Reading this book alone in the house, late at night, I will admit to a thud of fear at a bump downstairs, and a rush to switch all the lights on. There are only so many carnivorous children and menacing deer a reader can take before becoming inured to their terrors Christopher battles with sleep, which would take him into the arms of the hissing lady, and the residents of the real town start to get sicker, and angrier. The couple who can’t stop kissing, blood running from their mouths.

Hssss.” The man who lies inside the hollow log. There’s the hissing lady: “she turned to teeth and a hissing mouth. There are elements of Imaginary Friend that are genuinely frightening: as the nice man talks Christopher into building a tree house – which, incidentally, he and his gang of friends pull off with amazing skill for a group of seven-year-olds – the real and imaginary worlds of Mill Grove begin to overlap, and the bad things that lurk around this town are gradually revealed. It turns out there’s a whole other world lying behind Mill Grove, “an imaginary world filled with hissing ladies and mailbox people with mouths sewn shut and eyes closed with zippers”, one Christopher has found his way to, and where his new friend, the nice man whom nobody else can see but who keeps on whispering to him, needs his help. Six days later, he emerges – suddenly top of his class, and talking about the “nice man” who led him out. He follows the face, and finds himself lost in the woods.

Then, bullied and miserable at school, Christopher notices a collection of clouds that look like a face. Christopher is a good kid, but he’s dyslexic and struggles at school Kate is on the brink financially, piling up bills and living in a motel.

Imaginary friend stephen king