“Little man, I need you!”
Then Oscar jumped.
The air surrounding him smelled of steel and fire, and at first, he didn’t know what to make of the light. Was he in a hospital? Was he trapped under the train?
“Did I die?” he heard his voice in his ears, and it seemed detached from his body.
“Honestly, I don’t know how, but no,” said Raj, gulping at the air on the east side of the tracks, his body trembling hard enough for Oscar to feel the ground shaking under him. Or maybe that was the train. He could still hear the blare of the horn in the distance.
Oscar looked to Isaac, whose hands were on his knees as he closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.
“You’re an idiot,” he said.
“I know,” said Oscar.
But once the ground stopped vibrating and their legs stopped wobbling, they crept over to the part of the track where Oscar had played his most dangerous game of chicken.
There, twisted and flattened into the concrete ties and hardened soil underneath, lay the remains of one Plushtrap Chaser, a light-activated chomping green rabbit and no longer Oscar’s favorite character from the Freddy Fazbear world. Dark green fur floated in clouds around the smashed rabbit, while other clumps stuck with grease to the rail ties. Tiny jagged pieces of teeth shone under the newly uncovered moon, the clouds finally parting after it was already too late to help. Bits of bloody human gum were attached to the teeth. Oscar swallowed down bile and shifted his gaze.
Oscar stared down at the single grotesque eye that remained semi-intact, half buried but still bulging from the packed earth under the track. The other eye was smashed tissue, dead, but looking more human than ever. He shivered and turned to walk away. He was unable to stand looking at such an unblinking killer.
The next night, Oscar helped deliver candy to the residents at the Royal Oaks Nursing Home while his mom lit fires under the orderlies and rolled her eyes at the newest, dumbest ones. It was a sort of reverse trick-or-treating, with the candy coming to the people since they couldn’t come for the candy. When Oscar arrived at Mr. Devereaux’s room, Marilyn was curled at the foot of his bed.
“Someone’s feeling bold,” Oscar said to her, but Mr. Devereaux was the one who answered.
“I’ve decided that if she’s going to steal my soul, she’s earned the right,” he said, and while it made zero sense to Oscar, it seemed to make enough sense to Mr. Devereaux that he no longer eyed the loyal cat with suspicion.
“So, how’d the harvest go?” he asked, and again, Oscar found himself in the company of one of Mr. Devereaux’s lucid moments. More than lucid, even. It’s like he’d been standing right there on the train tracks with Oscar when he needed it most.
“Bad crop this year,” he said, and Mr. Devereaux nodded slowly, as though he’d been there before. Oscar tried and failed to imagine Mr. Devereaux with his own three-foot-tall chomping rabbit.
“But I’m glad I did the digging,” said Oscar, and with that, Mr. Devereaux was satisfied enough to fall back asleep, Marilyn greedily kneading the space between his splayed feet.
In the break room, Oscar found his mother, to whom he hadn’t spoken since the morning, and only to explain that the toy had done “just a little bit of damage” to the doors, and he’d spend the next weekend patching them and probably the rest of his natural life saving for a new garage door. His mom hardly seemed to notice, though. He supposed their fight over the phone earlier in the night had left more of a gaping hole in her than anything the Plushtrap could have done.
Because he’d felt so awful about that, he did something that he knew wouldn’t make up for it, but he knew he had to try. So he took what remained of his money and stopped into HAL’S HALLOWEEN HALLWAY and picked up a small plastic jack-o’-lantern and two bags of the chocolate-covered almonds she loved so much. He filled the pumpkin with the chocolates and stashed it in a cabinet in the break room until he knew she’d be taking her first coffee of the night.
When he handed it to her, she smiled, but he thought she hadn’t looked that sad since his dad died.
Still, she pulled him in for the tightest, rib-cracking hug in recent memory, and even though he could barely breathe under her fierce grip, he was so happy to know that he hadn’t completely destroyed her.
“I never meant to depend on you so much,” she whispered while she held him, and Oscar was surprised. He’d thought his dad was the reason for her sadness. He’d never considered she might be the reason.
“It’s okay,” and he surprised himself by meaning it. It really was okay. Not all the time, but he thought maybe that made the good times better. Like when his mom liked the present he made for her. Or when his friends put their actual lives on the line just so he wouldn’t face a monster alone.
“It’s okay,” he said, and he let her hug him for a good long while.
Scott Cawthon is the author of the bestselling video game series Five Nights at Freddy’s, and while he is a game designer by trade, he is first and foremost a storyteller at heart. He is a graduate of The Art Institute of Houston and lives in Texas with his wife and four sons.
Andrea Rains Waggener is an author, novelist, ghostwriter, essayist, short story writer, screenwriter, copywriter, editor, poet, and a proud member of Kevin Anderson & Associates’ team of writers. In a past she prefers not to remember much, she was a claims adjuster, JCPenney’s catalogue order-taker (before computers!), appellate court clerk, legal writing instructor, and lawyer. Writing in genres that vary from her chick-lit novel, Alternate Beauty, to her dog how-to book, Dog Parenting, to her self-help book, Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, to ghostwritten memoirs to ghostwritten YA, horror, mystery, and mainstream fiction projects, Andrea still manages to find time to watch the rain and obsess over her dog and her knitting, art, and music projects. She lives with her husband and said dog on the Washington Coast, and if she isn’t at home creating something, she can be found walking on the beach.
