My Schizophrenic Hallucination - Haruka's Torment

As the pale noon time rays shone through the window of the small treehouse clasped in the arms of the old oak tree in the back garden, Sammy crawled over to the window, and poked his small head up in order to look out at the world, screwing up his face against the sudden light as it streamed into his chocolate brown eyes. He could see over the fence that encircled their large garden, could see the stray tabby cat lounging on top of the shed, his tail flicking lazily from side to side as he sunbathed. Dad wouldn’t like that. An animal nearby would get him sneezing again.

The six-year-old pulled away from the window and pulled the thin blue curtains closed to block out a little of the light. It wouldn’t do to let the enemy see them. He shuffled back on his bum to rejoin his best friend in the world, sitting back against the opposite wall.

This friend didn’t actually exist. He didn’t have a name either, but Sammy had come to name him Phantom. He didn’t know why. Maybe he thought it suited him. Or maybe it was just a little cute. Phantom was the same sage and size and shape as Sammy, and his hair was the exact same shade of red. However, while Sammy wore his long hair loose so that it was always falling across his face, the other always had his own tied back in two messy bunches. Their eyes were different also. Sammy’s were brown, and he liked that because they were like his papa’s, even though his papa had only adopted him. Phantom’s, on the other hand, were bright yellow, ever full of a glint that made Sammy uncomfortable and even a little frightened whenever he thought about it. What Sammy found to be the strangest part of Phantom’s appearance, however, was the blue-black lines that ran down his cheeks from his eyes, as if he had put a whole lot of eyeliner on and then cried for a long time, or been caught out in a rainstorm, and the matching lips, as if he were constantly wearing lipstick.

Phantom was good to him, but sometimes his more violent thoughts and suggestions worried Sammy. Like the one he was having right now.

“So when are you going to get rid of your annoying little brother?” The boy was saying. He wasn’t looking at Sammy. His frightening eyes were fixed straight ahead, and his grey face was expressionless.

“What’s wrong with Haruka?” Sammy asked him, his voice quiet and a little wary. He had been uneasy when his parents had decided to adopt another child, certain that whoever they would choose would just be annoying and whiney, but Haruka wasn’t as bad as he had thought. Being only a year younger than him, he didn’t make a bad playmate and, eager to gain the affection and approval and company of his ‘big brother’, he was happy to go along with anything Sammy wanted to do. It was safe to say he was growing on him. “I quite like him. He’s not so bad.”

“‘Not so bad’?” Phantom seemed stunned that he should even consider such a thing. “You can’t be serious, Sammy. He’s replacing you, how can you not see that?!”

“Replacing me?” Sammy repeated, a little put off by the comment. “What do you mean?”

“It’s the only reason parents ever have more kids.” His companion responded knowledgeably, looking at him as if it should have been obvious. “They get fed up with the first one. Your parents will start loving Haruka more and more, and they’ll forget all about you. You may not see it now, but it’s going to happen. Soon.”

Sammy was watching him in a horrified trance, the words going round and round in his head over and over like some kind of nightmare whirlpool.

“Sammy?” Haruka’s quiet voice calling to him from outside dragged him from the inky depths of his mind, and he tore his eyes away from his friend at the sound. “Sammy, are you up there?”

Sammy got to his hands and knees and crawled over Phantom to the door to the treehouse, looking down at where Haruka was standing in the garden near the foot of the tree, looking up at him with his fingers fiddling nervously in front of his chest.

“What?” He called back to him. He wasn’t sure what to make of Phantom’s allegations, but he was suspicious of his brother all of a sudden. He didn’t want him stealing their parents away from him. Perhaps Haruka had been able to make out the hostility in his voice. Perhaps he had been able to recognise it as the same tone his birth father had used with him every time he had hit him and his mother for no reason other than that they were there. Just the one word was enough to shatter the young shaggy black haired boy’s little bit of confidence for that situation, and he stood there shaking silently for a minute or so, looking much like he was about to burst into tears. Phantom chuckled his strange laugh that always scared Sammy, and he suddenly wondered if he was in fact listening to the right person. He sighed. “Come on up and you can play with me, Haruka.” He called down, his voice much more gentle this time. He hadn’t meant to scare the boy before. He could sense Phantom’s disbelieving stare burning into the back of his head, but Haruka perked up immediately.

“Are you ... replacing me with him?!” His friend sounded breathless at the idea, his own insecurities coming through in his panic as Haruka started up the ladder. Sammy turned around to assure him that this wasn’t, in fact, the case, but instead met empty space. Phantom had vanished.

“Sammy, my foot’s stuck!” Haruka’s frightened voice came to him from outside and Sammy returned to the door of the treehouse to see what was going on. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat in fear.

Haruka was near the top of the ladder that ran up the trunk of the tree. He was clinging to the topmost of the wooden boards that served as rungs as if his life depended on it, his eyes tightly closed, his breath rapid and uneven in panic. Below him on the ladder was Phantom, holding Haruka’s ankle in a vice-like grip, his angry yellow eyes fixed right on Sammy.

“Haruka, hold on!” Sammy called to him, frightened and not sure what to do. Haruka looked up at him and he saw his brother’s scared grey eyes for a moment before Phantom tugged on his foot, and the pale boy let out a frightened squeak and hid his face once more, pressing it against the board he was clinging to so tightly.

Even as Sammy watched, helpless to do anything else, Phantom was reaching for Haruka’s other foot. He grabbed the ankle and pulled it off of the rung, and Haruka let out a loud cry of fear as the sudden weight of his whole body made him lose his grip on the rung he had been holding on to. There was a sickening crack just before he fell, and he screamed in pain, and then he was falling. Another echoing crack accompanied the dull thud as his limp body hit the ground far below.

He didn’t move.