He reached the end of the hall, where a door was standing ajar.
With one hand Dunn gave the door an inward push, dropping low and to the side as he did. The door swung in, and nothing happened. He pulled the nightstick from his belt; its heft was unfamiliar—he had never had much need for it in Hurricane. Now, though, he gripped its hard rubber handle like a lifeline.
The office was not quite empty: there was a small desk, and a metal chair was folded up, and leaning against it. A large cabinet stood against one wall, its door open just a crack. There were no exits, other than the one Dunn himself was standing in. He swept the light up and down the length of the cabinet, and took a deep breath. He bounced his nightstick lightly in his hand, reassuring himself of its presence, and carefully assessed the small space. Standing to the side, he used the stick to open the door, moving slowly. It came open easily, and again, everything was still. Relieved, Dunn looked inside: the cabinet was empty, except for a costume.
It was Bonnie, or, rather it wasn’t. The face was the same, but the rabbit’s fur was yellow. It was slumped lifelessly against the back wall of the cabinet, its eyes dark, gaping holes. The rabbit took him. The kid hadn’t been lying, then; Carlton must have gotten someone to dress up in this outfit, and help him play his trick. Still, Dunn’s unease did not abate; he did not want to touch the thing. He lowered his light, and stuck his nightstick back in his belt, intending to go.
Before he could turn, the costume pitched forward, landing on Dunn with the lifeless weight of a heavy corpse. For a moment it did not move, then all at once it was writhing violently, grabbing at him with strong, inhuman hands. Dunn screamed, a desperate, high sound, struggling as the rabbit gripped his shirt, then his arm. Dunn felt a sudden, vicious pain in his arm, and a small, detached part of his mind thought, he broke it, he broke my arm. But the pain was washed numb by terror, as the rabbit swung him around and slammed him into the cabinet door, taking Dunn’s weight as easily as if he were a child. Dunn struggled to breathe; the rabbit’s arm was pressed against his neck so tightly that every movement choked him. Just when he thought he was on the brink of passing out, the pressure lifted, and Dunn gasped with relief, clutching his throat. Then he saw the knife.
The rabbit was holding a slim, silver blade. His big, matted paws should have been too clumsy, but Dunn knew as he stared down at it that he had done this before, and would easily do it again. Dunn screamed again, an indistinct shriek. He had no hope that he would be heard; it was only a guttural, despairing noise. He breathed deep and did it again, a bestial sound, his whole body vibrating with it, as if this could somehow be defense against what happened next.
The knife went in. Dunn felt it tear through skin, through muscle, felt it sever things he could not name and plant itself deep in his chest. As he seized with pain and terror, the rabbit pulled him close, almost in an embrace. Dunn’s head went light; he was losing consciousness, and as he looked up, he could see two rows of smiling teeth, horrid and yellow, the costume peeling at the edges of the mouth. The two gaping holes for eyes were looking down at him. They were dark and hollow, but the creature drew near enough so that Dunn could see smaller eyes peering back at him from deep within the mask. He held Dunn’s gaze patiently. Dunn felt his legs go numb; his vision clouding. He wanted to scream again, to somehow voice his final outrage, but he could not move his face, could not raise the breath to cry out. The rabbit held him upright, supporting his weight, and his eyes were the last thing Dunn ever saw.
Charlie unlocked the front door to her old house and looked back down the front steps.
“You coming?”
John was still standing on the bottom step, staring up at the house. He shivered a little, then hurried to join her.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I just had a weird feeling for a second.” Charlie laughed without much humor.
“Just for a second?”
They went inside, and John stopped again, looking around the front room like he had just stepped into a sacred place, somewhere that merited a humbling pause. Charlie bit her tongue, trying not to be impatient. It was how she had felt as well; she might have felt that way now if she were not overwhelmed by a sense of urgency, the feeling that the answer to everything, the answer to how to get Carlton back, must be somewhere in this place. Where else could it possibly be?
“John,” she said. “It’s okay, come on.”
He nodded, and followed her up the stairs to the second floor. He stopped again briefly, halfway up, and Charlie saw his eyes fixed on the dark stain that marred the wood floor of the living room.
“Is—” he began to say, and swallowed it, then started over. “Is Stanley still there?”
Charlie pretended not to notice the lapse.
“You remember his name!” She said instead, and grinned. John shrugged.
“Who doesn’t love a mechanical unicorn?”
“Yeah, he’s still there. All the toys still work, come on.” They hurried the rest of the way to her room.
John knelt down beside the unicorn and pressed the button that set him on his track, watching raptly as he made his squeaky way around the room. Charlie hid a smile behind her hand. John was watching intently, his face serious as if something very important were happening. For a moment he looked just like he had so many years ago, his hair falling into his face, his whole attention fixed on Stanley as if nothing in the world were more important than this robotic creature.
Suddenly his attention was called upward, and his face lit up as he pointed.
“Your big-girl closet! It’s open!” He exclaimed, getting back to his feet and approached the tallest of the three closets which was hanging open slightly. He pulled it open all the way, then leaned in, finding it empty.
“So what was in it all those years?” He asked.
