Charlie smiled broadly, and Jessica drew back, her head pressing painfully into the brick wall. Charlie’s smile grew wider and wider, elongating impossibly, then suddenly her lips were split at the middle as a wide seam appeared, bisecting her face from top to bottom. Jessica shrank back, curling in on herself instinctually, and as she did Charlie seemed to grow taller, her limbs segmenting at the joints like a moveable doll. Her features slowly paled and faded away, replaced by the iridescent, clown-painted metal face they had just been able to make out in Clay’s pictures.
“Do you like my new look?” Charlie asked, her voice still soft and human. Jessica inhaled shudderingly, afraid to speak. The creature Charlie had become looked at her searchingly. For an instant, an acrid, chemical scent filled the air, then Charlie moved swiftly toward Jessica, and the world went dark.
I can’t see.
Jessica closed her eyes and opened them again, but the darkness remained. She tried again, realizing with a rising panic that she could not move. The air stank of something rotten, turning her stomach, and she forced herself to breathe deeply. I’ll stop noticing it if I breathe. She tried again to move, testing to see what was restraining her. She was confined in a sitting position: Her wrists were tied together behind her, her arms pulled uncomfortably around the back of a wooden chair and her ankles bound to its legs. She pulled against the restraints, almost tipping the chair over as she struggled to free herself, but she could not break away. Then there was light.
Jessica stopped moving. She blinked in the sudden brightness, her vision resolving. Charlie’s imposter stood in the light of the window, revealed in her true form: She was undeniably an animatronic, but she was nothing like any other Jessica had ever seen. She was human-size—the same size as Charlie—modeled on a human woman, of sorts, her bifurcated face painted with rosy cheeks and a bright red nose, and her enormous, round eyes were rimmed with long, black lashes. She even had hair, two silky orange pigtails sprouting from the sides of her head, gleaming unnaturally in the light—Jessica couldn’t tell what her hair was made of. She was wearing a red-and-white costume—or rather the metal segments of her body were painted to look like a costume; at her waist, a red skirt stuck out playfully. She was standing very still, and she was staring straight at Jessica. Jessica froze, afraid to breathe, but the creature just tilted her metal head to the side, watching. Her animatronic face looked familiar, but she still felt fuzzy and couldn’t recall where she’d seen it.
“I don’t suppose you’d give me a hand with these?” Jessica lifted her feet the quarter inch the restraints would allow. The animatronic smiled.
“No, I don’t suppose I would,” she said, her voice alarmingly unchanged. Jessica shrank back, revolted at the sound of her friend’s voice coming from this singular new creature.
“Who are you?” Jessica asked.
“I’m Charlie.”
Jessica looked around the dimly lit room helplessly. Apart from the chair, the only object she could see was a gigantic, old-fashioned coal-burning furnace, with a warm orange glow emanating from the thin vents in its door.
“At least,” the creature began, “part of me is Charlie.” She held her hand out in front of her, studying it. Jessica looked up and suddenly it was Charlie standing in the light of the window, looking confused and innocent. “It’s strange,” the animatronic said. “I have these memories. I know they don’t belong to me; and yet at the same time, they do.” She paused, and Jessica returned to wrestling with the knots. “I know that they don’t belong to me because I don’t feel anything when they come to mind. They are just there, like a long road you walk on, lined with billboards of things happening somewhere else.”
“Well, what do you feel?” Jessica muttered, trying to drag out the conversation as her survival instincts kicked in.
The animatronic girl’s eyes darted toward her. “I feel … disappointment,” she said, her voice growing more tense. “Desperation.” She looked out the window. “A father’s disappointment, and a daughter’s desperation,” she whispered.
“Henry?” Jessica gasped. The girl looked back at her.
“No. Not Henry. He was more brilliant than Henry. I watched my father work from a distance, a great, great, distance.” Her voice trailed off. Jessica waited for her to go on, half forgetting that she was trying to escape. “I see everything clearly now,” the animatronic continued. “But in my memories … things were much simpler, which made it so much more painful. Now I know that people are all fading, fragile, inconsequential. But when you are a child, your parents are everything: They are your world, and you don’t know anything else. When you are a little girl, your father is your world. How tragic and miserable such an existence is.” Jessica felt a wave of dizziness and looked up to see that the animatronic now appeared as the clown again, but the image passed. Suddenly, it was Charlie in the light, but the moment’s disruption in the illusion was enough to remind Jessica of where she was—and that she had to get away.
