The Imaginary Friend’s Obsession (Monster Research Facility #3)

Chapter Five

M y heart beats a wild rhythm as I step into the observation room. My eyes dart around to take in details—the plain metal desk and single chair, the control system with its intercom and various buttons—before stopping on the window into the next room. Ezra hangs back as I approach it, my trembling hands clasped into fists at my sides.

On the other side of the window sits an empty room. Dorian’s cell. It’s a tiny, plain box with white walls and tile. There are no windows other than this one, and only a single door. The only furniture is a cot in one corner and a metal table and chair, all welded to the floor. A coloring book and some crayons are scattered across the table. On the floor, a teddy bear’s head sits facing the viewing window; the rest of its body is nowhere to be found.

Ezra clears his throat from behind me.

“Like I said, I was operating under the assumption he was a poltergeist at first. Thus the toys. I wanted to see if he’d play like a child’s ghost would.”

I stare at the decapitated teddy bear. Its beady black eyes stare back. “I’m guessing he wasn’t pleased.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

I laugh despite my nerves, but it turns into a sob halfway up my throat. I press the back of my hand to my mouth and shut my eyes. Seeing that tiny room makes the gravity of this situation weigh on my shoulders. If it’s true, if he is real , like Ezra is telling me, it means Dorian has been trapped here for years. Years without a glimpse of the sun, without anything but children’s toys to amuse himself with.

I left Ash Valley and never looked back. And all of this time, he’s been trapped here.

“Can he see through the glass?” I ask, my throat tight.

“Right now it’s transparent, yes.”

I take a shuddery breath and nod. “Can he hear me?”

Ezra steps up to the control panel.

“Once I hit the intercom button, he’ll be able to,” Ezra says. “Are you ready?”

I nod. Ezra flashes an okay sign.

Now that the time has come, I’m not sure what to say. I lean closer to the window, struggling to form words. “Dorian?” I ask, my voice cracking. “It’s me, Daisy. I know it’s been a very long time, but I… I’m here.”

I search the room on the other side of the window, but there’s nothing. I swallow a lump in my throat and fight back the tears pricking my eyes.

“Please, talk to me,” I say, desperation leaking into my tone. “Show yourself. Give me a sign. Anything…”

Show me that you’re real.

As I stand there, hand pressed against the glass, I wonder if it’s already too late. I don’t realize I’m trembling until Ezra touches my shoulder. I suck in a breath, wipe my eyes, and turn to him. “Is he gone?”

Ezra holds up a small device. It looks almost like a radiation detector, but with glowing lights that are currently shifting between green and yellow and back again.

“This is an EMF reader,” Ezra says. “It monitors electromagnetic fields. Most hauntings give off energy fluctuations. It’s reacting now, so he’s responding to your presence, but…”

As I lean in to look, the EMF reader spikes to orange. I step back, and it recedes.

Ezra is focused on the viewing window. “I’m not seeing any activity, but he’s definitely reacting.” He taps a display on the desk. “Temperature is dropping, too, which is another classic sign of a spirit’s presence. He’s there. He heard you.”

I bite my lip, fighting frustration. “I don’t understand why he won’t appear to me, then.”

Ezra looks up at me. “Are you saying you used to be able to see him?”

I glance away, face heating. I was determined not to say too much, especially not anything that would make me seem different or weird, but it seems I’ve already blown it. “Um…”

“He might be too weak to manifest right now,” Ezra says, instead of pressing further.

Or he hates me. Or he was never real in the first place—

I gulp back the threat of further tears and force myself to nod. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yes, actually, there might be.” Ezra stares into the cell, arms folded across his chest. “Spirits often lose themselves—and eventually fade entirely—when they’re forgotten. But it strengthens them to be acknowledged. To hear their names and things about their life. If you spend time with Dorian, talk to him, share what you remember, maybe there’s a way for you to remind him who he is.”

The thought of diving into our shared past, our secrets, that night , makes me sick to my stomach. I stare down at my shoes, unable to form a response. My heart says yes , but the rest of me is so, so afraid.

Ezra says quietly, “I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do, Daisy. If you want to go, you’re free to go. I’ll erase your name from our files, and no one from the MRF will ever bother you again. I swear it.” I look up at him, startled. His expression is open and earnest, begging me to trust him, but I don’t know if I can.

Especially not if he intends to dredge up the past that I’ve tried so hard to forget. It will be an immense risk, uncovering all that I’ve hidden. For a terrifying moment, I imagine myself trapped in a cell just like the one on the other side of the glass. Padded walls and a straitjacket. Electrodes strapped to my head and needles in my veins. I shiver. I lived through my stint in the mental hospital, but there are worse—and more permanent—fates.

And yet if Ezra is correct, this is my only chance to make things right.

“Maybe it’s time for him to pass on,” Ezra continues. “I wanted to give you a chance to say goodbye, but if you think that’s what’s best—”

“ No ,” I burst out. The reaction is immediate, visceral—every fiber of my being screams against the notion. I slowly lift my eyes to meet Ezra’s. “I want to try to talk to him. Where do we start?”

