When Charlie and John caught up to the rest of the group, all three were looking up at the ceiling. Charlie mimicked their posture; sure enough, there was a square trap door, big enough for an adult to pass through, its edges barely visible in the darkness. Without speaking, they set up the ladder; it was perhaps ten feet high, and rose close enough to the ceiling to access the door easily. Marla climbed up first, as Lamar steadied the ladder on one side, Jessica on the other.
John and Charlie watched as Marla ascended.
“So, the trapdoor there…” John pointed up at it. “The trapdoor of this hallway is right next to Freddy’s. That will get us onto the roof of Freddy’s, which is under the roof of the mall, in a crawlspace. And on Freddy’s roof, there’s a skylight, which we will find, while crawling through the crawlspace.” He drew an invisible diagram in the air with his finger as he spoke, and his tone was edged with skepticism. Charlie did not respond. Marla’s footsteps on the ladder sounded through the hall, heavy, tinny thuds that echoed unsteadily all around them.
“Once we find the skylight in the crawlspace,” John went on, not certain if Charlie was even listening, “we are going to drop down through the skylight and into Freddy’s, possibly with no way of getting back out.”
At the top of the ladder, Marla fiddled with something on the ceiling that the others could not see, making little mutters of frustration.
“Is it locked?” Charlie called up.
“Okay, sure.” John said, aware by now that he was talking only to himself. “This makes sense.”
“The bolt is just stuck,” Marla said. “I need—ha!” A dull snapping sound rang out. “Got it!” She cried. She raised her hands over her head and pressed upward, and slowly the door opened above her, until it tipped over and fell with a thud.
“So much for sneaking in,” John said drily.
“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie said. “We still have to go. Besides, do you really think whoever is in there doesn’t know we’re coming?”
Above them, Marla was navigating her way up through the door. She braced her arms on either side of the space, and pushed up off the ladder. It swayed dangerously, and Lamar and Jessica clutched it, trying to stabilize it, but it was not necessary. Marla was already up and through, on the roof. They waited for her to say something.
“Marla?” Jessica called finally.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Marla said.
“What do you see?” Charlie called.
“Throw me the light.” Marla’s arm emerged from the trapdoor, flapping impatiently. Lamar got a bit closer and carefully lobbed the flashlight up. Marla snatched it out of the air and immediately the beam vanished—the light had gone out.
In the crawlspace, Marla sat in the dark trying to fix the flashlight. She shook it, rattling the batteries, and flipped the switch on and off uselessly. As she unscrewed the top of the light and blew into the battery cage, she felt a rising panic. Since realizing Jason had gone, Marla’s entire being had been focused on him. It was only now, alone in the darkness, that she began to think about the danger she herself might be in. She screwed the top back onto the flashlight, and it came on instantly. The light flashed in her eyes, briefly clouding her vision. She pointed it away, then carefully swept it in a circle around her, revealing a sprawling void in all directions. It was the roof of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.
“What do you see?” Charlie called again.
“You were right; there’s a space, but not much. It’s so dark, and it smells awful up here.” Her voice sounded shaky even to her own ears, and suddenly she was desperate not to be alone in this place. “Hurry, don’t leave me up here by myself!”
“We’re coming,” Jessica called up to her.
“Me next,” Charlie said, and stepped forward. The ladder was rusty, and made squeaking complaints as she climbed, protesting her weight as she moved from step to step. But it felt sturdy, and quickly she reached the trapdoor and did as Marla had done: she stood on the top step, so she was head and shoulders through the door, braced her arms on either side, and pushed off the ladder, almost jumping, to land on Freddy’s roof. There was not room to stand, only scarcely room to sit—the space between the restaurant’s roof and the mall’s roof above it was less than a yard. Something was rattling above them, as if stones were falling overhead, and it took Charlie a moment to realize that it was the rain, thundering on uninsulated tin. Water dripped in on her head, and when she looked up she saw a place where the metal’s seams had not been joined, two corrugated sheets simply lined up next to each other, allied by circumstance. She wiped her palms on her jeans: the shingles of the roof were wet, and her hands were covered in grit, and dust, and something slick and more unpleasant.
She looked toward Marla, who was a few feet away.
“Here, come on. Get out of their way,” Marla said, motioning her over, and Charlie hurried on her hands and knees as Jessica’s head appeared in the trap door, and carefully she made her way up into the crawl space. Safely on the roof, Jessica looked around as if gauging something. Concerned, Charlie remembered her fear in the air vent, but Jessica took a long, deep breath.
“I can handle this,” she said, though she did not sound as if she believed her own words. A moment later Lamar was next to them. He quickly reclaimed the flashlight and aimed it back toward the trapdoor. After a moment, John scrambled up into the crawl space—and something banged loudly beneath them, the sound repeating. Everyone but John startled at the sound.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was the ladder.”
“Charlie, which way?” Marla said.
“Oh.” Charlie closed her eyes again, retraced her steps as she had while they searched for a way in. “Straight across, I think,” she said. “As long as we get to the far side, we’ll find it.” Without waiting for responses, she started crawling in the direction she thought was right. A second later, light appeared ahead of her.
