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

Chapter Seven

“ I wasn’t able to get my hands on a good record player on such short notice, but I found this in storage.” Ezra holds up an antique radio, polished wood with a brass dial to change the station.

I smile. “I think he’ll like it.” God, I hope I’m right. I want so badly to see him. This will be our third session at the MRF, and I hope today is the day Dorian will reveal himself.

“I’m going to go put it in his room. You can watch through the window if you’d like.”

As badly as I want to accompany him into the cell, I know he’ll never say yes until I tell him about that night . So I bite my tongue and stand beside the viewing window in the observation room as Ezra goes to give the radio to Dorian.

When the door in the cell opens, I strain to see through to get a better idea of how Dorian is being trapped. Iron and salt , Ezra mentioned, but I’m not sure where it is or how it works. All I can see is that Ezra is in a small chamber with another, closed door behind him. Two doors, one of them shut at all times, like an airlock or a quarantine chamber. I watch as Ezra walks inside and sets the radio on the metal table. Nothing in the cell moves, other than Ezra. He walks out, shuts the door behind him, and soon reappears in the observation room with me.

I’m about to speak, but I pause as music starts within the cell. Ezra and I both look through the window at the now lit-up radio. It takes only a couple seconds for me to recognize the same soothing melody I listened to last night: “Daisy Bell.”

Delight zips up my spine. He’s here . I quickly reach over to hit the intercom. “Dorian?” I whisper, peering into the room. I stay quiet, listening and waiting to see if Dorian will appear, but he doesn’t. My shoulders sag, and I turn back to Ezra.

“We used to listen to that song all the time on the record player up in the attic,” I say. “I went up there last night. I found this.” I dig into my pocket and pull out the crumpled paper. It’s one of my childhood drawings of us. Me: small, blonde, excited. Him: taller, dark-haired, face hidden behind a white, grinning mask.

Ezra smiles as I show him, but his brow furrows as he takes a closer look. “The mask…?”

“I gave it to him,” I say. “Like I mentioned, he never wanted to show his face. He said it would scare me. When I was drawing this picture, I realized I didn’t even know what he looked like. So I drew him with a mask. And then all of a sudden he peeked out from beneath the bed, and he was wearing it.”

I smile as I remember him crawling out from under the bed, that smiling white mask emerging from the darkness.

“His appearance changed?” Ezra murmurs. “Unusual… But, all right, continue. That’s the first time he came out?”

“Yes. I was so excited.” That was the first time we sat face-to-face—or face-to-mask, rather—cross-legged on my bedroom floor. I took his hands in mine. “Then I asked him if he wanted gloves, too, because his hands looked like they hurt. They were all…torn up. I asked him what happened to him, to make his hands like that, and then…”

The radio goes staticky within Dorian’s cell, the song glitching. Da-Da-Daisy…

My brow furrows as the rest of the story evades me. It’s like I’ve hit a wall. There’s more to the memory, I know it, but as I reach for it, it slips through my fingers like it never existed at all. “And then… I…” Why can’t I remember? I force myself to focus: to remember looking down at Dorian’s small hands with his torn fingernails and bloodied fingertips. I can picture him leaning in, whispering as he told me… told me…?

Something important. I can feel it. It’s there in my head, I just can’t quite…

Disjointed moments flash through my brain. The lights flickering. Eyes in the darkness. Someone screaming. The attic hatch rattling—

I gasp, pressing my palms to my eyes as pain flares in my skull. The song on the radio turns to pure static, but buried within it, I hear a deep, echoing voice whispering my name.

“Daisy?” Ezra’s voice seems far away, as if through water. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I…” I lower my hands, and a drop of red splatters on the table. I raise my hand to my nose and it comes away wet with blood.

Dorian’s bloody hands, his eyes sad behind his mask.

“ What happened to you?”

I’m right on the verge of remembering more, but my skull is pounding, my heart thumping in terror of… something.

Sudden movement out of the corner of my eye jerks me out of my reverie. I lift my head, and my heart skips a beat.

Dorian .

He’s here, standing right on the other side of the glass.

Visible. Real .

I can see him, and he is achingly familiar and strangely different at the same time. He’s tall and lean, his limbs long and spindly. He must be nearly seven feet now, so tall he has to tilt his head to the side to look through the viewing panel. He has the same washed-out quality I remember, his coloring sepia-toned and his image blurry around the edges like an old photograph. He wears a black suit and a bowtie, like an old-fashioned butler. His skin is covered from his polished boots to his dark gloves, stretched to cover the long, long fingers on all four of his hands.

And of course, he wears his mask. Porcelain and blank, with holes for his eyes and his mouth—the latter stretched into a crude smile, just like the picture I once drew for him.

Our gazes meet. His eyes are wide, almost frantic.

“Dorian!” Possessed by a sudden, frantic need, I lurch out of my chair and toward the window, my hand outstretched.

