Nothing happened.
Jason frowned. He had been so certain these would tell him something, but they were just drawings; the child and the bunny stood in the middle of the paper, in one close together, in another far apart. But there was nothing there that could be called a story. Oh well. He started to look over at the others again—and the highest one began to move.
This time he saw the shift: the crayon lines twisted and slid on the page, moving of their own accord, too fast to follow. When the first stopped moving, another started, they continued one after the other until the last, the one he had just put back, was finished. Jason watched, eyes wide, his heart pounding, but by the time he realized what was happening, it was over. The figures were fixed in place, and now they did tell a story. In the first, a child was sitting alone. In the second, Bonnie appeared behind the child. In the next, Bonnie had snatched the child, lifting it off the ground.
In the last, the child was screaming.
His eyes wide and his heart racing, Jason stepped back. He was transfixed: his body suddenly felt leaden, too heavy to run. A sound arose, like wind rustling the pages on the wall, though they hung motionless before him. The sound rushed and grew, louder and louder until wind gave way to screaming. Jason clapped his hands over his ears as pages began to drop from the walls, landing with loud crashes, as if they were made of something far heavier than paper. As he watched, the fallen pages turned a dark red, soaking through with color as they touched the floor. Jason turned to run, but his path was blocked as pages tumbled from the ceiling in a torrent. One landed on his shoulder, another on his back and then another, and they clung to him, wrapping around him as if they would suffocate him. Jason felt his legs buckle under the weight, dropping at last to one knee.
As he braced himself under the storm of paper, the room began to shake violently. Jason gritted his teeth, trapped—and suddenly it was over. The red-soaked papers were gone, there was nothing on his back, and Marla had him by the shoulder, and was staring at him, wide-eyed.
“Jason, what on earth is wrong with you?”
Jason scrambled to his feet, brushing himself off as if he were covered with invisible insects.
“The pictures were falling on me,” He said it urgently, still panicked, but as he looked back at the wall, he realized that the room was silent and still. A single picture had fallen from its place. Marla looked down at it, then back to her brother, and shook her head. She leaned close, and hissed into his ear:
“You embarrass me.” She let loose her grip after a moment, her face almost blank, and walked away. Jason stumbled as he got to his feet, but followed as quickly as he could, keeping his eyes trained on the walls as they went.
In the control room, Dave had his hands on the buttons, his fingers wandering lightly over them without pressing anything. The movement looked careless, instinctual, like a habit. Charlie leaned close to John, whispering:
“He’s been here before,” she said. “Look at the way he touches the controls.”
“Maybe he’s just good with computers,” John offered, not sounding convinced.
“Can you make them dance again?” Jessica asked. Dave barely seemed to acknowledge the question. His mouth hung slightly open, and he seemed to be staring at something none of them could see. In the bright lights, they could all see that his uniform was grubby and torn in places, his face poorly shaven and his eyes a little unfocused. He looked less like a guard than a vagrant, and he looked at them all as if he had wandered in ages ago, and they were the newcomers. It took him a moment to register the question.
“Sure, let’s see what we can do,” he said. He smiled at her, his mouth askew. His eyes were a little too intent on her face, holding her gaze just a little too long. Jessica swallowed, seized with an instinctive revulsion, but she smiled back politely.
“All right,” Dave said. “I’ve been here a few times before, I think I can work some magic.”
Charlie and John exchange glances.
“You’ve been here before?” John said in a careful, even tone, but Dave ignored him, or did not hear.
There was a keypad to the far left of the control board that no one had touched yet, as it did not appear to be connected to anything. Now Dave reached for it and began to press the buttons quickly, as if he had done it a hundred times before. He gave Jessica a conspiratorial glance. “For special occasions, you can request a dance.” He smiled at her again with that crooked intensity.
“Great,” Jessica said, breathing a sigh of relief. Anything to get out of such forced proximity to this man. She looked at Lamar. “I’m going to go look, will you take over?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, scooting forward to fill the vacancy as Jessica and Dave made their way out to the show area.
