She climbed to the top of the broken wall and paused, bracing herself against the insistent pull of the door and what lay behind it. She took a deep breath—then was torn backward by a colossal force. She ripped back through the rocks, her arms pinned to her sides. Charlie screamed, struggling to get away. Dimly she heard John shouting close by.
As she whipped her body back and forth against its grip, Charlie glimpsed the immense thing that had caught her. The twisted Freddy stared blankly forward, or at least what remained of it. It held her with one arm; the other was gone, and wires hung from its shoulder like extra bits of sinew. Its plastic casing had melted away, and what remained were metal plates and stays, a skeleton with unnatural bulges and gaps in its frame where the collapse had mangled it. Its face was a gaping hole, spilling teeth and wire that hung in shapeless masses. Charlie couldn’t see it legs, and after a second she realized they were gone. It had dragged itself, one-armed, through the rubble. Wires spilled out of its body like guts, and when she saw its stomach, Charlie went cold with terror.
Its chest had parted at the middle. Sharp, uneven teeth lined both sides. Charlie kicked at the animatronic, but it did no good: it forced her instantly into the chasm. The thing embraced her, pushing her deeper inside its chest as they toppled backward together. The metal rib cage snapped shut: she was caught.
“Charlie!” John was kneeling beside her, and she reached out through the metal stays. He grabbed her hand. “Clay!” he shouted, “Jessica!” Jessica was there in seconds; Charlie could see Clay struggling back through the narrow opening.
“Wait!” Charlie cried as Jessica tried to pry the chest open. “The spring locks, they’ll kill me if you touch the wrong thing!”
“But if we don’t get you out, you’ll die anyway!” Jessica shouted. Charlie saw for the first time that the mouth wasn’t finished closing. It was layered somehow, and metal plates began folding over her like petals of a horrid flower. John started to stand, but Charlie tightened her hand around his.
“Don’t let go of me!” she cried, panicked. He dropped back to his knees and pulled her hand to his chest. She stared at him, even as the metal plates closed over her, threatening to seal her off. Jessica tried to jam them delicately, without setting off the spring locks. “John—” Charlie gasped.
“Don’t,” he said roughly. “I’ve got you!”
The plates continued to slide down and meet in the center. Charlie’s arm was trapped in the corner of the strange mouth, protruding from the only gap where the plates didn’t meet. She looked around wildly: another layer was closing. She was wedged into the suit haphazardly, her whole body crammed into Freddy’s torso, and she could see nothing but dimming figures as more layers of metal and plastic closed over her. Above her, Jessica was trying to stop the next layer from emerging, and she felt Freddy’s mutilated body lurch.
“Jessica! Look out!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. Jessica leaped back just in time to avoid Freddy’s violently swinging arm. The animatronic was on its back, but it struck out randomly, beating Jessica and Clay away. Its body rocked back and forth, and Charlie eyed the springs and robotic parts all around her: she drew her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself smaller.
John let go of her hand, and she grabbed at his absence. She could no longer see outside. “John!”
Freddy’s body shook, struck by a massive blow.
* * *
“Let go of her!” John screamed. Clay hefted a metal beam from the ground and struck at Freddy’s head. The twisted bear tried to strike with its remaining arm. Clay ducked out of the way and hit it again from the other side, out of reach. Jessica was still at the creature’s chest, trying to find an opening to pry at, but each layer melded seamlessly together. There was nothing to catch at. John moved in next to her, trying to help. Clay struck at the head over and over, making Freddy’s whole body jolt with every blow.
“I can’t get to her!” Jessica yelled. “She’s going to suffocate!” She tried to steady Charlie’s trembling hand. Clay hit Freddy’s head once more with a resounding crash, and they heard metal cracking as the head was knocked off the creature’s body.
“Can we get her out through the neck?” John asked urgently. Freddy’s arm continued to flail, but it had weakened, and was just rising and falling, seeming to swing without purpose.