He studies me and dips his chin in a nod. “With the beginning, I suppose.”

* * *

Ezra finds another chair, and soon he and I sit facing each other in the observation room, a few feet away from the viewing panel that shows Dorian’s cell. The intercom is still lit, so if he’s there, he can hear everything.

The setup is strange, almost formal, like a job interview. Or an interrogation. My palms sweat where I’ve jammed them in my lap, and my leg jumps, tapping an anxious beat against the tile.

“There’s no need to be nervous,” Ezra says. “We’re just having a conversation. Maybe Dorian will react, or maybe he won’t. Either way, we’ll learn something. Yes?”

“I understand.” But that doesn’t stop my heart from thumping.

Ezra sets a tape recorder on the table next to us. “Is it all right for me to record this conversation? It’s for my personal notes only.”

“Okay.”

He hits the button.

“This is Ezra Bradford of the MRF, session one with Subject X-15 and visitor Daisy Dumont,” he says. “Today’s goal is to establish the basic history of X-15 and Dumont and see if the subject has any reaction to her presence and the memories she chooses to share.”

I glance at the recorder, the viewing panel, and then down at my clasped hands.

“How did you first become acquainted with X-15?” Ezra asks.

“It started with the scratching,” I say, barely a whisper. He leans forward, trying to hear better, and I raise my voice. “A scratching sound under my bed every night.”

“How old were you?” Ezra asks.

“Um…maybe eight,” I say. He nods for me to go on, and I clear my throat. “The scratching kept happening. Every night, like clockwork, at midnight.”

“Repetitive behavior,” Ezra mutters. “Probably—” He glances at me, catches himself. “Sorry. Continue. Were you scared of the sound?”

“At first, I hid under my covers. But when it kept happening, I thought maybe it was an animal. A mouse. Something I could keep as a pet. I tried to lure it out with cheese. When that didn’t work, one night I climbed to the edge of the bed and looked underneath.”

Even after years of trying to suppress it, I can remember that moment with striking clarity. The hummingbird thrum of my heartbeat, the way my hair fell around my head as I lowered it, upside-down, to look.

“It was hard to see…” The lights were off, and I had only the dim glow of moonlight coming through the window. “But there was…something. A silhouette hunched under the bed. Not an animal.” As I talk, it comes more into focus in my mind. I’m shocked at how clearly I remember it. My psychiatrist probably would’ve said it was because I’ve told myself the story so many times, I started to believe it. I falter at the thought, but Ezra gives me an encouraging nod that spurs me onward.

“I saw something humanoid. Just a little bigger than me. Hunched on his hands and knees, with a crooked head staring back at me.” My lips lift in a wry smile. “ Then I was scared. I recoiled back into bed and screamed so loud that my parents came running. But of course, when they turned on the lights and went to look, the figure was gone. Instead, they found letters carved into the wood under my bed: D-A-I-S-Y.”

“Interesting.” Ezra leans back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. “He was your size. So he was a child. And with a physical manifestation… Anyway, continue. Did you try to tell your parents what you had seen?”

“Yes, but they didn’t believe me.” I fiddle with my hands, tracing the crooks in my pinky and ring fingers. “My parents tore the room apart trying to find whatever sharp object I had used to carve my name, but they found nothing.” I shrug. “They took away my books to punish me. They thought reading too close to bed was giving me an overactive imagination.” Or so they said. Really, I think, it was the cruelest thing they could think of. “But the scratching continued. I would just lie awake in the darkness, petrified, listening to that sound every night and imagining the figure I had seen. It frightened me so badly that it knew my name. It meant that it was there more often than I thought, listening…”

“Did he try to come out again? To interact with you at all?”

I shake my head. “He stayed under the bed. I think he realized that I was scared. Or maybe he was scared too. I don’t know.” I shrug. “We went on like that for about a week. Then one day I was lying in bed, listening to that scratching again, thinking about how he was stuck under there every night all alone. And I thought—” I swallow. “I thought he must be lonely.”

Loneliness was something I knew all too well, even as a child. I knew it so deeply and so horribly that I could not help but empathize, even with a monster.

So that night I crept out from beneath the covers. I put my socked feet on the floorboards, one at a time. Goose bumps rippled all over my skin as I anticipated a sudden grab, a flash of claws. But it didn’t come. Even the scratching had gone silent.

“I crept over to my closet, knelt down, and rummaged around until I found what I was looking for,” I murmur. “A toy. A rubber ball. I sat cross-legged on the floor with my back against the wall, far enough away that I couldn’t quite see the corner under the bed. Still, it was like I could feel something there, watching me.”

Ezra is silent now, watching me with the same intense attention I remember from that moment.

“Very carefully, I rolled the ball under the bed,” I say. “And then it rolled back, just as gently, and bumped against my foot. And I smiled. I said—” I pause, biting my lip. “I said, ‘Hello, my name is Daisy.’ Judging from the scratches, he already knew, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to be polite.” I swallow and raise my eyes to Ezra’s again. “And then a bloodied hand came out from the darkness.” Slowly, cautiously. “And he waved at me.”