The animatronic girl stood beside the only window in the room. There was a door nearby; she was closer to it than the animatronic, not that she could count on outrunning her. What else am I going to try? Tentatively, keeping her eyes fixed on her captor, Jessica started working her wrists back and forth, trying to loosen the rope that held her. The girl watched, but did not move to stop her, so Jessica kept going.
“That’s the flaw, and the greatest sin of humanity,” the girl said. “You are born with none of your intelligence, but all of your heart, fully capable of feeling pain, and torment, but with no power to understand. It opens you up to abuse, to neglect, to unimaginable pain. All you can do is feel.” She studied her hands again. “All you can do is feel, but never understand. What a sick power it is that you are given.”
The ropes only seemed to tighten as Jessica pulled at them, and Jessica felt tears of frustration pricking at her eyes. No wonder she doesn’t care if I try to escape, she thought bitterly. If I could just see the knots … She stopped moving and took a deep breath, then closed her eyes. Find the knot. Ignore the robot. Jessica fumbled with her right hand, searching for the end of the knot, bending her wrist painfully. At last, she found the end of the rope and grasped it: the rope tightened, but she inched her fingers along until she came to the base of the knot, then began to carefully push the end of the rope up through the final loop.
“I wanted so desperately to have been the one on that stage, but it was always her. All of his love went into her.”
“You’re talking about Afton.” Jessica stopped, and Charlie nodded confirmation. “William Afton never made anything with love,” Jessica snarled.
“I should rip you in half.” Charlie’s appearance flashed, the animatronic’s face and body seeming to break, then reassemble in an instant. For a moment her expression wavered, a vulnerability showing on her face, but she quickly collected herself. “She was his obsession.”
The animatronic twisted her hair around her fingers. “He worked on her day and night, the clown baby with bright orange pigtails. Petite enough to be sweet and approachable, but large enough to swallow you whole.” She laughed.
Jessica pulled the rope a last time: She had managed to undo the first knot. Breathing heavily with the effort, Jessica opened her eyes: The animatronic had not moved from the window—she seemed still to be watching with a kind of amused interest. Jessica gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, and started on the next knot.
“I wanted to be her,” the girl whispered. “The focus of his attention, the center of his world.”
“You’re delusional.” Jessica snickered as she struggled with the rope, trying to keep her distracted. “You’re a robot; you’re not his child.”
The animatronic pulled a chair away from the wall, and sat with a pained expression. “One night I snuck out of bed to see her. I’d been told not to a hundred times. I pulled the sheet away. She was gleaming bright, beautiful, standing over me. She had happy red cheeks and a lovely red dress.”
Jessica paused in her work, confused. Who is she talking about?
“It’s odd, because I remember looking down at the little girl as well. It’s strange seeing through both sets of eyes now. But as I said, one is no more than a data tape, a record of my first capture, my first kill.” The animatronic’s eyes flared bright in the darkness. “The little girl approached me and pulled the sheet away. I felt nothing; it’s no more than a record of what happened. But there is feeling, my feeling as I pulled the sheet away, and stood in awe before this creature my father loved, this daughter he had made for himself. The daughter who was better than me, the daughter he wished I had been. I wanted to be her, so badly.” Charlie’s appearance faded, revealing the painted clown, and Jessica sighed as a wave of nausea and dizziness passed over her again. “So, I did what I was built to do,” the girl said, and stopped talking. The room was silent.
When the last knot slipped loose and the rope fell to the floor, Jessica’s eyes popped open in surprise. She leaned forward, moving her numb, tingling arms down to her ankles as she watched the girl, who simply continued to observe her. Jessica undid the knots that held her ankles quickly—they were looser, done carelessly, and she put her feet flat on the floor, her stomach fluttering. Time to run.
