“Look,” he said. “I know you don’t believe me, but Carlton does things like this—although I have to admit, this is probably the weirdest. It’s not right, making you relive all that stuff from when you were kids.” He stared into his mug for a long moment. “I need to have another talk with him,” he said quietly. “Believe me, my son has a strange sense of humor,” he went on. “You know for high school, we sent him to a place in the next town over; no one knew him. He managed to convince his classmates and his teachers that he had a twin brother, at the school, for the first month of class. I don’t know how on earth he managed it, but I didn’t find out until he got tired of the act and I started getting calls from school that one of my sons had gone missing.”
Charlie smiled weakly, but she was not convinced. This was different.
“This is different,” Marla said, as if reading Charlie’s thoughts. “Jason saw him disappear, he was terrified. It’s cruel, if it’s a prank.” Marla shook her head with anger and scratched her nails against the porcelain cup. “If it’s a prank,” She repeated in a softer tone. She looked at Charlie, her face stormy, and Charlie knew that if Carlton had in fact set all of this up, Marla would never speak to him again. The happy reunion was over.
“Yes,” Clay said. “I know. But he doesn’t see it that way.” He took a sip of cocoa, searching for words. “The twins, they had totally different personalities. Shaun was this outgoing, cheerful guy. He was on the debate team. He played soccer, for goodness’ sake! Carlton had never gotten near a sports game without being forced. I don’t know how he kept it up.”
“Still,” Marla said, but she sounded less convinced.
“The worst part was,” Clay went on, talking more to himself now than to the teenagers, “Shaun had a girlfriend. She really liked him too; but he was just playing the part. Poor girl had been dating a guy who didn’t even exist. I think he was surprised when he realized how upset people were. He gets carried away, and just assumes everyone is having as much fun as he is.”
Charlie looked at John and he met her glance anxiously. We don’t know each other, not really.
“Maybe he did set it up,” she said aloud.
“Maybe,” Jessica echoed.
“I saw him!” Jason said loudly. Before anyone could respond, he had stormed out of the room, disappearing through a doorway. Marla stood automatically, and moved to follow him, but Clay, put up a hand.
“Let him go,” he said. “He needs some time to himself. And I want to talk to the rest of you. He set his mug down, and leaned forward. “I know you were just kidding around, but I don’t want to hear you kids joking about Freddy Fazbear’s. You know, I wasn’t the chief back then, I was still a detective, and I was working on those disappearances. To this day, it was the worst thing I’ve ever had to see. It’s not something to joke about.” He looked at Charlie. His gray eyes were hard, and the lines of his face were immobile; he was no longer the friendly father-figure, but the police chief, staring as if he could see right through her. Charlie had a sudden urge to confess, but she had nothing to confess to.
“I’m especially surprised at you, Charlie,” Clay said quietly.
Charlie blushed, shame rising up in her with the flush of heat. She wanted to protest, to explain herself, to say anything that might soften the eyes that seemed to bore into her skull. Instead she ducked her head, and muttered an indistinct apology.
Lamar broke the silence.
“Mr. Burke—Clay—did they ever find out who did it? I thought they arrested somebody.”
Clay didn’t respond for a long moment. He was still looking at Charlie, and she felt as if he were trying to tell her something, or else read something in her face.
“Clay?” Marla said, and he seemed to come back to himself. He looked around the group, his expression dark.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “We did arrest someone. I did, in fact, and I am as sure now that he was guilty as I was then.”
“So, what happened?” Lamar asked. There was a hush among the group, as if something very important were about to happen.
“There were no bodies,” Clay Burke said. “We knew it was him; there was no doubt in my mind. But the children had disappeared, they were never found, and without their bodies...” He stopped talking, staring off into the middle distance as if scarcely aware that they were there.