“Thanks,” she called back softly to Lamar, who was steadying the flashlight, trying to anticipate where Charlie would go.
“I don’t have anything else to do,” he whispered.
The crawlspace was wide; it should have felt spacious, but there were support beams and pipes strewn at random, intersecting the space or running across the roof below them so that it was a little like navigating a very cramped forest, ducking vines and climbing over felled trees. The roof of Freddy’s had a shallow upward slope; they would have to go down again once they reached the middle. The shingles beneath their hands and feet were soggy in a deep, swollen way that suggested they had not been truly dry in years, and a moldy smell rose from them. Every once in a while Charlie wiped her hands on her pants, knowing they would only be clean for a moment. From time to time she thought she heard something skitter by, sounds a little too far away to be coming from their group, but she ignored them. They have more right to be here than we do, she thought, though she was not certain what species “they” might be.
The roof above them followed a bizarre pattern, sloping up and down without regard to the roof beneath, so that at one point it opened four feet above their heads, then at another plunged downward, so close that it grazed their backs, forcing them to duck their heads and wriggle awkwardly through. Jessica was right behind Charlie, and from time to time she could hear her friend make soft, frightened noises, but every time she looked back, Jessica just nodded, stone-faced, and they continued, until they reached the edge of the roof, and the wall that marked it.
“Okay,” Charlie called, half-turning behind her. “It should be near here, let’s spread out and look.”
“No, wait, what’s that?” Marla said, pointing. Charlie could not see what Marla had spotted, but she followed the direction, until she came to it.
The skylight was a flat glass pane in the roof; it was framed like a small window, a single panel with no visible handles, hinges, or latches. They leaned over it, trying to see into the room below, but the glass was too covered in grime for anything to show through. Jo
hn reached forward and tried to clean it with his sleeve; he came away with the arm of his shirt black, but it had done no good; at least half the dirt was on the other side, and the skylight was still opaque with filth.
“It’s just a closet, it’s ok.” Charlie said.
“But is anyone in the closet?” Lamar said.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Marla. “We don’t have a choice.”
Everyone looked at Charlie, who looked thoughtfully at the skylight.
“It swings in,” she said. “You pull down on this side,” she pointed, “and it swings. There’s a latch on the inside, right there.” She touched the side of the skylight, thinking. “Maybe if we—” She pushed on it, and it gave way almost instantly, jolting her with a sudden, panicked sense of falling, even though her weight was solidly on the roof.
“That’s kind of narrow,” John said. The skylight did not open all the way; the glass just tilted inward a little, barely enough for a person to slip through.
“I didn’t build it,” Charlie said, slightly irritated. “This is it, so if you’re going, go.”
Without waiting for a response, she swung her legs over the sill and lowered herself down, dangling for a moment in the dark. Closing her eyes and hoping the floor was not as far away as she remembered, she let go, and fell.
She landed, and the shock of impact ran through her legs, but it passed quickly.
“Bend your knees when you land!” She called up, and got out of the way. Marla dropped through, and Charlie went to the door, trying to find a light switch. Her fingers stumbled across the switch, and she flipped it up. The old fluorescent lights clicked and buzzed, then slowly a dim and unreliable glow filled the space.
“All right,” she whispered with a thrill of excitement. She turned around, and as something brushed her face she had a fleeting impression of big plastic eyes and broken yellow teeth. She screamed and leaped back, clutching for balance at shelves that swayed as she grabbed them. The head she had touched, an uncovered wire frame for a costume with nothing but eyes and teeth to decorate it, wobbled precariously on the shelf beside Charlie, then fell to the ground. Her heart still pounding, Charlie brushed at herself roughly as if she were covered in spider webs, her legs unsteady as she moved back and forth with agitation. The head rolled across the floor, then came to rest at her feet, looking up at her with its cheerful, sinister smile.
Charlie jerked back from the ghastly grin, and something grabbed her from behind. She tried to yank free, but she was stuck, a pair of metal arms wrapped around her. The bodiless limbs clung to her shirt, their hinges biting into the cloth, and as she tried to wrest herself away her hair was caught, too, tangling her deeper into the wire until she felt as if she would be consumed. Charlie screamed again and the arms reached out further, almost seeming to grow as she struggled against them. She fought back with all her strength, fueled by terror and a base, frantic fury that this thing would hurt her.
“Charlie, stop!” Marla cried, “Charlie!”
Marla grabbed her arm, trying to stop her frantic movement, using one hand to disengage Charlie’s hair from the metal frame.
“Charlie, it’s not real, it’s just… robot parts,” she said, but Charlie pulled away from Marla, still in a panic, and smacked her head into a cardboard box. She cried out, startled, then the box overturned and eyes the size of fists fell to the ground like rain, showering down with a clatter and rolling everywhere, covering the floor. Charlie stumbled and stepped on one of the hard plastic orbs, and her feet went out from under her. She grabbed at a shelf and missed, and fell on her back, landing with a thud that took the wind out of her. Stunned and gasping, she looked up: there were eyes everywhere, not just on the floor, but in the walls.
They looked out at her from the dark, deep-socketed, shadowed eyes peering down from the shelves all around her. She stared, unable to look away.
