The Imaginary (10 page)

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 everyone.'