The Twisted Ones

by Scott Cawthon

  Her legs weren’t pinned in place as her arms had been. They’d simply been awkwardly positioned, wedged between metal rods that ran through the body of the mascot. Without the weight of her body resting on them, she was able to maneuver. Cautiously, Charlie lifted her right leg into the air, pulling it over the rod and into the center of the torso. Nothing triggered, and she did the same with her left.

  Her limbs freed, Charlie looked down the length of the animatronic, at the door to the chest cavity. The latch was on the outside, but these creatures were old; their parts were rusted and weak. She reached out and put her hands against the metal, feeling for springs and other devices. She couldn’t quite see from where her head was stuck, and she couldn’t move down safely. Unless.

  The dirt had piled up almost a foot on either side of her head, and it covered the lower half of her body. Charlie abandoned the door momentarily, and began to slowly move the dirt. She lifted her head slightly and brushed at the mound with her hands, pushing soil into the space she left. She rocked her body back and forth, using her hands to sweep dirt under her, until she lay on it like a thin bed. It wouldn’t protect her from the suit if she triggered it, but it would give her an extra cushion, make it slightly harder for her to jostle something and be skewered alive. She glanced at the arm of the suit that had been triggered, now filled with metal spines and hard plastic parts. A shiver went down her back.

  Now she inched down until she could see the chest plates, placed her hands in the center, and began to push upward with all her might. After a moment they came apart and a rush of dirt cascaded in. Charlie coughed and turned her head, but she kept pushing as the dirt rained down on her. She managed to get the plates a foot apart, then crouched beneath them and paused for a moment. How deep am I? she thought for the first time. If she’d been buried six feet down, she might be escaping only to suffocate in the home stretch. What else am I going to do? Charlie closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and held it. Then she pressed herself up to the doors and began to claw her way out of the grave.

  The dirt wasn’t packed tightly, but it still took effort: she scratched and scraped at it with her bare hands, wishing for a tool as her fingernails split and bled. As she hacked at the dirt, her lungs began to burn and clench, trying to get her to breathe. She scrunched her face up as hard as she could and scratched harder. Are you out there? I’m coming, but help me, please, I have to get out of this. Please, I can’t die here, buried ali—

  Her hand broke the surface, and she drew it back in shock. Air. She gasped gratefully until she no longer felt starved of oxygen. Then she closed her eyes and battered her fists at the tiny hole above her head, breaking the sides until it was large enough to wriggle through. Charlie stood up, her feet still planted in the chest cavity of the suit. There had been little more than a foot of dirt covering her. She braced her feet on the half-open doors and clambered out of the hole, hauling herself up. She collapsed beside it, shaking with exhaustion. You’re not safe yet, she scolded herself. You have to get up. But she couldn’t bring herself to move. She stared, horrified, at the hole she had escaped from, her face wet with tears.

  Time passed, minutes or hours; she lost track completely. Finally mustering her strength, Charlie pushed herself up to a sitting position, wiping her face. She couldn’t tell where she was, but the air was cool and still. She was indoors, and somewhere in the distance was the sound of rushing water. With the adrenaline gone, her head ached again, throbbing along with her heartbeat. It wasn’t just her head—everything hurt. She was covered in bruises, her clothing was stained with blood, and now that she wasn’t suffocating, she was aware again of the stabbing sensation in her rib cage every time she inhaled. Charlie prodded her ribs, trying to feel if anything seemed out of place. The bruises were already brightly colored, especially where parts of the suit had struck her, but nothing was broken.

  Charlie stood up, the pain receding enough to at least move and get her bearings. As she looked around, her blood went cold.

  It was Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.

  It can’t be. The wave of panic rose again. She glanced around wildly, backing up, away from the hole in the ground. The tables, the carousel in the corner, the stage—the tablecloths are blue. “The tablecloths at Freddy’s weren’t blue,” she said, but her relief was quickly washed away by confusion. Then what is this place?

