The Twisted Ones

by Scott Cawthon

  All the eyes were tracking her. The creatures were moving, their skin stretching organically, their mouths snapping. Charlie ran for the dining table in the center of the room, the largest one with a tablecloth that almost reached the floor on all sides. She slid to the ground and crawled under it, curling herself into a ball and pulling her legs tight against her. For a moment, there was only silence, and then the voices began again. Hello? a voice called from somewhere nearby. The tablecloth rustled.

  Charlie held her breath. She looked at the thin gap between the tablecloth and the floor, but she could see only a sliver of the black-and-white tile. Something shot by, too fast to see, and she gasped and drew back, forgetting to be silent. The cloth rustled again, swinging gently inward. Someone outside was prodding it. Charlie maneuvered herself onto her hands and knees, feeling as if she had too many arms and legs. The cloth moved again, and this time a swirl of color appeared and vanished in the gap. The children. They had found her. The tablecloth swung again, but now it was moving on all sides, jouncing up and down as the children brushed against it. The strange, colorful trails of movement appeared and vanished all around the edges of her hiding place, surrounding her like a wall of living paper dolls.

  Hello? Hello? Hello? More than one spoke at a time now, but not in a chorus. Their voices overlapped until the word became a meaningless layer of sound, blurred like the floating children themselves.

  She turned her face to the side. One of the children stared back—it was under the cloth and gazing at her with a fixed grin and motionless eyes. Charlie jumped up, banging her head on the tabletop. She looked around wildly. She was surrounded: a smiling, blurry face was staring at her from every side. One, two, three, four, four, four. She turned in an awkward circle on her hands and knees. Two of the children feinted at her, making little jumps as if they were about to spring. She turned again, and the next one leaped at her, swimming under the cloth in a bright streak of blue and yellow. Charlie froze. What do I do? She scrabbled at her sluggish brain, trying desperately to revive it. Another sweep of color whooshed at her, all purple, and her brain awoke: RUN.

  Charlie scrambled to the tablecloth on her hands and knees and grabbed it, yanking it off the table as she stood. She threw it down behind her and ran, not looking back as someone called again, Hello?

  She raced toward a sign propped up in the middle of the room, knocking it over behind her as she ran past. Then a shadow near the stage caught her attention, and she swerved. She tripped over a chair and just barely managed to catch herself on another table. Her head was still too heavy. It jerked her forward, and she shoved the table aside, managing to stay upright. She arrived at the stage, and in the shadow there was a door.

  Charlie fumbled with the knob, but it was spongy, too soft to turn. She grabbed it with both hands, putting the whole force of her body behind it, and it moved at last: the door opened. She hurried through and slammed it shut behind her, feeling for some kind of latch. She found one and snapped it shut, and as she did her hand brushed a light switch.

  A bulb flickered for a moment, then came on dimly, a single glowing strand of orange illuminating the room. Charlie stared at it for a minute, waiting for the rest of the light. No more appeared.

  She leaned back against a cabinet beside the door and slid down to sit, putting her hands on her temples and trying to shove her head back to a normal size. The relative darkness steadied her. She stared down at the floor, hoping whatever was happening to her was almost over. She looked up, and the room shifted nauseatingly. It’s not over. Charlie closed her eyes, took a deep breath of the stale air, and opened them again.

  Fur. Claws. Eyes. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. A jolt of adrenaline cut briefly through the fuzziness. The room was full of creatures, but she couldn’t make sense of them. The dark fur of a simian arm lay on the floor, inches from her feet, but out of it spilled coils and bare wire. The rest of the ape was nowhere to be seen.

  There was something large and gray right in front of her, a torso with arms and webbed, amphibious hands, but there was no head. Instead, someone had balanced a large cardboard box where the neck would have been. Past the torso were standing figures, a phalanx of shadows. As she stared at them, they resolved into something comprehensible. They were unfinished mascots, as distorted as the ones outside.

