Jinx the cat wandered into the living room, took one look at the rabbit, arched her back, puffed out her tail, and hissed like a cat on a Halloween decoration. Oswald had never seen her act scared or unfriendly before, and he watched as she turned tail and fled down the hall. If Jinx knew this situation was bad, it must be really bad.
“You can’t do this,” Oswald said to the rabbit, in tears. He didn’t want to cry. He wanted to look strong, but he couldn’t help it. “This—this is kidnapping or something! My mom will be home soon, and she’ll call the police.”
It was a total bluff, of course. Mom wouldn’t be home until after midnight. Would he even be alive by the time Mom got home? Was his dad even alive now?
He knew the bunny would grab him if he tried to make a run for the back door. “I’m going to my room now, okay? I’m not trying to escape. I’m just going to my room.” He backed away, and the bunny let him. As soon as he got inside his room, he slammed the door and locked it. He took deep breaths and tried to think. There was a window in his room, but it was high and too small to climb through. Under his bed, Jinx let out a low growl.
Oswald could hear the bunny outside his door. If he made a phone call, it would hear him. But maybe he could send a text.
He took out his phone and with shaking hands texted: Mom, emergency! Somethings wrong with dad. Come home now
Oswald knew even as he texted that she wouldn’t be coming home now. Because she was always dealing with medical emergencies at work, sometimes it took her a long time to check her phone. It was Dad who Oswald was supposed to contact in the event of an emergency. But obviously that wasn’t going to work now.
A miserable hour passed until Oswald’s phone vibrated. Afraid the rabbit might still be listening outside his locked door, he picked up without saying hello.
“Oswald, what’s going on?” Mom sounded terrified. “Do I need to call nine one one?”
“I can’t talk now,” Oswald whispered.
“I’m on my way home, okay?” She hung up.
Fifteen minutes seemed to pass more slowly than Oswald thought was possible. Then there was a knock on Oswald’s door.
Oswald jumped, his heart in his throat. “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” Mom said, sounding exasperated. “Open the door.”
He opened the door just a crack to make sure it was really her. Once he let her in, he closed and locked the door behind them.
“Oswald, you need to tell me what’s going on.” Mom’s brow was furrowed with worry.
Where to start? How to explain without sounding crazy? “It’s Dad. He’s … he’s not okay. I’m not even sure where he is—”
Mom put her hands on both his shoulders. “Oswald, I just saw your dad. He’s lying on the bed in our bedroom watching TV. He made you a chicken potpie for dinner. It’s sitting on the stove.”
“What? I’m not hungry.” He tried to wrap his mind around his mom’s words. “You saw Dad?”
Mom nodded. She was looking at him like he was one of her patients instead of her kid, like she was trying to figure out what was wrong with him.
“And he’s okay?”
She nodded again. “He’s okay, but I’m worried about you.” She put her hand on his forehead as if checking for a fever.
“I’m okay,” Oswald said. “I mean, if Dad’s okay, I’m okay. He just … didn’t seem okay.”
“Maybe it’s good school’s starting back. I think you’re spending too much time by yourself.”
What could he say? Actually, I’ve been spending time with my new friends in 1985? “Maybe so. I probably should just go on to bed. I have to get an early start in the morning.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Mom said. She put her hands on his cheeks and looked him directly in the eyes. “And listen, if you’re going to text me at work, make sure it’s a real emergency. You scared me.”
“I thought it was a real emergency. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, honey. Get some rest, okay?”
“Okay.” After Mom left, Oswald looked under the bed. Jinx was still there, crouched in a ball like she was trying to make herself as small and invisible as possible, her eyes wide and looking terrified. “It’s okay, Jinxie,” Oswald said, reaching under the bed and wiggling his fingers at her. “Mom says it’s safe. You can come out now.”
The cat wouldn’t budge.
Oswald lay awake in bed. If Mom said Dad was there and okay, then it must be true. Why would she lie?
But Oswald knew what he had seen.
