His 'Condition'

I found him.

I choked on my own relief when I made out his crouched figure. I stumbled; my mind wanted to keep going but my feet hesitated. Goosebumps rose on my skin, alerting me to the fact I’d left in such a hurry, I was still wearing my stripy pyjama bottoms and a black singlet; the cold penetrated my skin and my bare feet froze on the freezing wet grass. I didn’t realise it was raining.

He was whimpering as I crept closer, his head banging against the wall in a rhythmic manner. Bang...Bang...Bang... It reminded me of a clanging bell, except the sound was less ding-dong and more flesh-against-brick. It scared me. I knew what he could do to himself and my heart’s beating quietened for a moment before it started back up, thumping in my ear.

I fell to my knees in front of him and tried to make him out in the darkness. I could see he was sitting in a ball-like position, his arms wrapped around his head to hide his face and his knees pulled up to his chest. I couldn’t see his face; I could hear his whispers. I knew what was going on, knew it to the bone as soon as I’d heard him on the phone, screaming for help.

He wouldn’t scream for help, if it was something real. He would stay silent as the grave.

“Oh no, go away, please, go away, I don’t want you, I don’t want it, go away, please.” His begging continued, taking on different words as it went on. ‘Go away’ was repeated the most, ‘please’ as well. I knew asking with please would just make it worse, and he knew that too, but he was too far in to remember that.

He screamed and I grabbed his arms, scaring even myself. I didn’t mean to move so quickly. But it stopped his scream; all he was doing was shaking then, even the whispers had stopped. Slowly, gently, I pulled his arms away from his face and nearly burst into tears as I saw his face, pale as a ghost and tear stained, his eyes wide and unfocused. I’d only seen him this bad once before, the time when his mother ran away from him, frightened and confused by his ‘condition’, as other people called it.

His ‘condition’ was ignored by adults and worsened by teenagers and kids, because of all the bullying. You would not believe how many people asked him if he saw things we didn’t because he was on drugs; the same amount asked how his ghosts were doing. Some of the bullying was harmless, just a little kid’s idea of a dare, but other bullying was just plain cruel. Just the day before I knew someone had set his hair on fire and told him to ask his ‘fake girlfriend’ to put it out, while holding his hands to the wall.

I only knew about it because now he was half bald. Luckily, he didn’t have to go to hospital (or so he told me), and he wore a hat now too, to hide it from everyone else. He didn’t want anyone making fun of his head as well.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I murmured to him, keeping my voice as soft as possible because I knew a loud voice freaked him out even more when he was like this. I saw his eyes start to refocus and I knew he was concentrating on looking at me and not what was around him. His eyes widened even further – who knew eyes could get that big? – when he saw me, my hands trailing down his arms to join our hands together.

“Come here, okay?” I usually ended my sentences with ‘okay’ when he was like this. I knew it calmed him down when he thought he had a choice about whatever I was saying, when he knew he could say ‘not okay’. I tried to make him as calm as possible in situations like this; everything got worse if he was scared and freaked.

I loosened my hands slightly and pulled him towards me, slowly, slowly. Then his head was on my chest and my arms were around his back, one rubbing a soothing circle. I was treating him like a child who’d just had a nightmare; maybe that was what he was when he was like this. “Don’t look at them, okay? Just talk to me, I’ll listen to you,” I whispered in his ear, my eyes closing as I wished I could help him more.

“Sh-sh-she’s gone,” he stuttered to me, sobs erupting from his throat. Somehow, I thought it was even sadder when boys or full grown men – like him – cry, rather than girls. It was heartbreaking, listening to him cry into my chest and knowing, just knowing, I could do nothing to help.

“Shh,” I murmured, “don’t cry. Who are you talking about? Don’t worry about telling me if you don’t want to, okay?” I opened my eyes and blinked in surprise at the sudden rain falling. I’d tilted my head upwards without realising, and the rain was sprinkling into my eyes uncomfortably. I closed my eyes again and slowly moved my head down.

“Her!” His voice rose to a screech. But when he next spoke, his voice was back to a strained whisper. “She was so scared...She was so scared...She screamed...I wish I could have protected her...She was so scared.” Pain filled me as I listened to his own misery; it sounded like he’d lost someone he would’ve rather died than lost.

It was that thought that made me realise who ‘she’ was.

My eyes opened again; I no longer cared about the rain. I felt his grief right down to my heart – she was the only good thing about his ‘condition.’ His imaginary girl, who wasn’t so imagined to him, who loved him as much as he loved her. It was like a fairy tale but, of course, the other bad things about his ‘condition’ darkened it. And everything else was bad; she was the only good thing at all.

“Come on, okay?” I whispered, pulling him to his feet. “Let’s go home. We’ll make this better, okay?” He nodded, his tears mixing with the now-heavier rain and I didn’t let go of the hand of my best friend. I never would until he stopped shaking and stopped crying and started smiling instead. I guess that meant a long time. But that didn’t matter.

I pulled him away from his dark world for the time being, but I knew it wouldn’t be forever. Sooner or later, I’d get another phone call, screaming for help. And I’d help. Every time.