“Someone needs to stay with it. I’ll keep my distance. I promise. I won’t disturb … it.”
“Okay.” Like Jessica, John hesitated for a moment. Then they left Charlie alone in the empty lot. After a minute, she heard the engine start, and the noise of the car faded as they drove off down the empty streets. She sat at the top of the mound where she had uncovered the misshapen bear and gazed down at it.
“What do you know?” she whispered. She stood and paced slowly over the other two plots of disturbed soil, wondering what lay beneath. The bear was frightening, misshapen, an imitation of Freddy created by someone else. It was a strange variation, into which her father had never breathed life. But William Afton—Dave—did. The man who designed these things was the same man who had stolen and murdered her brother.
A thought surfaced, a question that had visited her many times before: Why did he take Sammy? Charlie had asked herself, the wind, and her dreams that question endlessly. Why did he take Sammy? But she had always meant, Why not me? Why was I the one who lived? She stared down at the soil beneath her, envisioning the bear’s strange, embryonic face. The children murdered at Freddy Fazbear’s had lived on after death, their spirits lodged somehow inside the animatronic costumes that had killed them. Could Sammy’s spirit be imprisoned somehow, behind a large, rectangular door?
Charlie shivered and stood up, suddenly wanting to put as much distance as possible between her and the twisted Freddy buried in the soil. The image of his face came to her again, and this time it made her skin crawl. Did the other two mounds hide similar creatures? Was there a malformed rabbit hidden in the dirt just there? A chicken clutching a cupcake to its grotesque chest? But the thing that tried to kill me—tried to envelop me—it was designed to kill. There could be anything buried down there, waiting for nightfall. She could look, dig up the other two mounds to see what lay slumbering beneath. But as soon as she thought it she could almost feel the lock of metal hands on her arms, forcing her inside that deathly, cavernous chest.
Charlie took a few deliberate steps back from the mounds, wishing just a little that she had allowed Jessica to stay.
* * *
“How has your visit with Charlie been?” Jessica asked in a conspiratorial tone as they made the final turn out of the development and onto the main road.
John didn’t take his eyes off the road. “It’s been fun to see her again. You, too,” he added, and she laughed.
“Yes, you’ve always loved me. Don’t worry, I know you’re here to see her.”
“I’m here for a job, actually.”
“Right,” Jessica said. She turned and looked out the window. “Do you think Charlie’s changed?” she asked abruptly.
John was silent for a moment, picturing the bedroom Charlie had turned into a scrap heap and Theodore, ripped apart and strewn in pieces. He thought of her tendency to retreat into herself, losing whole minutes as if she were stepping briefly out of time. Do I think she’s changed?
“No,” he said finally.
“I don’t think she has, either.” Jessica sighed.
“What did you find at Freddy’s?” John asked.
“Dave,” Jessica said plainly, waiting for a moment before looking at John. “Right where we left him.”
“And you’re sure he was dead?” John looked down.
Jessica swallowed hard, suddenly seeing the body again. She pictured the discolored skin and the costume that had sunken into his rotting flesh, fusing the man to the mascot in a grotesque eternity.
“He was dead all right,” she said hoarsely.
The gas station was just up ahead. John parked in the small lot and got out of the car without waiting for Jessica. She followed at his heels.
“What a dump.” Jessica spun, marveling at the surroundings. “Surely there was a better place to …” Jessica stopped short, suddenly seeing the teenage boy behind the counter. He was staring into space, watching something just behind them and to the left.
“Excuse me,” John said. “Do you have a public phone?” The boy shook his head.
“No, not public,” he said, gesturing to it.
“Could we use it? Please?”
“Customers only.”
“I’ll pay for the call,” John said. “Look, this is important.” The boy looked at them, his eyes finally focusing, as if only just registering their presence. He nodded slowly.
“Okay, but you have to buy something while she makes the call.” He shrugged, helpless against the rules of management.
“John, just give me the number,” Jessica said. He dug it out of his pocket and handed it to her. As she went behind the counter, John scanned the shelves impatiently, looking for the cheapest item available.
“We have Popsicles,” the kid said.
“No, thanks,” John said.
“They’re free.” He pointed at the cooler.
“Well, how’s that going to help me if they’re free?”
“I’ll let it count as a purchase.” The boy winked.
John clenched his jaw and lifted the lid of the cooler, jerking slightly at the sight of the taxidermy coyote hidden inside.
“Brilliant. Did you stuff that yourself?” he asked loudly.
The boy laughed, a sudden, snorting sound. “Hey!” he yelled as John grabbed the carcass by the head and yanked it out of the cooler. “Hey! You can’t do that!” John marched to the door, out into the parking lot, and hurled the dead thing into the road. “Hey!” The boy screamed again and ran out into the street, disappearing into a cloud of dust.
“John?” Jessica hurried out from around the counter. “Clay’s on his way.”
“Great.” He followed her out to the car.
* * *
Charlie was still walking in circles, glancing up at the horizon every few seconds. She felt like a sentry, or the keeper of a vigil. She couldn’t stop imagining the animatronics buried there, whatever they were. They weren’t in boxes, not even shielded from the dirt; it would sink into their every pore and joint, it would fill them. They could open their mouths to scream, but the relentless dirt would just flow in, too fast for sound to escape.