“Clay, help!” Jessica cried. He ran to take over, digging his fingers between the plates to pry them open. Jessica continued holding Charlie’s hand, which had gone limp. “Charlie!” Jessica cried. Charlie’s hand closed over hers again, and Jessica gasped with relief. “John, Clay, she’s okay! Hurry! Charlie, can you hear me? It’s Jessica.” There was no sound from inside Freddy’s sealed chest, but Charlie held on tightly to Jessica’s hand as the others grimly worked to free her.
Suddenly a single high-pitched click reverberated through the air. John and Clay froze, their hands still hovering above Freddy’s chest. For a moment, the air stood still, then the metal body convulsed violently. It launched itself off the ground, and a ghastly crunch of metal pierced the air. All three pulled back instinctively. Clay and John jumped away from the thing, and Jessica scrambled backward, dropping Charlie’s hand.
The suit fell again and was still. The arm was splayed on the ground at an awkward angle. The room was silent. “Charlie?” John said softly, then his face went white. He ran to the place where her arm was exposed, falling hard on his knees, and grabbed her hand in both his own. It was limp. John turned it over and tapped her palm with his fingers. “Charlie? Charlie!”
“John,” Jessica said very quietly. “The blood.” He looked up at her, confused, still holding on to Charlie. Then something wet dripped onto his hand. There was blood running out of the suit and down Charlie’s arm. Her skin was slick and red, except the hand he held. He watched, unable to look away, as it dripped steadily from the suit, pooling on the ground and beginning to seep into his jeans. It covered his hand and hers, until his skin was slippery and he began to lose his grip. She was sliding away from him.
Sirens were suddenly nearby, and John realized vaguely that he’d been hearing them in the distance. He looked dazedly up at Clay.
“I radioed them,” he said. “We aren’t safe in here.” Clay took his eyes off the suit and looked up to study the ceiling. It was bowed and cracking, on the verge of collapse. John didn’t move. People were shouting outside, and flashlights bobbed up and down as they ran toward the crumbling building. Jessica touched his shoulder. Breaks and cracks resounded through the space.
“John, we have to.” As if to mark her point, the floor shook again beneath them and something crashed loudly not far away. Charlie’s hand didn’t move.
A uniformed officer pressed through the crack in the wall. “Chief Burke?”
“Thomson. We have to get the kids out, now.” Thomson nodded and motioned to Jessica.
“Come on, miss.”
“John, come on,” Jessica managed to say, and a thunderous clatter sounded from behind them. Clay looked to the officer again.
“Get them out of here.” Thomson took hold of Jessica’s arm and she tried to shove him away.
“Don’t touch me!” she shouted, but the officer firmly pulled her up and over the rubble, half dragging her outside. John only half heard the commotion, then someone’s hands were on his shoulders as well. He batted them away, not looking around.
“We’re leaving,” Clay said in a low voice.
“Not without Charlie,” John responded. Clay took a deep breath.
John saw him signal someone from the corner of his eye, then he was grabbed forcefully by two large men and dragged toward the opening.
“No!” he shouted. “Let me go!” They shoved him roughly over the broken wall, then Clay struggled out behind them.
“Is everyone out?” a female officer called.
“Yes,” Clay said hesitantly, but with the ring of authority.
“NO!” John shouted. He broke free of the office
rs holding him back and ran for the opening again. He had one foot through the gap, then stopped dead as a sweeping flashlight briefly illuminated the room in front of him.
A dark-haired woman knelt in the pool of blood, holding Charlie’s limp hand. She looked up sharply and met his eyes with a piercing black gaze. Before John could move or speak, hands grabbed his shoulders again and drew him back, and then the whole house collapsed before them.
We don’t know for sure,” Jessica said, firmly setting down the fork she’d been playing with on the diner table. It made a disappointing click.
“Don’t do this,” John warned. He didn’t look up from the menu, though he hadn’t read a word since he picked it up.