Just before I reach it, Dorian grabs the radio and hurls it toward the glass. I flinch away as it hits the window with a loud bang , and by the time I lower my hand from my face and look again, he’s gone.

I press my fingers to the glass, searching—but there’s nothing but the radio on the floor. Still, I can’t stop a smile from spreading across my face, even as tears well up in my eyes.

“Hi, Dorian,” I whisper.

He’s real. He’s really real.

Right? Struck by a sudden need to confirm I wasn’t the only one who saw that, I turn to Ezra, who is pale with shock as he stares at the viewing panel.

“That…that was not a poltergeist. The size of him…”

My eyes widen. “You saw him too?”

His mouth opens, shuts. “I saw the height the radio was held at. He must be, what, seven feet tall?”

“Something like that.” I realize with a lurch how scared Ezra looks. His fingers tremble as he turns off the intercom.

“This is good,” I say, desperate for Ezra to see. “He showed himself!”

Ezra’s eyebrows pull together, his fear bleeding into incredulity. “He tried to attack us.”

“He was just getting our attention! He knew the window wouldn’t break.”

Ezra shakes his head. “I think this is a mistake,” he murmurs. “I thought I knew what I was dealing with here, but I was wrong.”

No . Panic wells up inside of me as indecision crosses Ezra’s face. “Please don’t say that,” I say. “This means what we’re doing is working. It’s making him stronger.”

“But it also might be making him dangerous.” Ezra stares into the cell at the shattered remains of the radio. Then he slaps the button to close the viewing panel. I resist the urge to protest as the metal shutters close off my view of the room. “I think… I think we should take a break and reevaluate what we’re doing.”

The panic inside of me swells. I struggle to keep it down, to keep myself under control. I wrap my arms around myself as if I can physically restrain the feeling. “But we don’t know how much time we have,” I say. “What if he fades while we’re reevaluating ?”

“I want to help him. I do. But not at the expense of your safety or anyone else’s.”

No. Not now. Dorian is real, I saw him, and that glimpse has intensified the ache of his loss tenfold. The panic is a living thing inside of me now, clawing and desperate. It snarls through my chest, climbs up the back of my throat like bile.

Breaking free.

No, no, no .

“You promised me,” I whisper.

“I told you I’d give you a chance to say goodbye, and—”

“ No! ”

Anger breaks through the terror gripping me. Something inside of me cracks, and the metal table on the other side of the room suddenly lifts into the air before thumping back down, sending Ezra’s files scattering all over the floor.

Ezra flinches, staring at it. Then at me.

My jaw drops. I try to speak, but nothing comes out. The anger is gone just as quickly as it arrived, leaving me with nothing but fear and the desire to make myself small and unnoticeable.

But it’s too late. Ezra noticed me. The real version of me, which I’ve been trying so hard to hide.

A shocked silence falls over both of us. Our eyes meet, and I see the realization in his. He knows . I open my mouth to say something, make some excuse, but I can’t seem to speak. It’s been so long since I lost control of my powers like that. I’ve worked so hard to keep them bottled up. For it to happen now, here, is unthinkable.

What have I done? Now he knows—the MRF’s mistake, seven years ago, was not locking me up in a cell just like Dorian. Because I’m a monster, too.

“That…must have been X-15,” Ezra says. “Maybe he cracked the glass. Or he’s getting too strong for the barriers. I’ll have to make the room hasn’t been compromised.”

I stare at him, still slack-jawed. I should just accept that explanation and the out it gives me, but…but I saw that look in his eyes. He knows . So why is he covering for me?

Ezra crosses the room and picks up his notebook from the floor. He looks at the table, at the scattered papers.

I swallow the lump in my throat. “Y-Yes. Sorry, that… I… I’m a bit shocked, I’m sorry.”

“Understandable. Are you okay?” Ezra scrawls in his notepad and holds it up.

Play along , it says. I glance at the words and then at his face, uncertain.

“I’m…fine,” I say. “Are you?”

“I’m all right.” He nods, and scribbles again: We can’t talk here . He inclines his head toward the camera in the corner, and I realize he’s intentionally placed his back toward it so the notebook isn’t visible.

“Um. Good. I guess we should probably call it a day.” I’m already stepping toward the door, trying not to stare at that camera. Even if Ezra is on my side for some reason, that doesn’t mean the MRF will be. I need to go. Now. Leave town and run again before it’s too late.

I hate the thought of leaving Dorian behind, but what am I supposed to do? If I stay, I’ll just be locked up alongside him.

Ezra lifts a hand as if to stop me but then lowers it. “Right. Of course. But, uh…listen, we’re both shaken up, I think. How about we go grab some coffee and talk?”

I pause, caged halfway between him and the door and not sure which is the safer option. Is this some kind of trick designed to keep me here while he calls in backup? What is he playing at?

While I’m still deciding my answer, Ezra writes in the notebook once more and holds it up. When I read the message, time seems to stop.

I am like you , it says.