The Imaginary (6 page)

And
the room was in darkness again.

Amanda
did something she hadn't expected to do, something quite out of character: she screamed. Without thinking she kicked out at the chair, and at the place the girl had been crawling.

It was ridiculous, she thought later on, to scream like that—to scream like a girl—when all she'd seen was a face lit up in the dark, and maybe not even that. It had flashed before her so fast, so briefly, could she even be sure she'd seen a face at all? (The answer to that, upon a moment's reflection, was ‘Yes'.)

Within seconds Goldie had run into the study, knocking over the wastepaper basket and swearing again. She had her phone held out in front of her, the screen illuminating the room with a hazy blue glow.

And there was no one there.

Goldie pulled the chair away from the desk and put a hand out to help Amanda to her feet.

They were without any doubt the only two people in the room. Amanda looked around and Goldie pointed her phone in all the corners.

‘There was a girl here,' Amanda said, breathing heavily.

‘Well, there's no one here now,' Goldie replied, putting a hand on Amanda's shoulder. ‘You probably imagined it. It's the dark, the
unexpected
dark. Power cuts are spooky like that. There, there.' She patted Amanda's head, which at any other time would have infuriated her. Right now she hardly noticed it, she was too busy thinking.

Amanda
knew she hadn't imagined it (had she?), but she didn't know what else to say. Her brain was ticking through the house, wondering where the girl might have got to, and in that moment she thought of Rudger.

Upstairs Rudger was still in the bedroom. He couldn't see in the dark any better than a real boy.

When he heard Amanda's scream he ran for the doorway. It stood as a darker rectangle in the dark grey of the room's wall. Before he reached it, a third burst of lightning flashed its stark glare through the windows and he saw her, stood there.

The girl. The one with the long straight black hair, the dark dress, the white socks and the half-hidden deep sad eyes.

He recognised her from Amanda's description. She was the imaginary friend of the man who'd come to do a survey that afternoon. There was no question, no doubt about it.

Even if Amanda hadn't told him what she was, Rudger would've known. He couldn't say how, couldn't say what gave the game away, what tipped the last clue into his hands, but he could tell she wasn't
real
. Maybe it just takes one to know one, as the old saying says.

But it was only a flash of lightning and as soon as he saw her, as soon as he knew who she was, the darkness returned and he found himself flying backwards.

She must've run at him and now her cold hands were gripping his T-shirt and she was pushing him backwards into the bedroom.

She
was stronger than she looked. Stronger even than Amanda was. (Sometimes an argument with Amanda turned into a wrestling match and Rudger always lost, partly because she was pretty strong for a girl and partly because she cheated.)

His foot caught on the edge of a rug and they tumbled backwards, the girl on top of him. Her hair fell into his face like spiders' webs and he tried to blow it away.

‘Get off,' he gasped between puffs. ‘Let go of me.'

She got off him, but she didn't let go.

She picked herself up and clambered to her feet, all in the dark, and pulled him toward the window. His T-shirt dragged half off as he, and the rug he'd fallen on, slid across the floor.

Another lightning bolt split the sky and looking up he saw her pale arms and that straight black hair. He didn't see her face (it was turned away) but he felt something dreadfully wrong about her.

It wasn't just that she'd attacked him, knocked him over, and was dragging him away. These things, of course,
were
wrong and unexpected, but on top of all that, on top of the frightening, weird turn this evening had taken, there was something else. He felt it in his heart, the way it was beating slower rather than faster, a tingle down his spine like a dull trickle of boredom. This girl was not
right
.

She heaved him onto Amanda's bed and finally let go. He could see her now, in front of the window, lit by the orange glow of a street light. She was touching the lock of the window handle with her fingertip.

She
hissed and there was a
click
and then she was turning the handle and a windy spray of rainwater whipped into the bedroom.

‘Help!' he shouted, rolling himself off the bed. ‘Amanda!'

And as he shouted a different sort of light swung across the window, circling round the bedroom wall, and he heard the revving of a car, and then silence as the engine was switched off.

Just the rain pattering outside.

The girl hissed again as they heard the clunk of a car door.

She turned to look at him. Silhouetted as she was in the window he couldn't see her eyes, but he felt them burning icily into him. His knees wobbled.

There was a buzz in the air, a flicker from somewhere behind him and Rudger heard the noise of a key turning in the front door.