He had seen the yellow thing, as he had started to think of it, drag his dad into the pit. He had seen the yellow thing climb out of the pit, had felt its grip on his arm, sat beside it in the car as it drove him home.
Or had he? If Mom said Dad was home and okay, he must be. Oswald trusted his mom. But if Dad was okay, it meant Oswald hadn’t seen what he thought he saw. And that must mean that Oswald was losing his mind.
* * *
After only a few hours of fitful sleep, Oswald woke to the aroma of frying ham and baking biscuits. His stomach rumbled, reminding him he had missed dinner last night.
Everything felt normal. Maybe he should just treat yesterday like a bad dream and try to move forward. A new school year, a new beginning.
He stopped in the bathroom, then made his way to the kitchen.
“Feeling better?” Mom asked. There she was, her hair in a ponytail, wearing her pink fuzzy bathrobe, fixing breakfast just like always. Something about this fact made Oswald feel tremendously relieved.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m pretty hungry, actually.”
“Now that’s a problem I can fix,” Mom said. She set down a plate with two ham biscuits on it and poured him a glass of orange juice.
Oswald ate the first ham biscuit in three big bites.
The yellow thing walked in and sat across from him at the breakfast table.
“Uh … Mom?” Oswald’s heart beat like a jackhammer in his chest. The ham biscuit sat heavy in his churning stomach.
“What is it, hon?” Her back was turned as she fiddled with the coffeemaker.
“Where’s Dad?”
She turned around, the coffeepot in her hand. “Oswald, your dad is sitting right across from you! If this is some kind of elaborate prank, you can cut it out right now because it has officially stopped being funny.” She poured a cup of coffee and set it down in front of the yellow thing, which stared straight ahead, its mouth set in an unchanging grin.
Oswald knew he wasn’t getting anywhere. Either he was insane or his mom was. “Okay, I understand. I’ll cut it out. I apologize. May I be excused so I can get ready for school?”
“Of course,” Mom said, but she was looking at him kind of funny again.
Oswald stopped in the bathroom to brush his teeth and then went to his room to get his backpack. He peeked under his bed to find Jinx still hiding there. “Well, it’s good to know there’s somebody else in this family who has some sense,” he said. When Oswald came back into the kitchen, the yellow thing was standing by the door, car keys in its paw.
“Is … uh … Dad taking me to school?” Oswald asked. He didn’t know if he could bear sitting beside it in the car again, hoping it was watching the road as it stared through the windshield with its empty eyes.
“Doesn’t he always?” Mom said. He could hear the worry in her voice. “Have a good day, okay?”
Seeing no choice, Oswald got in the car beside the yellow thing. Once again, it locked all the doors from the driver’s side. It backed out of the driveway and passed a jogging neighbor, who waved at it just as if it were his dad.
“I don’t understand,” Oswald said, on the edge of tears. “Are you real? Is this real? Am I going crazy?”
The yellow thing said nothing, just stared at the road ahead.
When it pulled up in front of Westbrook Middle School, the crossing guard and the kids at the crosswalk didn’t seem to notice that the car was being driven by a giant
yellow rabbit.
“Hey,” Oswald said before he got out of the car, “don’t bother picking me up this afternoon. I’ll just catch the bus.”
The school bus was a big yellow thing he could handle.
Because it was some kind of cosmic law, the first person Oswald saw in the hall was Dylan, his tormentor. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Oswald the Oc—”
“Give it a rest, Dylan,” Oswald said, pushing past him. “I’ve got way bigger problems than you today.”
It was impossible to concentrate in class. Usually Oswald was a pretty decent student, but how could he focus with his life and possibly his sanity falling apart? Maybe he should talk to someone, the school counselor or the school police officer. But he knew anything that came out of his mouth would sound dangerously crazy. How could he convince a police officer that his dad was missing if everybody who looked at the yellow thing saw Oswald’s dad?
There was no one to help him. Oswald was going to have to figure out how to solve this problem himself.
