By Mihir Mathur
[Prompt] Your daughter never feared the dark or being alone, she says because of her imaginary friend. The school child psychologist tells you the imaginary friend is very unusual and shows you a crayon picture of it, an 8 foot knight in black armor with a broadsword.
“Come in, please.”
Mrs. Addams’s office was small, and even with the air conditioner, was hot. The curtains on the window behind her attempted to futilely hold back the sun, but were almost blinding to look at. The rattling of the air conditioner was briefly stifled by the siren of a police car somewhere outside. In that lighting, she looked rather severe. She motioned at the seats in front of her. I sat down.
“Here we are again, Mr. Drake,” she said, the severity extending to her voice. “She got into a fight again.”
“She said she didn’t hit anyone,” I said, “just scared them off. She’s a tough girl.”
“Her actions concern me, especially the latest incident. She terrified the three girls out of their minds. We had to send them home,” her gaze suddenly turned piercing, “What do you think she did that had such a reaction?”
I shook my head. Liz is a sweet and gentle soul, but was also tough as nails for a nine-year old. She had no problem venturing out about the house for a glass of water or to sneak a snack out of the refrigerator in the middle of the night. She also refused to have a baby-sitter, insisting that she could handle it.
“I want you to look at this,” she said, bending down to retrieve something from her desk drawer. The siren of a cop car faded in again, lingered, and faded out. Mrs. Addams cast a concerned look out the window, before handing me a sheet of paper to me. “This is how she imagines her imaginary friend looks like.”
Liz had drawn herself, dark hair, and eyes as blue as her mothers’, standing next to a knight, clad in armor, holding a broadsword almost as long as he was tall, and his eyes peering out of his helmet were represented by two red dots. Judging the disparity in height between the two, her knight would tower over everyone. I had seen a similar drawing taped to my refrigerator before. “What does this have to do with anything?”, I said putting it back on the table
“There were nine people present in the hallway where the incident happened. Two were teachers, and the rest were kids, your daughter included. The teachers claimed that the other girls just started screaming, asking, begging, someone or something not to hurt them. The children, all of them, claimed that this person,” she tapped the picture, “had appeared out of nowhere, and intimidated them. The teachers saw no such thing, and neither did the cameras. Now, how do you think that is possible, Mr. Drake?”
I was getting annoyed now. Liz had been complaining about bullies for a few weeks now, and I had expected the school to handle it. Instead, they were now trying to pin this on my daughter, when she did something to stand up for herself. Good for her, I thought.
“How is it possible that a bunch of kids saw the same cartoon or a movie? I don’t know, you tell me,” I said. She was clearly taken aback by my sarcasm, judging by the lessening severity of her face.
“Mr. Drake, this is certainly not any character from a movie that I…” she certainly wasn’t expecting anyone sitting in my chair to talk back.
“Mrs. Addams, please tell me exactly what my daughter did or said that caused the girls to react in such a way. If there is something, then I will discipline her accordingly,” I said, deciding right then that I would be taking Liz out for ice-cream today.
“Those girls should be the ones sitting here, not me. And you should be telling them off for pulling my daughter’s hair, and trying to put chewing gum in it, and spoiling her clothes with pens and markers, and calling her names,” I said, getting up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to take my daughter home.”
She nodded, disappointed.
Despite the counselor, I was still quite curious about her imaginary friend. How had she managed to reduce those girls to a “quivering mess”, as the teacher’s note had described? Emma and I decided to ask her after dinner.
We were sitting on the couch, the TV turned to the news, when I muted it and turned to Liz. “So,” I said, trying to sound casual, “how was school today?”
“It was fine,” she replied, still focused on finishing the second cup of ice cream that she had talked me into buying for her. Emma slowly put her book down, and looked on curiously.
“OK. Your friends, how are your friends?” I said.
“They’re fine too,” she said. Emma, realizing that I did not plan this conversation, took over.