Lights came on all over the house: in the hallway, in the study, in the kitchen, on the landing.

A shaft of bright light poured into Amanda's bedroom. A lopsided rectangle of light that ran from the door right across the carpet and up onto the bed.

Rudger looked round, just for a moment, as if the light were a friend he wanted to greet coming into the room, and then something lifted up off him. Not a solid thing, not a weight, but something washed out of him, a worry, a pain, a fear, and when he turned back to the window the girl was gone. There was just the night and the rain.

‘
I'm home,' called Mrs Shuffleup as she pushed open the front door. ‘Amanda? Marigold? The storm was too bad. Ruth couldn't leave her little Simon on his own, stupid dog, and Mr Stott was afraid Bishops Road was going to flood again, so the meeting's postponed, which is silly because—'

‘Mum!' Amanda said, running into the hall. ‘There was this power cut and the lights went out and there was this girl in your study and she was dead creepy and—'

‘Slow down, love,' her mum said, hanging her coat up on the hatstand by the radiator. ‘What's all this?'

Goldie came out into the hall.

‘Hi, Mrs Shuffleup. We were playing hide and seek and there was a power cut, that's all. Amanda was in the study there, and she thought she saw something in the lightning. She didn't half scare me with her screaming—'

‘I did
not
scream,' Amanda interrupted, defending her honour angrily. ‘I'm no scaredy-cat.'

‘I'm sure you didn't, love,' her mum said, sitting down on the stairs and pulling Amanda close for a cuddle.

Amanda struggled away.

‘There was this girl, right. The same one I saw this afternoon, and she—'

‘Oh, you do let your imagination run away sometimes, don't you?'

‘No,' Amanda protested. ‘I didn't
imagine
her, she was—'

‘There was no one there,' Goldie said, cutting in. ‘We looked
everywhere
and there was nowhere to hide in there…except… except under the desk.'

Amanda clenched her mouth anxiously. She had a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach.

‘And
that
was where Amanda was hiding! Ha! Found you!'

‘It doesn't count,' Amanda snapped. ‘You
didn't
find me. You didn't. Tell her, Mum.'

‘I helped you out from where you'd got tangled up with the chair. I pulled you out of your hiding place. I
definitely
found you. I win.'

‘It's not fair,' Amanda said. ‘I'm going to go find Rudger.'

Rudger was sat on the messed-up bed. He'd shut the window, but his T-shirt was still untucked and his hair looked unusually spiky. When he saw Amanda he said, ‘You'll never believe what happened. All the lights went out and there was this girl. The one you saw with that man. The
imaginary
one.'

‘Yeah, I know
that
,' Amanda said, dismissively, as if it were old news. ‘I saw her downstairs.'

‘She attacked me,' Rudger said. ‘Tried to drag me out the window—'

Amanda looked at him, but wasn't really listening. The babysitter had cheated. The unfairness of it filled her head.

‘Do you know what happened?' she said, ignoring Rudger's story. ‘That Goldie reckons she found me, even though I'd already come out of hiding. Can you believe that?'

Rudger
stood there with his mouth open for a moment before saying, ‘Did you hear what I said? The girl, the scary-looking one with the hair and the hissing, she
attacked
me. It was horrible. Her hands were all—'

‘Oh, stop exaggerating. You always make such a fuss about everything. I saw her downstairs and she wasn't
that
scary.'

‘You didn't have her touch you, I'll bet.' Rudger shivered at the memory. ‘Her hands. Ugh. They were all cold and clammy. All wrong. It was just horrible.'

‘Rudger,' Amanda said, sounding suddenly shocked, ‘you've knocked my moneybox over.'

Rudger hadn't even noticed it. Her moneybox, shaped like a red pillar box with a slot in the top, had been a birthday present from Granny and Grandad Shuffleup. It lay on the floor, broken, and coins had spilled out.

‘Sorry,' he stuttered. ‘I guess
she
must've knocked it over when she climbed onto the windowsill.'

‘Whatever,' Amanda said, waving his explanation away and brushing past him. She knelt down at the edge of the bed and began picking up the money.

Rudger stared, his heart beating oddly, hollowly in his chest.

‘I could've been dragged out the window,' he said slowly, watching her clutch her coins, ‘kidnapped by some imaginary ghost-girl, and you're…you're not even listening to me.'