Onstage, the lights were flashing in patterns, accompanying music that no longer played, and Bonnie’s mouth was moving as though in song. His eyelids closed for long blinks, then opened again with loud clicks, his glass eyes moving from side to side. One large blue hand rose and fell, strumming exaggeratedly on the red guitar, whose strings had long since gone missing.
“Lamar, how much of this are you doing?” Carlton said, suitably impressed.
“Not much!” Lamar called back. “Most of it seems pre-programmed.”
Bonnie turned to them and Jessica startled as he seemed to look right at her. But he turned away just as quickly to face the rows of empty seats, lifting his head to sing.
“It’s strange seeing them like this,” Jessica said, and took a step back to get a better view. Bonnie’s foot tapped along in rhythm, and his mouth opened and closed with song. There was no voice; there was no music. There was only a strange humming coming from the speakers, and an orchestra of mechanical snaps and squeaks. Bonnie sped up, strumming and tapping faster. His eyes suddenly seemed out of sync, looking left while the head went right, then rolling back into his head.
Dave approached the stage with deliberate steps. “Nervous little fella, aren’t you.” He smiled, seemingly unbothered as the rabbit moved faster and faster.
“Hey Lamar, can you take it down a notch?” Jessica called.
Bonnie’s arms began convulsing violently, his mouth open but stuttering, his eyes were throwing their gaze in seemingly random directions.
“Lamar! Something’s wrong!” Jessica cried.
Bonnie’s foot jerked upward with a sound like a gunshot, yanking free the bolt that anchored him to the stage.
“Lamar!” Carlton climbed onto the stage and hurried to Bonnie, trying to search the rabbit for an off button as he ducked its erratic swings.
“Carlton get down, you idiot!” Jessica ran to the stage.
Bonnie was moving too fast, out of control as if his program had hit a glitch. He was no longer following the dance sequence they all remembered so well. He began to convulse and thrash. Carlton scrambled back, trying to get away, but Bonnie’s arm broke away from the guitar, swinging out and hitting Carlton across the chest, knocking him off the stage; he landed on his back and stayed down, gasping for breath.
“Lamar!” Jessica shouted, “Lamar, turn it off!”
“I don’t know how!” He yelled back.
Jessica knelt down beside Carlton, looking helplessly at him. She tapped his shoulder insistently.
“Carlton, are you okay? Carlton? Look at me!”
Carlton gave a small laugh that sounded more like a cough, then grabbed her hand and pulled himself up to sit.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Just got the wind knocked out of me.” Jessica still looked worried. “I just need a minute,” he assured her, the words still coming in little wheezes.
In the control room, Lamar pressed button after button frantically, but on the screens he could still see Bonnie moving wildly and at random, not responding to anything he did. Charlie rushed in, pushing him out of the way, but it took her only seconds to see that the buttons were powerless. She locked eyes with Lamar for a moment. We aren’t in control. she thought. As o
ne, they rushed from the control room to help the others.
Jessica screamed, a short high-pitched sound, and Marla and John ran to her, Charlie and Lamar arriving seconds later. All the animals were moving now, in that same, fitful way, cycling through their programmed movements at random, but with a desperate, panicked air. The lights began to pulse, flickering rapidly on and off. The stage lights did the same, the colors appearing and disappearing so that the whole space was washed first in bright gold, then a sickly green, then a bruised and vicious purple. They blinked like strobes, and the effect was nauseating. The speakers blared brief bursts of static, cutting in and out like the lights, and beneath the static was the same sound as they had heard the night before, the growling of a voice too low to be human, to indistinct to be speaking words.
The group came together cautiously, not quite trusting their own senses: the lights throbbed savagely, and as Charlie walked toward her friends, she could not be sure how far away they were, or what was right in front of her. They huddled in the middle of the floor, staring at the animals as they rattled and rocked as if with their own agenda. Carlton got to his feet, and Jessica watched him with concern, but he waved her off.