“Honey, can you tell us more about your imaginary friend?” she said. Now, Liz looked worried, as though we had caught her lie. “OK,” she replied timidly.
“What does he look like?”
“He’s tall and he has a big sword and he doesn’t like it if I touch the sword. He also has black armor on, and he never takes if off,” she said quickly.
“Is he here right now?” I asked.
She looked around, and said, “No. He comes whenever I need help.”
“Like with those girls yesterday?” I asked.
Suddenly, she grabbed my hand and pleaded, “Please, daddy, he didn’t hurt anyone! I told him not to hurt anyone and he didn’t! Please, mommy, daddy, don’t make him go away! He’s really sweet!” She seemed to be on the verge of tears.
Her reaction was quite unexpected. I pulled her into a hug. “It’s OK, honey, we just wanted to know.”
Emma also reached out and rubbed her back, “We won’t send him away, OK? What’s his name?”
“Calogrent… er, Calogrenten,” she struggled to pronounce the name that she supposedly had picked, “Caloco- something. It’s long, so I just call him Cal.”
“OK, honey. Why don’t you go up and brush your teeth? Daddy and I will tuck you in,” Emma said, planting a kiss on her forehead and sending her on her way.
“So, what do you think?” she asked, “Do you think she actually befriended Calogrenant?”
“Who?”
“A supernatural Black Knight, from Arthurian legend.” she said. She did like to show off her credentials as an art historian sometimes.
“Does he usually go around protecting little children?”
“Not exactly, no,” she said, getting up to throw the empty ice cream cup in the trash. I turned back to the news on the TV, the bottom ticker tape mentioning the recent spike in crime. I sighed, shut off the TV, and accompanied Emma to Liz’s room to tuck her in.
I was awoken for the third time by a loud noise. This time, the neighbor’s cat loudly snarling at something. I was still half-asleep. I couldn’t tell if the noises I was hearing were real, or an echo of a dream. A strange echoing clicking sound, a distant creak, that felt like a vibration, and then the clicking again, closer this time. My slumbering brain tried to make sense of these curious noises, to connect them to a source, or to at least determine whether I was dreaming or not. It was not until I heard Liz scream from her room that I realized that I wasn’t, after all, dreaming.
Emma awoke next to me with a loud gasp, but I was already running towards the bedroom door. As I reached halfway between the bed and the door, I heard a loud noise, like metal striking and gnashing against metal. I also heard a man shout, high pitched and unfamiliar. As soon as I entered the hallway, I heard an almighty crash, like something heavy falling over. I skidded to a halt outside her door, and wrenched it open. Emma burst into the room moments later, snatching up Liz who was running towards the door. I flicked on the light switch, ready to kick, punch, scratch and bite the intruder.
However, I was met with a strange sight. There was a man lying upright against the wall next to the door. He was slumped over to the side, unconscious. Judging by his broken and bloody nose, his eyelids and cheeks that were starting to swell, he had taken quite a blow. The cracks in the wall panel below the light switch, roughly the same shape as the intruder, suggested that someone had decided that he was not at all welcome here. But who?
As my eyes traveled down to his feet, I saw a shotgun. My heart leapt to my throat. This guy was armed. Armed, and in my daughter’s bedroom. The gun was cleanly cleaved in half, rendered useless. The barrel was lying under the bed.
The police came not too long after, rushing up to arrest the man, who was just starting to come around. Emma was downstairs with Liz, who ran up to me and wrapped her hands around me. “Cal protected me, daddy! I told you he was sweet!”
Before I could respond, the intruder, fully awake now, was shouting at the officer, leading him to the squad car in cuffs. He was having trouble speaking through several broken teeth, but persevered.
“I’m telling you, officer! Look at it! Look at my gun! I know you saw it! It was there! It was right there! It was eight feet tall and wearing black armor! It cut my gun in half with a huge freakin’ sword! I’m telling you!”
The cops exchanged puzzled glances, as they shut the door.
By Mihir Mathur