“But kidnapping,” Charlie said. “They disappeared!” She was suddenly furious, appalled at the obvious injustice. “How can this man be walking around somewhere? What if he does it again?” She felt Marla’s hand on her arm, and she nodded, settling back, trying to calm down. But the anger was still there inside, seething under the surface of her skin. Clay was looking at her with something like curiosity in his eyes.
“Charlie,” he said, “justice penalizes the guilty, but it must also protect the innocent. It means that sometimes the guilty get away with terrible things, but it is the price we pay.” He sounded grave, his words weighty. Charlie opened her mouth to argue. But this was my price, she wanted to say, but before she spoke she looked at his face. He had a grim conviction about him; what Carlton’s father was saying mattered very much to him, and he believed it utterly. It’s how you sleep at night, she thought with an uncharacteristic bitterness. They locked eyes for a long moment, then Charlie sighed, and nodded, giving up the challenge. Intellectually, she didn’t even disagree with him. Clay sat up suddenly in his chair.
“So,” he said brightly. “I think it’s a bit too late for you girls to be driving back to that motel. Why don’t you spend the night here? We have two more guest rooms. And you can scold Carlton for his little prank in the morning,” he added with a grin.
Lamar and John showed Charlie, Marla and Jessica up to the bedrooms, and Jason reemerged as they headed up the stairs, joining the group as if he had never been gone.
“So, Jason and I will take one,” Marla said, “and Jessica, you and Charlie can have the other.”
“I want to stay with Lamar,” Jason said instantly, and Lamar grinned widely before he could help himself.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. He glanced at Marla, over her brother’s head, and she shrugged.
“Take him,” she said. “Keep him if you want! So, that means someone gets her own room,” she went on, “or we could all stay together. I know everything is fine, but I kind of feel like we should stay together.” She was voicing Charlie’s precise thoughts from only a little while before, but now, Charlie jumped in.
“I’ll take the other room,” she said.
Marla gave her a dubious look, and even John looked a little surprised, but Charlie just looked at them and said nothing.
When the door closed behind her, Charlie sighed with relief. She went to the window; it was as she imagined, nothing in view but the trees. It was as if the house were completely isolated, though she knew that the driveway, and the road, were just on the other side. From outside she could hear nocturnal birds, and the rustling of other, larger creatures on the ground below. She felt suddenly restless, wide awake. Looking out the window, she almost wanted to go outside, to slip into the woods, and see what they concealed. She looked at her watch. It was long past midnight; and with reluctance she took off her shoes, and lay down on the bed.
It was, like everything else in Carlton’s house, well-worn, the kind of furniture only owned by people who have been wealthy for generations, whose ancestors could afford things of such high quality that they last for a hundred years. Charlie closed her eyes, in what she assumed would be a futile effort to find rest, but as she lay there, listening to the sound of the woods, and of Jessica and Marla gossiping and laughing in the next room, she felt as if she were sinking into the mattress. Her breath deepened, and she was soon asleep.
She woke suddenly, startled from sleep. She was a little girl again, and her father was asleep in the next room. It was summer, and the windows were all open; it had started to rain, and the wind rushed into the room in great gusts, blowing her bedroom curta
ins in a frenetic dance and ushering in a fine mist. But that was not why she awoke. There was something in the air, something unshakeable that gripped her: something was very wrong.
Charlie climbed out of bed, lowering herself carefully onto the floor. Beside her bed, Stanley the unicorn stood, patient and deactivated, staring at her with lifeless eyes. She patted his nose, as if giving him comfort might bring it to her as well. Quietly, she snuck past him and out into the hallway, uncertain what compelled her. She crept down the hallway, past her father’s room to the stairs, and ducked down beside the wooden bannister, as if its open slats could protect her from anything at all. She held fast to it as she made her way down the staircase, letting the rail take her weight as she avoided the boards that creaked. One by one she took the steps; it felt like ages, like years might pass before she reached the bottom, and when she arrived she might be an old woman, her whole life spun out in the descent of these stairs.
