A Nest of Nightmares

‘I sat all alone in that cold, dusty attic, and I could feel the house changing below me. I was in the attic of another house. I could hear the voices of my new family drifting up to me. I could imagine every room, how each one was furnished. When I had it all clear in my mind, I went downstairs to see for myself. It was the same size as my real house, but completely different. There was a small chord organ in the living room that my make-believe mother played in the evenings, all of us gathered around to sing old-fashioned songs. The family room had a cork floor with woven Indian rugs on it. There was a deer head over the television set; my make-believe father liked to hunt. The wallpaper in the kitchen was gold and brown, and the cookie jar was shaped like a rabbit dressed in overalls. There was a big oak tree in the back yard that was perfect for climbing, perfect for playing pretend games in. It could be a pirate ship, or – ’

My skin was crawling. It was my house she was describing. My parents. My childhood. ‘What about the front yard?’ I asked.

‘Another oak tree. We had lots of acorns in the fall. There was a magnolia tree on one side, and a big brick planter box built out of the front of the house. It was great to play in. I’m amazed those blue flowers managed to grow with us stomping on them all the time. Your mother – ’

‘It was you,’ I said.

She shut up and looked down into her coffee.

‘Why didn’t you say?’ I asked. ‘Why this game? Why pretend you didn’t know me? Did you think I’d forgotten? Jane?’

She gave me a wary look. ‘Of course I thought you’d forgotten. I wasn’t sure myself that any of it had happened. I never thought I’d see you again. I thought I’d made you up.’

‘Made me up!’ I laughed uneasily. ‘Come on, Jane! What are you talking about? What’s the point of this whole story?’

‘It’s not a story,’ she said. Her voice was high and stubborn, like a child’s. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘What is it you want me to believe? We were friends when we were children. We both remember that. But if you tell me that you grew up in New York, and I know that – ’

‘Why did you say you had an imaginary friend called Jane?’

‘Because I thought – ’ And I stopped and stared, feeling the little hairs prickling all over me as I remembered. ‘Because you disappeared,’ I said softly. ‘Whenever you left to go home, you just vanished. I saw you come and go out of nowhere, and I knew that real people didn’t do that.’ I was afraid that I was sitting at a table with a ghost.

As if she read my thoughts, Jane reached across the table and gripped my hand. There was a sullen, challenging look on her face. Her hand was warm and firm and slightly damp. I remembered that, as a child, too, she had been solid and real. Once her firm grasp, just in time, had kept me from falling out of a tree. We had tickled each other and played tag and helped each other into dressing-­­up clothes. She had liked to braid my hair.

Jane took her hand away to look at her wristwatch. ‘We’d better go,’ she said.

I thought of the first time I had seen her, coming down the attic stairs. I was surprised to find a stranger in my house, but she had looked back at me, perfectly at ease, and asked me if I wanted to play. We were friends in that instant – although I couldn’t remember, now, what we had said to each other or what we played. Only that first moment of surprise remains hard and clear and whole in my mind, like the last time I saw her disappear.

Usually when Jane left she simply walked away and I did not see where she went. She was different from my other friends in that I never walked her home and we never played at her house. I didn’t even know where her house was; I knew only, from things she had said, that it was in a different neighbourhood.

But that last day, I remember, we had been playing Parcheesi on the floor of my bedroom. Jane said goodbye and walked out. A few seconds later I thought of something I had meant to ask or tell her, and I scrambled to my feet and went after her. She was just ahead of me in the hallway, and I saw her go into the living room. She was just ahead of me, in plain sight, in daylight – and then she wasn’t. She was gone. I looked all through the living room, although I knew she hadn’t hidden from me; there hadn’t been time.

I couldn’t believe what I had seen. Things like that didn’t happen, except on The Twilight Zone. I was eleven-and-a-half years old, too old to have imaginary friends. I never saw Jane again.

Until today.

And now she was standing, preparing to leave me.

Hastily I stood up, pushing my chair away from the table. ‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

She looked at me and shrugged. ‘Why do you think I know? I thought I’d imagined you, and here you are. But I grew up in New York, you grew up in Texas. We couldn’t have known each other as kids. But that’s what we both remember.’

‘And now what?’