ve eaten yourself, and then in a final gulp you’ve vanished down your own throat. That was what it felt like.
The hunger was aching in him, burning. That and the loneliness. Everything he cared for, everyone he cared for, everything he’d known was all long gone. And she had been the very last of it.
But he couldn’t even remember her name.
That struck him as odd.
And then he couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember.
The snakes had gone. When Mr Bunting had shrivelled and his girl had vanished, the snakes had just turned to smoke. The room smelt strange, gunpowdery and acrid, but at least, at last, it was over.
‘Excuse me,’ Amanda’s mum said, poking her head out of the door. ‘Is there a nurse about?’
She’d taken charge in the way the best adults do.
Fridge was sitting at the foot of the bed watching her with huge damp eyes. She’d helped Rudger to his feet, sat him in the chair beside the bed. As far as she could tell he wasn’t badly hurt by all the fighting and all the other stuff that had been going on.
That had been odd, holding the arm of this boy she’d heard so much about, had shared a house with, but had never met before. She hadn’t blinked though (there would be a time for wondering about all this later on). She had just helped him up and edged him towards the bed.
She had sat him down with Amanda and had looked at the shrivelled Mr Bunting. Something needed to be done about him. He was muttering, half-deaf, half-blind. A poor old man who was powerless, forgetful and, it seemed, at last, quite harmless.
When the nurse came Mrs Shuffleup just pointed at him.
‘I think he’s lost,’ she explained. ‘He doesn’t seem to know where he is.’
‘Oh dear, love,’ the nurse said. She turned to Mr Bunting. ‘What’s your name, love?’ She almost shouted the words, but kindly.
‘Uh?’ said Mr Bunting.
‘Oh, come on then. Come with me, we’ll see if we can’t find out where you’re meant to be. Get you back to bed, find you a cup of tea, eh? My name’s Joan, love. You lean on me arm. Come on.’
‘Joan,’ said Mr Bunting in a gasp, his eyes brightening. ‘Yes, that’s…uh…that’s it.’
‘That’s what, love?’ asked the nurse.
Mr Bunting looked at her blankly. Dimness had sunk across his face again.
‘Uh?’
‘Oh dear,’ said the nurse. ‘You forgotten? Come on, love. It’ll all be okay. Someone’s probably looking for you, aren’t they?’
The nurse led Mr Bunting out of the room. He took small shuffling steps and held onto her arm.
When they were half out the door she turned to Amanda’s mum and said, ‘I’m sorry about this, love. Poor old chap. It’s easy to get confused sometimes, you take a wrong turn and all these corridors look the same. I hope he wasn’t a bother. You two okay, really?’
Mrs Shuffleup looked around the room, smiled and said, ‘Yeah, I think we’re all fine. Thank you for your help.’
A week later Amanda was fit enough to go home.
She sat in the back of the car with Rudger.
‘Oh, Lizzie,’ Fridge said, half his words getting carried away on the wind, ‘when did you learn to drive?’
‘Get your head in the car, Fridge,’ Amanda’s mum said, laughing.
‘How come he gets to sit in the front seat?’ asked Amanda, with only the slightest annoyance in her voice. ‘I’m the one with the broken arm. Shouldn’t I get the special treatment?’
‘Darling,’ her mum said over her shoulder. ‘Fridge hasn’t been in a car before. He was a big coward when I was a little girl. He spent most of his time under the bed. He didn’t like the noise of the engine.’
‘It’s not that,’ Fridge said. ‘I just used to get carsick.’
‘Uh oh,’ said Rudger.
‘I’m all right now,’ the dog barked. ‘Now that Lizzie’s all grown up.’
‘Do you remember,’ Mrs Shuffleup asked, ‘when we went on holiday? We went to Lyme Regis. We went fossilling and you found that bone the chef in the hotel had “lost” from the kitchen? You told me it was a dinosaur bone. It was only three days later, when Mum wondered what the smell was and looked under the bed, that I found out what it really was—’
‘Hang on,’ Amanda said, interrupting with a finger in the air. (She’d been thinking.) ‘If Fridge wouldn’t go in the car, how did he go on holiday with you?’
‘I just met them there,’ Fridge replied. ‘It was easier that way.’
‘I met a dinosaur,’ Rudger said nonchalantly. ‘It was a Tyrannosaurus rex called Snowflake.’
‘Ooh,’ barked Fridge. ‘Me too. Me too.’
Grownups aren’t meant to see everything, not always, not forever, and a few weeks later Amanda’s mum missed Rudger at the breakfast table.
‘Is Rudger coming down, Amanda?’
‘He’s sat right there, Mum,’ Amanda said.
‘Oh.’ She felt embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Rudger,’ she said to a patch of empty air exactly where Rudger wasn’t sitting.
Fridge, who was half-asleep by the back door, looked up and said, ‘Lizzie, don’t worry yourself. He’s Amanda’s Friend. You’re not really meant to see him at all. Look, I’m still here.’ He wagged his tail.
‘But even you look a bit thin, Fridge,’ she said.
‘I’m just tired,’ the dog replied.
School had begun again. Amanda had missed the first week and a bit, but the day came when eve
n she thought she was well enough to return.
Amanda and her mum bumped into Julia Radiche and her mother at the school gates.
The two girls smiled politely and walked into school together.
‘Does Amanda still have that imaginary friend, Mrs Shuffleup?’ Julia’s mum asked.
‘What, Rudger?’
‘Yes that’s right.’
‘How did you know about Rudger?’ Mrs Shuffleup asked. She wasn’t going to let on that he’d told them all about his adventures in the Radiche household.
‘My Julia mentioned him.’ Mrs Radiche lowered her voice and looked around to make sure she wasn’t overheard before going on. ‘She had a funny turn during the holidays. Thought she had an imaginary friend too.’
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ Amanda’s mum said, ruffling Fridge’s head. ‘I think they’re—’
‘It was just awful, Mrs Shuffleup,’ Julia’s mum said, ignoring her. ‘I was dreadfully worried. She was acting so oddly. It’s not natural. I took her to see Dr Peterson at the hospital. He’s a specialist, a child psychologist.’ She half-whispered, half-mouthed the last two words, as if embarrassed by them. ‘He came highly recommended.’
‘You took Julia to a child psychologist?’ Amanda’s mum asked loudly.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Radiche said, looking around guiltily. ‘And it was brilliant. The moment we got there, she was cured. Not a single hallucination from that day to this. Cured.’
‘How dreadful.’
‘I can give you his phone number if you like?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Amanda’s mum said. ‘I think Amanda’s doing fine.’
‘Hmm,’ said Julia’s mum.
‘Did she ask after me?’ Rudger asked that evening.
‘No, not a word,’ Amanda said.
It was dark in the bedroom. Amanda was in bed, Rudger was in his wardrobe. Everything was back the way it had been before.
‘Did you ask her?’
‘About Veronica?’
‘Yeah.’
The Imaginary Page 12