“It’s just, all that we saw was, you know, blood. People can survive a lot of things. Dave—Springtrap, whatever he wants to call himself—he survived one of those suits, twice. For all we know she might be trapped in the rubble. We should go back. We could—”
“Jessica, stop.” John closed the menu and put it down on the table. “Please. I can’t listen to this. We both saw it happen. We both know she couldn’t have …” Jessica opened her mouth again, about to interrupt. “I said, stop. Don’t you think that I want to believe that she’s okay? I cared about her, too. I cared about her a lot. There is nothing I want more than for her to somehow have escaped. For her to drive up in that ancient car and get out all furious and say, ‘Hey, why’d you leave me behind?’ But we saw the blood: there was too much. I held her hand, and it didn’t feel like anything. As soon as I touched her, I just—Jessica, I knew. And you know it, too.”
Jessica picked up her fork again and twirled it between her fingers, not meeting his eyes. “I feel like we’re waiting for something to happen,” she said quietly.
John picked up the menu again. “I know. But I think that’s just how this feels.” From behind him, he heard the waitress approach for the third time. “We don’t know yet,” he said without looking up. “Why am I even looking at this?” John set the menu back down and covered his face with his hands.
“Can I join you?” John looked up. An unfamiliar, brown-haired young man slid into the booth next to Jessica and across from John.
“Hey, Arty,” Jessica said with a weak smile.
“Hey,” he said, glancing from her to John and back again. John said nothing. “Everyone okay?” Arty asked finally. “I heard there was some kind of accident. Where’s Charlie?”
Jessica looked down, tapping the fork on the table. John met the newcomer’s eyes, then shook his head. Arty blanched, and John looked out the window. The parking lot outside blurred as he fixed his gaze on the smudged and streaky glass.
“The last thing she said to me was …” John lightly touched his fist to the table. “‘Don’t let go of me.’” He turned back to the window.
“John,” Jessica whispered.
“And I did. I let go of her. And she died alone.” There was silence for a few moments.
“I can’t believe it,” Arty said, his brow furrowed. “We had just started dating, you know?”
Jessica kept her face smooth, and John turned his thousand-yard stare on Arty. The boy faltered. “I mean, we were going to. I think. She really liked me, anyway.” He looked to Jessica, who nodded.
“She liked you, Arty,” she said. John turned back to the window.
“I’m sure she did,” he said evenly.
Random thoughts swirled through his mind. The mess of her room. The pang of concern when he saw her childhood toy, Theodore the stuffed rabbit, torn apart. Charlie, what was wrong? There was so much more he wanted to ask her. Those blind faces with their smooth, nearly featureless faces and their couplet word games. Something—everything—about them had disturbed him, and now that he pictured them again, he was bothered for another reason. They looked like William Afton’s designs—the blank faces with no eyes. Charlie, what made you think of that?
Jessica made an indistinct cry, and John startled back to the present to see her racing to the door, where Marla had appeared. He got up more slowly and followed her, with a sense of déjà vu. He was waiting his turn as Marla hugged Jessica close, stroking her hair and whispering something John couldn’t hear.
Marla released Jessica and turned to him. “John,” she said, taking both his hands. The sorrow in her eyes was what broke him. He leaned in and hugged her close, hiding his face in her hair until he could compose himself. When his breathing had steadied, she pushed him gently back and took his arm. They all went back to the table where Arty waited, peering uncertainly over the side of the booth. They sat down again. Marla slid in next to John and looked from him to Jessica. “You have to tell me what happened,” she said quietly. Jessica nodded, letting her hair fall over her face for a minute in a shiny brown curtain.
“Yeah, I want to know, too,” Arty piped up, and Marla glanced at him as if only just registering his presence.
“Hi,” she said, sounding slightly puzzled. “I’m Marla.”
“Arty. Charlie and I were—” He glanced at John. “We were good friends.”
Marla nodded. “Well, I wish we were meeting under different circumstances. Jessica? John? Please, tell me.”
They glanced at each other. John looked to the window again. He was content to let Jessica do the talking but felt an obligation—not to talk to Marla, but to talk about Charlie. “Charlie was chasing something from her past,” John said, his voice calm. “She found it, and it didn’t let her leave.”
“There was a building collapse,” Jessica added. “Her father’s house.”
“Charlie didn’t make it out,” John said roughly. He cleared his throat and reached for the glass of water in front of him.
