Thomas's garden

Thomas’s eyes were bright and clear as he sat near the pond and a gentle breeze tussled his blond hair. He played in the garden everyday and the pond was his favourite place. He would sit and watch the frogs jumping from one lily pad to the other and sometimes his other friends would come out and play. He was always happy when they came. They were special and Thomas didn’t share them with anyone else. He was five years old and would be starting school in another three weeks. He wondered what his friends would do while he was at school and whether they would still come when he got home. He was lost in his thoughts when a voice said “Boo!”
A smile lit up his face as he turned around. “Ellie!”
“Hello Thomas” Ellie said “I have brought Tammy with me today.”
Thomas watched with delight as they hovered in front of him. The colours in their wings were wonderful; blues, greens and yellows glittered with the sunshine. He remembered the first time he saw Ellie, he was amazed at the little figure that sat on a lilypad next to a green frog. They had seemed to be talking to each other and he had rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Then Ellie flew over and sat on his shoulder. He found he wasn’t scared of her and laughed when her wings tickled his ears. She had whispered in his ear “How would you like to sit on a rainbow?”
Thomas’s eyes had lit up as he answered yes. Ellie told him to close his eyes as she put her tiny hand in his and then he felt himself floating away across a clear blue sky. Birds flew passed and squawked a greeting that Ellie seemed to understand as she answered them. Then he had seen the rainbow. He was awed at the sight of it. He had seen rainbows after the rain but never been this close to one. Ellie had guided him to the top of it and they sat and looked at the world way below them. Thomas could see fields for miles and Ellie had pointed out his house. He had giggled with delight and when he looked up the fluffy white clouds seemed to caress him gently as they passed overhead. He had wanted to stay there with his new friend but he had heard his mother calling him to come in for lunch. Suddenly he was back, sitting next to the pond where he had first seen Ellie. Ellie had promised to come again and he had gone inside the house.
Ellie came whenever she chose to. Once in a while she would bring another friend with her. Sometimes she never came for days and it upset him. His mother noticed his mood change a couple of times but had put it down to him not having any friends to play with, but thought that would change when he started school.

“Hello Tammy” Thomas said. Looking at Ellie, he asked ‘what can we do today?”
Ellie thought for a moment, “Have you ever been to the bottom of the pond?”
Thomas shook his head as he looked down into the pond. “There’s nothing there”
“Oh yes there is” Tammy answered him “there are many things in a pond you don’t see”
The pond didn’t look too deep and Thomas thought it would fun to see what was down there. “Okay” he replied.
“Take your shoes of” Ellie told him. He took his shoes of and placed them neatly side-by-side and tucked his socks inside them, and then he followed Ellie and Tammy into the pond. The water was cool and he shivered slightly as they went to the bottom of the pond. Thomas opened his eyes; he saw tiny tadpoles swimming past and water snails feeding off the reeds and the goldfish that his mother had put in darted in and out of the rocks. He looked around for Ellie and Tammy but he had lost sight of them. All of a sudden he started to feel short of breath and gasped, taking in a mouthful of water. He found himself thrashing around and when he tried to stand his feet slipped on the muddy bottom. The more he thrashed, the more water he swallowed. He felt a burning deep inside and it was painful and struggled desperately to get out but everything started to go black and he silently screamed. The words just got lost among the reeds.

“Thomas! Thomas! Where are you?” his mother called. She had called him twice from the house but he never came so she went down the garden to look for him. She saw his shoes before she even got to the pond and ran, screaming his name. Their next-door neighbour Mr Murray heard her screams and came running. Without hesitating he jumped into the pond and searched for him. He dragged Thomas’s limp body out of the pond and yelled at her to get an ambulance. He proceeded to rescucitate Thomas and
was relieved when Thomas coughed and spluttered. The ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital where they kept him overnight.
Thomas’s mother kept a stricter eye on him after his stay in hospital. She was angry with herself for being so stupid in thinking he would obey all her rules. The most important one being: he was not allowed to go into the pond. When she questioned him about it, he shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t know why he went into the water. She left it at that and told him he was not to go down there without her.

