In the later pages, he had tried to capture everything about her: the way she moved, the way she spoke. It was hard; the more time passed the more the memories would be John’s memory of Charlie and not Charlie, and so he had written down as much as he could, as fast as he could, starting three days after that night. There was the way she walked, self-assured until she realized someone was looking at her; there were the non sequiturs she tended to toss out every time she got nervous around people, which was often. There was the way she sometimes seemed to sink into herself, as if there were another reality going on inside her head, and she had stepped momentarily outside this one and into somewhere he could never follow. He sighed. How do you check for that? He flipped the notebook over: he had started a different set of thoughts from the back.
What happened to Charlie?
If the woman at Carlton’s party, the woman who had appeared so suddenly at the diner, was not Charlie, then who was she? The most obvious answer, of course, would be her twin. Charlie had always referred to a boy, but Sammy could easily be short for Samantha, and the memory Charlie had confided in him, of Sammy being taken from the closet, was a kidnapping, not a murder. What if Charlie’s twin was still alive? What if she had been not only kidnapped by Springtrap, William Afton at the time, but raised by him? What if she had been shaped and molded by a psychopath for seventeen years, primed with all the knowledge Springtrap could glean from Charlie’s life, and now she had been sent to take Charlie’s place? But why? What would be the point of that? Afton’s fixation on Charlie was disturbing, but he didn’t seem capable of anything so elaborate—or of caring for a human child long enough to brainwash her.
He had written out a dozen other possible theories, but when he read them over now, none really felt right: They either fell apart upon scrutiny, or, like the imagined Samantha, they made no real sense. And in all cases, he could not match them to the Charlie he had met earlier that night. Her sorrow and her bemusement had seemed so real; picturing her face now raised a dull ache in his chest. John closed the book, trying to imagine for a moment the situation reversed: Charlie, his Charlie, turning from him, insisting that he was not himself—that he, the real John, was dead. I’d fall apart. He would feel the way Charlie had looked tonight, pleading, hugging herself as if it was all she could do to hold herself in one piece. He lay back on the bed, holding the book to his chest, where it sat, heavier than its weight. He closed his eyes, clutching the book like a child’s toy, and as he drifted to sleep he heard the sound from Theodore’s head again: the whirring, and then the click.
* * *
The next day, John woke up late and filled with a rootless dread. He glanced at the clock, realized in a panic that he was late for work, and almost simultaneously recalled that there was no more work, a reality that would have consequences soon enough, but not today. All he had to do today was meet Charlie. The dread swelled again at the thought of it, and he sighed.
Late that afternoon, as he dug through his dresser for a presentable shirt, someone knocked at the door. John glanced at Theodore.
“Who?” John whispered. The rabbit didn’t answer. John went to the door; through the front window he saw Clay Burke standing outside staring at the door, apparently politely ignoring the fact that he could see right into John’s apartment if he wanted to. John sighed and slid the chain off the latch, then opened the door wide.
“Clay, hey. Come in.” Clay hesitated on the threshold, glancing at the interior that was too sparse to be a mess. John shrugged. “Before you judge, remember that I’ve seen your place look worse than this,” he said, and Clay smiled.
“Yes, you have,” he said at last, and came inside.
The noise from Theodore’s head started again, but John chose to ignore it.
“What is that?” Clay asked after a few seconds. John waited to answer, knowing the sound would stop soon, and after a moment it did, with the same click as before.
“It’s the rabbit head.” John smiled.
“Right, of course.” Clay looked toward the dresser, then back at John as though nothing was out of the ordinary. Considering what they’d been through in the past, it really wasn’t. “So, what can I do for you?” John asked before something stranger could happen. Clay rocked on his heels momentarily.
“I wanted to see how you were doing,” he said lightly.
“Really? Didn’t we have that talk yesterday?” John said drily. He stood again and grabbed a clean shirt from his dresser and went into the bathroom to change.
“Yeah well, you know, you can never be too sure,” Clay said, raising his voice to be heard. John turned on the faucet. “John, what do you know about Charlie’s aunt Jen?”
John turned the faucet off abruptly, jarred out of his petulant mood. “Clay, what did you say?”
“I said what do you know about Charlie’s aunt?”
John changed his shirt quickly and came back out into the bedroom. “Aunt Jen? I never met her.” Clay gave him a sharp look.
“You never saw her?”
“I didn’t say that,” John said. “Why are you asking me this now?” Clay hesitated.
“Charlie became very eager to see you again when I mentioned that you had seen Jen that night,” he said, seeming to choose his words with care.
“Why would Charlie care if I saw Jen or not? For that matter, why do you?” John reached past Clay to grab a belt hanging off the foot of the bed, and began to slip it through the loops of his jeans.
“It just made me realize that there is a lot we don’t know about that night,” Clay said. “I think your conversation with Charlie tonight can help fill in those gaps, if you ask the right questions.”
“You want me to interrogate her?” John laughed without humor. Clay sighed, frustration leaking through his habitual calm.
