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

Chapter Thirteen

W hen I next go to the MRF, I find Ezra waiting in the observation room, staring through the window. Dorian’s radio is playing a soft, sad song I don’t recognize.

I stop beside Ezra. “Anything today?”

“Well, he certainly seems to like the radio. I’m glad I replaced it for him,” Ezra says. He turns away, heading to our table and the metronome. “Ready to go again?”

“Yes. I think I’m going to try to find a later memory. Our teenage years, maybe.”

Maybe that will help me understand why Dorian is so different now. Why he’s refusing to appear to us even though yesterday he proved he can, and why he gave me that ominous warning. Something important must have changed, and the reason must be buried somewhere in my mind.

Ezra nods. “It’s your call.”

I study him across the table as he sets up the metronome and the recorder. I can’t help but wonder if Dorian’s warning was about him . Does he refuse to appear in front of Ezra because the other psychic poses some kind of threat? Yet I can’t quite bring myself to believe it. Everything Ezra has done so far has shown that we’re in this together. He’s risking his job and his safety for me. In that case, I should probably tell him about Dorian’s warning. But I’m afraid he’ll shut down our experiments if I do, and I don’t think Dorian has time to spare.

I refuse to run away like Dorian wants me to, even if I don’t fully understand what kind of danger he’s warning me about. I’m not going to leave him again—especially after I saw how weak he was yesterday. I need to find a way to help him, and soon. Right now, my memories are the only lead we have.

“Ready?” Ezra asks, jerking me out of my thoughts.

I nod, folding my trembling hands in my lap. I’m terrified about what I’m going to see as I venture further into my lost memories, but I need to do this.

“Close your eyes and focus on the sound of my voice,” Ezra begins, like usual.

It’s even easier than last time to follow the sound of the metronome into my memories. The house in my mind appears realer than ever; I can hear the creaks and groans in the old foundation, feel the dust tickling my nose. I hold my intent in mind— let me see us growing up together —as I grab a door handle at random. I lift my foot—

My boot comes down with a disorienting crunch on gravel. I’m no longer in the house but outside somewhere, on a familiar-but-not street. I barely have a second to reorient myself before a waifish young woman runs past me, long blonde hair streaming behind her. She— I— am running hard, chest heaving, face a mask of panic. Moving with the speed of the hunted. And the hunters are not far behind: two teenage boys with their grins full of cruel delight.

“Where you going, Daisy?”

“Crazy Daisy! Crazy Daisy!”

“Come back! We just wanna talk!”

I watch my teenage self stumble past the gate of my house—all fresh white paint in my memory, far from its current dilapidation. I don’t have to remember this moment to know it’s not going to go the way these boys expect. I smile as I follow them into the front yard of my home.

Teenage me collapses just past the front gate, breathing hard. She licks her split lip; I taste blood. But as she rests her palms on the gravel around her, I know she’s no longer afraid. The boys are no longer the hunters here, but they don’t realize it as they skid to a stop a couple of feet from her.

“Running home to Mommy and Daddy?” one of them asks, his voice mocking. “You think they’re going to rescue you?”

I shake my head half a second before the teenage version of me does. “Not them,” I say.

The boy sneers. “Who else would care enough to help you?”

We both pause, heads tilting. Waiting, and then smiling. “Him.”

A gloved hand shoots up from the ground and grabs one of the boys by the ankle. It yanks, and the boy falls on his face with a yelp of shock and pain. “What the f—” is all he has time to say before he’s yanked backward, hands scrabbling for purchase on the gravel.

We watch him, a ghost of a smile still on our lips.

The other boy blanches. He takes one step back, and another, watching his friend be dragged out the front gate. “Please don’t hurt me,” he says.

I look at the gravel embedded in my palms from the fall. “ I’m not doing anything,” I say, and smile as a gloved hand taps on his shoulder. He whirls around and goes white as a sheet as he comes face-to-face with…nothing, as far as he can see.

