The Imaginary (23 page)

‘Excuse me?' Amanda's mum said.

She had a cup of coffee in one hand, with a plastic-wrapped cake balanced on top of it. She'd used her other hand to open the door and was just shutting it with her bum when she saw Mr Bunting.

‘What are you doing in my daughter's room?' she asked. ‘Can I help you?'

She wasn't worried exactly, more curious. There was probably a perfectly simple explanation. This was a hospital, after all, and there were people in and out of rooms all the time. Except he didn't look like one of the nurses or the cleaners, they all had uniforms, and he wasn't the doctor who'd examined Amanda before.

And then she realised that she recognised him. But where had she seen him before? That bright Hawaiian shirt? Those Bermuda shorts? That bald head? Oh, she
did
know him, she thought, but couldn't think where from.

‘Ah, Mrs Shuffleup,' he began. ‘I'm just in the hospital conducting a survey.'

‘In my daughter's room?'

‘I was looking for you.'

‘
You came to the house the other day,' Mrs Shuffleup said, finally remembering him. ‘How did you know I was here?'

‘What a good memory it has,' he said.

Mrs Shuffleup recalled the odd feeling she'd had then. She was having it again now.

‘I think I'd like you to leave,' she said firmly.

‘There's nothing to worry about,' he said, in his smoothest tone of voice. ‘Don't you believe me?'

‘Mum!' croaked Amanda.

She'd been struggling with the snakes more than ever since her mum had come back, but one had slithered right across her mouth, silencing her. By biting and blowing, though, and by tickling it with her tongue, she'd managed, finally, to get it to wriggle out of the way.

‘Mum!' she croaked again. Her voice was weak, little more than a whisper. The snake across her throat was wound round tight.

‘Amanda,' her mum stuttered with shock. ‘You're awake! Oh, my darling.'

She ran over to the bedside, sat down in the chair and stroked Amanda's forehead. She didn't see the snakes.

‘You're so hot,' she said. ‘But you're awake, at last. Darling, I had hoped and hoped. Oh, I wish I'd been here for you when you—'

‘Don't believe him, Mum,' Amanda whispered, interrupting her. ‘He's got Rudger.'

‘
Rudger?'

‘He's going to eat him.'

‘Oh, that's such a
mean
thing to say, little girl,' Mr Bunting said. ‘
Eating
isn't the right word at all. I'm going to
borrow
him.
Use
him.
Annihilate
him.'

‘What are you all talking about?' Amanda's mum said, looking from one to another.

‘Oh, nothing, nothing,' Mr Bunting lied, voice light and bright, eyes sparkling.

‘No. Something's going on. I want to know what it is, or I'm going to call security.'

‘Mum, he's—' Amanda choked on her words. The snake at her neck had suddenly constricted its coils, strangling her. But, even as she struggled in panic, Amanda knew all her mum could see was her daughter gasping for air.

‘Amanda,' her mum cried, trying to get Amanda to sit up with one hand, trying to loosen her pyjamas with the other. ‘Oh, Amanda! Amanda?' She turned to Mr Bunting. ‘You. I don't care
why
you're here. Go get help. Quick. Can't you see she's choking?'

‘Now they're busy,' Mr Bunting said, ignoring Mrs Shuffleup and turning back to Rudger, ‘we can go back to
our
business, yes? Where were we?'

He began the gruesome chittering task of unhooking his jaw again.

Rudger
wasn't watching. He was looking at Amanda and her mum.
He
could see the snake throttling her, but Mrs Shuffleup couldn't.

Could Mr Bunting's imaginary snakes
really
hurt Amanda? Could they
actually
strangle her? Rudger didn't know. But he had the feeling, the sense, the certainty that if only Amanda's mum could see them, then she'd be able to fight them, to pull them off, to free Amanda.

And although she couldn't see them
now
, although she was a grownup and grownups didn't have the sort of imagination to see all this stuff, he knew that once she had. He'd met Fridge, hadn't he? He knew Amanda's mum's old imaginary friend. And that meant that once upon a time she had been part of this world.

Mr Bunting had his imaginary-eating mouth open now. Rudger could feel the world beginning to tip up again.

‘Amanda,' he shouted desperately. ‘Amanda, tell your mum about Fridge. Tell her I met him. Tell her he's waiting for her. Tell her he'd come if she asked. Tell her about the mirror.'

‘Mum,' Amanda wheezed.

‘Hush, baby,' her mum said. ‘Don't try to talk.'

‘It's Rudger,' Amanda managed. ‘He wants me to tell you…'

‘What, darling?'

‘About…about a fridge? I don't under—'

‘What about the fridge, darling?'

Amanda
paused as if she were listening to something far off. Her breaths whistled in her throat, and there were tears on her cheeks.

Her mum stroked her hand, kissed her brow.

‘A dog?' Amanda whispered, finding each word hard to say, her breaths coming so short. ‘Fridge…a dog? Rudger… Rudger met him.'

Amanda's mum looked at her, shocked.

‘What?' she stuttered.

‘He says,' Amanda could hardly get the words out, ‘he's waiting. Use the…the mirror.'

It had taken Lizzie Downbeat ages before she'd realised Fridge wasn't a real dog. Even when he had talked to her from underneath the bed at night, she just thought her parents had found her the best dog in the world. She didn't know any better. It had only dawned slowly that no one else could see Fridge, that no one else seemed to know about him, that her parents denied having bought him for her. It was only then that she had realised what he was.

Imaginary
.

Such a strange thing.

And now, here in this hospital room, where she'd spent so long hoping and wishing and, yes,
imagining
that her Amanda would wake up, here where her daughter finally
had
woken up (she wasn't imagining
that
, was she?), she thought she could smell Fridge's damp fur once again.

And, looking down at her daughter, she saw something else.
Not
just sheets, not just her girl, but there was something else there.

She couldn't make it out. No sooner had she seen the something than it had gone again.

She heard a faint voice, a faint boy's voice from far away, saying, ‘The mirror. Tell her about the mirror.'

Was it talking to her? It had sounded like mist speaking, it was so faint, so thin, but she looked around.

She saw the wardrobe where Amanda's clothes were hanging. The door was open and on the inside of the door was a full-length mirror.

She looked straight into it and saw herself reflected back. She looked tired, like she'd not slept for days. She felt it too. She'd not left Amanda's bedside for more than a few minutes this whole time. And there, next to her in the mirror, was Amanda in her bed with her wriggling green duvet.

No. That wasn't what it was. It wasn't a duvet, it was…

She looked down at the bed next to her and saw the snakes. They looked as real as anything and were coiling around and across her daughter, holding her tight, pinning her down.

‘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.'