She finally came to a brick wall and sprinted around it to the front of the apartment. Clay was at the door already. He banged against it and impatiently peered into the nearest window. No one answered; no one was inside.
A scream cut through the night, and Charlie froze. It was high-pitched and human, reverberating off the walls of the houses. It came again. Clay aimed his light in the direction of the sound.
“We missed someone!” he shouted. He darted around the side of the house, running blindly back across the field. The scream seemed to be in motion, making its way rapidly toward the black trees.
“Over here!” Charlie cried, breaking from behind Clay and running toward an indistinct movement in the dark.
“Charlie!” John’s voice cut distantly through the night, but Charlie didn’t wait for him. The sound of gravel under her feet was deafening. She came to an abrupt stop, realizing she’d lost her bearings. “Charlie!” someone yelled in the distance. The rest was lost in the rustle of the trees as a night wind swept through. She tried to keep her eyes open as grains of sand pelted her face. Then the wind finally calmed, and there was another rustle of branches nearby, this one unnatural. Charlie stumbled toward the sound, holding her arms in front of her until she could see again.
Then it was there. Just at the edge of the tree line, a misshapen figure stood hunched in the darkness. Charlie stopped short a few yards away, struck still, suddenly aware that she was alone. The thing lurched to the side, then stepped toward her, revealing a sleek snout. A wolf’s mane ran over the top of its head and down its back. It was stooped over, one arm twisted downward while the other flailed up. Perhaps its control over its limbs was uncertain. It was looking at Charlie, and she met its eyes: they were piercing blue and self-illuminating. Yet while the eyes held a steady light, the rest of the creature was in flux, morphing in a disorienting fashion even as she watched. One moment it was a groomed and agile figure covered in silver hair, the next a tattered metal framework, partly coated in rubbery translucent skin. Its eyes were stark white bulbs. The creature flinched and convulsed, finally settling on its crude metal appearance. Charlie drew in a sharp breath, and the wolf broke its stare.
It spasmed alarmingly, doubling over. Its chest split open, folding outward like a horrid metal mouth. The parts made a grinding, abrasive sound. Charlie stifled a scream, rooted to the spot. It lurched again, and something fell from inside it, landing solidly on the ground. The wolf toppled forward beside it, shuddered, and went still.
“Oh no.” Clay arrived from behind Charlie, staring at the human body that lay writhing in the grass.
Charlie remained motionless, captivated by the wolfish pinpoints of light that stared back at her. The thing tucked its head down, suddenly flowing again with a silver mane. It folded its long, silken ears, and slunk backward, disappearing into the woods. There was a rustling in the trees, and then it was gone.
No sooner had Jessica arrived than Clay was forcefully shoving the light into her hands. “Take it!” Clay knelt by the body doubled over in the grass and checked for a pulse. “She’s alive,” he said, but his voice was hard. He bent over her, looking for something else.
“Charlie!” It was John, tugging at her shoulder. “Charlie, come on, we have to get help!”
John took off running and Charlie followed more slowly, unable to take her eyes off the woman who seemed to be dying on the ground. Clay’s voice faded into the darkness behind them.
“Miss, are you all right? Miss? Can you hear me?”
Professor Treadwell seemed restless. Her face was calm as ever, but as the students worked, she paced back and forth across the auditorium stage, the heels of her shoes making a repetitive click. Arty poked Charlie, nodded toward the professor, and quickly mimed screaming. Charlie smiled and turned back to her own work. She didn’t mind the sound. The professor’s sharp, regular steps were like a metronome, marking the time.
She reread the first question: Describe the difference between a conditional loop and an infinite loop. Charlie sighed. She knew the answer; it just seemed pointless to write it down. A conditional loop happens only when certain conditions she started, then scratched it out and sighed again, staring out over the heads of the other students.
