The Society of Imaginary Friends

The next day, Valerie and Thai decided to explore the Giza Plateau, where they could go inside the three huge pyramids that they could see from the window of their hotel room, as well as see the Sphinx, a giant statue that was half-lion, half-man.

As they were about to leave, Thai paused. “Hey, Tan. You have something to say?”

“H-h-hi,” Tan’s gravelly voice said with obvious effort. Valerie almost jumped in surprise.

“Your eyes didn’t change!”

“Yeah, that happens sometimes. It takes less effort for him just to speak without taking over completely,” Thai explained.

It was going to be strange talking to two people in one body. It would take some getting used to. She took a deep breath. “Hi, Tan. Do you want to see inside the pyramids?” she asked.

“Y-yes. Thai told me a l-l-lot about them.”

Valerie smiled. “You’ll have to tell me what you’ve learned. It’s all new to me.”

“Ready to go?” Thai asked, in control of his voice again.

“Definitely,” she said eagerly, excited to visit the site that would launch her to the Globe that night. Chisisi was waiting at the entrance of the hotel as they left.

“Good morning to you both.”

“Morning, Chisisi,” Valerie replied.

“I caution you to stay alert today, young ones,” he added.

“Thanks, we will,” she said, waving goodbye.

Once they were out of his earshot, Thai whispered, “Who does Chisisi think he is, calling me young? I’m a grown man!”

“Not much fun being treated like a kid, huh?” she said with a little snicker. “But Chisisi’s cool. He’s taking care of us.”

“I know. I wish he would tell us who his employer is. Maybe he would know more about Venu.”

Valerie shrugged. She didn’t want to dwell on the battle at Stonehenge. It was her last day on Earth, and she wanted to relish every second. The Giza Plateau was a ten-minute walk from their hotel, and she stared as the pyramids grew even larger the closer they came.

After getting their tickets, she hurried over to the base of the Great Pyramid, Thai trailing behind her. As she stood in line waiting to enter, she marveled at the thousands of golden brown stones that made up the Great Pyramid. It towered above her, hundreds of feet high, its ragged edges standing out in sharp relief against the cloudless blue sky. “So what do you know about this place?”

“I know it was the first of the pyramids built here. A pharaoh named Khufu had it built a long, long time ago—around 2500 BC, I think. It was supposed to be where he would be buried when he died, but they never found his body inside,” Thai said.

They reached the entrance to the pyramid, and Valerie squinted, staring into the dark opening and trying to see what was in store for them. The second she stepped inside, an oppressive, humid heat hit her like a punch in the face and made her start to sweat. The hall was dark and narrow. Was the space around her was shrinking, about to crush her? A bead of sweat trickled down her back, making the hair on her neck rise. As they walked deeper into the heart of the pyramid, the same vibrating hum of magic that she felt at Stonehenge returned. It was so strong that it almost overwhelmed her.

“It’s d-dark. I don’t like it,” Tan’s gravelly voice said.

“Don’t worry, buddy, we’ll be out of this hall soon,” Thai said quietly.

The halls split off in different directions, like a maze. An instinct steered Valerie away from the stream of people who were heading up the biggest of the passageways. “This way,” she whispered, leading Thai and Tan down a smaller hall that was vaguely familiar as she recalled the images that had flashed through her mind at Stonehenge. The ceiling of the passageway was so low that they had to hunch over. The tight space was squeezing her. She panicked that she had taken the wrong path and they would be lost inside the pyramid forever, doomed to search in the darkness for a way out.

She breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the end of the hall and entered an empty room with a vaulted ceiling. The vibrating was even stronger in here.

“It’s b-b-buzzing in here,” Tan said quietly.

“You can feel it, too? I’m glad it’s not just me,” Valerie replied.

“This must be the Queen’s Chamber,” Thai said, poking around the room with interest. “No one knows for sure what this room was for. Some people think it was supposed to be where they would put the pharaoh’s body when he died, but they changed their minds and built the bigger room above us for the body instead.”

Valerie walked around the room, running her hands along the surface of the walls and marveling at the way the stones were perfectly cut and joined together. She knew that the entire pyramid had been built by hand, each stone shaped by a person, not a machine. She couldn’t imagine how they had accomplished it.

“It’s near here—the room that will launch me into space tonight.”

“I w-w-want to s-see it!” Tan said.

“Sorry, Tan, but I don’t think there’s a way to get to it from here. I’ll have to start at the Sphinx and somehow find my way back here. Must be a tunnel,” she explained, and goose bumps rose on her arms at the thought of traveling through a dark tunnel beneath the ancient monuments.