Charlie shivered and rubbed her arms, looking up at the sky. It was turning orange, and shadows from the weeds began stretching out across the ground. Giving the mounds a sideways glance, she walked with deliberate steps to the other side of the lot where the only telephone pole with wires stood. They hung down from it like the branches of a weeping willow, dragging in the dirt. As Charlie got closer she saw small, dark shapes by its base. She approached slowly: they were rats, all lying stiff and dead. She stared down at them for a long moment, then whirled, startled, at the sounds of cars.
John and Jessica had returned, and Clay was just behind them. He must have already been in the area.
“Watch out for that pole,” Charlie said by way of greeting. “I think the wires are live.”
John laughed. “No one touch the wires. Glad you’re okay.”
Clay didn’t speak; he was busy examining the patches of dirt. He walked around them as Charlie had, peering at them from every angle, then finally came to a stop when he’d made a full circle. “You dug one of these up?” he asked, and Charlie could hear the strain behind his level voice.
“No,” John said hastily. “We just uncovered part of it, then covered it back up.”
Clay looked down again. “I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse,” he said, his eyes still on the mounds.
“It looked like Freddy,” Charlie said urgently. “It looked like a strange, misshapen Freddy. There was something wrong with it.”
“What was wrong?” Clay asked gently. He looked at her with serious eyes.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said helplessly. “But there’s something wrong with all of them.”
“Well, they’re murdering people,” Jessica offered. “I’d count that as something being wrong with them.”
“Charlie,” Clay said, still focused on her, “If you c
an tell me anything else about these things, then now’s the time. We have to assume that, as Jessica told me over the phone, they’re going to kill again tonight.”
Charlie dropped to her knees in the place where they had dug up the twisted Freddy, and began digging again.
“What are you doing?” John protested.
“Clay needs to see it,” she muttered.
“What in the …” Clay inched forward to study the face, then took a long step back to observe the disturbed plots of earth, measuring the size of the things buried at their feet.
“We have to evacuate these buildings,” John said. “Otherwise, what are we going to do when these things get up? Ask them to go back to bed? There aren’t that many apartments in this area that actually have people living in them. There’s only one building in the whole block,” he said, pointing, “maybe two, that looked occupied.”
“Okay, I’m going to go check it out and see who’s home. Keep watch over these things.” Clay studied the row of buildings and made his way toward them.
“So we wait,” John said.
Charlie continued watching the skyline. Dark clouds were rolling over the sun, making it appear as though night had fallen early.
“Do you hear that?” Jessica whispered.
Charlie knelt beside the metal face half-buried in the ground and turned her ear to it. “Charlie!” John startled. She lifted her head and stared at the face again. It had changed from one moment to the next. Its features had smoothed over, become less crude. She looked up at John, her eyes wide. “It’s changing.”
“Wait, what? What does that mean?” Jessica said, looking horrified.
“It means something is very wrong,” he said. Jessica waited for him to explain.
“We’re not at Freddy’s anymore,” was all he offered.
Clay returned from across the field.
“Everyone into the car,” he said.
“My car?” Charlie asked.
Clay shook his head. “Mine.” Charlie was about to protest, but Clay gave her a stern look. “Charlie, unless your car has a siren and you’ve had high-speed pursuit training, stand down.” She nodded.
“What did you tell them?” Jessica asked suddenly.
“I told them there was a gas leak in the area,” Clay said. “Scary enough to get them out, not so scary as to start a panic.” Jessica nodded. She looked almost impressed, like she was taking mental notes.
They piled into Clay’s car, Jessica quickly claiming the front seat, though Charlie suspected that she just wanted to leave her alone next to John. The cruiser sat at the edge of the lot, as far from the mounds as they could be without edging onto the road. As the sun sank below the horizon and the final streaks of light bled away into darkness, a single streetlight flickered on. It was old, the light almost orange, and it sputtered at intervals, as if it might fail at any moment. Charlie watched it for a while, empathizing.
John was busy staring out across the field, unblinking, but as the hour passed he began to slouch in his seat. He let out a yawn, then quickly brought himself back to alertness. An elbow poked him in the ribs and he turned to find Charlie with a mess of wires in her lap, studying something carefully. “What are you doing?” he asked, then turned his gaze back to the field.
“I’m trying to see what exactly this thing does.” Charlie had the metal disc firmly in her hand. It was the one they’d wrestled from the monster that day. She was trying to connect it properly to the diagnostic tool’s small keypad and display.
“Okay, John, don’t puke on me.” She smiled, her finger ready to flick the switch.
“I’ll do my best,” he grumbled and tried to concentrate on the dimly lit field.
“What is that?” Jessica whispered.
“We found it inside the animatronic that attacked us today,” Charlie was eager to explain. Jessica leaned in closer to see. “It emits some kind of signal; we don’t know what it is.”
“It changes what those things look like.” John turned his head from the window with a nauseated look.
“It changes our perception of what they look like,” Charlie corrected.