  A rabbit stood at the back. Its head was brown like a jackrabbit and its ears were swept back, but its eyes were just empty holes. The rabbit’s body was hunched to the side, and its arms were short, held up as if in surrender. Two metal frames stood in front of it. One was headless, and the other topped with the head of a red-eyed, slavering black dog, whose fangs stuck out from its mouth. Charlie kept her eyes on it for a moment, but it didn’t move. Beside it—

  Charlie cringed and ducked her head, covering her face with her arms. Nothing happened. Cautiously, she lowered her hands and looked again.

  It was Freddy—the misshapen Freddy that had been buried. Charlie glanced at the door, then back at Freddy. He stared straight ahead, his eyes blank and his hat askew. It can’t be him, she told herself. It’s just another costume. But she shrank back, trying to make herself smaller.

  Something delicately stroked the top of her head. Charlie screamed and yanked herself away. She turned to see a disembodied human arm on the shelf above where she’d been sitting. Its hand stuck out at just the right height to brush her head. Other arms were stacked beside it and on top of it, some covered in fur and others not. Some had fingers, some simply ended, cut off at what would have been the wrist. The other shelves were stacked with similar things: one with pelts of fur, another with piles of detached feet. One just had dozens of extension cords tangled up in an ugly nest.

  From outside the door Charlie heard the voice again. Hello? The doorknob rattled. She squeezed past the mutilated arcade games and chopped-off parts, gritting her teeth as she crawled over soft things that squelched beneath her weight. As she stepped back, her shoulder crashed into one of the standing metal frames, the headless one. It rocked on its ungrounded feet, threatening to topple. She tried to pull away, but the frame followed, swaying for a moment as she fought to free her hands. She yanked them back and ducked as more metal frames came crashing to the ground.

  She squatted down beside one of the large arcade cabinets. The plastic casing was cracked so badly the words and pictures were entirely obscured. Right beside her, inches away, were Freddy’s stocky legs. Charlie huddled down, pressing against the game as if she could blend in with it. Don’t turn around, she thought, eyeing the motionless bear. The dim light seemed to be moving like a spotlight. It glinted off the dog’s red eyes, then the gleaming tusk, then off something sharp-cornered at the back of the rabbit’s hollow socket.

  Just out of her line of sight, something moved. Charlie whipped her head around, but there was nothing there. From the corner of her eye, she saw the rabbit straighten its spine. She turned frantically back toward it but found it hunched in its same agonized posture as before. Slowly, Charlie looked around her in a half circle, keeping her back pressed against the console.

  Hello? The doorknob rattled again. She closed her eyes and pressed her fists to her temples. No one’s here, no one’s here. Something rustled in front of her, and Charlie’s eyes snapped open. Scarcely breathing, she watched as Freddy came alive. A sickly twisting sound filled the room, and Freddy’s torso began to turn. Hello? Her eyes shifted to the door for a split second, and when she looked back again Freddy was still. I have to get out of here.

  She took a moment to measure the path, looking first to the door, then to Freddy in front of her, mapping a blurry route. At last she went, looking down at her hands and nothing else as she crawled steadily around the motionless legs of the standing animatronics, and past the half-bestial games. Don’t look up. Something brushed against her leg as she passed it, and she pressed on, her head down. Then something grabbed her ankle.

  Charlie screamed and flailed, t
rying to kick herself free, but the iron grip tightened. She looked frantically over her shoulder: Freddy was crouched behind her, the light glinting off his face and making him seem to smile. Charlie yanked her foot back with all her strength, and Freddy pulled even harder, dragging her closer. Charlie grabbed the leg of a pinball game and hoisted herself up to her knees. As Freddy tried again to drag her back, the game shook and rattled like it was about to fall. Clutching at it with all her might, Charlie jerked her body up and forward. Freddy’s claws tore her skin as she wrenched herself free, and the pinball machine collapsed under her weight.

