She showered quickly and pulled on new clothes, jeans and a black t-shirt, then lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She had a vague sense that her mind should be racing with excitement, or horror at their discoveries, going over and over the memories she had awakened, searching for something new. Instead, she just felt blank. She wanted to be alone, to push the memories to the back of her mind, where they belonged.
After what seemed like only a few short minutes, there was a knock on the door, and Charlie sat up, checking her watch. More time had passed than she realized: it was time to leave. She let John in.
“I have to put on my shoes,” she said. She looked up at him as she knotted the laces. He had changed, this time into jeans and a t-shirt, a contrast with the formal clothes she had gotten used to. His hair was still wet, and there was something fresh and bright about him. She smiled a little.
“What?” He said when he noticed.
“Nothing,” she said, “You still look dirty.” She joked as she pushed past him. They got in the car. This time she drove, and when they reached the diner, Charlie turned off the engine and hesitated, not moving to leave the car.
“John,” she said. “I don’t want to tell anyone about Fredbear’s.”
“But—” he stopped himself. “Yeah,” he said. “I think we forget this is your life, and not just some adventure. It’s fine; I can keep a secret.”
“It’s all our lives,” she said. “We were all there. We can tell them later; I just want to sort some of it out for myself right now.”
“You got it,” he said, and he looked a little pleased. Charlie knew why—it was a secret between them, something she entrusted only to him.
When they went inside, everyone was already halfway through dinner. Charlie realized with a sharp pang that she had not eaten all day, and found herself suddenly starving. The waitress spotted them as they sat down, and came over immediately. They talked intermittently: Lamar, Jason and Marla had gone to a movie, and Carlton and Jessica had played video games at his house. But their conversation was cursory, just filling the time as they ate. Charlie barely listened, and she had the feeling that even those who were talking were paying little attention to their own words. There was an agitated energy among the group; they were all just waiting, their minds already focused on Freddy’s.
“What about you two?” Jessica asked, looking at Charlie and John.
“Yeah, what about you two?” Marla echoed with a twinkle in her eye.
“We just went for a drive,” John said quickly. “Got lost for a while.”
“I bet you did,” Carlton muttered into his burger, grinning slyly even though his mouth was full.
After dinner, the group hurried through the mall and toward the restaurant, hushed and cautious. As they passed through the atrium, their shoes made only soft sounds on the tiled floor, and no one spoke. Charlie had left the big flashlight in the car. They knew their way well enough by now, and the guard had almost seen them the night before; there was no reason to risk drawing extra attention. They came to the end of the hall, and Lamar, at the front of the group, stopped short. Charlie bumped into Marla before she realized what was happening, and she murmured an apology, then froze.
The night guard was blocking the alley behind Freddy’s, his arms folded across his chest. He had no flashlight, and so he had been invisible, hidden in the darkness until they were almost upon him.
“I had a feeling you wouldn’t leave it alone,” he said with an odd, uneven smile.
Marla whispered something unpleasant under her breath.
“I could have you arrested for trespassing,” he said. “Saw you here last night, but I couldn’t see where you got to; I guess now I know,” he added with a smirk.
There was something almost immediately off-putting about the man. He was tall and slightly too thin for his uniform, which bagged at the shoulders and waist, as if he had once been a more robust man, but lost his form somehow to illness or tragedy; his nametag, reading “Dave” hung askew on his chest. His skin was sallow and his eyes undercut by heavy lines, adding to the impression of longstanding ill health.
“What were you all doing back here, anyway?” He demanded. “You kids partying? Drugs? I could have you arrested right now, you know.” Charlie and John glanced at each other.
“We’re sorry,” Lamar said quickly. “We’ll go. We don’t have any drugs.”
“Says who? Says you?” The guard wore an odd expression and his were harsh and fast; he seemed not to be responding to what they were saying. He looked angry, but his mouth kept quirking up at the corners, like he was trying not to smile.
“What do we do?” Jessica whispered.
“Probably the most action he’s ever had out here,” Carlton said with a hint of disdain, and Charlie remembered suddenly that Carlton’s father was a cop. She remembered him in his uniform, tilting down his dark sunglasses at them with a mock-glare, then smiling, revealing the joke. The guard, however, looked like he meant it.
“We’ll go,” Lamar said again. “Sorry.”
Charlie looked at the man, considering him; the ill-fitting uniform, his peaky, almost exhausted-looking features. He really could kick them off the property or even have them arrested for trespassing, but still, she could not really fear him. His inadequacy shone through him like a kind of negative charisma. He would always be shoved to the back of a crowd; always shouted down in an argument; always picked last, forgotten, ignored in favor of those who were simply more vital, more vigorously attached to life. Charlie frowned at herself. It was an unusual train of thought for her—she did not usually assume she could read the lives of strangers through the lines on their faces. But it gave her an idea.
“Why don’t you come with us?” She said. “We just want to explore a little bit more, then we’ll leave. You know your way around better than any of us,” she added, hoping that some of the flattery would stick.
