Once he reached the Freddy’s building, he walked around the side and found the bathroom window. If he stood on tiptoe, he could just reach the windowsill with his fingertips. He groaned in disappointment. There was no way he had the upper body strength to pull himself up. He was going to have to find something to climb on. He walked farther around the building. Next to the back door was a lidded garbage can on wheels. Perfect, Colton thought.
The handle of the garbage can was sticky with something Colton didn’t want to think about, but he hung on to it anyway and rolled the can to the side of the building. The wheels made a little more noise than he would have liked, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around to hear it. He positioned the garbage can right under the window and awkwardly climbed on top of it. The can’s plastic lid warped under his weight, and the wheels made him feel unsteady. But he pushed up the window, grabbed the sill, and started dragging himself through, headfirst.
Soon he was awkwardly hanging with his hands in the sink and his feet still sticking out the window. Not sure what else to do, he pushed his feet off the windowsill and flipped forward, hitting the floor hard on his backside. It didn’t tickle, and the wind was knocked out of him, but he wasn’t injured.
And most important, he was in.
He pulled himself clumsily to his feet and waited a minute for his breathing to return to normal. How was it that in the movies, people could jump from a great height, land hard, and then hop right up and keep on running?
When Colton swung open the bathroom door, the clown animatronic was standing in the hallway, almost as if it had been waiting for him. Colton jumped backward, his heart beating fast. “Yeesh!” he said, looking at the thing’s horrible gape-mouthed grin. “Shouldn’t somebody put you away at night?” He squeezed past the clown, fearful that it might grab him, but it just stood there like the inanimate object it was.
Still, when Colton walked down the hallway, it was hard not to look back to see if the clown was following him.
Colton didn’t think he’d ever get used to this silent version of Freddy’s. No screaming rug rats, no bleeping games, no prerecorded songs and chatter from Freddy’s animatronic band. It was quieter than a library.
Then Colton heard a faint jingling.
Or at least he thought he did. It was the soft, tinkly noise that the bells on the birthday clown’s costume would make. Was the clown following him?
Colton had to laugh at himself. Of course the clown wasn’t following him. It was a machine, a thing. It was no more capable of stalking somebody than a vacuum cleaner.
He heard the jingling again. Closer this time.
He ducked behind BB’s Ball Drop and listened for the bells. He heard nothing.
When he stepped out from behind the machine, he saw the clown. It was at the end of the row of games with its back turned to him. Colton hurried as quietly as he could in the opposite direction.
Jingle, jingle.
The clown was on the move again. Colton squatted down beside DeeDee’s Fishing Game. His heart was pounding in his chest. He held his breath as the clown shambled past him, bells tinkling.
It’s not looking for you, Colton told himself. Stop acting like a stupid squeaker. You can’t get all spooked by a dumb fake clown and lose the opportunity that’s right here for the taking. You know why you came here.
He made his way to the Ticket Pulverizer. When he got there, the clown was standing in front of the machine as if it were guarding it. But when Colton waved his hand in front of the clown’s eyes, it didn’t react at all. One eye looked ahead and one looked down and off to the right, like always. And of course they weren’t really looking anyway, Colton told himself. The clown’s eyes were as unseeing as the button eyes on Colton’s childhood teddy bear. He couldn’t let the creepy clown distract him from his mission. Colton stared at the Ticket Pulverizer. Its lights flashed and glowed. It felt like an enemy issuing a challenge. But soon, Colton thought, he would tame the Ticket Pulverizer, and it would be a faithful friend, giving him the rewards he so richly deserved.
He walked around the machine, surveying its base. On one side, he spotted what looked like the larger version of a battery compartment cover on a TV remote control. If he could get that cover open, he might be able to squeeze into the base of the machine to tinker with its workings.
Colton dug through his pockets to find the tools he needed. He set out his phone, a screwdriver, and a flashlight.
Colton felt a hand on his shoulder, but it wasn’t a normal human hand. He looked down to see a large three-fingered white glove connected to telltale yellow coils.
“Get off me!” he yelled. He slapped the hand away, then whirled around and shoved the clown as hard as he could in its midsection. It hurtled backward, crashed into an arcade cabinet, and fell onto its side.
Colton was amazed how lightweight the clown was and how far he had been able to push it. Seeing it lying there on the floor, it looked like a broken toy, certainly not like anything to be scared of. He got down on his knees and pulled on the cover. It flipped open easily. Clearly it was a hatch that allowed access to the Pulverizer’s innards. The opening was small, no bigger than the bathroom window Colton had used to break into Freddy’s.
Colton dropped his screwdriver inside the door, and then, turning on his flashlight, he crawled into the machine.
The space inside was cramped. There was no room to sit up. He could only lie down with his legs bent sideways in an uncomfortable position, with the bottom of the machine’s platform touching the length of his body. Shining his flashlight around, he was relieved to see that the mechanical parts looked how he expected them to look. It was just going to be hard for him to do the work he needed to do from an awkward reclining position.
Colton squinted at the inner workings of the Ticket Pulverizer. As he started to loosen a screw, he felt something tightly grip his ankles. He shined his flashlight to see a pair of white-gloved hands, one grasping each ankle. The yellow coil arms were stretched out long, but they contracted as they pulled his body toward the opening where he had entered the compartment.