Jessica ran for the door, propelling her wobbly knees and sore ankles through sheer force of will. There was no sound from behind her. She’s going to be right behind me! she thought wildly as she reached the door and turned the knob. She yanked it open with overflowing relief—and screamed.
Close enough to touch was a mottled face, swollen and misshapen. The skin looked too thin, and the bloodshot eyes, staring angrily at her, quivered as if they were about to burst. Jessica jerked away, stumbling back into the room. Her eyes darted to his neck, where two rusting lengths of metal protruded from his skin. He stank of mold: the furry suit he wore was covered in it, turning the cloth green, though as Jessica took in the whole of him, she knew it had once been yellow.
“Springtrap,” she breathed, her voice shaky, and his lips twitched into something that might have been a smile. Jessica ran to the chair she’d been tied to, putting it between them as if it would do any good, then horribly, Springtrap began to laugh. Jessica tensed, grasping the chair’s wooden back, ready to defend herself, but Springtrap just kept laughing, not moving from the spot where he stood. He cackled on and on, rising to an impossible pitch, then he broke off abruptly, his eyes snapping to Jessica. He shuffled closer, then, inexplicably, he began to caper in a grotesque dance as he sang in a thin, unsteady voice.
Oh, Jessica’s been caught
Oh, Jessica she fought
But now she’s going to die!
Oh my!
Jessica glanced at the animatronic girl in the corner, who looked away as though disgusted. Springtrap danced closer, circling Jessica as he repeated the verse, and she hefted the chair between them, watching for a chance to strike. Jessica tripped over her own feet trying to get out of his way. Even for him, this is insane. He danced closer and away, the words he sang degenerating into syllables of nonsense, interrupted by maniacal laughter. Jessica held the chair steady, ready to swing it. Suddenly, Springtrap froze in place.
Jessica’s arms wavered, and she set the chair down with a thud. Springtrap didn’t move, even his face was completely motionless. Like someone turned him off. She had barely finished the thought when his whole body went limp, collapsing on the floor with a clatter. He flickered, then Springtrap faded away, leaving in his place a blank, segmented doll. Jessica whirled to look at the animatronic girl: she was still watching without expression.
“Enough theatrics.” A rasping male voice came from the open door. “Jessica, isn’t it?” The voiced wheezed. She squinted, unable to make out anything in the dim light.
“I know that voice,” she said slowly. There was a whirring sound coming from the doorway, and soon Jessica could see something roll into the room, an automated wheelchair of some sort. He was dressed in what looked like white silk pajamas and a black robe of the same cloth, covering him from chin to toe, black leather slippers on his feet. Behind him, three IV bags hung from a wheeled stand, the tubes extending up under the sleeve of his pajama shirt. His head was bald, covered in ridged pink scars. Where there were no scars, there were strange pallets of plastic, molding, and metal, pressed into his head as though fused to it. He turned his head slightly and Jessica saw that while one eye was perfectly normal, the other was simply missing: the gaping socket was dark, and shot through with a thin steel rod that glinted in the light. He was painfully thin, the bones of his face visible, and as he gave Jessica a small, twisted smile, she saw tendons move like snakes beneath the surface of his skin. She had to fight to keep from retching.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
You’re William Afton, Jessica thought, but she shook her head, and he sighed, a rattling sound.
“Come here,” he said.
“I’ll stay where I am,” she said tightly.
“As you like.” He shifted his weight carefully, the wheelchair letting out a whir as it moved forward slowly. The animatronic girl started toward him and he waved her off, but the gesture threw off his balance, and for a moment he appeared as though he might fall to the side, but he gripped the arm of the chair with a pained expression, righting himself.
“So what was the dance routine for?” Jessica asked loudly, and he looked at her as though surprised she was still there. Then, he raised his hands to the knot on his robe, his fingers struggling clumsily to undo it.
“I thought you might like to see me as I was. A familiar face,” he said, and smirked. He held up a small disc in his hand and clicked it on. The blank doll on the floor suddenly looked as it had a moment ago, with the bloodied, duplicate William Afton stuffed inside the rabbit suit.