“And then we’ll never come back again,” Carlton said. The guard did not immediately dismiss the idea, and the others quickly chimed in with their own assurances. The guard peered at them one by one, fixing his gaze on each in turn. When he looked at Charlie she looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes, as if she would be giving something away if she let him look too deeply. Once he had inspected them to his satisfaction, he nodded.
“Sure,” he said. “Only because I’ve always wanted to take a walk in there myself.” He jerked a thumb behind him, and, catching the surprise that must have shown on their faces, added: “I’m not an idiot, I’ve been working here for years, walked this building inside and out every night. You think I don’t know what’s back there?” Charlie felt herself flush; she had somehow assumed their discovery was unique. The guard looked down at his nametag suddenly, then pointed to it. “Name’s Dave,” he said.
“I’m Jason,” Jason said, and, a little warily, the others recited their own names in turn. They stood there, looking at one another awkwardly for a moment, no one wanting to be the first to move, then Jessica shrugged.
“Come on,” she said. She walked quickly to the scaffolding that hid the alley to Freddy’s and pulled back the plastic, revealing the break in the wall, and they all filed through, squeezing past the piled boxes. Dave hung back politely, letting them all go first. He motioned to Charlie to go ahead.
I don’t want you behind me, Charlie thought. She looked at Jessica, who wasn’t moving either.
“Please, go ahead,” Charlie said with an edge in her voice, and Dave ducked his head shyly and went. Charlie followed him and Jessica tucked the plastic carefully back where it was, concealing their passing even though there was no one left to catch them. As they made their way down the dank alley, Charlie touched her fingers to the brick wall, dragging her hand along it as if to guide her. The flashlights seemed a little dimmer, now, though she knew it could only be her imagination.
They led the guard to the heavy, wooden shelf that hid the entrance, and Lamar, John and Jessica dragged i
t out of the way, revealing the door. Charlie expected their new companion to be impressed, but he just nodded, as if he had suspected this all along.
One by one, they entered the hall to the restaurant, and again Charlie lagged back from the group. She caught Carlton by the arm as he passed her.
“Carlton,” she whispered. “Have you ever seen this guy?”
Carlton shook his head. “It’s not that small a town; I don’t know everybody.”
Charlie nodded absently, her eyes still on the newcomer as they made their way down the long hallway into Freddy’s main dining room. She had invited the guard because it seemed like the only way to get back in, but now she was beginning to regret it. Letting a stranger into Freddy’s was like letting him into her home, like giving something up.
“What happened to the restaurant?” Lamar said, his tone carefully even, forcing a friendliness he could not have felt. “Why is it boarded up? And why is the mall abandoned, anyway?” His voice sounded thin in the narrow hallway, a little muted.
“You don’t know?” Dave said. “This town needs money, jobs, revenue, things like that, and one thing we’ve got a lot of is space. So they decided to build a big mall, try and attract businesses, maybe even tourists. They built up around where Freddy Fazbear’s was, but when it came to it, no one would lease the restaurant, you know, because of what happened. So someone had the bright idea of sealing the whole place up, intact; someone who had a sentimental attachment to it, perhaps. I don’t think they even tried to clear it out. But it wasn’t enough. Something about that place spilled over into the rest of the building, maybe right down into the soil. No one wanted to bring their business here. Sometimes business owners, franchisers from outside the town would come and look at the place, but they never signed the papers. Said it just didn’t feel right. I think it’s got an aura, a mystical energy maybe, if you believe in that sort of thing.” Dave wiggled his fingers in the air as though casting a spell.
“I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” Lamar said shortly, but the guard did not seem to notice his tone.
“To each his own,” he said. “All I know is, no one ever wanted their stores here, and they abandoned the construction before the building was even finished. Now nobody comes up here except kids wanting to screw around. And me,” he added with what sounded like pride. He must have felt possessive, Charlie thought, the only one who ever came here, for years and years. It must have felt like it belonged to him, this strange, half-finished building. To him, they must be the invaders.
They came to the end of the hallway, and the space opened up before them. Jessica ran ahead to the control room beneath the stage, her flashlight bobbing merrily ahead of her. She disappeared for a moment, then hit the light switch, and all at once the room was warm and bright. Charlie stopped, blinking in the sudden light. Dave brushed past her, and as he did something caught her eye: there was a scar on his neck, curved and ugly, almost a perfect half-moon. The tissue was knotted and white—the cut that made it must have been a deep one. Only a few feet away, Dave turned in a circle, taking in the restaurant, awed, and as he did, Charlie saw that the scar had a twin; the same half- moon, in the same place on the other side of his neck. She shivered a little. The marks were too clean, too perfectly placed: they almost looked deliberate.
The group fanned out. Carlton, for some reason, headed toward the kitchen, and Jason wandered away toward the arcade again.
“Be careful!” Marla called after him, but she was already following Lamar to the control room to join Jessica. Charlie hung back, and John stayed with her. There was something different in the air, Charlie thought. It felt thinner, like she had to breathe deeper to get enough oxygen. It’s just a guy, she told herself, but that was the problem. They had brought an outsider in with them, and now the restaurant felt less secure, no longer hidden away. Freddy’s had been breached. Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica had begun to move, in their stiff, single movements. Charlie looked at Dave, but he did not appear surprised. He’s been here before, she thought. Then: of course he’s been here before. The whole town used to come here, back then.