How could the clown weigh so little and yet be so strong? It had pulled his legs straight and was dragging him out of the machine. Once Colton’s legs were outside, he wrenched his right one free and threw a bunch of wild, hard kicks that he felt connect with the clown’s body. After one particularly forceful kick, the clown loosened its grip on his other leg, and Colton scrambled to get his full body back into the base of the Pulverizer. Once he was inside, he closed the hatch he had entered through behind him. The clown’s hands were large, awkward things, and he hoped it would lack the motor skills needed to pull the hatch back open. Besides, from the strength of his kicks, maybe he’d put the clown out of commission anyway.
Now it was time for Colton to steady his hands and his nerves and do what he came here to do.
Even with the flashlight, it took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was like being in a small, tight alcove in a cave. Memories of the claustrophobic closet in the back room of Freddy’s momentarily rushed back to him, but when he shined his flashlight on the machinery, he smiled. He knew what he needed to do. It was going to be challenging because he needed both hands to do his work, but there was no place to set the flashlight, which he needed so he could see.
Finally, he awkwardly secured the flashlight under his left armpit and angled the beam to hit the area he needed to work on.
All his reading, planning, and obsessing had paid off. Even though he was working under less-than-ideal conditions, the process of fixing the Pulverizer couldn’t have gone more smoothly. At some point he’d realized the trick: Flip these switches to tie the ticket release to the size of the bounces. Loosen these screws to give the platform even more bounce. The little kids would get more tickets, sure, but big kids like Colton would be flush with them.
Colton smiled at his achievement. People didn’t give him the credit he deserved, he thought. His teach
ers didn’t comprehend who they were dealing with. They thought he was just some regular high school freshman, a C student. Average, no different from a thousand other kids. His mom, even though she loved him, didn’t give him enough credit either. Only Colton could see the truth about himself. He was brilliant, a mechanical genius.
With his newly realized self-confidence, his luck was sure to change. The thousands of tickets he was going to win from the Ticket Pulverizer were only the beginning.
Colton smiled at his handiwork one last time, then reached over his head to push the small door open so he could climb out and make his exit.
The door wouldn’t budge.
There has to be some kind of mistake, Colton thought. He pushed the door again, harder this time. It still refused to move. It was like it was locked from the outside. But how was that possible? No one was in Freddy’s, and even if they were, why would they suspect someone was inside the Ticket Pulverizer?
He shoved it again. It held fast.
Colton shined his flashlight around the tiny space, trying to see if there might be another way to get out, a panel that could be removed or something. There was nothing.
Colton’s flashlight found a small round hole about the size of the head of a bolt. It was just big enough to peek through. Colton closed one eye and looked through the tiny opening with the other. All he could see were big green shoes. Clown shoes. It was standing guard there, waiting. If it couldn’t get him out of the machine itself, it would wait until he found a way to get out on his own. He thought of an expression his uncle used sometimes: between a rock and a hard place. He had never really understood the meaning of that saying until now.
He felt himself starting to shake. His heart thudded in his chest so loud that he could hear it. Somehow he felt sweaty and cold at the same time. The space seemed to shrink around him until it was squeezing him from all sides. He lay with his knees hugged to his chest, trying to make himself smaller so the space would seem larger.
It’ll be okay, he told himself. In two or three hours, Freddy’s would open, and somebody could rescue him. But how could he stand to stay in this tiny place in this uncomfortable position for two or three hours? Was there even enough air to keep him alive that long? Already the air he was breathing felt scarce and stale. And assuming someone did rescue him, how would he explain himself? I was playing Jump for Tickets last night, and I guess I jumped so hard I fell in. Oops.
He was going to have to come up with a more credible story.
Colton looked down at his flashlight. He had no idea how much life the batteries still had in them. It was probably best to try to conserve them. He switched off the flashlight and was plunged into total darkness. He remembered a story he’d read in school about a man trapped in the deep blackness of a coal mine, waiting to die. He felt like that man.
He tried to let his mind wander. He made lists of things: favorite video games, favorite movies, favorite foods. But the last one was a bad idea because it made him realize how hungry he was. He usually ate a full breakfast, but today he’d had nothing but that banana. He was thirsty, too. It had never occurred to him to bring water because he hadn’t thought that he might be trapped like this.
Colton’s stomach lurched, not with hunger but with nausea. The acid from the orange juice he had drunk earlier seemed to be upsetting his stomach. But he knew it wasn’t really the orange juice that was affecting him. It was fear. Fear was eating away at his insides and making him sick.
Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, Colton told himself. If he threw up in here, he would be trapped in this tiny space with the horrible smell of his own vomit. He sucked in great gulps of air, trying to quell his nausea. But then, he worried, what if he was being too greedy with the air? What if he was using the limited supply of oxygen in this tiny space too quickly?
Both of Colton’s legs had fallen asleep, but there was no room to move them around to wake them up. He wiggled his toes and moved his feet at his ankles, all the time feeling like he was being pricked by hundreds of needles. His neck was starting to cramp, and he pivoted his head from side to side, trying to relieve the pain.