“I told you, I’m fine,” he said, shouting to be heard over the intermittent noise.
Charlie stood fixed in place, unable to take her eyes off the animals. They’re trying to get away, she thought. It was a child’s thought, and she tried to dismiss it, but it clung as she watched them, scarcely noticing the fitful flickering of the lights and sound. The animatronic creatures didn’t look like they were glitching; their movement seemed not mechanical but hysterical, like there was something they needed desperately to do, but, horribly, could not.
“Where’s Dave?” John said suddenly. Charlie met his eyes with a rising dread. Oh, no. They all looked around, but the guard was nowhere in sight.
“We have to find him,” Charlie said.
“He probably left already; who cares?” Marla said, her voice high and frightened.
“I’m not worried about him,” she said grimly. She turned to John. “Come on,” she said, setting off toward the hallway to the right of the stage. He glanced at the rest of the group over his shoulder, then followed Charlie at a brisk pace.
“We should find the other control room and see if we can stop all this from there,” Jessica said crisply, taking charge. “You and Jason go look for Dave,” she told Marla.
“I’ll go with them,” Lamar said quickly.
“Control room?” Carlton said, looking at Jessica.
“Control room,” she confirmed. They all set off, moving slowly. The strobing lights distorted the space in front of them, seeming to throw up obstacles that were not there, obscuring the ones that were. The effect was disorienting, a constantly shifting maze of light and noise.
“Ow!” Marla shouted, and everyone stopped short.
“Are you okay?” Carlton yelled.
“Yeah, I just bumped into this stupid merry-go-round,” she called back. The speakers were momentarily noiseless, but they shouted across the small distance as if there were a canyon between them.
In another hallway, Dave was moving toward a goal. Without the others there to watch, he moved fast, scuttling almost sideways and darting his eyes back over his hunched shoulders from time to time to see he was not followed. There was a large key ring at the belt of his uniform, but only a few keys hung from it. He selected one, opened a door, and let himself into the restaurant’s office. He closed the door quickly behind him, cushioning it against noise even though the group would never hear it this far away, or note it between their own shouts and the blaring of the speakers. He turned on the overhead light, and it was steady, illuminating the room without a flicker. On the far wall there was a tall closet flat against the wall, and he used another key on his ring to open it. Dave stood in the open door, still for a long moment, breathing deeply. As he did, his back straightened and his hollow chest seemed to expand, as if what he saw lent him an uncharacteristic confidence. An odd, thin smile on his lips, Dave reached out with his fingertips, savoring the moment, and brushed yellow fur.
Jessica and Carlton hurried away down the hall toward the second control room, but Marla and the two boys moved more slowly, sticking their heads into the party rooms, then the arcade. The rooms appeared empty, but in the constantly changing light, Jason thought, as they moved on, it would be easy to miss just about anything. Having checked the area, Marla and Lamar headed back into the main room.
“Where are Jessica and Carlton?” Lamar shouted over another burst of garbled sound. Jason stopped and looked back, and in a fleeting instant, he saw it: a rabbit, outlined in the hall for a split second as the lights flashed on him, then vanishing and appearing again as he disappeared into the party room they had just left.
“Marla!” Jason shouted, “MARLA!” His voice was shrill, agitated.
She whirled around. “What? Are you okay?”
“I saw Bonnie, he was there!”
“What?” Marla’s eyes went automatically to the stage. Bonnie was still there, moving back and forth in the same odd, spastic movements. “Jason, look, he’s there. He can’t move off the stage.”
Jason looked. Bonnie was there. I saw him, he thought, looking back down the hallway, but it was empty.
Jessica came running up, out of breath.
“Is everyone okay? I heard screaming.”
“We’re fine,” Lamar said. “Jason thought he saw something.”