“Time changes all things,” he went on, clicking the disc off again. “As does pain. When I called myself Springtrap I was ecstatic with power, delirious over my newfound strength. But pain changes all things, as does time.” He opened his robe to reveal his torso.
At the center of his chest was a mass of twisted flesh, crossed with neat, diagonal lines of black stitching thread; rippling out from the wound were the marks of the spring-lock suit, some scarred over years before, and some scarcely healed, the skin a shiny, angry red. He raised a hand to the wad of stitches, careful not to touch it. “Your friend inflicted this new wound,” he said mildly, then bent his head slightly forward, calling her attention to his neck. She took an involuntary step closer, and gasped.
His skin was gone, she thought at first, the innards of his neck laid open to the air. But the blood … he’d be dead. Jessica took a long, slow breath, feeling light-headed as she tried to make sense of what she saw. The wound had been covered with something else, plastic, maybe: she could see where the surrounding skin had fused to it, healing red and ugly. Through the clear material, whatever it was, she could see his throat—she didn’t know enough about anatomy to name the parts, but they were red and blue, blocks of muscle and strings of veins or tendons. Wedged in among them were things that never belonged inside a human body; small scraps of metal, embedded in the tissue. There were too many to count. The man moved, and they glinted in the light. Jessica gasped, and he wheezed, clearly struggling to breathe with his neck turned the way it was. Something caught her eye as he moved, and she leaned in closer: she was almost touching him now, and the smell was awful: a noxious perfume of disinfectant. She peered through the clear shield and saw it: a spring, its coils wrapped tightly around what looked like three veins, the sharp ends plunged deep into red muscle tissue.
Jessica stepped back and almost tripped on the fallen mannequin that had been Springtrap. She kicked away the jumble of limbs, recovering her balance, and looked into the man’s mutilated face again.
“Yeah, I know you. Didn’t you used to be a mall guard?” she said. His fists clenched, and his eyes darkened with fury.
“Spare me. D
ave the guard was a character, one concocted on a moment’s notice to play you for a fool, you and your friends. It was insulting. It doesn’t take a great thespian to pretend to be an idiot night guard, as long as you can get around inconspicuously. I have not been inconspicuous for some time. It hardly matters now anyway, as this is all that’s left of me.” His voice gargled with despair.
“Come sit with me, Jessica.” The animatronic girl dragged his IV stand with one hand, helping him back to a corner, where more medical devices and a reclining chair awaited. Jessica eyed the door, bracing herself to move, when the quiet was broken by what sounded like a child’s scream in the distance.
“What was that?” Jessica said. “That sounded like a kid.”
The man ignored her and settled back into the furnished chair. The animatronic girl busied herself with the machines around him, attaching electrodes to his bare scalp and checking the IV bags. A monitor began to beep at slightly irregular intervals, and he waved his hand. “Turn that off. I can’t stand the sound of it. Jessica, come closer.”
Stay alive. Play along, Jessica thought to herself as she warily picked up the chair she’d been tied to, carried it over to the man, and sat. Jessica trained her eyes on the animatronic girl as she strode across the room, gripped a handle, and pulled a long table straight out of the wall as if they were going to view a body in a morgue. Jessica clasped her hand over her mouth as fumes of oil and burning flesh washed over her. There was something lying on the table, covered with a plastic sheet.
Jessica leaped up again and backed away. “What is this? Who did you murder now?” she demanded.
“No one new,” William spurted, almost as though he was trying to laugh. The plastic crinkled; something was moving inside.
“What have you done?” Jessica gasped.
The animatronic girl took a cotton ball from a bag nearby, wetted it from the bottle in her hand, and wiped it thoroughly up and down the metal fingers of one hand, then dropped it into a trash can at her feet. She took another piece of cotton and repeated the process, continuing over the surface of her hands and forearms up to her elbows. She’s sterilizing herself. Jessica turned to the man in the chair, keeping the girl in her peripheral gaze. Behind him the animatronic girl was sterilizing a scalpel, using the same care she had taken with her hands.
The Fourth Closet Page 12