John motioned her on, and reluctantly she went with him to the control room, Dave tagging along behind them like a stray.
In the booth, Jessica was hunched over, pressing buttons, and Lamar was studying the control board, trying to make sense of it. Dave peered intently over their shoulders, watching. He was nodding slightly to himself, wrapped up in some private calculation, and when Jessica stepped back and stretched, he cleared his throat.
“Um,” he said. “Could I try?” He drew himself up a little, extending his arm graciously.
Jessica and Lamar exchanged glances, then shrugged.
“Why not?” Jessica said. They shuffled around so that he could reach the board, and he stared down at it for a long moment without moving, then touched a short series of buttons. A hum rose from the speakers, a long, low tone that did not waver.
“Whoa,” Jessica said, and pointed to the monitors. Charlie saw movement on the screen, and backed out of the control room to look for herself. Onstage, the animals were dancing. Crudely, awkwardly, without the grace or complexity Charlie remembered, but they were moving in sequences, not just one motion at a time.
Charlie went back to the control room, but did not go beyond the door.
“How did you do that?” She snapped, not caring if it was rude. Dave raised his hands in the air.
“Beginner’s luck,” he said. “I just pressed some buttons.”
“Right,” Charlie said. She rubbed her temples. “Can someone please turn the speakers off?”
Lamar darted forward and flipped a switch, and the sound died. Despite the silence, Charlie felt as if she could still hear it, whining away inside her head. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them Jessica and Lamar had gone back to working the controls, but there was a caution to their movements, and they glanced at one another every few seconds, as if seeking reassurance. Charlie looked at John. His arms were folded across his chest, and his eyes were trained on the back of Dave’s head.
In the arcade, Carlton pressed some random buttons on a game console, knowing nothing would happen, then turned around, finding himself the subject of an eleven-year-old’s resentful stare.
“What?” He said.
“I’m not a baby,” Jason said. “You don’t have to watch me.”
“What? Jason, I’m not watching you, I’m just hanging out with you. I’m not Marla. Go stick your tongue in an electric socket for all I care.” He waggled his eyebrows comically, and Jason laughed.
“Okay, then, maybe I will.” he said. He scanned the baseboards for a socket, briefly considering calling Carlton’s bluff, but when he glanced back, Carlton had already wandered off. Jason bit his lip and rocked on his heels, feeling foolish. After a moment, he went back to the drawings on the wall. There were too many drawings to peruse each one in turn, but Jason suspected he would not need to. As they had the night before, the drawings would come to him. They wanted to be found. All Jason had to do was look.
The drawings in the arcade gave up nothing: they were just children’s grubby art, faded with age, and so he went back out into the dining room, still hugging the walls and scanning them, hunting for something that was more than crayon.
“What’re you up to, Jason?” Lamar was suddenly behind him. Jason turned around and studied him for a moment, considering. He liked Lamar, even if his friendliness could be traced easily to his interest in Marla. Lamar had bent down so his head was almost level with Jason’s, and Jason leaned toward him and whispered:
“The drawings are moving.”
Lamar drew back, and for a moment a look of real alarm crossed his face, but it was fleeting. Jason bit his lip, waiting, and Lamar grinned at him, then reached out to pat him on the head.
“Ok, Jason. We’ll get you the help you need.” He said heartily, and Jason laughed and slapped Lamar’s hand away.
“Shut up, seri
ously,” Jason said with a hint of sheepishness, and Lamar patted his head again and headed off. As soon as the Lamar was a few feet away, Jason rolled his eyes. What do you think I am, your pet? He gave his hair a violent tussle as if he could shake loose whatever Lamar had done to him, then went back to the wall, concentrating.
He had made his way all the way along one wall, and was turning the corner, when it happened: a flicker, just out of the corner of his eye, almost a shimmering. He stopped. Which one was it? He scanned the drawings again, going up and down the wall carefully, around the place he thought he had seen movement, but there was nothing. He started over, stopping to look at each crayon scribble, and then it happened again. He seized on it this time, his eye finding the drawing just as the shimmer of movement stopped, and just as he did, he saw another, so brief he would have ignored it, just a trick of the light, had he not been watching for it. It was above the first, and maybe two feet to the left; his eyes darted back and forth, trying to see both at once. Suddenly, there was a third movement in a drawing between the two, this one more noticeable. This time he almost, almost saw the drawing shift before it was still again. Sitting back on his heels, Jason looked at the three drawings, each in turn. The crayon was black, and they all looked like they had been drawn by the same kid, all with two figures in the foreground: a child, and a rabbit.
Jason glanced around the room. His sister and the others still seemed to be engaged by the stage; Lamar had gone back to join them. Jason pulled the drawing he had found the night before from his pocket. He smoothed it out, pressing it to the surface of the floor, then, slowly, he peeled its linty tape out flat and stuck the paper to the wall just at his eye level. He stared at the wall, waiting.
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