But I see a white mask, and two gloved hands that shove the boy backward.

Dorian and I both watch as the boy runs screaming from the property. Then he bends down and offers me a gloved hand, the perfect gentleman. I take it and grin as he lifts me up. When he sets me on my feet, my head barely reaches his shoulder.

Teenage Dorian is long and lanky, his dark hair worn shaggy. Messy strands fall in front of his white mask as he tilts his head down to meet my eyes.

“My protector,” I say, and stand on my tiptoes, tugging on the front of his shirt. He obligingly leans down so I can plant a kiss on the cheek of his mask—but at the last second, he turns his head.

My lips touch only cold porcelain, but I can feel his breath through the mouth hole of his mask, so very close. Mischief lights his dark eyes.

“You—” I sputter, flushing red but grinning. I reach for his hand and—

The world spins around me as the memory changes.

I’m still standing on the edge of the property. But now I’m pulling at Dorian’s hand desperately, tears streaming down my face. He’s even taller than the last memory, his shoulders broader and stronger, and he’s grown an additional set of hands, each one gloved. I grasp at one hand with both of mine while the other three hang limp at his sides.

“Come with me,” I beg. “There has to be a way!”

Dorian’s feet are stopped just beyond the gate, and his gloved hand is stuck midair in the same spot, like it meets an invisible barrier there. No matter how hard I strain, I can’t get him to move.

His eyes are sad behind the mask. He shakes his head.

“I can’t leave without you,” I sob, frantic. “I can’t go on my own…”

“Daisy!”

* * *

I startle awake, head spinning. I’m back in the room at the MRF. Ezra has me by both arms and is shaking me as he shouts my name. My head lolls to the side, and I swear I see Dorian at the viewing panel. But when I turn that way, he’s gone again.

“I’m— I— What happened?” I ask, disoriented.

Ezra’s shoulders slump in relief as he lets me go. “Oh, thank God,” he says. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for five minutes. You went completely unresponsive.” He grabs a tissue and holds it out to me. I stare for a moment before I feel the trickle of blood from my nose and take the tissue to dab at it. As I do, I notice that my palms are bleeding too, scraped raw and pockmarked. I must’ve been gripping the edge of the table.

“That hasn’t happened before?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “You usually talk to me while it’s happening. But this time you were completely gone.”

“It felt different,” I murmur, pressing the tissue against my nose. I almost forgot it was a memory; it was disorienting to jolt back to the present.

And Dorian was different in that memory, too. When we were children, he couldn’t touch my father. But as a teen, he was able to physically drive off those boys. He was so much stronger…yet still trapped on the grounds.

And I was trapped, too. With him and my parents. What a horrible irony that the MRF found a way to free Dorian, only to trap him here instead.

If not for the MRF, we could’ve lived together so happily once my parents were dead…

I jolt out of my thoughts. Ezra is still staring at me, brow furrowed with concern.

“If this is dangerous for you…” he says.

I shake my head. “It doesn’t seem dangerous,” I lie. “I feel like I’m moving forward. Like I’m starting to remember things.” I wipe my nose one last time, see no spots of new blood, and toss the dirty tissue into the wastebasket. “Did Dorian react?”

“I didn’t see him, but the EMF reading was going haywire, and the radio started playing a song.”

“Was it ‘Daisy Bell’?”

Ezra shakes his head. “No. ‘Run, Rabbit, Run!’”

“Hm.” I shrug. “Well… Those are good signs, right?”

Ezra huffs a strained laugh. “I don’t know anymore.”

“But it means Dorian’s getting stronger!”

Ezra still looks hesitant but nods. “I guess so.” He returns to his side of the table and sits down, flipping his notebook open. “Now, describe what you saw.”

As I give him a censored version of the memory—leaving out the fact that Dorian could physically harm people—I stare down at the dried blood on my tissue and return to that guilty thought again and again.

We could’ve been so happy together, once my parents were dead.