“That’s not what I’m asking, John. All I’m saying is, if Charlie’s aunt was there that night, then I’d like to ask her a question or two.” John stared at Clay, who just looked back at him placidly, waiting. John grabbed a pair of socks and sat down on the bed.
“Why are you suddenly coming to me, anyway?” he asked. “No one’s believed anything I’ve said so far.”
“It’s what we found at the compound,” Clay answered, more easily than John had expected. He straightened.
“The compound—you mean Charlie’s dad’s house?” Clay gave him a level look.
“I think we both know it was more than just a house,” he said. John shrugged and said nothing, waiting for him to go on. “Some of the things we found in the wreckage were … they didn’t mean much to anyone else, but what I saw—some of the things I saw down there were pretty scary, even though most of it was buried under concrete and metal.”
“‘Scary’? Was that the conclusion of your entire team, or just you?” John said, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Clay didn’t seem to hear him, his eyes fixed on a point between them. “Clay?” John said, alarmed. “What did you find? What do you mean, ‘scary’?”
Clay blinked. “I wouldn’t be sure how else to describe it,” he said. John shook his head. “I will say this,” Clay said harshly. “I’m not ready to close the book on the Dave/William Afton/whatever else he was calling himself—”
“Springtrap,” John said quietly.
“I’m not ready to close the book on that case,” Clay finished.
“What does that mean? You think he’s still alive?”
“I just think we can’t make any assumptions,” Clay said. John shrugged again. He was out of patience—out of interest, almost. He was sick of intrigue: Clay withholding information, trying to protect them—as if keeping secrets had kept any of them safe, ever.
“What do you want me to ask her?” John said plainly.
“Just get her to talk to you. It’s been wonderful having her here again, don’t misunderstand, but it seems like she’s holding something back. It’s like she’s—”
“Not herself?” John said with an edge of
mocking.
“That’s not what I was going to say. But I think she might know something she hasn’t told us yet—maybe something that she hasn’t felt comfortable sharing.”
“And she might feel comfortable sharing it with me?”
“Maybe.”
“That feels morally ambiguous,” John said wearily. From the dresser, the whirring noise started again. “See? Theodore agrees with me,” he said, gesturing toward the rabbit.
“Does it always do that?” Clay reached for the rabbit’s head, but before he could touch it, Theodore’s jaw snapped open and the head jerked in place. John startled, and Clay took a quick step back; they both watched, transfixed, as the sound went on, though the head did not move again. The sound it was making became a distorted murmur, louder and softer, at times almost mimicking words, though John could not even begin to make them out. After a few minutes, the head fell silent again.
“I’ve never seen it do that before,” John said. Clay was bent over the dresser, his nose almost touching Theodore’s, as if he could see inside.
“I need to go soon,” John said shortly. “I don’t want to be late, right? For this new open and honest relationship that I’m starting with her.” He made brief, accusing eye contact with Clay and went briskly to the door. “Don’t you need to lock it?” Clay asked as John brushed past him.
“It doesn’t matter.”
* * *
It was still light out when John got to St. George, and when he looked at the dashboard clock, John saw that he was over an hour early. He parked in the restaurant lot anyway and got out, glad for the opportunity to walk around and burn some nervous energy. He had avoided St. George, the town where Charlie and Jessica had been in college—Jessica probably still is in college, he thought with a pang of guilt. I should know basic stuff like this.
He walked past a few storefronts, heading semiconsciously for the movie theater he had been to with Charlie the last time he was here. Maybe we can go see a movie. After the dinner-and-interrogation. John stopped short on the sidewalk: The theater was gone. Instead, two gigantic clown faces grinned at him from the windows of a gleaming new restaurant. The faces were almost as large as the wide front door, painted on either side, and above them was a sign, in red and yellow neon letters: CIRCUS BABY’S PIZZA. The neon lights were on, glowing uselessly in the daylight. John stood motionless, feeling like his sneakers had fused to the parking lot. A group of kids rushed past him on their way in, and a teenager bumped into John, breaking him out of his daze.
“Just keep walking, John,” he muttered to himself, turning to move away, but he stopped again after only a few steps. “Just keep walking,” he repeated in a sterner tone, and turned to face the restaurant defiantly. He approached the front door and pushed it. It opened into an empty vestibule, a waiting area, where smaller versions of the clowns out front smiled crazily from the walls, and a second door read WELCOME! in painted cursive letters. There was a familiar smell in the air: some particular combination of rubber, sweat, and cooking pizza.
John opened the second door, and noise exploded. He blinked in the florescent lights, bewildered: Children were everywhere, screaming and laughing, and running across the floor, and the jingles and blips of arcade games sounded discordantly from around the room. There were play structures, something like a jungle gym to his left, and a large ball pit to his right, where two small girls were throwing brightly colored balls at a third girl, who was shouting something he could not make out.
