One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (Thursday Next 6)

“What’s going on?” asked Square, who had suddenly reappeared. “It’s not like the BookWorld, where I can be five or six places at once.”

“Landen thinks I might actually be Thursday,” I said, “and if I can see Jenny, then he might be right.”

“Who’s Jenny? I don’t see anyone.”

“She’s one of the wraiths I’ve been seeing. And if I am Thursday, then I’m simply imagining you.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked the figment Jenny, which seemed a bit impertinent given her less-than-definite existence.

“Agent Square,” I said, “in Jurisfiction deep cover.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Square.

I sighed. This was getting more and more complex, but in a way I was heartened that they couldn’t see or hear each other. If they were both in my head, they should be able to converse—unless I was more insane than I thought possible.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said as we crossed another road, walked through the graveyard of the Blessed Lady of the Lobster, took a right down the hill and then an immediate left, where we found a small apartment building. Jenny led us into the lobby, and we paused while she consulted the names on the mailboxes.

“Fifth floor.”

We took the stairs, as neither I nor Square wanted to get into the elevator, and arrived at the upstairs corridor, from which four apartments could be accessed. As I walked along the corridor, one of the doors opened and a nurse walked out, glanced at me and moved off towards the elevators. As the door closed on the apartment, I could see that other medics were in attendance, clustered around a bed.

“You brought me here to see a guy dying?”

“Sort of,” replied Jenny, “but not him in there—him out here.”

She pointed. At the far end of the corridor were five more of the wraithlike figures I had seen earlier. They all stood around looking solemn, trying to comfort one of their number, who flickered in and out like a badly tuned TV set. They all spoke in a low growl that I couldn’t really understand, and as I walked closer, I noticed that they were dressed rather oddly.

“You brought me here to see some spooks?”

“They’re not spooks,” said Jenny. “They’re like me and you, Thursday—made up. Figments, inventions. Created in the white-hot heat of a child’s imagination, they linger on even when redundancy renders them invisible to their creators. Sometimes people catch a glimpse of them, but for the most part they’re invisible. You can see them because you’re fictional. So can I. You, them, me—we’re all one and the same. A living fiction that needs no book.”

I looked closer at the figures. They were partially dressed as clowns, had bold, large features and spoke in a simple dialect of basic verbs and a limited number of nouns.

“They’re . . . imaginary childhood friends, aren’t they?”

Jenny smiled. “Bravo, Thursday—a chip off the old block. They follow their creators about, an echo of a vibrant childhood imagination.”

She indicated the one who was flickering.

“Pookles here is about to leave—they can have no independent existence without their creator.”

As we watched, the flickering imaginary friend started shaking hands with the others, hugging them and thanking them, and then, with a final bright burst, it vanished. Almost immediately we heard a cry of grief from the bedroom behind us, and one by one the ethereal figures took their leave, walking through us and along the corridor, leaning on one another for support and shaking their heads sadly.

“So where does Thursday come into all this?”

“This is how I know she’s still alive. I’m still here. Unlike you, who are the figment of a ghostwriter and are now carved into a textual matrix, a part of Thursday is all I am. If she were dead, I wouldn’t be around to be thought of. I’m bound to her, like a dog on a leash.”

“Right,” I said, “I get that. But it doesn’t tell us where she is. Any ideas? The Dark Reading Matter, for instance?”

“That was one of her interests, certainly, but the whole Racy Novel stuff had taken over her life. The last time we spoke, she said something about Lyell being boring.”

“Lyell? Boring?”

“Yes. I don’t know who Lyell was or why he should be boring, but boring he was—and Thursday didn’t like it. Not one little bit.” Jenny shook her head and took me by the hand. “I miss her, Thursday. It’s lonely not being directly imagined on a day-to-day basis.”

We walked back towards Landen’s house.

“I’m confused,” said Square. “What, precisely, is going on?”