“Not sure.” Charlie shrugged. “I sort of remember Aunt Jen bringing me back at some point, but I could be wrong. Maybe it was full of clothes that I was finally big enough to wear. Aunt Jen was always thrifty, why spend money on new clothes if you don’t have to, right?” She smiled.
John glanced briefly at the smaller closets, but left them alone.
“I’m going to see if I can find any photo albums, or paperwork,” Charlie said, and she nodded absently as Stanley rattled back to his starting point. As she left the room she heard him starting up again, making another round on the track.
The room that had been her father’s was next to Charlie’s. It was at the back of the house, and had too many windows: in the summer it was too hot, and in the winter the cold dribbled in like a persistent leak, but Charlie had known without being told why he used it. From here you could see the garage, and his workshop. It had always made sense to Charlie: that was his place, like a part of himself always lived there, and he did not like to be too far away from his touchstone. A wave from her dream came to her for a moment, not even an image, just a strange, evocative gesture of memory, and she frowned, looking out the window at the closed, silent garage door.
Or maybe he just wanted to be sure nothing got out, she thought. She broke away from the window, shrugging her shoulders up and down and shaking her hands, sloughing off the feeling. She looked around the room. Like her own, it was all but untouched; she did not open the drawers to his dresser, but for all she knew it might still have been filled with shirts and socks, clean and folded and ready to wear. His bed was made crisply, covered in the plaid blanket he used as a bedspread after Charlie’s mother left, and there was no one to insist on white linen. There was a large bookcase against one wall, and it was still stuffed with books: Charlie went over and began scanning the shelves. Many were textbooks, engineering tomes whose titles meant nothing to Charlie, and the rest were nonfiction, a collection that would have seemed eclectic to anyone who did not know the man.
There were books of biology and anatomy, some on human beings and others on animals; there were books about the history of the traveling carnival and of the circus. There were
books about child development, about myths and legends, and about sewing patterns and techniques. There were volumes that claimed to be about trickster gods, about quilting bees and about football cheering squads and their mascots. On the very top shelf were stacks of file folders, and the bottom shelf was empty except for a single volume: a photo album, leather-bound and as pristine as time and dust could allow. Charlie grabbed it, and it stuck for a moment, almost too tall for the low shelf it had been given. After a minute it came free, and she headed back to her bedroom, leaving the door open with the sudden sense that if it closed, she might never get back in.
John was sitting on the bed when she returned, looking at Stanley with his head tilted to the side.
“What?” Charlie said, and he looked up, still pensive.
“I was wondering if he’s been lonely,” he said, then shrugged.
“He’s got Theodore,” Charlie said, and pointed at the stuffed rabbit, then smiled. “It’s Ella that’s all alone in the closet. Watch.” She placed the album beside John on the bed and went to its foot, then turned the wheel that set Ella on her track. She sat down beside him, and they watched together, spellbound as of old, as the little doll came out in her crisp, clean dress to blankly offer tea. Neither of them spoke until the smallest closet door closed behind her. John cleared his throat.
“So, what’s in the books?”
“Photos,” Charlie said. “I haven’t looked at them yet.” She picked one up and opened it at random. The top picture was of her mother holding a baby, maybe a year old. She was holding the child above her head, flying it like an airplane, her head thrown back in the midst of a laugh, her long brown hair swinging out in an arc behind her. The baby’s eyes were wide, its mouth open in delight. John smiled at her.
“You look so happy,” he said, and she nodded.
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I must have been.” If that’s me, she did not add aloud. She opened to another page, where the only picture was a large family portrait, stiffly posed at a studio. They were dressed formally: Charlie’s father was wearing a suit, her mother was in a bright pink dress with padding that lifted her shoulders almost to her ears, and her brown hair was straightened flat in place. Each of them was holding a baby, one in a white frilly dress and one in a sailor suit, and Charlie’s heart skipped. Beside her, she heard John take a sharp quick breath. She looked at him with a feeling like the floor was dropping away beneath them.
“It was real,” she said. “I didn’t imagine him.” John said nothing in response, just nodded. He put a hand on her shoulder briefly, and then they turned back to the photo album.
“We all looked so happy,” Charlie said softly.
“I think you were,” John said. “Look, you had such a goofy smile.” He pointed, and Charlie laughed
The whole book was like that, the first memories of a happy family who expected there to be many more. They were not arranged chronologically, so Charlie and Sammy appeared as toddlers, then as newborns, than at various stages in between. Except on formal occasions when Charlie was put into a dress—of which there seemed to be few—it was impossible to tell which baby was which. There were no traces of Fredbear’s Family Diner.
Near the back of the book, Charlie came to a Polaroid of her and Sammy together, infants bright red and squalling on their backs, wearing nothing but diapers and hospital wristbands. On the white space below the picture, someone had written: “Momma’s Boy and Daddy’s Girl.”