Carly Anne West is the author of YA novels The Murmurings and The Bargaining and middle grade novels based on the Hello Neighbor video games. She lives in Seoul, South Korea, with her husband and their two sons.
Grim wasn’t always lucid.
Well now, it wasn’t good to fib. The truth was that Grim was rarely lucid. Being lucid made his teeth hurt. His teeth hurt when his eyes and his ears hurt. When he was lucid, the world had this way of assaulting his eyes and his ears. Everything was too intense, too much. Grim preferred to hang out in his own crazy world where the voices in his head ruled, even when he knew they were crazy.
Grim’s teeth hurt tonight.
In the shadows, pressed against the corrugated metal sides of a storage shed near the train tracks, Grim pulled his dirty pink acrylic blanket tighter around his body. Though the blanket was damp and provided no warmth, it comforted him. Also, because it wasn’t just dirty—it was so filthy you had to pry at the blanket fibers with a fingernail to find a hint of pink—it gave him camouflage. Camouflage was good. Ever since he’d walked away from his life, he’d done everything he could to be invisible: he hunched his five feet eight inches into several inches less than that; he ate just enough to keep skin hanging on his bones; he covered his long stringy brown hair with a floppy gray hat; he hid his long face under a matted beard. And he gave up his name for the nickname he’d been given. He made it his goal to be unseen.
He especially did not want to be seen right now. No way. No how.
He didn’t want to be seen because he didn’t like the pounding and clanking. And he didn’t like what he was seeing. He was seeing ominous things, things that hurt his teeth.
For the last five minutes, Grim’s gaze had been riveted on the railroad tracks. Or again—truth was important—not on the tracks themselves but rather what was on the tracks. What was on the tracks was disturbing him greatly.
On the tracks, illuminated by the peripheral glow of a security light, a cloaked figure was prying bizarre items from the rails. The figure was
slightly hunched and moving in an awkward pitch-and-roll gait that reminded Grim of the way people walked after coming off a boat. Grim was only twenty feet or so from the hooded person, but he could clearly see both the figure and what it was collecting.
The person appeared to be unaware of Grim, and Grim intended to keep it that way. Grim’s teeth wanted to chatter, and his body wanted to shake, but he willed himself still as he watched the mysterious figure pound at the end of what looked like a foot-long pry bar with a bright yellow end. The yellow end kept wriggling free pieces of something Grim couldn’t identify. So far he’d seen it collect a hinged jaw, a jagged row of what looked like bloody human teeth, mutilated human eyes, several bolts, a computer port, and chunks of metal with tufts of dark green fur.
Now he continued to watch while the figure pried up one and then two green oblong objects. What were those?
As if answering Grim’s inner question, the figure held up the pieces. Even in the muted light, Grim could immediately discern what they were. In his previous life, he’d been a professor, and even at the rate he’d been pickling his brain cells, he still had many at his disposal.
Green rabbit ears.
Oh, his teeth.
The figure went back to prying, and it worked free of the tracks a large metal rabbit foot.
Grim had to admit to himself a modicum of curiosity about what the figure was doing. But his sense of self-preservation was stronger. So he sat, with aching teeth, as still as the bits of detritus the figure was collecting, until the figure put all the pried-up parts in a bag and disappeared into the darkness.
Detective Larson knocked on the door of a one-and-a-half-story brown Craftsman house squatting next to a two-story Craftsman four times its size. He looked down at the well-maintained porch he stood on. It looked like it had fresh paint. He’d noticed the entire house was in similar condition. But the paint and tidiness weren’t having what was probably their intended effect. The house he stood in front of looked diminished, not just in relation to its bigger, spiffier neighbor, but in general. If houses had faces, this house would look hangdog.
A mission-style door opened in front of Larson. A pretty young woman with almost cartoon-large eyes and shoulder-length brown hair looked at the detective with absolutely no interest. “Yes?”
“Ma’am, my name is Detective Larson.” He showed the woman his shield. She gave it the same non-attention she was giving him. “As part of an ongoing routine investigation, I need to take a look at the premises. Do you have any objections?”
The woman squinted at him. He thought he saw the glint of something lying dormant in her gaze, like she had some spark that had been nearly, but not fully, extinguished. He wondered if that spark was about to light an objection to his entry. He didn’t know what he’d do if it did because he didn’t have a warrant.
The woman shrugged. “Come on in.”
Crossing the threshold into a meticulously clean and neat living room, he looked around and saw that a small kitchen and dining room were in similar condition—this in spite of the fact that the house contained at least four cats, which lounged in various displays of regal ownership on the backs of furniture or in puddles of sunlight on braided throw rugs.