At last Charlie reached the end of the stairs, and she looked down to see that she had changed: her body was no longer small, nightgown-clad and barefoot, but her teenage body, tall and strong, and fully clothed. When she straightened from her fearful crouch she stood taller than the bannister, and she looked around at her childhood home, startled. This is me, she thought. Yes. This is now.
Something banged in front of her: the front door was wide open and thudding irregularly against the wall, caught by the wind. The rain was whipping in, soaking the floor and lashing the coatrack that stood beside it, rocking it back and forth as if it weighed nothing at all. Leaves and small branches were scattered on the floor, ripped from the trees and swept in, but Charlie’s eyes went to her old, familiar shoes, her favorites. They placed neatly beside the mat, black patent leather with straps, and she could see the rain pooling inside, ruining them. Charlie stood still for a moment, transfixed, too far for the rain to reach, but close enough for the haze to slowly wet her face. She ought to go to the door and close it.
Instead, Charlie backed away slowly, not taking her eyes from the border of the storm. She took a step, then another—and her back hit something solid. She whirled around, startled, and saw it.
It was the thing from her father’s workshop, the terrible, twitching thing. It stood on its own, bent and twisted, with a narrow, reddish canine face and an almost human body. Its clothing was rags, its metal joints and limbs stark and exposed, but Charlie registered only its eyes, the silver eyes that flashed at her, on and off, over and over, blinking in and out of existence. Charlie wanted to run, but her feet would not move; she could feel her pulse in her throat, choking her, and she struggled to breathe. The thing convulsed, and in slow, jerking motions, its hand rose up and reached out to touch her face. Charlie drew in a shaking breath, unable to duck away, and then it stopped, the hand only inches from her cheek.
Charlie braced herself, her breath shallow and her eyes screwed shut, but the touch of metal and ragged cloth on her skin did not come. She opened her eyes. The thing had gone still, and the silver light in its eyes was dimmed, nearly out. Charlie backed away from it, watching warily, but it did not move, and she began to wonder if it had shut down, run out of the finite current that powered it. Its shoulders were hunched forward, hapless, and it stared dully past her as if it were lost. Charlie felt a sudden stab of sorrow for this creature, that same feeling of lonely kinship she felt in her father’s workshop so many years ago. Does it hurt? She had asked. She was old enough now to know the answer.
All at once, the thing lurched to life. Charlie felt her head go light as it took an awkward step toward her, hurtling its body forward as if it had only just learned to walk. Its head turned frantically from side to side and its arms jerked up and down with dangerous abandon.
Something shattered: it was a lamp, the thing had knocked over a ceramic lamp, and the sound of it bursting on the wooden floor shook Charlie from her stupor. She turned and ran up the stairs, scrambling as fast as her legs would carry her to her father’s door, too scared to even call out for him. As she clambered up the steps some small part of her realized that they were too big, that she was nearly on all fours, tripping barefoot over the hem of her nightgown. She was a little girl again, she realized in a bursting moment of awareness, and then it was over, and being a little girl was the only thing she could remember.