  Freddy lurched forward. That horrible mouth unhinged again like an enormous snake. He crouched down, coming toward her in a sinuous motion. She scrambled over the broken game toward the door. Behind her, something rustled and scraped, but she didn’t look back. Her hand on the doorknob, Charlie stopped as the room around her swayed. The noise behind her grew louder, closer, and she turned to see Freddy crawling toward her in a predatory crouch. His mouth was widening. Dirt poured out of it in a steady stream.

  “Hello? Charlie?” came a voice from outside. But this voice was different; it wasn’t the animatronic child. Charlie fumbled at the knob, the spinning sensation in her head worsening as Freddy came slowly, purposefully closer. The room swayed again, and her hand closed on the knob and turned it. She shoved the door open and stumbled into the light.

  “Charlie!” someone cried, but she didn’t look up. The sudden brightness was piercing, and she held up a hand to shield her eyes as she forced the door shut again. The ringing hadn’t stopped while she was in the closet, but now it was louder. It filled her ears like a skewer, plunging into her swollen brain. She fell to her knees, wrapping her arms around her head, trying to protect it. “Charlie, are you okay?” Something touched her, and she shied away, her eyes screwed shut against the light. “Charlie, it’s John,” the voice said, cutting through the awful noise, and something in her went still.

  “John?” she whispered, her voice raspy. The dust from the grave had settled in her throat.

  “Yeah.” She turned her head and peered up through the shield of her arms. Slowly, the blazing light calmed, and she saw a human face. John.

  “Are you real?” she asked, uncertain what kind of answer would convince her. He touched her again, a hand on her arm, and she didn’t pull away. She blinked, and her vision cleared a little. She looked up, feeling as if she were opening herself to attack. Her eyes lit on two more people, and her halting mind slowly named them. “Jessica … ? Clay?”

  “Yeah,” John said. She put her hand on his and tried to focus. She could see Jessica, who was doubled over, her hands over her own ears.

  “The noise,” Charlie said. “She hears the noise, too. Do you?” It grew louder, drowning out John’s response, and Charlie grabbed his hand. Real. This is real. “The children!” she cried out suddenly, as a swath of undulating colors rose from underneath the tables. They flew, their feet not touching the ground, their bodies leaving comet-like trails of color behind them. “Do you see?” Charlie whispered to John.

  “Jessica!” he shouted. “Look out!” Jessica straightened, dropping her hands, and yelled something indistinct. The children converged on her in a swarm, dancing around her, darting in close, then back out again, as if it were a game, or an ambush. Two rushed on Clay, who stared them down until they shriveled and swirled back to join the circle around Jessica.

  “The lights!” Jessica cried, her voice rising above the painful ringing noise. “Clay, it’s coming from the lights on the walls!” She pointed up, where Charlie could just make out a long row of decorative colored lights, evenly spaced.

  A gunshot cut through the clamor, and Charlie gripped John’s hand tighter. Jessica’s hands were on her ears again. The children were still in motion, but it was a nervous, shimmering movement. They’d stopped in place. Clay stood with his back to them all, his gun pointed at the wall. Charlie watched, wide-eyed, as he took aim again, and shot out the bulb of the second light fixture. The room dimmed slightly, and he moved on to the third, then the next, then the next. As one shot rang out after another, Charlie’s head began to equalize, like whatever stuff had filled her to the point of bursting was slowly being drained. The room darkened, one bulb at a time. Bang. She looked up at John, and his face was clear. “It’s really you,” she said, her voice still choked with dust. Bang.

  “It’s really me,” he agreed.

  Bang.

  The children’s shimmering slowed, giving glimpses of arms and legs and faces. Jessica took her hands from her ears.

  Bang.

  Clay shot the last light, and the children stopped shimmering. They wavered briefly on the edge of solidity, a sickening ripple of lights in a scattered harmony, and then they were still. The room was silent. It was still lit by the overhead lights, but all the others were dead. Jessica looked around her, bafflement and horror taking turns on her face. The children were no longer children. They were wind-up toys, plastic boys in striped shirts, wearing plastic smiles and propeller beanies, and offering balloons.

