Page 20 of The Imaginary Friend's Obsession

“You don’t have to.” I’m grateful for Ezra’s voice here with me, calming me down. “It’s your house. Your choice. Only you can open the doors, and you don’t have to go inside if you don’t want to.”

I take a deep breath, and another. The rattling slows before stopping entirely. The hallway is quiet; the doors are locked, and I hold the key.

“Ignore the attic,” Ezra says. “Whatever is inside will wait for you to be ready. Look at one of the other doors, the closer ones. They hold good memories, ones you want to remember.”

I turn to the door on my right. Light spills out from underneath, and I can hear the sound of distant laughter. I recognize it as my own, pitched higher with youth.

“Are you ready to open the door and see?” Ezra asks.

I nod and step forward, sliding the key into the lock. The door creaks open slowly and reveals my childhood bedroom. Identical to now, except without the dust and the cobwebs.

A young version of me sits at my vanity table, carefully arranging my long blonde hair into a ponytail. An invisible hand grabs the end and lifts it, tugging playfully; the younger version of me laughs in delight.

Smiling to myself, I shut it and move to the next door. This version of me is younger still, sprawled across the floor and drawing on a piece of paper with crayons. A pair of eyes watch from underneath the bed while I hum and kick my feet. I step closer, taking a look at the drawing: a small blonde girl, holding hands with a dark figure wearing a mask, slightly larger than she is. The same drawing I showed to Ezra the other day.

“Dorian was always there,” I murmur. “He was my best friend. How could I forget…?” Tears prick my eyes, frustration and guilt welling up within me at the thought that I forgot all of this.

The child version of me picks up a black crayon and draws circles around the two figures in the drawing.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says in a singsong voice.

I look back at the doorway, expecting to see someone walking in—one of my parents, maybe? But there’s no one, and when I turn back to her, she’s looking straight at me with an odd smile on her face. She keeps drawing circles while her eyes remain on me. Each movement of the crayon is faster and harder, till I fear it will snap in her tiny hand.

The girl in the drawing is starting to cry, black tears slipping down her cheeks. The masked figure next to her is growing taller and taller. Darkness is all around them.

“Are you talking to me?” I ask. It can’t be possible, can it? But…

“Youreallyshouldn’t be here,” she says. Her eyes stay locked on me, her smile is rigor mortis rigid, and a single tear rolls down her cheek.

The lights flicker. When they come back, the drawing is gone; instead, the young version of me holds up a dead magpie.

Somewhere down the hallway, I hear music. Something is pounding on the other side of the attic hatch again.

“Ezra,” I say, my voice trembling. “Something’s wrong. I want to stop.”

“Okay,” he says, his voice quiet and muffled, as though through water. “All you have to do is walk back down the hallway—”

The lights go out, leaving me in darkness. My frantic breathing echoes in my ears. A floorboard creaks behind me.

“Ezra, get me outnow!”

“You’re awake,” he says, suddenly clear, as if he’s speaking directly into my ear. “Open your eyes, Daisy.”

I sit up with a gasp. I’m back in the room at the MRF, in a chair at a metal table, a metronome ticking in front of me. Ezra is standing behind me, his hands braced on my shaking shoulders.

“You’re all right,” he says, and I realize I’m crying. “Daisy, hey. You’re here. It was just a memory.”

I remember my blank-eyed little-girl stare, the way shespoketo me. It didn’t seem like a memory. Something felt terribly, terribly wrong. But he’s right… Eerie or not, it’s not like anything in my own mind could hurt me.

“You went so deep so fast,” Ezra continues, sounding almost as shaken as I feel. “It caught me by surprise. It must’ve been…” He glances toward the camera, turns his back to it, and gestures between us. “One of our abilities, or some combination, I think.”

I nod shakily. “Did you see any of what happened?”

“I only heard what you said.” He lowers his voice. “But I felt what you felt.”

I try to quell my fear. The last thing I need is to give him doubts about our plan. This is the only way for me to get close to Dorian and the truth. I wipe my eyes and force my breathing to steady. The shakes gradually ease.

“I’m sorry,” I say, once I have regained some level of composure. “I don’t know what came over me. It’s just…theguiltof it all, the way I left Dorian behind all of these years…”

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