“How?” Jessica seemed captivated.
“I’m not sure yet, but maybe we can find out.” Charlie dug her nail into the groove and pulled the switch. “Ugh, I can hear it already.”
John sighed. “And I can feel it.”
“I can’t …” Jessica tilted her head to listen. “Maybe I can. I don’t know.”
“It’s very high-pitched.” Charlie was busy turning small knobs on the handheld display, trying to get a readout from the device.
“It gets into your head.” John rubbed his forehead. “This morning it almost made me sick.”
“Of course,” Charlie whispered. “It gets into your head.”
“What?” Jessica turned toward her.
“These readings looked nonsensical at first. I thought something was wrong.”
“And?” John said impatiently when Charlie suddenly went silent.
“In class we learned that when the brain is overstimulated, it fills in gaps for you. So, say you pass a red hexagonal sign on the road, and someone asks you what words were on it. You’d say ‘STOP.’ And you’d imagine that you saw it. You’d be able to picture that stop sign the way it should have been. That is, of course, if you were properly distracted and didn’t notice an obviously blank sign. This thing distracts us. Somehow it makes our brains fill in blanks with previous experiences, the things we think we should be seeing.”
“How does it do that? What’s in the actual signal?” John glanced back again, only half listening.
“It’s a pattern. Sort of.” Charlie leaned back, letting her arms relax, the device cradled in her hands. “The disc emits five sound waves that continuously vary in frequency. First they match one another, then they don’t; they go in and out of harmony, always on the edge of forming a predictable sequence, then branching away.”
“I don’t understand. So, it’s not a pattern?” John said.
“It’s not, but that’s the whole point. It almost makes sense, but not quite.” Charlie paused, thinking for a moment. “The tone fluctuations happen so fast that they’re only detected by your subconscious. Your mind goes mad trying to make sense of it; it’s immediately overwhelmed. It’s like the opposite of white noise: you can’t follow it, and you can’t tune it out.”
“So the animatronics aren’t changing shape. We’re just being distracted. What’s the purpose of that, though?” John had turned away from the window, giving up the pretense of ignoring the conversation.
“To earn our trust. To look more friendly. To look more real.” As the possibilities stacked up, a grim picture began to form in Charlie’s mind.
John laughed. “To look more real, maybe. But they certainly don’t strike me as friendly.”
“To lure kids closer,” Charlie continued. The car got quiet.
“Let’s just focus on getting through the night, okay?” Clay said from the front seat. “I can’t call this in as is. Right now it’s just buried junk in a field. But if you’re right, and something starts moving out there …” He didn’t finish. John leaned against the car door, propping his head against the window so he could keep watching.
Charlie leaned her head back, letting her eyes close for just a few moments. Across the field, the orange bulb continued to flicker with a hypnotic pulse.
* * *
Minutes passed, and then almost another hour. Clay glanced at the teenagers. They had all fallen asleep. Charlie and John were awkwardly leaning on each other. Jessica had curled up with her feet on the seat beneath her and her head resting on the narrow window ledge. She looked like a cat, or a human who was going to wake up with neck problems. Clay shrugged his shoulders up and down, seized with the odd alertness he always felt when he was the only one awake. When Carlton had been a baby, he and Betty would take turns getting up with him. But while Betty had been exhausted by it, barely making it through t
he following day, Clay had found himself almost energized. There was something about walking through the world when no one else was stirring. It made him feel as if he could protect them all, as if he could make everything all right. Oh, Betty. He blinked, the orange streetlight suddenly shimmering as his eyes moistened. He took a deep breath, regaining control. There was nothing I could say, was there? Unbidden, the memory of their last conversation—their last fight—reared in his mind.
“All hours of the night. It’s not healthy. You’re obsessed!”
“You’re as consumed by your work as I am. It’s something we have in common, remember? Something we love about each other.”
“This is different, Clay. This worries me.”
“You’re being irrational.”
She laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “If you think that, then we’re not living in the same reality.”
“Maybe we’re not.”
“Maybe not.”
The light changed. Clay glanced around, fully focused on the present again. The orange streetlight was fading, the flickering growing faster. As he watched, it gave a final heroic burst and went dark.
“Damn it,” he said aloud. Jessica stirred in her sleep, making a small protesting noise. Quietly, but quickly, Clay exited the car, grabbing the flashlight from its place beside his seat. He closed the door and started toward the mounds, his frantic light shaking out across the field until it disappeared.
Charlie roused. Her heart was racing, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the sudden awakening, or from the remnants of a dream she could no longer recall. She shook John.
“John, Jessica. Something’s going on.” Charlie was out of the car and running before they could answer, heading toward the mounds. “Clay!” she called. He jumped at the sound of her voice.
“They’re gone.” Charlie gasped, stumbling on the upturned earth. Clay was already running toward the apartment nearest him. “Go back to the car,” he barked over his shoulder. Charlie ran after him, glancing back, trying to spot John and Jessica. Charlie’s eyes weren’t adjusted yet and Clay’s flashlight seemed to sink into the darkness ahead of him. Charlie could only follow the sounds of his footsteps as he charged through the shallow grass.
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