  The dining room was larger than the one at Freddy’s, though there were fewer tables. The floor was black and white tile, except for large patches where the tiles were missing, revealing plots of packed dirt. It was oddly incongruous with everything else, which looked finished and brand-new, if dusty. As she turned to the opposite wall, she saw that she was being watched. Large plastic eyes stared back from the dark, glaring down at Charlie, seeming to identify her as an intruder. Fur and beaks and eyes stood poised like a small army halfway up the wall.

  For a long moment she stood stock-still, bracing herself. But the animatronics didn’t move. Charlie took a small step to one side, then the other; the eyes did not track her. The creatures looked forward, unseeing, at their fixed points. Some of their faces were animals, and some seemed to be painted like clowns. Others appeared disturbingly human. Charlie moved closer and saw what it was they were perched on. All along the wall, arcade games and carnival attractions were lined up, each with its guardian beast or a giant face mounted on top. Their mouths were wide open, as if they were all laughing and cheering some invisible spectacle. As Charlie peered through the darkness, she saw that the animals were unnaturally posed, their bodies twisted in ways no animal should be able to twist. She scanned the wide-mouthed faces again and shivered. With their bodies so torturously bent, they looked like they were screaming in pain.

  Charlie took deep breaths. As she calmed herself she realized that there was music playing through the speakers overhead. It was quiet; familiar, but she couldn’t name it.

  She approached the nearest of the games. A massive, contorted birdlike creature with a wide, curved beak presided over a large cabinet with a fake pond. Rows of ducks sat still in paper water, waiting for rubber balls to knock them down. Charlie looked up again at the creature perched on top of the game. Its wings stretched wide, and its head was thrown upward in the midst of an elaborate dance. It cast a shadow in front of the game, right where the player would stand. Charlie turned, not stepping any closer. Besides the duck pond, there were three arcade consoles lined up next to one another, their screens dusty. Three large chimpanzees squatted atop them, the tips of their toes gripping the edges above the screen. Their arms were raised, frozen in motion, and their teeth were bared in mirth, rage, or fear. Charlie stared for a moment at the teeth; they were long and yellow.

  Something about the arcade games nagged at her. She looked them up and down carefully, but nothing tripped her memory. None were turned on, and none of them were games she had ever seen before. She wiped the dust from the screen of the central console, revealing a glossy black screen. Her face, distorted in the curved glass, showed only a little bruising and a few visible cuts. Charlie self-consciously smoothed her hair.

  Wait. At Freddy’s Pizza, ghostly images had been burned into the arcade screens after years of play. She pressed a couple of buttons experimentally. They were stiff and shiny—untouched.

  “That’s why it feels so empty,” she said to the chimp above her. “No one’s ever been here, have they?” The great ape didn’t respond. Charlie glanced around. There was a doorway to her left, the bluish glow of an unseen black light emanating from the room beyond. Charlie went toward the light, through the door, and into another room of games and attractions. Here, too, they were all guarded by mascots, some more identifiable than others. Charlie staggered for a moment and put her hand on her forehead. “Strange,” she whispered, regaining her balance. She looked back the way she’d come. It must be the light making me dizzy, she thought.

  “Hello?” someone called faintly in the distance. Charlie whirled around as if someone had
shouted in her ear. She held her breath, waiting for it to come again. The voice had been high and scared, a child. The sudden impression of life in this place shook her, as if waking her from a dream.

  “Hello!” she called back. “Hello, are you all right? I won’t hurt you.” She glanced around the room. The sound of rushing water was louder here, making it hard to judge how far away the voice had come from. She moved quickly through the room, ignoring the wide-eyed creatures and the strange and garish games. A simple, skirted table in the corner caught her attention, and she went to it swiftly. Charlie crouched down, careful to keep her balance, and lifted the cloth. Eyes stared back at her and she startled, then steadied herself.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, flipping the cloth up over the table. The glimmer of the eyes faded with the rush of light. There was no one there after all.

  Charlie put her hands on her forehead and pressed hard for a moment, trying to ward off the growing pain in her temples.