One morning Thomas had risen early, he crept out the back door and went down to the pond. He sat on a rock and threw stones and watched the ripple of water as the stones sunk to the bottom, gentle ripples that suddenly turned into a bubbling mass. Thomas watched as something rose out of the water and stretched out a huge black hand towards him. It was ugly and Thomas was scared. He screamed for Ellie and suddenly she was there. “It’s okay Thomas,” she said as she faced the monster and chased him away.
Thomas was shaking and tears ran down his face. “It was horrible” he said “What’s it doing in my pond? Why is it here?”
“You shouldn’t think of things like that” Ellie replied “You should only think of nice things. You never know what you can dream up if your not careful”
Thomas wiped his eyes and said he would only think of nice things.
“Tell me something you would like to do” Ellie said
Thomas thought about it for a while, then said “I’d like to meet the man in the moon”
“That would be a bit hard” Ellie replied smiling “That can only happen at night and you are in bed early”
“I can wait until mummy goes to bed then I can come down here and meet you”
“But you need the magic and that is only here in the morning. It won’t work” Ellie answered
“I can take some with me and keep it in my pocket till then”
“I suppose you could but you mustn’t tell anyone and it might not work.”
“I won’t tell anyone. Can we try?” Thomas begged “Please!”
“Okay. We’ll try. Here, put it in your pocket. If it works then you only need to call me. You won’t need to come down here, I will hear you”
Thomas gave her a big grin and put the magic in his pocket. “I’ll try tonight”
He said goodbye to Ellie and went back to the house.

He went upstairs to his room and hid the magic in a box under his bed. Then he went back downstairs for breakfast.
“Good morning”she smiled at him as he went into the kitchen. What would you like for breakfast?”
“I’m not hungry” Thomas replied
His mother looked at him and asked if he was feeling okay. Thomas nodded and asked for a drink. He was very thirsty.
Later that morning his mother stood outside his bedroom door listening to Thomas talking to himself. It was not the first time she had heard him talking to himself and thought it was just a natural thing that kids do. She listened for a bit longer before she went in. “We are going to Aunt Sally’s”she said as she looked around the room. Thomas was sitting on the floor playing a game of snap. He had dealt for two people.
“Who were you talking to?”
Thomas turned around sharply at the sound of her voice and fiddle with the cards in his hand. “No one”
When Thomas turned back to the game, Ellie was gone.
“Well” his mother hesitated “Let’s get dressed and go”

They went shopping with Aunt Sally and had lunch in a café. Thomas enjoyed shopping with Aunt Sally and she always bought him a little toy. They had passed a store that sold crystals and ornaments of coloured dragons and tiny fairy figurines. Thomas stopped and looked in the window. “Can I have one of those little fairy statues Aunt Sally? The one with the blue and green wings”
Aunt Sally and his mother looked at each other. Thomas’s mother had told Aunt Sally about Thomas talking to himself and recalled the episode at the pond. His mother was worried about him but Sally had convinced her it was just a five year olds imagination. Now they weren’t so sure. It was one thing to dream up imaginary friends but they never expected him to want to have a statue of a fairy.
“Why do you want that statue?” Aunt Sally asked Thomas
“She looks like my friend” Thomas replied
Thomas walked out of the store clutching the little fairy in his hand.

The moon was full that night. Thomas looked out the window at the big yellow ball shining brightly. He was determined to go there. His mother came in and tucked him into his bed and kissed him goodnight. She looked at the fairy statue sitting on his bedside table; the moonlight giving it an ethereal look and it worried her. She closed the door quietly as she left the room. Thomas waited a little while and when he was sure she had gone back downstairs he reached under the bed and pulled out the box. He hoped there was enough magic left to take him to the moon.
This time Ellie did not come. Instead, the same hand that came out of the pond reached for Thomas and attached to the hand was an ogre, the ugliest thing Thomas had ever seen. When it spoke, it made a gurgling noise and Thomas cringed.
“So, you want to go the moon? I’ll take you there” the ogre said reaching out and grabbing Thomas. Thomas felt himself floating before he could say he had changed his mind. He wanted Ellie but she never answered him. Thomas soon realised that the ogre wasn’t taking him towards the moon but down, way down, further than he ever thought possible. They were in a dark cave and Thomas couldn’t see anything. Still further down they went, the ogre cackling to himself and hanging on to Thomas as if he was going to crush him.
“Where are we going? I don’t want to go down here!. I wanted to go to the moon! Take me home!” Thomas screamed. He tried to wriggle free but it was impossible and he started crying but the ogre ignored him and kept going. Soon Thomas could see a light in the distance and he was getting hot. “I don’t want to be here! I don’t want to be here!”
The light got brighter and Thomas could see figures dancing around a fire. He saw a funny looking red man who had horns on his head and a tail. Thomas knew instantly who he was. He had seen pictures of him in books. “Mummy said he wasn’t real”. Thomas thought “Where is Ellie? Ellie! Ellie!” Thomas screamed. “I want to go home. I don’t like this place, take me home!”
“Thomas. Wake up!” his mother shook him. Thomas was sweating and he had wet the bed. His eyes flew open and his mother could see the fear in them. “You must have had a bad dream” She said. “Come and sleep in my bed for the night” She helped Thomas change and then he climbed into her bed and cuddled her. He felt hot and clammy but he soon fell asleep.