She could see the face of the wolf again, shimmering back and forth between its two faces: the illusion and the frame beneath it. Its eyes stared into her own, as if reading something deep inside her. Who are you? Who were you supposed to be? she thought. She had never seen it before, and it worried her. Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza didn’t have a wolf.
Charlie had a near-photographic memory, she’d realized last year. It was the reason she had such recall of even her early childhood. But she didn’t remember the wolf. That’s silly, she told herself. There’s plenty you don’t remember. And yet her memories of her father’s workshop were so strong: the smell, the heat. Her father bent over his workbench, and the place in the corner where she didn’t like to look. It was all so present within her, so immediate. Even the things she didn’t remember without prompting, like the old Fredbear’s Family Diner, had been instantly familiar as soon as she’d seen them. Yet these creatures had no foothold in her memory. She didn’t know them, but they clearly knew her.
Why were they entombed in the back of the house like that? Why not just destroyed? Her father’s deep attachment to his creations had never outweighed his pragmatism. If something didn’t work, he dismantled it for parts. He had done the same with Charlie’s own toys.
She blinked, suddenly recalling.
He held it out to her, a little green frog with horn-rimmed glasses over its bulging eyes. Charlie looked at it skeptically.
“No,” she said.
“Don’t you want to see what he does?” her father protested, and she crossed her arms and shook her head.
“No,” she mumbled. “I don’t like the big eyes.” Despite her protests, her father set the frog on the ground in front of her and pressed a button hidden beneath the plastic at its neck. It rotated its head from side to side, then suddenly leaped in the air. Charlie screamed and jumped back, and her father rushed to pick her up.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s okay,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean for it to startle you.”
“I don’t like the eyes,” she sobbed against his neck, and he held her for a long moment. Then set her down and picked up the frog. He put it on his workbench, took a short knife from the shelf, and sliced its skin along its entire length. Charlie clapped a hand over her mouth and made a small, squeaking sound, watching wide-eyed as he carelessly peeled the green casing off the robot. The plastic split with a loud cracking noise in the quiet workshop. The frog’s legs kicked helplessly.
“I didn’t mean it,” she said hoarsely. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it! Daddy!” She was speaking aloud, but it was mostly air. Her voice was somehow constrained, like in dreams where she tried to scream, but nothing came out. Her father was intent on his work and didn’t seem to hear her.
The stripped-down robot lay prone before him on the bench. He prodded it and it made a horrible twitch, its back legs kicking out uselessly, repeating the motion of its leap into the air. It tried again, more frantically, like it was in pain.
“Wait. Daddy, don’t hurt him,” Charlie mouthed, trying and failing to force out the sound. Her father selected a tiny screwdriver and began to work at the frog’s head, deftly unscrewing something on each side. He removed the back of the skull to reach inside. Its whole body convulsed. Charlie ran to her father’s side and grabbed his leg, tugging at the knee of his pants. “Please!” she cried, her voice returning.
He disconnected something, and the skeleton went completely limp. Joints that had been stiff collapsed into a slump of parts. The eyes, which Charlie had not even noticed were lit, dimmed, flickered, and went dark. She let go of her father and moved back into the recess of the workshop, putting both hands over her mouth again so that he would not hear her cry as he began to methodically dismantle
the frog.
Charlie shook her head, pulling herself back to the present. The child’s guilt still clung to her, like a weight in her chest. She gently pressed her hand there. My father was pragmatic, she thought. Parts were expensive, and he didn’t waste them on things that didn’t work. She forced her mind to the problem at hand.
So why would he have buried them alive?
“Buried who alive?” Arty hissed, and she turned, startled.
“Shouldn’t you be busy doing something?” she said hastily, mortified to have spoken aloud.
The creatures had been buried in a chamber like a mausoleum, hidden in the walls of the house. Her father hadn’t wanted to destroy them for some reason, and he had wanted them nearby. Why? So he could keep an eye on them? Or did he even know they were there? Did Dave somehow hide them there without his knowledge? She shook her head. It didn’t matter. What mattered was what the creatures were going to do next.