At recess he sat on a bench by the playground, grateful that he didn’t have to pretend to listen to a teacher and could just think. He couldn’t imagine how his life could get any weirder. The yellow thing seemed to think it was his father. This was weird enough, but why did everybody else think it was his father, too?
“Do you mind if I share your bench?” It was a girl Oswald had never seen before. She had curly black hair and big brown eyes and was holding a thick book.
“Sure, help yourself,” Oswald said.
The girl sat on the opposite end of the bench and opened her book. Oswald went back to his confused, confusing thoughts.
“Have you gone to this school for a long time?” the girl asked him after a few minutes. She didn’t look over at Oswald when she talked; she just kept staring at the pages of her book. Oswald wondered if this meant she was shy.
“Since kindergarten,” Oswald said, and then, because he couldn’t think of a single other thing to say about himself, he asked, “What are you reading?”
“Greek mythology,” she said. “Tales of heroes. Have you read much mythology?”
“No, not really,” he said, feeling stupid immediately after. He didn’t want to give the impression that he was the kind of guy who never read books. In desperation, he added, “I love to read, though,” and then he felt even stupider.
“Me too,” she said. “I’ve probably read this book a dozen times. It’s like a comfort book for me. I read it when I need to be brave.”
The word brave struck a chord in Oswald. Brave was what he needed to be, too. “Why’s that?”
“Well, the Greek heroes are super brave. They’re always doing battle with some kind of big monster, like the minotaur or the hydra. It kind of puts things in perspective, you know? No matter how bad my problems are, at least I don’t have to do battle with a monster.”
“Yeah,” Oswald said, even though he was trying to figure out how to do battle with a monster—a yellow, long-eared monster—in his own home. He couldn’t tell this girl about the yellow thing, though. She would think he was crazy and would be leaving their shared bench in a hurry. “So you said you read that book when you need to be brave.” He was surprised he was having this conversation given the way his mind was racing. For some reason, this girl was easy to talk to. “I mean, it may be none of my business, but I was wondering why you needed to … to be brave.”
She gave a shy little smile. “First day at a new school, third day in a new town. I don’t know anybody yet.”
“Yes, you do,” he said. He held out his hand. “I’m Oswald.” He didn’t know why he was offering his hand like he was some kind of businessman, but it felt like the right thing to do.
She took his hand and shook it surprisingly firmly. “I’m Gabrielle.”
Somehow, this was the conversation Oswald had needed to have.
* * *
He took the bus home from school. When he came inside, the yellow thing was vacuuming the living room.
He didn’t ask it any more questions. It wasn’t as if it could give him any answers anyway, and besides, if he was going to make his plan work, he was going to have to act like everything was normal. And as anybody who had seen him in the fourth-grade class play knew, acting was not one of his talents.
Instead, he did what he was supposed to do when life was normal, when his real dad was vacuuming the living room. He got the feather duster out of the cleaning closet and dusted the coffee table, the end tables, and the lamps. He emptied the wastebasket and neatened the throw pillows on the couch. Then he went to the kitchen and took out the garbage and the recycling. Once he was outside, it was tempting to run, but he knew running was not the answer. If everybody saw the yellow thing as his dad, nobody would help him.
The yellow thing would always catch him.
He went back inside.
His chores done, he walked right past the yellow thing. “I’m gonna go chill out a while before dinner,” he said, even though the possibility of relaxing in any way was unimaginable. He went to his room, but he didn’t close the door. Instead, he took off his shoes, sprawled on the bed, and started drawing in his sketchbook. He didn’t want to draw mechanical animals, but they seemed to be all he could draw. He shut his sketchbook and started reading a manga, or at least pretending to. Normal. The plan could only work if he acted like everything was normal.
When the rabbit appeared in his doorway, he managed not to gasp. It beckoned for him the same way it had when it led him into the murder room at Freddy Fazbear’s, and he followed it into the kitchen. On the table was one of the grocery store pizzas his dad kept in the freezer, baked to a pleasing golden brown, and two glasses of the fruit punch Oswald liked. The pizza had already been sliced, which was a relief, because Oswald couldn’t imagine what he would have done if he had seen the thing holding a knife. Run screaming out into the street, probably.