***

Thomas started school and everything seemed to be fine until one morning his mother got a call from the school. The school principal wanted to talk to her and she arranged to see him that same afternoon. After she had spoken with him and picked Thomas up from the playground she went straight home. She was not in a good mood. “How dare he suggest Thomas has a problem! Who does he think he is?” she thumped the steering wheel as she drove. “Ogres, goblins devils and fairies”. Then she smiled, remembering herself as a young girl and the tales she used to tell. “So what if Thomas does the same,” she thought. “It can’t harm anyone.” She soon changed her mind about that when two nights later she heard Thomas in his room, talking incessantly. It was late and he should have been asleep hours before. She slowly opened the door and peeked in. Thomas was staring at the moon. She quietly spoke his name but he didn’t respond to her, he seemed to be in some kind of trance and there was no one else in the room.

This time Ellie came and Thomas was thrilled to see her. “Why didn’t you come the other day?” he asked “It was horrible. I never want to go there again.”
“Thomas” Ellie said, “It’s what you are thinking at the time that counts. You must not think of things like that. Now, concentrate. Think of the man in the moon and take my hand”
Thomas felt himself floating through the night sky. Stars twinkled at him and further on, meteors with colourful tails sailed by. As he got closer to the moon, he could see the face of the man in the moon. It seemed to cover the whole surface of the moon and he was smiling. Thomas didn’t know what to expect and wondered where they were going to land without hurting the man in the moon. Suddenly the man in the moon opened his mouth, it was huge and Thomas could feel himself being dragged towards it, then into it. Down the man in the moon’s tongue he slid. It seemed to go on forever and he cried out, “Ellie! I don’t like this! Make it stop! Make it stop!”
“Think of something else,” Ellie replied, “Hurry up!”
Further down they went. Thomas tried hard to think of something else but his stomach was churning and he felt sick. “Ooh, I’d rather sit on his nose” Thomas thought. The next moment they were sitting on the man in the moon’s nose. Thomas felt a bit better as he looked into the man in the moon’s eyes.
“You have done me out of my dinner” the man in the moon said. “But that is okay Thomas”
“You know my name?” Thomas asked
“I know all little boys and girls name” the man in the moon said “I watch over you every night”
“Do you eat many chidren?” Thomas asked
The man in the moon laughed. “No, only those that think about it”
“See, I told you” Ellie said “You have to be careful of what you think”
Thomas looked around. He could see the world way of in the distance. “I live there” he said “I’d like to go back now”
He could feel himself being picked up gently and placed back in his bed. He saw his mother standing over him. “Thomas, are you okay” he heard her say
“Yes. I am fine mummy. I was just talking to the man in the moon”

Thomas’s mother decided to take him to the doctor the next day and have him checked out even though he seemed to be fine in the morning. She had sat and watched him the rest of the night. It was the second time she had noticed he was hot and sweaty and he had her really worried. She thought of the incident in the pond and the trouble he had gotten into at school. She related it all to the doctor and he did some tests. He couldn’t find anything wrong with Thomas physically, so he also took blood tests and said he would ring her as soon as the results came back. She took Thomas home and kept him from school that day.
Two days later the doctor rang with the results, they were negative. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with Thomas at all” he said. “Best just keep an eye on him and if it occurs again, you ring me no matter what time of the day or night.”
She thanked the doctor and hung up.
That same night, Thomas took the box out from under his bed. There was only a little magic left so he would have to go back into the garden and find Ellie, but he waited until early morning before he went.

It rained during the night and the grass was wet when Thomas went down the garden path. He saw a hedgehog and chased after it but it crawled under a hawthorn bush, Thomas was dissappointed. Soon enough Ellie joined him and together they put more magic in the box. “Mmm,” Ellie said, “There is quiet a lot of magic there this time.”
“That doesn’t matter does it?” Thomas asked. “ I can have more fun then, can’t I?”
“I’m not sure you should have that much”
Thomas didn’t listen and put the lid back on his box. “I better go and hide it before mummy sees it”
He said goodbye to Ellie and went back inside.
He didn’t want breakfast again and his mother didn’t know what to do with him. A couple of times now he had gone without breakfast and she had noticed his lunch box came home still half full. He had not been eating much at school either, although he did eat a fair amount at dinnertime. She sighed and started to clear away the dishes.