She closed her eyes again, trying to envision the wolflike creature. She’d only seen it for that moment, as it disgorged the woman inside it and hovered between states, its illusion flickering like a faulty lightbulb. Charlie held on to the image, kept it frozen in her mind. She’d been fixated first on the victim, then on the wolf’s eyes, but she had still seen the rest of it. Now she pictured the scene, ignoring the wolf’s gaze, ignoring the panic that had seized her, the others shouting and running around her. She watched it happen again and again, picturing the chest sliding open one toothlike rib at a time, then the woman falling out.
She realized she had a better picture of the same thing stored away: the creature in the tomb, just before it tried to swallow her. She visualized its chest opening, searching her mind to see what lay beyond the hideous mouth, inside the cavernous chest. Then she bent her head over her exam book and began to draw.
“Time,” called one of the graduate students. The other three began to march up the aisles, collecting blue books one by one. Charlie only had half a sentence in answer to the first question, and it was crossed out—the rest of the book was a mess of mechanisms and monsters. Just before the teaching assistant reached her, she quietly tucked the book under her arm. She exited the row, blending in with the students who had already finished. She didn’t speak to anyone on the way out, drifting more than walking, focused on her own thoughts as her body carried her aimlessly down the familiar hallway. She found a bench and sat. She looked around at the passing students, chatting to one another or lost in thoughts of their own. It was as if a wall had risen up, circling only her, completely isolating her from everything around her.
She opened her book again, to the page where she’d spent her test time scribbling. There, staring back at her, were the faces she understood: the faces of monsters and murderers, with blank eyes that pierced right through her, even from her own sketches. What are you trying to tell me? She stood, clenching her book, then took one last look at her surroundings.
It felt as though she were saying good-bye to a chapter of her life, another passage that would become nothing more than a haunting memory.
“Charlie,” John’s voice said from nearby. She glanced around, trying to find him through the thick flow of students exiting the building.
She finally spotted him off to the side of the stairs. “Oh, hey,” she called and made her way over. “What are you doing here? Not that I’m not glad to see you, I just thought you had to work,” she added hastily, trying to settle the whirling thoughts in her head.
“Clay called me. He tried your dorm, but you were here I guess. The woman we … from last night. She’s going to be okay. He said he went to the next area, the next spot on the map, and drove around.” John glanced at the crowd of students streaming past them and lowered his voice. “You know, the next place they’re going to—”
“I know,” Charlie said quickly, forestalling the explanation. “What did he find?”
“Well, it’s a lot of empty space and fields mostly. One plot for future development, but it’s vacant. He thinks we should focus on tomorrow instead. He has a plan.” Charlie looked at him blankly.
“We’re going to have to fight them,” he said at last. “We both know that. But it won’t be tonight.”
Charlie nodded. “So what do we do tonight then?” she asked helplessly.
“Dinner?” John suggested.
“You can’t be serious.” Charlie’s tone dropped.
“I know there’s a lot going on, but we still need to eat, right?”
Charlie stared at the ground, collecting her thoughts. “Sure. Dinner.” She smiled. “This is all pretty awful. It might be nice to get my mind off it, even if just for an evening.”
“Okay,” he said, and shifted awkwardly. “I’m going to run home and change then. I won’t be long.”
“John, none of this has to involve you,” Charlie said softly. She gripped the straps of her backpack with both hands, as if they were tethering her to the ground.
“What are you talking about?” John looked at her, his self-consciousness gone.
“It doesn’t have to involve anybody. It’s me they’re looking for.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” he said, and put a hand on her shoulder. “You have to get that out of your head for a while. You’ll drive yourself crazy.” John smiled briefly, but he still looked worried. “Try to do something relaxing for a bit, take a nap or something. I’ll see you for dinner, okay? Same restaurant at seven?”
“Okay,” she echoed. He looked at her helplessly and gave a distressed smile, then turned and went.