But the pain and sickness weren’t the worst parts. The worst part was the question gnawing at the back of Colton’s mind: What if no one finds me? What if nobody hears me and I die from thirst or hunger? Will somebody find me when my body starts to rot? Or will all that’s left of me be a dusty, forgotten skeleton, curled up in this compartment for years and years like a mummy in its tomb?
But he also knew that curling up and dying inside the machine might not be the worst thing that could happen to him. From outside the machine, he heard jingling as the clown patrolled back and forth in front of the Ticket Pulverizer. He thought again of the mice who wanted to hang the bell on the cat so they would know when their killer was close. Colton shuddered. Maybe it was better not to know.
Clearly, sitting here in the dark like this was making him a little crazy. He turned on the flashlight for just a couple of seconds as a reality check. At least he knew he could still see. Good. But when he turned off the light and was surrounded by darkness again, he felt scared of the dark as though he was a little kid. It was like this terrible experience was making him move backward in time, becoming the child he had once been. The child that he hated, like he hated all children.
But wait. Colton remembered something. His phone. He had his phone. If all else failed, he could call his mom, confess to his crimes, and get rescued. She was probably already home from her shift and wondering where he was. He reached into his right back pocket. It was empty. He tried the left back one even though he knew he hadn’t put it there. He patted down all his pockets frantically. And then a picture flashed in his mind: him setting out the phone and his tools on the floor beside the machine, opening the machine’s door, and dropping the tools inside but not the phone.
Colton said some words his mother didn’t allow him to say.
Then, as if on cue, he heard it. A faint ringing coming from just outside the machine. His ringtone. He was sure it was his mom, calling to see if he was okay.
Colton was not okay.
He pushed on the door with his full strength. It was like trying to move a solid brick wall. He pushed on the platform just above him. It was useless.
Colton peeked through the tiny hole in the Ticket Pulverizer’s base. He saw his phone on the black-and-white tile floor, vibrating as it rang. And then a white-gloved, three-fingered hand reached down and picked it up. “No!” he screamed. “No! No! No!” He screamed till his throat was raw, knowing the whole time that it wouldn’t make any difference.
Time passed. How much? An hour? Five minutes? Colton had no idea. In the dark, with nothing to do and nothing to see, time lost its meaning. Other things started to lose their meaning, too. Colton started to find it hard to form words in his mind. He knew the physical sensations he was feeling: thirst, hunger, pain from his body being cramped into an unnatural position, the uncomfortable pressure of a full bladder. But he couldn’t find the words for any of these things. He could only feel them and whimper softly and wait.
He wasn’t even sure anymore what he was waiting for.
Scared, unable to use language or feed himself, in very real danger of wetting his pants, Colton was regressing to the helplessness of an infant. If he continued to go backward physically and emotionally, the next logical step would be to disappear into nothingness, to become one with the darkness.
For a while, it seemed as if it had happened, that Colton had simply ceased to exist, but then he heard it. And if he could hear, it must mean that he existed. It was the music, the bleeping and blipping of the games, the annoying voices of the animatronic characters. Colton remembered where he was and what his predicament was.
But things were looking up. Noises meant people. If Freddy’s was open for business, somebody was there to hear him.
He started out by yelling for help but quickly realized his throat was too dry and his voice too weak
from disuse to make much noise. Instead, he banged on the platform with his fists. He hit the stupid thing over and over but with no results. His knuckles ached and would probably bruise. He figured no one was nearby and decided to conserve his energy. If he kept banging on the platform continuously, he would only exhaust himself. He would wait a little while until there were some customers, then try again.
Like a cat washing its paws, Colton licked his knuckles, trying to soothe his pain with the moisture of his saliva. But his tongue was too dry from thirst to be of much use.
At least now the terrible darkness was no longer accompanied by silence. If he could hear noises, he knew he was alive.
From the sound of little footsteps and high-pitched yelling and giggling, it was clear that Freddy’s had now opened for business. And when Freddy’s was full of overstimulated rug rats, it was the noisiest place on earth.
It was amazing how much Colton could hear from his tiny prison. He could pick out the sounds of different video games. He recognized sound effects that accompanied BB’s Ball Drop and the annoying jingly tune that played when someone put in a token to play DeeDee’s Fishing Hole. He could hear the canned music of Freddy Fazbear’s band as they launched into the birthday song. He could hear some obnoxious child whining, “But why isn’t it my happy birthday?”
Normally, the sounds at Freddy’s all jumbled together in a big, noisy soup. But Colton could hear everything individually, like hearing was his superpower. Maybe when you had been isolated from some of your senses, the ones you could still use became stronger.
Right now, for example, Colton was hearing Coils the Birthday Clown’s prerecorded voice say, “Get ready for the Ticket Pulverizer Countdown!”
There was the sound of little kids screaming and cheering.
“Now who’s ready to Jump! For! Tickets!” Coils said, its voice actor feigning excitement.
Colton knew what would happen next. Some Freddy’s employee would open the door of the Ticket Pulverizer and let in all the overexcited birthday party kids.
The Puppet Carver Page 8