The room was full of light. The brightest Thomas had ever seen and in the light she stood. She was beautiful and she seemed to be floating above him. Her wings were golden and her halo shimmered as she reached out her hand. Thomas wasn’t afraid, she seemed nice and he reached out his hand to touch hers. “There will be no going back if you come with me Thomas” she whispered gently. “You will be with me always”
Thomas couldn’t think. He wanted to touch her and feel her soft long hair. He felt like he was being drawn towards her, part of him wanted to call out for his mother and yet the compelling feeling he felt to go with the angel was overpowering. Then Ellie was beside him. “Too much magic Thomas. I can’t help you now. If you take her hand you will never see me again.”
Pulled between the two of them, Thomas tried to think of something else but this time it wasn’t working. The presence of the angel was too powerful and Thomas reached out and touched her fingertips.

Thomas’s mother looked in on him on her way to bed. She opened the door quietly, and she could see Thomas lying on the bed, his eyes were open. She crossed over to him and her heart thumped rapidly. His eyes were open and yet there seemed to be no life in them. She reached out and touched him with trembling fingers, he didn’t respond. She turned and raced downstairs to the phone. First she rang the ambulance and then her doctor. She ran back upstairs, clutching the railings for support as her body wanted to collapse, all the time wondering what was wrong with him. The doctor hadn’t been able to find anything. The loss of appetite and his high temperature had revealed nothing; then again he had seemed fine when she did take him to the doctor’s.
The ambulance arrived and an officer informed her Thomas was still breathing but only just. The doctor arrived a few minutes. He conferred with the ambulance officers before they put Thomas in the ambulance. Turning to Thomas’s mother he said. “Go with them. I will meet you at the hospital”
She climbed into the ambulance, shaking and tearful.
It seemed like an eternity to get to the hospital. One of the officers had radioed ahead to have the emergency team stand by. They were met at the hospital by a team of doctors and nurses who whisked Thomas away quickly. It was a long night.

As he reached for the angels fingers Thomas could faintly hear his mother calling his name. He tried hard to answer her but she didn’t seem to hear him. He felt the softness of the angel’s fingers just as he also felt his body being picked up and carried away.
The light in the room wasn’t as bright as before and he could see faces with masks on. A doctor stood over him: “Thomas, Can you hear me? Just nod if you can hear me”
Thomas nodded his head slowly.
“You’re gonna be fine” the doctor said “you are a very lucky little boy”
Thomas’s mother stayed with him all through the night. She never let go off his hand. She slept in the chair beside his bed and was woken early next morning by her doctor. Thomas was still asleep and he looked pale.
“What happened to him?” she sobbed, “What caused this?”
“Come and have a coffee with me. Thomas will be fine. Come on” the doctor said taking her by the arm. She followed the doctor to a staff room and he made coffee for her then sat next to her on a couch.
“Tell me about Thomas,” he said, “What does he like to do? Where does he play? Does he go to friend’s houses to play?’
Thomas’s mother shook her head. “Thomas only plays at home, in the garden. He likes the garden, although after the episode in the pond I don’t let him out there without me”
“You’ve never noticed anything strange about Thomas’s behaviour?”
She related how Thomas had a loss of appetite sometimes and how she had heard him talking to himself. She even told him about the statue of the fairy Thomas had asked his aunt to buy for him.
“I’d like to come and have a look in your garden. Can we go there now? Thomas will be fine and it won’t take long”
“Why has this happened?” she asked again
“I’ll explain after I have checked your garden”

They walked down the garden path; new spring blosoms were out in all their glorious colours. “Nice garden you have” the doctor said. Soon they came to the pond. The doctor looked around searching the ground. Soon he bent down and picked up something and held it out for her to see. “
“Here is your culprit”. he said handing it to her “psilocybe baecystis, commonly called panther cap. It is a hallucigenic mushroom. Causes high fever, loss of appetite. Also it increases the heart rate. I would say Thomas has tried them, mistaking them for normal mushrooms and has eaten a few too many this time. When the trip starts there is no way to control it or stop it and a bad trip can be unpredictable. Thomas is one very lucky little fellow”.
“So all this time when Thomas was talking to himself he had been eating these “mushrooms” Thomas’s mother replied. “But I have been watching him and he hasn’t been in the garden without me”
“Let’s go back and take a look in his room shall we?’
They went back inside and went up to Thomas’s room. Thomas’s mother and the doctor looked around the room. The doctor picked up the little fairy.
“Thomas said she looked like his friend when my sister bought it for him” Thomas’s mother said.
The doctor replaced it and continued to look around. He bent down and looked under the bed. Pulling out Thomas’s magic box, he opened it and found tiny brown pieces of the mushroom. “I think we are going to have to educate Thomas a bit more about his garden, don’t you think?” he said handing the box to Thomas’s mother.