* * *
Jessica was gone when Charlie got back to the dorm. She closed the door behind her with a sense of relief. She needed quiet. She needed to think, and she needed to move. She looked around, paralyzed for a moment. Her system of piling everything up as she used it was functional day-to-day, but when searching for something she hadn’t touched in weeks, the system broke down.
“Where is it?” she muttered, scanning the room. Her eyes lit on Theodore’s head, lying tumbled up against the leg of her bed. She picked it up and brushed off the dust, stroking his long ears until they were clean, if matted and patchy. “You used to be so soft,” she told the rabbit’s head. She set it on the bed, propped up on her pillow. “I guess I did, too,” she added and sighed.
“Have you seen my duffel bag?” she asked the dismembered toy. “Maybe under the bed?” She got down on her knees to check. It was there, all the way at the far side, crushed by a pile of books and clothing that had fallen through the space between the bed and the wall. Charlie wriggled under the bed until she could snag the strap, then dragged it out and set it on top.
It was empty—she’d dumped out the contents as soon as she arrived, a harbinger of the messy habits to follow. She grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste and zipped them into the bag’s side pocket.
“I lied to John,” she said. “No, that’s not right. I let him lie to me. He has to know it’s me they’re coming for. We all do. And this isn’t going to stop.” She picked up clothing from what she thought was the clean pile, pulling out a T-shirt and jeans, socks and underwear, and shoving them emphatically into her bag as she spoke. “Why else would they be coming in this direction?” she asked the rabbit. “But … how would they even know?” She threw two textbooks into the bag and patted her pocket, reassuring herself that the disc and the diagnostic keyboard were there. She zipped up the bag and tilted her head, meeting Theodore’s plastic eyes.
“It’s not just that,” she said. “This thing …” She measured the disc in her hand and studied it anew. “It made John sick. But it sings a song to me.” She broke off, unsure of what that meant about her. “I don’t know if I’ve ever known anything with quite such certainty,” she said quietly. “But I have to do this. Afton made them. And Afton took Sammy. When I was with John, I could feel … something in the house. It had to be him; it was like the missing part of me was there, closer than it had ever been. I just couldn’t quite reach it. A
nd I think those monsters are the only things in the world that might have answers.”
Theodore stared back at her, unmoved.
“It’s me they want. No one else is going to die because of me.” She sighed. “At least I have you to protect me, right?” She slung the bag over her back and turned to go, then paused. She grabbed Theodore’s head by the ears and held him up to her own eye level. “I think today I need all the support I can get,” she whispered. She shoved him into her bag, then hurried out of the dorm to her car.
The map was in the glove compartment. Charlie took it out and spread it in front of her, glancing at it momentarily then putting it away with confidence. She drove slowly out of the lot. Though she passed people and other cars on her way, she felt as though she was just part of the background, unseen to the world. By the time she and her car slipped out of sight, she’d already be forgotten.
* * *
The sky was cloudy; it gave the world a sense of waiting. It seemed like Charlie had the road to herself, and peacefulness overtook her. She’d been preoccupied with isolation today, but the speed and openness were comforting. She didn’t feel alone. The tree line seemed to race across the field when she watched it from the window, an illusion made by the speeding car. She began to feel as though there were something in the woods matching her speed, darting through the blur of branches, a silent companion, someone coming to tell her everything that she ever wanted to know. I’m coming, she whispered.
The street dwindled from a highway to a country road, then to a gravel path. It rose up a long hill, and as Charlie slowly ascended, she could see clusters of houses and cars in distant, more populated areas. She turned a corner and left it all behind: there were no more houses, no more cars. The rows of trees had been replaced with lines of stumps and piles of brush, accompanied by the occasional blank billboard that, presumably, would someday announce what was to come. Slabs of concrete and half-paved driveways interrupted the countryside, and an abandoned bulldozer sat in the distance. Charlie took Theodore’s head from her bag and set it on the passenger seat.
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