“Charlie, come on.” Marla was there, kneeling anxiously over her. She grabbed Charlie’s arm again and pulled until Charlie was upright again. Charlie still did not have her breath back, and as she inhaled thinly, she began to cry. Marla hugged her tightly, and Charlie let her.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Marla whispered, as Charlie tried to calm herself, looking around the store room for distraction.
It’s not real, she told herself. They were in a store room, just a closet, and these were all spare parts. The air was thick with dust, and it tickled at her nose and throat as it poured off the shelves, still unrestful. The rest of the group dropped through the skylight one by one; John came last, landing in the middle of the room with a thump. Jessica sneezed.
“You okay?” John said as soon as he saw Charlie.
“Yeah I’m fine.” Charlie disentangled herself from Marla and crossed her arms, still collecting herself.
“You know we can’t get back up through there.” John said, looking up at the skylight.
“We just need something to stand on,” Charlie said. “Or we can climb a shelf.”
Jessica shook her head.
“No, look at the way it’s opened.”
Charlie looked. The skylight opened downward, so the pane of glass sloped in at a gentle angle, just enough to have let them through. To get out, they would have to—
“Oh,” she said. There would be no getting out. However close they got to the skylight, the pane of glass would always be in the way, sticking out into the precise space they needed to pass through. If anyone tried to get a grip on the roof, they would have to lean so far over the glass that they would fall from the ladder.
“We might be able to break the glass,” John started. “But the metal frame is going to be dangerous to climb over, even more dangerous with shards of broken glass.” He fell silent and thought it through again, his face grim.
“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie said. “We’ll find another way out. Let’s start looking.”
They peered cautiously out into the hallway; Lamar had turned off the flashlight, but it was easy enough to see their surroundings now with the light from the closet seeping into the hall. At least nothing’s dripping from the ceiling, Charlie thought, and wiped her hands on her pants again. The floor was black and white tile, as glossy as if it had just been polished. There were children’s drawings on the walls, rustling with the air from the open skylight. Charlie remained motionless, more than aware of how much noise she had just made. Does it know we’re here? She thought, realizing as she did that by “it” she meant the building itself. It felt as if Freddy’s were conscious of their presence, as if it reacted to them like a living, breathing thing. She reached out to brush her fingers against its wall, tracing lightly as if she were petting it. The plaster was still and cold, inanimate, and Charlie pulled her hand back, and wondered what Freddy’s would do.
They wound around one corner, and then another, then stopped at the entrance to Pirate’s Cove, hanging back from the doorway. Pirate’s Cove, I have my bearings again. Charlie gazed at the little stage, no longer lit, and the curtain that hid its sole performer.
A few small lights flickered on the sides of the stage, then came on, illuminating the space with a pale grey glow. Charlie looked around and saw Lamar standing by the doorway with his hand on a switch, having just flipped it.
“We don’t have a choice,” he said defensively, gesturing to his flashlight: its light was failing. Charlie nodded resignedly, and Lamar switched off the dying flashlight.
“I want to take a look in this control room,” Marla said, pointing to the small door nearby. “Lamar, come with me. The rest of you try the other one; if we each take one set of cameras we can see the whole restaurant. If Jason’s in this place, we’ll see him.”
“I don’t think we should split up,” Charlie said.
“Wait,” said Lamar, and handed John the dead light, freeing his hands. From his pockets he produced two walkie-talkies; large black boxy things Charlie had only seen attached to police officers’ belts.
“Where did you
get those?” She asked, and he smiled mysteriously.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said.
“He stole them from Carlton’s house.” Jessica stated plainly, taking one from his hand and examining it.
“No, they were in the garage. Mrs. Burke told me where to find them. They work, I tested.”
Mrs. Burke knew we would come here? Charlie thought. Marla just nodded; maybe she had already known, or maybe nothing could surprise her anymore.
“Come on,” Marla said, and walked between the tables in front of Pirate’s Cove, careful not to disturb anything. Lamar leaned over Jessica to show her how to use the walkie-talkie.
“It’s this button,” he said, indicating it, and then he took off after Marla.
After a startled moment, the rest of them followed. Something clutched in Charlie’s stomach, the reality that both Jason and Carlton might truly be in danger seizing her. It was not that she had forgotten, but while they were outside, trying to solve the puzzles, it was possible to gain some distance from what was happening. Charlie watched Marla, stalking toward the control room with a bleak authority.
Marla crouched at the small door before turning to Charlie.
“Go,” she said, nodding toward the hall that led to the main dining area. They went, Charlie taking the lead as they crept down the hall, heading for the main stage.
Marla looked at Lamar, who nodded. She grasped the doorknob, clenched her teeth, and forced the door open, all in one motion.
“Marla!”
She jumped, barely suppressing a scream. Jason was huddled in the space beneath the monitors, his eyes wide and terrified, staring at the door like a frightened mouse.
“Jason!” Marla crawled into the control room and swooped him into her arms. Jason hugged her back, for once grateful, even desperate for her intense affection. She held on tight, crushing him to her until he began to worry that he might, in fact, be crushed.
Five Nights at Freddy's_The Silver Eyes Page 21