John vaguely heard Marla and Jessica exchanging words of comfort, but his mind was elsewhere. The woman, kneeling in the pool of Charlie’s blood, holding her hand. He had only glimpsed her for a moment; she had looked almost as surprised to see him as he was to see her. But there was something familiar about her.
He turned away from the others again and closed his eyes, trying to picture it. Dark hair, dark eyes. She looked severe and unafraid, even with the ground shaking and the building tumbling down over her head. I know her. The woman he remembered looked different, younger, but her face was the same … Suddenly he had it. The last day I saw you, Charlie, back when we were kids. She came to pick you up from school, and the next day you weren’t there, and the next day, and the day after that. Then even us kids began to hear the rumors, that your father had done what he did. And that’s when I realized I would never see you again. John shivered.
“John, what’s wrong?” Marla said sharply, then blushed. “I mean, what are you thinking?”
“Her aunt was there,” he said slowly. “Her aunt Jen.”
“What?” Marla said. “Where?”
“They hadn’t spoken in months,” Jessica said doubtfully.
“I know,” John said. “But she was there. When I ran back, just before they pulled me away, I saw her. With Charlie.”
The thought struck him like a blow across the chest, and he looked out the window again so that he wouldn’t have to meet anyone’s eyes. “Charlie’s aunt Jen was there,” he repeated to the dirty pane of glass.
“Maybe Clay called her,” Jessica offered. John didn’t respond. No one spoke for a long moment.
“I think it’s best not to look for more mysteries,” Marla said slowly. “Charlie was—”
“Are you all ready to order?” The waitress asked brightly. John turned to look at her with impatience in his eyes, but Marla cut him off.
“Four coffees,” she said firmly. “Four eggs and toast, scrambled.”
“Thanks, Marla,” John whispered. “I’m not sure if I can eat, though.”
She glanced at the rest of them. Arty looked briefly as if he wanted to say something, then he cast his eyes down at the table. The woman departed, and Marla looked around. “We all have to eat. And you can’t sit around in a diner all day without ordering
anything.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Marla,” John said. She nodded.
“We all love Charlie,” she said, looking at each of them in turn. “There’s never a right thing to say, is there? Nothing ever makes it okay, because it’s not.”
“All those crazy experiments,” Jessica said suddenly. “I didn’t understand, but she was so excited about them, and now she’ll never get to finish.”
“It’s not fair,” Marla said softly.
“So what do we do?” Jessica said with a plaintive note in her voice. She looked at Marla like she must have the answer.
“Jessica, sweetie,” Marla said. “All anyone can do is hold on to the Charlie that we all loved.”
“It’s over,” John said hoarsely, turning away from the window abruptly. “That … that psychopath murdered her, just like he did Michael and all those other kids. She was the most fascinating, the most amazing person I have ever known, and she died for nothing.”
“She did not die for nothing!” Marla snapped, leaning in toward him. Rage flashed in her eyes. “No one dies for nothing, John. Everyone’s life has a meaning. Everyone has a death, and I hate it that this was hers. Do you hear me? I hate it! But we can’t change it. All we can do is remember Charlie, and honor Charlie’s life, from the beginning to the very end.”
John held her stormy gaze for a long moment, then broke away and looked down at his folded hands on the table. She mirrored the movement and placed one hand over his.
Jessica gasped, and he turned back to the table wearily. “What, Jessica?” John asked. Her nervous energy was beginning to exhaust him. She didn’t answer, but gave him an incredulous look, and turned back to the window. Marla leaned past John, craning her neck to see. Reluctantly he looked, too, letting his eyes focus for the first time on the parking lot outside the window, and not the pane of glass itself.
It was a car. The woman driving killed the engine and got out. She was slim and tall, with long, straight brown hair that glistened in the sun. She was wearing a bright red, knee-length dress with black combat boots, and she strode purposefully toward the diner. They all watched motionless, as if the slightest sound might rupture the illusion and send her away. The woman was almost at the door. Arty said it first:
The Twisted Ones Page 21