“I’m Margie,” the woman said. She offered her hand.
Larson took it. It was cool and limp.
She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised, as if she was waiting for him to answer some unasked question. He smiled at her but said nothing. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him. Did she see the thirty-something, decent-looking guy he used to see in himself or did she see the deep lines forming around his mouth and eyes, which was all he could see now when he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror?
She looked away, her gaze landing on two of the cats. She frowned and shook her head. “Sorry about all the cats. I’m not sure how this happened. I was given one to keep me company after … um, well, just to keep me company. Turned out it was a she, and she was pregnant. I couldn’t bear to give the four kittens away. I felt like their mom, and it seemed like abandonment. So here I am. A cat lady.” She gave a dry laugh and then coughed.
Larson had a feeling she used to laugh a lot and had gotten out of practice lately. He wondered what had happened to her. He was tempted to ask, but that wasn’t why he was here.
Larson started wandering through the house. Margie followed him.
“How long have you lived here?” he asked. He’d found that chatting with homeowners tended to distract them when he was checking out their place. It gave him more time to poke around before they started getting uncomfortable or even defensive.
“Just over three years.” Her voice hitched between “three” and “years.”
He glanced at her.
She sounded like she was going to cry, but her eyes were dry, and her face was placid. “I was hired to take care of a sick boy while his dad served overseas. He passed away and left me the house.”
The dad or the boy, Larson wondered. He didn’t ask.
Larson had stepped into a short hallway with three doors. A fifth cat appeared from inside the last door. It was a small gray tabby. It sat down in the middle of the hall and started cleaning itself.
Larson looked into a small, shiny bathroom and then into a decent-size bedroom, the one the woman was obviously using. A fuzzy yellow robe was folded neatly at the foot of a queen bed, and cosmetics were lined up just as neatly on a cherry dresser. Other than those touches, he thought the room had a distinctly masculine feel.
Larson decided not to comment on the woman’s relationship with her dead employer, whatever that relationship might have been. He didn’t need to risk setting her on edge. He continued on down the hall.
The old house creaked and shifted, emitting something that sounded like a groan. He was pretty sure Margie flinched at the noise.
A dark gray cat meandered down the hall, sniffed the gray tabby, and then rubbed against Larson’s black slacks. He bent over and scratched it behind the ears. He knew he’d be sorry later. He was allergic to cats, but he still liked them.
Stepping into what was obviously the second bedroom, Larson stared at the single bed in the middle of the room. Other than the bed, the room held only a small cabinet.
He wasn’t sure what to make of this room, but he was compelled to stay in it. Specifically, the cabinet grabbed his attention.
Next to him, Margie was quiet. She was close enough for him to smell what he assumed was her soap or shampoo. It had a fresh but clean scent, nothing heavy or alluring like perfume or cologne. In spite of the makeup she wore, he got the impression Margie didn’t care much about doing things to impress others. He wondered if that was why he found her attractive. He liked her simple transparency. No, she wasn’t spilling her guts to him in the annoying way nervous witnesses often did, but she wasn’t trying to be something she wasn’t either. He could tell.
He cleared his throat as he meandered around the bed toward the cabinet that had captured his interest. “We’ve been pursuing a person of interest in the ongoing case I mentioned. The case has been at a near standstill. It’s gone without any leads, until recently. Now we have this.” He reached into the inner pocket of his gray sports jacket and pulled out a photo, which he held up for Margie to see.
Margie said nothing, but her face had a lot to say. First, she flushed. Then, as quickly as her cheeks went pink they lost all color, and she blanched. Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened slightly. He heard her breathing quicken.
About to call her out on her reaction, Detective Larson did a stutter step of surprise when the gray tabby suddenly jumped onto the single bed.
“Sorry,” Margie said again. She picked up the cat. It immediately started purring.
Larson couldn’t help himself. He reached out and rubbed the side of its face. Suddenly aware he was very close to Margie, he stepped back.
The cabinet was right in front of him. He hadn’t realized he’d reached it. Now, he had to see what was in
side of it.
At the same time he was drawn to it, he felt an inexplicable reluctance to open the cabinet door. He sneezed.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“It’s the cats,” Margie said.
“It’s okay.” He was lying. He’d be miserable the rest of the day.
He realized he was putting off opening the cabinet. Which was absurd. So he grabbed the cabinet knob and pulled on it.
The cabinet was empty, but the inside walls of the cabinet weren’t. They were covered in harsh black scribblings jammed close together. What looked like nonsensical letters made by a thick marker covered nearly every inch of the cabinet’s interior. Larson could see no meaning in the scrawls, but nonetheless they gave him the same feeling he’d had when he’d looked at the recent grotesque death reports.
Larson turned and looked at Margie. “What happened in this house?”
Copyright © 2020 by Scott Cawthon. All rights reserved.
Photo of TV static: © Klikk/Dreamstime
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First printing 2020 • Book design by Betsy Peterschmidt
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e-ISBN 978-1-338-62697-1
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