Oswald sat down at the table and helped himself to a slice of the pizza. He didn’t feel much like eating, but he knew he couldn’t act like anything was wrong. He took a bite of pizza, a sip of punch. “Aren’t you going to eat anything … Dad?” he asked. It was hard calling the thing Dad, but he managed.
The yellow thing sat across from him in silence with its unblinking stare and frozen grin, an untouched pizza slice on a plate in front of it beside an untouched glass of punch.
Could it even eat? Oswald wondered. Did it need to? What was it anyway? At first he thought it was a guy in a suit, but now he wasn’t so sure. Was it some kind of highly sophisticated animatronic animal, or a real, flesh-and-blood giant bunny? He didn’t know which possibility was the most disturbing.
With great effort, he finished his pizza slice and glass of punch, then said, “Thanks for dinner, Dad. I’m going to get a glass of milk and go do my homework now.”
The yellow thing just sat there.
Oswald went to the refrigerator. He checked to make sure the yellow thing wasn’t watching and poured some milk into a bowl. Once he was in his room, he didn’t close and lock the door because he wouldn’t if he were home with Dad. Normal. Normal so as not to arouse suspicion.
He slid the bowl of milk under his bed where Jinx was still hiding. “It’s going to be okay, girl,” he whispered.
He hoped he was right.
He sat on his bed and in a few minutes heard Jinx lapping the milk. He knew from past experience that even when terrified, she couldn’t turn down dairy products. He made a halfhearted attempt at his homework, but he couldn’t concentrate. All he could think about was his dad. The yellow thing had dragged his dad into the pit and under the surface. Did this mean his dad was at Freddy Fazbear’s circa 1985, wandering around an arcade of games he had played as a kid? That was the most likely explanation, unless the yellow thing had killed—
No. He couldn’t let himself think that. His dad was alive. He had to be. The only way to know was to go back into the pit.
But first he was going to have to
get out of the house without the yellow thing noticing.
Oswald waited until dark, then waited some more. Finally, he grabbed his shoes and tiptoed out of his room and into the hall in his sock feet. The door to his parents’ bedroom was open. He sneaked a glance inside as he crept past. The yellow thing was lying on its back on his parents’ bed. It appeared to be staring at the ceiling.
Or maybe it wasn’t staring. Maybe it was asleep. It was hard to tell since its eyes didn’t close. Did it even need to sleep?
Holding his breath, he passed his parents’ room and tiptoed into the kitchen. If the yellow thing caught him, he could always say he was just getting a drink of water. The kitchen was the best escape route. The door there was less squeaky than the front door.
He slipped into his shoes and pulled the door open slowly, inch by inch. When it was open just wide enough, he slipped through and shut it softly behind him.
Then he ran. He ran through his neighborhood and past neighbors walking their dogs and kids riding bicycles. Some people looked at Oswald strangely, and he couldn’t figure out why. People ran in this neighborhood all the time.
But then he realized he wasn’t running like he was doing it for exercise. He was running like something was chasing him. And it might be.
It was a long way to Jeff’s Pizza on foot, and Oswald knew he couldn’t keep up this pace all the way there. He slowed to a walk after he was out of his neighborhood and chose to walk side streets instead of the more direct route so he’d be harder to follow.
He was afraid Jeff’s Pizza might be closed by the time he reached it, but when he arrived, hot and out of breath, the lighted OPEN sign was still on. Inside, Jeff was at the counter, watching a ball game on TV, but otherwise the place was empty.
“You know we just serve whole pizzas at night. No slices,” Jeff said in his usual monotone. As always, he looked exhausted.
“Yeah, I just stopped by to get a soda to go,” Oswald said, his gaze roaming to the roped-off ball pit.
Jeff looked a little puzzled, but finally said, “Okay, let me get a pie out of the oven, then I’ll get it for you. Orange, right?”
Into the Pit Page 4