  She went through another door, now unsure which way she’d come from, and discovered the source of the running water. Springing from the center of the wall to her left was a waterfall. It cascaded down over a rock face protruding several feet out, and joined with a riverbed below. The water rushed from a wide pipe only partly concealed by the rock. The stream below was maybe three feet wide. It crossed the room, splitting the floor in two, and disappeared into the open mouth of a cave.

  Charlie watched it for a moment, mesmerized by the water. After a moment, she noticed a narrow gap in the rock face behind the waterfall, just big enough for a person to walk through. “Hello?” Charlie called again, but only halfheartedly; here the white noise of the water was louder than anywhere else. She realized after a second that it was a recording, overpowering the sound of the actual water.

  She surveyed the rest of the room: except for the waterfall and the little river it was empty, but she noticed the floor had a gray border. No, it’s a path. It was narrower than a sidewalk, paved with square gray cobblestones. It ran alongside the curved wall, tracing the way to the waterfall, and led through a narrow passage under the fall itself. Charlie crouched down to touch the stones: they felt like hard plastic given a rough finish. The path was likely there for a time when the place would be filled with other attractions; she could probably just walk straight across the room. Probably.

  Charlie stepped onto the cobblestones carefully, expecting them to give way under her weight, but they held. The manufactured coarseness of the rocks’ surface was sharp—it hurt a little to walk on it. Charlie dutifully followed the walkway, keeping close to the wall. She had a vague sense that stepping off onto the open floor might be dangerous.

  When she reached the waterfall, she went to the gap and gingerly touched the rock surface. It was the same plastic as the cobblestones. Like the path, the cliff was hard plastic, solid, but because it looked like rocks it felt insubstantial when she touched it. Charlie took her hands away and wiped them on her jeans. She stepped carefully sideways, scooting through the hole behind the waterfall. The cavern was only a few feet long, but she stopped for a moment at the center. She felt trapped in the darkness, though she could see light on either side. Trapped. Her chest tightened, and she screwed her eyes shut. Calm down. Focus on what’s around you, she thought. Charlie took a long, steadying breath and listened.

  Standing beneath the waterfall, the tape recording was muffled. She thought she could hear the water itself, rushing over her head and spilling down in front of her, though she couldn’t see it. There was something else as well, quiet but distinct. From above her, or maybe behind, Charlie could hear the cranking of gears. A machine was churning the water, keeping it flowing in a giant cycle, making the whole thing work. The sound of the machine at work calmed her; the rising panic subsided, and she opened her eyes.

  She took another sideways step, moving closer to the light, and stubbed her toe on something hard. A shock of pain jolted her. The object tipped over, making a sloshing sound as it fell. Grinding her teeth, she waited a moment for her toe to stop hurting, then maneuvered herself into a crouch. It was a fuel can. For the waterfall, she realized as the machinery ground on overhead. There were several more, all neatly arranged along the wall, but this one had been in the middle of the path. If she had been going faster, she would have fallen over it. Charlie set it firmly beside the others, and stepped quickly into the other half of the room.

  “Hello?” The voice again, this time a little louder. Charlie stood up straight, immediately on alert. It had come from ahead. She didn’t respond this time but moved carefully toward it, staying on the path and keeping close to the wall.

  The hallway opened out into another room. The lights were dimmer here. In the corner opposite Charlie was a small carousel, but there seemed to be little else. Charlie scanned the room, and then her breath caught. The child was there, motionless, almost hidden in the shadows in the far corner of the room.

  Charlie approached slowly, apprehensive of what she might find. She blinked and shook her head hard, her dizziness resurging. The room seemed to spin around her. Who are you? Are you all right? she wanted to ask but kept silent. She stepped closer, and the figure came into focus. It was just another animatronic, or perhaps just a normal doll, made to look like a little boy selling balloons.

  He was perhaps four feet tall, with a round head and a round body, his arms almost as long as his stout legs. He wore a red-and-blue striped shirt, and a matching propeller beanie on his head. He was made of plastic, but his shiny face had something old-fashioned about it. Its features mimicked fairy-tale dolls carved from wood. His nose was a triangle and his cheeks were made rosy with two raised circles of dusky pink. His blue eyes were enormous, wide, and staring, and his mouth was open in a grin that bared all his even white teeth. His hands were fingerless balls, each gripping an object. In one he held a red and yellow balloon nearly half his size on a stick. In the other he raised a wooden sign reading BALLOONS!