The rest of the pages were blank. Charlie went back again, opening at random to find a strip from a photo booth, four shots of her parents alone. They smiled at each other, then made faces at the camera, then laughed, missing the chance to pose and blurring their faces. Last they smiled into the lens. Her mother was beaming happily at the camera, her face alight and flushed, but her father was staring into the distance, his smile fixed on his face as if he had left it there by mistake. His dark eyes were intense, remote, and Charlie resisted a sudden urge to look behind her, as if she might see whatever it was he was looking at. She peeled back the cellophane from the album’s page and took the strip out, then folded it in half, careful to place the crease between pictures, leaving them intact. She slipped the pictures into her pocket, and looked at John, who was watching her again, as if she were some kind of unpredictable creature he needed to be careful around.
“What?” She said.
“Charlie, you know I don’t think he did it, right?”
“You said that.”
“I’m serious, it’s not just what Carlton’s dad said. I knew him, as well as a kid can know some other kid’s dad—he wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t believe it.” He spoke with calm certainty, like someone who believed that the world was made out of facts and tangible things, and that there was such a thing as truth. Charlie nodded.
“I know,” she said. She took her next breath slowly, gathering the words she would speak with it. “But I might.” His eyes widened, startled, and she looked up at the ceiling for a minute, briefly trying to remember if all the cracks had been there when she was a child.
“I don’t mean I think he did it; I don’t think that,” she said. “I don’t think about it at all, I can’t. I shut the whole thing off in my mind the day I left Hurricane. I don’t think about Freddy’s; I don’t think about what happened; and I don’t think about him.”
John was looking at her like she was monstrous, like what she was saying was the worst thing he had ever heard.
“I don’t understand how you can say things like that,” he said quietly. “You loved him, how can you even consider the possibility that he would do something so terrible?”
“Even the people who do terrible things have people who love them.” Charlie was looking for words. “I don’t think he did it, I’m not saying that,” she said again, and again the words hit the air as flimsy as paper. “But I remember him dressing up for us in the yellow Freddy suit, doing the dances, miming along with the songs, it was so much a part of him. He was the restaurant, there was no one else. And he was always so distant, like in that picture; there was always something else going on beneath the surface. It was like he had a real life, and a secret life, you know?”
John nodded and looked about to speak, and Charlie rushed on before he could.
“We were the secret life. His real life was his work; it was what mattered. We were his guilty pleasure, the thing he got to love and sneak away to have time with, something he kept hidden away from the dangers of what he did, of his ‘real’ world. And when he was with us, there was always a part of him that was back in reality, whatever that was for him.”
Again John opened his mouth, but Charlie snapped the photo album shut, stood up, and left the room. John didn’t follow right away, and as she traversed the short hall to her father’s bedroom she could almost hear him making up his mind. Not waiting for him, she went to the bookshelf, wanting to get the book out of her hands, like maybe if it were closed up and put away, her mind, too, would return to its normal order. It would not fit, and she dropped to her knees to get a better angle, trying to jam the thing back where it belonged, get it out of her hands. The shelf seemed to have shrunk, sunk down while she was gone, so that it could never be returned, never put right.
With a cry of frustration, Charlie shoved the photo album in as hard as she could. The shelf rocked back and then forward, and a sudden mass of papers and file folders tumbled from above her. Charlie began to cry as pages drifted down around her, covering the floor like snow as she wept. Swiftly, John was there.
He knelt down with her in the delicate wreckage, clearing papers away as quickly as he could without tearing them. He put a hand on her shoulder carefully and she did not move away; he pulled her close and held her, and she hugged him back, gripping so tight it she knew she must be hurting him, but she could not let go. She sobbed harder, as if being held, being contained, had made it safe to let go. Long minutes passed; John stroked her hair and Charlie still cried, her body shaking with
the force of it, shuddering like she was possessed. She was not thinking of what had happened, not flitting from one memory to the next to mourn for them all—her mind was all but blank. She held nothing, was nothing, but this feeling of wracking sobs. Her face was sore with tension, her chest hurt like all her pain was being forced out through its wall, and still she cried as if she would cry forever.
But forever was an illusion. Slowly her breathing calmed, and finally Charlie returned to herself, and pushed away from John’s shoulder, exhausted. Once again John was left with his arms partially suspended in the air, caught off guard by their sudden emptiness and tried to move out of the awkward pose without calling attention to himself. Charlie sat back against the side of her father’s bed, leaning her head against it. She felt wrung out, stretched thin and aged, but she felt a little better. She gave John a tiny smile, and saw relief pass over his face at this first sign that she might be all right.
“I’m okay,” she said. “It’s just this place, it’s all this.” She felt silly trying to explain, but John scooted back to sit with her.
“Charlie, you don’t have to explain. I know what happened.”
“Do you?” She looked at him searchingly, not sure how to put the question. It seemed too crude, to graphic, to say it outright. “Do you know how my dad died, John?” He looked immediately nervous.
“I know he killed himself,” he said hesitantly.
“No, I mean—do you know how.”
“Oh.” John looked down at his feet, as if he could not meet her eyes. “I thought he stabbed himself,” he said quietly. “I remember hearing my mom and dad talk, she said something about a knife, and all the blood.”
“There was a knife,” Charlie said. “And there was blood.” She closed her eyes and kept them shut as she talked; she could feel John’s eyes on her face, watching every movement of her face, but she knew if she looked at him, she would not be able to finish.
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