“That makes sense. Otherwise someone would have found the entrance in here, I guess,” Thai said, his voice filled with curiosity and excitement. “Lots of people have thought that the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx are connected, but no one has been able to prove it.”

“From what I saw in my vision at Stonehenge, this whole place is a maze of tunnels that no one’s ever seen before,” she said, shutting her eyes and trying to remember the images that had flickered through her mind.

“L-l-look! I don’t like her,” Tan said, lifting Thai’s arm to point down the dark hall that led out of the Queen’s Chamber.

Valerie squinted and saw a flash of dark red that stood out against the neutral stones. Seconds later, a woman glided down the hall and entered the room. When she stepped into the dim yellow light inside the chamber, all of the heat drained from Valerie’s body. Sanguina. She stared right into Valerie’s eyes and her mouth stretched in a soulless smile of triumph.

“Found you,” she said, and the sound of her voice made Valerie’s stomach clench painfully. Thai stepped protectively in front of her.

“Get away from us,” Valerie said in a wavering voice. But Sanguina glided closer and closer, and Valerie knew that they would soon be cornered in the small space. “Run,” she whispered to Thai. “She can’t touch us; she’s projecting.”

Knowing that Sanguina couldn’t hurt them didn’t bring her much comfort. She decided to follow her instincts and sprinted past her enemy. Thai was right behind her. He didn’t need to ask why they were running—the danger surrounding the woman was so strong they could almost touch it.

They were only halfway down the low, narrow hallway when Sanguina appeared in front of them a few yards away, out of thin air. They stopped short, and Thai yanked Valerie’s hand so that she was behind him. The damp heat inside the pyramid was closing around her, smothering her.

“What do you want?” Thai demanded.

“I know what you’re here for. And if you leave this planet, I will kill you. I promise you that,” Sanguina said, speaking only to Valerie, as if Thai didn’t exist.

“If I stay, I die. You can’t stop me.”

Sanguina was close enough now for Valerie to see that her eyes were as black as they seemed when she was unconscious. “I can and will stop you. And I will make your life hell for defying me.”

As she stared at the woman who had hunted her for years, Valerie was filled with a desperation that made her hands shake. Would she never escape? “Why do you chase me in my dreams? Isn’t what you do to me while I’m awake enough?” she couldn’t help asking, and saw surprise flash across Sanguina’s face.

“Your dreams?” Sanguina echoed, her tone bewildered.

Before Sanguina could recover, Thai gripped Valerie’s hand. “Remember what you said. She isn’t even here! She’s on the Globe. There’s nothing she can do to either of us.”

Anger twisted Sanguina’s face. “You don’t know how wrong you are.” Her eyes bored into Valerie as if she would kill her if she could.

“Valerie, let’s lose this psycho. Run!” Thai’s voice yanked her out of her frozen terror.

She did run, squeezing her eyes shut as she passed through Sanguina. She and Thai raced away as fast as they could, never letting go of each other’s hands. They burst out of the pyramid into the bright sunshine at full speed, and didn’t stop until they were on the manicured lawn of their hotel, where they both collapsed, breathing in gulps of fresh air. Valerie glanced behind her, half expecting to see Sanguina chasing them, but she had vanished.

“Who was that freak? You knew her?” Thai asked.

Suddenly, from behind, they heard a man clearing his throat. When they saw Chisisi, they sighed in relief. “Welcome back. You seem exhausted. Let me take you to your room for rest and refreshment.”

“Thanks anyway, but we’ll be fine now that we’re back at the hotel,” Thai insisted.

“You must not assume that anywhere in Giza is safe. Danger may lurk where you least expect it, even here at the Mena House,” Chisisi said, his tone sharp for the first time. Then he abruptly turned and left them.

Valerie immediately worried that they had offended Chisisi after all he had done for them. But before she could chase after him, Cyrus appeared by her side. “What’d I miss? Who was that woman at the Great Pyramid? I barely saw her before she disappeared.”

“Sanguina. She’s been chasing me for as long as I can remember. She said she’d kill me if I go to the Globe,” Valerie said quietly.

Cyrus’s jaw dropped with shock, but he quickly recovered. “She’ll have no idea how to find you on the Globe, Val. Everything about your identity and your trip is a secret to all but a few people. And once you’re here, I’ll be able to protect you. In the meantime, I’ll ask the others about who this Sanguina person is. Don’t worry, they’ll find her. She’ll never get near you.”

“Venu must be working for her,” Thai said thoughtfully. “Maybe at Stonehenge he was trying to stop you from leaving Earth.”

“I don’t understand. Why is she after me?” Valerie asked.

“Because you’re special, of course,” Thai said, as if the answer was obvious.