  He was nothing like the creatures Charlie’s father had made, nothing even like the animatronics that had kidnapped her. They were horrible, but she recognized them as twisted copies of her father’s work. This boy was something new. She circled around him, tempted to poke and prod, but she held back. Don’t chance triggering anything.

  “You’re not so bad,” Charlie murmured, cautious not to take her eyes off him. He just kept grinning, wide-eyed, into the darkness. Turning her attention to the rest of the room, Charlie looked thoughtfully at the carousel, the only thing there besides the boy. She was too far away to make out the animals.

  “Hello?” said the voice, right behind her. She spun back just in time to see the boy turn toward her with a single, swinging step. Charlie screamed and ran back the way she came from, but beneath her feet the dirt began to stir. It jolted, as if something were bumping upward. She scrambled backward as the dirt rose again, and something broke through the surface.

  Charlie ran for the carousel, the only cover in the room. She ducked behind it, lying down on her stomach so her body would be hidden behind its base. She stared down at the ground and listened to muffled scratches and beating sounds as some creature climbed free of its grave. The spinning sensation took hold of her again. The black-and-white tiles swam beneath her. She tried to push herself up to peek over the carousel, but her head felt leaden. The weight of it held her down, threatening to pin her back to the ground. There’s something wrong with this room. Charlie gritted her teeth and yanked her head up; she scrambled to her feet, steadying herself against the carousel, and ran back the way she came, not looking back.

  The room with the games and the harsh black light was dizzying as well, and it sprawled out in all directions. Everything seemed farther apart than before, the walls miles away. Her mind was numb. She fumbled to remember where she was, unable to tell which way was which. She stumbled forward, and another mound of earth rose ahead of her. Something glimmered. Her eyes lit on the silhouettes of arcade machines, their reflective sur
faces acting as beacons in the dark.

  She staggered toward them, her head swaying, so heavy she could hardly stay upright. The walls were crawling with activity. Small things skittered disjointedly all over the ceiling, but she couldn’t see what they were—they were wriggling under the paint. The surface undulated chaotically. There was a strange ringing in the air, and though she only now registered it, she realized it had been sounding all along. She stopped in her tracks and looked desperately for the source, but her vision was clouding and her thoughts were slow. She could barely name the things she saw. Rectangle, she thought fuzzily. Circle. No. Sphere. She looked from one indistinct shape to another, trying to remember what they were called. The effort distracted her from staying on her feet, and she fell to the ground again with a hard thud. Charlie was sitting upright, but her head dragged at her, threatening to pull her over.

  Hello? A voice called again. She put her hands on her head, forcing it back, and looked up to see several children standing around her, all with plump little bodies and broad smiling faces. Sammy? She moved toward them instinctively. They were blurred, and she couldn’t see their features. She blinked, but her vision didn’t clear. Don’t trust your senses. Something is wrong.

  “Stay back!” Charlie screamed at them. She forced herself unsteadily to her feet and stumbled toward the shadows cast by the arcade towers. There, at least, she might be hidden from whatever worse things lurked in the room.

  The children went with her, rushing in trails of color around her and sweeping in and out of view. They seemed more to float than walk. Charlie kept her eyes on the towers; the children were distracting, but she knew there was something worse nearby. She could hear the sickening grind of metal, and plastic twisting, and a rasping noise she recognized. Sharp feet scraped against the floor, digging grooves into the tile.

  She crouched low, fixing her eyes on the nearest open door, and was struck with a certainty that this was the way she had come. She crawled desperately toward it, moving as fast as she could without fully standing. Finally, she collapsed under her own weight and lay flat on the tile again. You have to get up, now! Charlie let out a scream and clambered to her feet. She ran headlong into the next room, barely keeping her balance, and skidded to a stop. The room was full of dining tables and carnival games; it was where she’d started, but something had changed.