“Where’s Carlton?” Marla said. She rubbed her temples. “Ugh, this light is giving me such a headache.”
“He’s still fighting with the controls,” Jessica said. “We should find Charlie and John; I think we need to get out of here.”
“I think they went that way,” Lamar said, pointing to the hall at the far end of the room, just past the stage.
“Come on,” Jessica said. Jason followed as the group crossed the main dining room again, maneuvering cautiously around tables and chairs. He looked back as they reached the hall: suddenly, Bonnie appeared again, darting out from the arcade and ducking into the hall that led to Pirate’s Cove. Jason watched his sister and the others file through the doorway, then slipped away before they could see him go. He ran across the room, intent on following the rabbit, then slowed his pace when he reached the dark hallway.
The lights in the little hall were completely out, and though he could see nothing, it was a minor relief from the pulsing strobes. Jason hugged the wall as he moved, trying to scan ahead of him for signs of movement, but it was too dark; his eyes had not adjusted. After what seemed like ages, he came out of the hall, and into Pirate’s Cove. From a distance, he could hear his sister’s voice, calling his name. Guess they noticed I’m gone, he thought wryly. He ignored it. He crossed the room and peered down the other hallway, the one that led to more party rooms, but it too was dark, and he could scarcely see more than a few feet ahead.
Turning back, he approached the little stage, the out of order sign still strung across it. As if anything in this place is in order. Suddenly, the curtain moved, and Jason froze. The curtain began pulling back. Jason couldn’t bring himself to run. All went dark, then the lights came on suddenly to reveal Carlton standing in front of him, having emerged from behind the curtain. “What are you doing back here by yourself? Come on, let’s go.” Carlton greeted him with a warm smile.
Awash with relief, Jason took a step forward, opening his mouth to speak—and stiffened, struck still with fear.
Bonnie suddenly broke through the darkness, appearing beneath the stage lights before them. But it was not Bonnie: this rabbit’s yellow fur was almost blinding in the light. He rushed at them, and before Jason could cry out the giant rabbit had hold of Carlton from behind, smothering his face with a giant, matted paw and wrapping its other great arm around his chest, gripping tightly. Carlton struggled silently, hitting and kicking, but the creature barely seemed to notice. He screamed into the rabbit’s paw, bu
t the sound was swallowed whole. As he fought, the rabbit slunk back the way he came, dragging Carlton with him like a prize from the hunt.
Jason watched them go, agape. His heart was racing, and his breath was shallow; he was lightheaded, the air around him stifling. A noise came from behind him, the grinding screech of rusted metal beginning to move, and he leapt forward and turned, moving just in time to avoid a hook as it plunged swiftly downward. Foxy’s eyes flashed in synchrony with the lights above, and for a dizzy moment it seemed to Jason as if those eyes were the controlling force behind it all, that if Foxy closed his eyes, every light might go out. The animal did not move like the others. It slowly, purposefully, rose between the gap in the curtains, its gleaming eyes reaching a staggering height.
“Jason!” It was Charlie’s voice, he knew, but he kept staring back and forth, first at Foxy, then at the place where Carlton had been stolen away. “Jason!” She called again, and then she and John were beside him, touching him, shaking him out of his ghastly reverie. John grabbed his hand and pulled him into a run; in the main room the others were already halfway down the hallway to the outside door, all but Marla, who was waiting anxiously at the entrance, her face flooding with relief when she saw Jason’s face.
“Marla, Bonnie, he took Carlton!” Jason yelled, but she just put a hand on his back and pushed him through the door and into the hall.
“Go, Jason!”
“But I saw Bonnie take Carlton!” He cried, but he ran, afraid to stop.
They ran down the hall to the outside door, all bouncing with a frightened impatience as they filed through to the alley one by one; there was no way to go faster. When they were all through Charlie looked down the hallway for a long moment, but there was no one coming. She shoved the door closed and stepped out of the way as Lamar and John wrestled the shelf back into place, blocking it off.
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