The Imaginary (24 page)

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 wrinkled 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.