There were tables set up in the center of the room, where he noticed five or six adults talking to one another. Occasionally they’d look over their shoulders at the chaos surrounding them, at the stage in back of the room, its red curtain closed. A chill went down his spine, and he looked around again with a terrible déjà vu at the playing children and complacent parents.
He started toward the stage, twice stopping just in time to avoid tripping over a game of tag. The curtains were brand-new, the red velvet plush and gleaming in the light, and trimmed with golden ropes and tassels. John slowed his pace as he got closer, the pit of his stomach tensing with an old, familiar dread. The stage floor was about level with his waist, and he stopped beside it and glanced around, then carefully grasped the thick curtain and began to pull it back.
“Excuse me, sir,” a man’s voice came from behind him, and John straightened like he’d touched a hot stove.
“Sorry,” he said, turning to see a man wearing a yellow polo shirt and a tense expression.
“Are you here with your children, sir?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. The shirt read CIRCUS BABY’S PIZZA, and he was wearing a name tag that read STEVE.
“No, I …” John paused. “Yes. Several children. Birthday party, you know. Cousins, so many cousins, what can you do?”
Steve was still looking at him with raised eyebrows.
“I have to go meet someone … somewhere else,” John said. Steve gestured to the door.
No!” Jessica cried in dismay as she wrangled her keys from the pocket of her fashionably too-tight jeans. An apple tumbled out of the paper grocery bag she was struggling to balance on her hip and rolled away down the hallway. It came to rest on the welcome mat of her worst neighbor, a middle-aged man who seemed capable of detecting the tiniest noise, then promptly complaining about it. In fact, since she moved in to the apartment six months ago, leaving behind the dorm room she and Charlie had shared, he had come to her door three times to complain about her radio. Twice it had not even been on. Mostly, he just glared at her whenever they passed in the hall. Jessica didn’t really mind the hostility; it was a little like being back home in New York. She left the apple where it was.
Having managed to get the door open, Jessica dropped the bags on the kitchen counter and looked around the room with a quiet satisfaction. The apartment wasn’t very fancy, but it was hers. When she first moved in, she had gone on a cleaning rampage, scouring out the baked-in dirt that must have been lining the baseboards since the building went up some fifty years ago. It had taken almost two weeks of nothing but scrubbing between classes and homework, and she went to bed every night with sore arms, as though she’d done nothing but weight training. But now the apartment was clean enough for Jessica—albeit just barely—which was no small bar to clear.
She began taking things out of the grocery bags, lining everything up on the counter before putting each item away. “Peanut butter, bread, milk, bananas …” she muttered to herself, then fell silent.
Something is wrong. She looked around the room carefully, but there was no one there and everything seemed to be where she’d last left it. She returned to the grocery bags.
As she closed the refrigerator door the hair at the back of her neck prickled. Jessica whirled around as though expecting to catch a burglar in the act, her heart jolting with adrenaline, but the room was still. Just to be sure, she went to check the door: it was locked, as expected. She stood in silence for a moment, listening to the distant sounds of her apartment complex—the hum of an air-conditioning unit outside, a leaf blower across the street—but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She stepped carefully back to the counter and finished putting away the groceries, then headed to her bedroom. She turned the corner to the hallway and screamed: a figure stood in the dark, blocking the way.
“Jessica?” said a familiar voice, and Jessica reached hastily for the light switch, tensed to run. The light flickered on slowly: it was Charlie.
“Did I scare you?” Charlie said uncertainly. “Sorry. The door was unlocked—I should have waited outside,” she added, looking down at her shoes. “I just figured since we used to be roomies anyway …”
“Charlie, you scared me to death,” Jessica said in a mock-scolding tone. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you I’m having dinner with John?” Charlie said, and Jessica nodded. “Could I borrow something to wear? Maybe you could help me pick something out?” Charlie looked hesitant, like she was asking an immense favor,
and Jessica gave her a puzzled frown.
“Yeah, sure, of course.” Jessica tried to calm herself. “But, Charlie—it’s not like you need my help choosing an outfit these days.” Jessica gestured at Charlie’s clothing: she was wearing her habitual combat boots—or a more elegant version of them—but she had paired them with a medium-length black skirt and a dark red, scoop-necked blouse. Charlie shrugged and shifted her feet.
“I just think—he might like me better if you help me pick an outfit, instead of me dressing myself, you know? John doesn’t seem to like my new look.”
“Well, Charlie …” Jessica stopped, choosing her words carefully. “It won’t do either of you any good to pretend nothing has changed,” she said firmly. “Wear what you have on, you look great.”
“You think so?” Charlie said, looking doubtful.
“Yeah,” Jessica said. She brushed past Charlie to go into her room, stepping cautiously past her, and Charlie followed, pausing in the doorway like a vampire waiting for an invitation. Jessica looked at Charlie and was suddenly set at ease, as if their friendship had never been interrupted. Jessica grinned. “So, I mean, are you nervous?” she asked, going to her dresser for her hairbrush, and Charlie came in and sat down on the bed.
The Fourth Closet Page 4