  “Jessica, come here,” Clay said in a low voice, holding out his hand. She stepped toward him, glancing warily at the balloon boys as she moved between them. He took her hand to help her through, as if he were pulling her out of a chasm. Charlie slowly let go of John’s hand and put hers to her temples, checking to make sure everything was still there. Her head no longer ached; her vision was clear. Whatever had come over her was gone.

  “Charlie,” Jessica said. “Are you all right? What’s going on in here? I feel … drugged.”

  “These things aren’t real.” Charlie steadied herself and slowly got to her feet. “I mean, they’re real, but not how we’re seeing them. This whole place is an illusion. It’s twisted somehow. Those things …” She gestured toward the wall where Clay had shot out the lights. “Those things are like the disc we found. They emit some kind of signal that distorts how we see.” Charlie shook her head. “We have to get out of here,” she said. “There’s something worse here than these.”

  She pushed over a balloon boy, and it toppled easily. Its head popped off as it hit the ground, and it rolled across the floor. Hello? it muttered, much quieter than before.

  John prodded the plastic balloon boy’s head with his toe. It rolled a little farther, but did not speak again.

  “Charlie?” Jessica said shakily. “Where are they? The big ones.”

  “I don’t know. My head is still spinning.” Charlie glanced around quickly, then drew closer to the others as they surveyed the room. Everything had changed when Clay shattered the fixtures. The realistic beasts and vicious-looking creatures were gone, replaced with strange, hairless versions of themselves. They no longer had eyes, only smooth, raised bumps of blank plastic.

  “They look like corpses,” John said softly.

  “Or some kind of mold,” Clay said thoughtfully. “They don’t look finished.”

  “It’s the lights,” Charlie said. “They were creating an illusion, like the chip.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jessica said. “What chip?”

  “It’s—it’s some kind of transmitter, embedded in a disc,” Charlie said. “It scrambles your brain, cluttering it with nonsense so that you see what you expect to see.”

  “Then why don’t they look like that?” Clay pointed to posters on the walls depicting a very cheerful Freddy Fazbear with rosy cheeks and a warm smile.

  “Or that.” John had found another, depicting Bonnie jovially strumming a bright red guitar so shiny it looked like it was made from candy.

  Charlie looked thoughtful for a moment. “Because we didn’t come here first.” She walked toward the posters. “If you were a little kid and you saw the cute commercials, then saw these posters and toys and all that stuff, then I think that’s exactly what they would have looked like.”

  “Because you already have those images in your head,” John said. He tore the Freddy poster off the wal
l and stared at it momentarily before letting it fall to the ground. “But we know better. We know they’re monsters.”

  “And we’re afraid of them,” Charlie said.

  “And so we’re seeing them for exactly what they are,” John concluded.

  Clay went up to the arcade mascots again, his gun still drawn. He walked back and forth in front of the displays, looking at them from different angles.

  “How did you find me?” Charlie asked suddenly. “You showed up like the cavalry—just in time. How did you know I was here? How did you know any of this was here?”

  No one answered right away. John and Jessica looked to Clay, who was casting his eyes around the room purposefully; he looked like he was searching for something specific. “We followed …” He trailed off.

  Charlie looked at each of the three of them in turn. “Who?” she demanded. But just as she spoke, the closet door burst open, banging against the wall with a ringing clatter. The twisted Freddy who had taken Charlie came crashing out, his mouth still unhinged and swinging unnaturally. He was a nightmarish version of the Freddy they’d known as kids, with searing red eyes and the musculature of a monster. He turned his elongated head from side to side wildly, his jaw bouncing in place.

  “Run!” Clay yelled, waving his arms and trying to usher them together toward the door. Charlie was rooted to the ground, unable to take her eyes off the maw of the beast.

  “Wait!” Jessica cried suddenly. “Clay, these aren’t possessed like the others—they’re not the lost children!”