that I had to be strong. He said he was a soldier, who promised his father to keep us all safe from her, and he would never give up. So, I couldn’t give up, either. I asked him what he knew about the woman with the burnt feet. He said she rules the imaginary world.
May 22nd
Her plan has started. No one on the real side can see it, but it’s there. I tried to help them see things the way they really were, but the kids think I’m crazy. I was walking home from school because I didn’t want them to make fun of me on the bus anymore. I went to the imaginary side through my tree house. I saw a woman yelling at her son on the porch. She hit her son really hard. She didn’t know that the hissing woman with the burnt feet was moving her arm and whispering in her ear.
June 1st
It’s spreading everywhere. The soldier and I have tried to keep people safe from inside the imaginary world, but it’s not working. The hissing woman is so much stronger than us. She gets stronger every day. It’s like the thing I heard in science class. The teacher told us that if you put a frog in boiling water, it knows to jump out. But if you put a frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it can’t tell until it’s too late. So, it boils to death. Right now, the town thinks it’s a flu, but it’s something much worse. I would ask Ambrose to help me, but I know that deep down, even Ambrose thinks I’m crazy. And I really hope he’s right. I really hope I am just a psycho kid who goes into the woods and talks to himself. Because if this is real, the world is in a pan of cold water right now, and the heat is getting turned up. And I’m the only one on earth who can stop it.
“Nurse!” a voice called out.
Ambrose closed the book and looked up in the parlor. He saw Mrs. Haggerty stop knitting her granddaughter’s Christmas stocking to put her hand to her forehead to check her temperature. The nurse came rushing up.
“What is it, Mrs. Haggerty?”
“I have the flu.”
“Okay. Let’s get you to bed, love.”
Ambrose studied the parlor. Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Russell loosened their sweaters and asked someone to turn down the heat. Mrs. Webb scratched her neck, which was coated in a thin sweat like cooking spray on a skillet. Ambrose heard one of the spinsters cough as they watched the trashy reality show. The complaints and requests for water and Advil and cold washcloths spread throughout the room.
People were getting sick.
Except Mrs. Collins’ mother.
She stared right at Ambrose from her wheelchair. Ambrose felt the room go cold around him. A breeze tickled the hair of his neck. Like a whisper.
“That woman is standing right next to you, whispering in your ear,” she said. “Can you hear her?”
“What is she saying, Mrs. Keizer?”
Mrs. Keizer smiled like the Cheshire Cat and wheeled herself down the hallway with a squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
“Death is coming. Death is here. We’ll die on Christmas Day.”
Chapter 56
The Christmas Pageant was supposed to be great.
That’s what everyone told Christopher’s mother. The Christmas Pageant was a proud tradition between Shady Pines and Mill Grove Elementary School going back all the way before they had to start calling it the “Winter Pageant” for legal reasons. On the last Friday before Christmas, Mill Grove Elementary would send kids to sing “winter” (aka holiday) songs and make cookies for the old folks. Then, the old folks would give the kids different prizes for Balloon Derby. The rule was whoever’s balloon flew the farthest by the pageant would get the best prize, but all the kids would get a little something. Everyone knew the prizes were actually Christmas and Hanukkah presents, but the Balloon Derby excuse was a great way around the separation of church and state.
“That’s like keeping God out of God dammit!” the nurses liked to joke.
No matter on which side of the aisle one stood, the old people loved the pageant because it was a distraction from checkers and daytime TV. The kids loved it because they got out of school. But nobody loved it more than the staff because it meant that for a few blissful hours, the old people would stop complaining.
There aren’t a lot of win-win-win situations in life.