The Imaginary (22 page)

Amanda heard a bang from the cupboard and pushed herself up on her elbows to look. She saw the cupboard rock back against the wall.

And then its door swung open.

The
light from the hallway outside lit the inside of the wardrobe.

She saw her coat and a pair of jeans hanging on a hanger and her rucksack on the floor. It was all her stuff. All waiting for her.

On the inside of the wardrobe door was a full-length mirror. One day, when she was better, she'd put her own clothes back on, and she'd look at herself in the mirror, and—

Oh
, she thought, as the previous thoughts all fell silent.

The door was swinging to and fro and the mirror was reflecting something
different
to what she could see in the room.

There was a girl dressed in pink struggling in the arms of some pale monster. A skeleton-shape wrapped in a thin shifting cover of moonlit flesh and skin. Long black hair ragged and split and cobwebbed.

The sight jogged something inside her, a memory, a memory, a memory…of being in her mum's study. She remembered hiding under the desk, remembered Goldie, the babysitter, looking for her.

What was
that
all about?

And who was the girl struggling with the ghoul?

And why did Amanda want to think the word ‘boy' instead of ‘girl'?

And then it came back to her.

All of it.

Rudger felt a shudder go through him, a weird warming shiver, and then something happened.

He was free.

Although the girl had loosened her grip on his arm when they'd fallen, she'd twisted his long red hair tighter in her other hand. But now that long hair was gone. She had been left clutching mist as Veronica had vanished and he'd become the real imaginary Rudger.

Forgotten energy surged in his limbs, his heart beat free, and he seized the moment. He pushed away from her, ducked past Mr Bunting and ran for Amanda's bed.

Free of the girl, he felt hope surge back into him. They had a chance.

‘Quick,' Amanda said, holding out her good hand and pulling him up onto the mattress.

‘
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,' Mr Bunting said, turning round slowly to face them and shaking his head. ‘I had hoped to not have to…upset…young Miss Shuffleup. Forgetting is quite natural, my dear, and hurts so much less. When I take him now—'

‘You're not going to take Rudger,' Amanda said, interrupting him.

‘He eats imaginaries,' Rudger whispered. ‘I've seen him do it.'

‘We've got to get out of here,' Amanda whispered back.

‘How?'

They looked around. It did seem, at first sight, an impossible task. Not only was Amanda still weak and injured (though feeling brighter, more awake now she had Rudger by her side), but the only way out was through the door behind Mr Bunting and he wasn't going to let them go. It looked an impossible task at second sight too.

There was a high hissing noise and the dark-haired girl leapt at them. She didn't look like the monster Amanda had seen in the mirror, just the sad pale girl she'd seen once on the doorstep, but even that was frightening enough.

Rudger shrank back, remembering the touch of her hands, but before she landed on the bed something happened.

There was a shimmer in the air.

Instead of landing on top of them, the girl crashed onto the glass dome that had appeared from nowhere and now covered the bed.

Rudger
looked around. At his side was a control panel, a bank of brass buttons and gauges and handles. He recognised it. He remembered it. Of course he did. It was the submarine they explored the oceans in.

But that had been imaginary. It hadn't been real.

He looked at Amanda.

‘First thing that came to mind,' she said. ‘If it keeps the water out, it might keep
them
out.'

‘But it's not real,' Rudger said.

‘And I don't reckon they are neither,' said Amanda.

The girl above them was scratching at the thick, impervious glass, her face white with anger, her eyes motionless dark pits. Her hair floated around her, like a black dandelion, wafted back and forth by underwater currents.

‘She'll never get in,' Amanda said. ‘I built this thing to last.'

The girl stopped scratching at the dome. She sat up, sat still and looked away. She looked at Mr Bunting.

He was clapping. He had on a diving suit, one of those old-fashioned ones with the big brass helmet and the little round glass windows. Fish swam past him.

‘Very clever it is,' he said. His voice crackled as it played through their cabin's speakers. ‘A girl with bright sparks. A girl with big dreams.'

Amanda pressed the intercom button and said, ‘Not with
dreams
. With a two-person submersible capable of staying submerged for
up
to eight hours at depths of greater than three miles. You'll just have to wait.' She took her finger off the button and whispered to Rudger, ‘By then Mum
must've
come back and she'll get a security guard or something. Chuck him out.'

‘You forget one thing, little girl,' Mr Bunting said.

‘Yeah?'

‘I'm so much
older
than you. So much cleverer, bigger, wiser. I have seen so many more things. I have dreamt of so much. I have imagined worlds that you couldn't even think names up for. I have travelled and eaten in every—'

The girl, perched on top of the submarine's dome, banged on the glass and hissed bubbles at him.

‘Yes, yes,' Mr Bunting said, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Too long and perambulatory a speech, I know, I know. But, at least, please, let me just say this. You, girl…' He raised a hand and slowly pointed at Amanda. ‘…are in my way.'

His moustache ruffled inside the brass helmet and in the blink of an eye both the ocean and the submarine, controls, glass dome and all, vanished. In their place Amanda and Rudger found themselves lying, suddenly and unexpectedly, in a bed of writhing, wriggling, coiling snakes. But before they could scream about that, the girl fell on top of them.

As she fell she turned like a cat, twisting in the air so she landed with her hands already gripping Rudger's wrists and her knees pinning his legs to the bed. She was dripping wet.

Before
Amanda could move warm ropes of snake curled round and across her arms and legs and waist and neck. She was caught.

‘You're not the only one with an imagination, little girl.' Mr Bunting chuckled sourly. ‘Now, I'm hungry. I've been hungry for hours and I need to…
borrow
your friend, if you don't mind. Bring him here.'

The girl dragged Rudger off the snake-bed, pulled him back into the middle of the room, wrenched him into an upright position.

There was nothing he could do. He felt so tired, and the cold grip of her fingers dripped despair into his brain. He could hardly be bothered to struggle at all.

Amanda was no better off. She was trapped in her bed by snakes and, although she wasn't especially scared of snakes, the experience was not thrilling her. She tried imagining herself free. She tried imagining Rudger free. She tried imagining anything, but it was too hard. The snakes filled too much of her mind up, the way they squeezed, the way they writhed around her. It ruined her concentration.

All she could do was watch.

‘At last,' Mr Bunting said. ‘You got away too often, you did. It was fun, yes. A challenge. Better than most. But in the end, boy, it changes nothing.'

Mr Bunting stopped talking and unhinged his jaw. That tooth-tiled, unnatural,
supernatural
tunnel-throat unfolded into his head
and
beyond, back to wherever its dark-eyed ending was. The scent of rotting spice, of hot dust and sand, hit Rudger in the face and he
tried
to get a hand free,
tried
to get loose,
tried
to make one last weak attempt to get away.

But his world tipped up and Mr Bunting's throat was suddenly beneath him, a tiled pit, a white well with that far speck of absolute darkness at the bottom of it.

He
felt himself falling, he was beginning to go, and then, unexpectedly, a voice he knew interrupted it all and the lights crackled and came back on and Mr Bunting's mouth snapped shut with a clanging, clattering
boom
.