She tried again to scream for her father, but he was already there, she did not need to call him. He was standing in the hall, and she grabbed at his shirt tails as she crouched behind him. He put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her, and for the first time, her father’s touch did not make Charlie feel that she was safe. Peeking out from behind his back, Charlie could see the thing’s ears, then its face, as it climbed the stairs in its fitful, jerking steps. Her father stood calm, watching it, as it climbed the final stair, and then Charlie’s father grasped her hand, and disentangled it, gently forcing her to let him go. He went forward to meet the thing in large, even strides, but as he reached out to it, Charlie could see that his hands were shaking. He touched the thing, put his hands on either side of its face for a long moment, as if he were caressing it, and its limbs stopped, head still moving gently from side to side. It looked almost bewildered, as if it, too, had awakened to something strange and frightening. Charlie’s father did something she could not see, and the thing stopped moving; its head drooped, defeated, and its arms fell to its sides. Charlie backed up toward her room, feeling her way along the wall behind her, not daring to look away from the thing until she was safely behind her door. As she looked out one last time into the hallway, she could just barely see the glint from its eyes, cast down at the floor. Suddenly, the little silver lights flickered. The head did not move, but in a slow, calculated arc the eyes swung to meet Charlie’s gaze. Charlie whimpered, but did not look away, and then the head snapped up with a crack like something breaking—
Charlie startled out of sleep, an involuntary shudder running through her. She put a hand to her throat, feeling her heartbeat there, too quick and too hard. She darted her eyes around the room, bewildered, putting together where she was one piece at a time. The bed. Not her own. The room. Dark, she was alone. The window. The woods outside. Carlton’s house. Her breath slowed. The process had only taken seconds, but it disturbed her, to be so disoriented. She blinked, but the afterburn of those silver eyes was still with her, glowing behind her eyelids as if they had been real. Charlie stood and went to the window, thrust it open, and leaned out, desperate to breathe in the night air.
Did that happen? The dream felt like memory, felt like something that had happened just moments ago, but that was the nature of dreams, wasn’t it? They felt real, and then you woke up. She closed her eyes and tried to catch the thread, but it was too difficult to tell, what was the dream and what was not. She shivered in the breeze, though it was not cold, and brought herself back inside. She looked at her watch. Only a couple of hours had passed, and it was still hours more until daylight, but sleep felt impossible. Charlie put on her shoes and shuffled quietly through the hall and down the stairs, hoping not to wake her friends. She went out to the porch, sitting down on the front steps and leaning back to look up at the sky. There were traces of clouds overhead, but the stars still shone through, scattered overhead, uncountable. She tried to lose herself in them as she had as a child, but as she gazed up at the pinpoint lights, all she could see were eyes, looking back at her.
There was a noise behind her, and she jumped, whirling to press her back against the railing. John was standing behind her with a startled look on his face. They stared at one another for a moment, like strangers, then Charlie found her voice.
“Hey, sorry, did I wake you up, again?”
John shook his head and came to sit beside her.
“No, not really. I heard you go out, or I figured it was you. I was awake, though—Jason snores like a guy about three times his size.”
Charlie laughed.
“I had a weird dream,” she said. John nodded, waiting for he
r to go on, but she did not. “What did people think of my father?” She said instead. John leaned back and looked at the stars for a moment, then pointed.
“That’s Cassiopeia,” he said, and she squinted in the direction of his finger.
“It’s Orion,” she corrected. “John, I’m serious. What did people think about him?”
He shrugged uncomfortably.
“Charlie, I was a little kid, you know? Nobody told me anything.”
“I was a little kid once myself,” she said. “Nobody tells you anything, but they talk in front of you like you’re not there. I remember your mom and Lamar’s mom talking, making bets on how long Marla’s new stepdad would stick around.”
“What did they come up with?” John said, amused.
“Your mom was banking on three months; Lamar’s mom was more optimistic,” Charlie said, grinning, but then her face grew serious again. “I can tell you know something,” she said quietly, and after a moment, he nodded.
“Some people thought he did it, yeah,” he admitted.
“What?” Charlie was aghast. She stared at him, eyes wide, scarcely breathing. “They thought what?” John glanced at her nervously.
“I thought that’s what you were asking,” he said. Charlie shook her head. Some people thought he did it.
“I—no, I meant what did they think of him, as a person. Did they think he was odd, or kind or… I didn’t know…” she trailed off, lost in the magnitude of this new truth. People thought he did it. Of course they did. It was his restaurant. The first child to vanish was his child. In the absence of a confession or a conviction, who else would anyone think of? Charlie shook her head again.
“Charlie,” John said hesitantly, “I’m sorry. I just assumed. You must have known people would think that, though—if not then, then now.”
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