Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(11)

Charlie shone the flashlight up and down the hallway, playing the light off each wall, but there was no break, no door.

“There was a back door to Freddy’s.” John said. “Marla wrote that right next to the back door, right?”

“Why didn’t they just knock it down?” Charlie pondered.

“Does this hallway just lead nowhere?” Jessica said, puzzled.

“It’s the story of my life,” Carlton said lightly.

“Wait…” Charlie ran her fingers along the edge of a shelf, peering through the odds and ends crammed onto it. The wall behind it looked different; it was metal, not brick. “Right here.” She stepped back and looked at the others.

“Help me move it,” she said. John and Jessica pressed against one side in a unified effort, and she and Carlton pulled on the other. It was immensely heavy, laden with cleaning supplies and large buckets of nails and tools, but it slid farther down the hall almost easily, without incident. Jessica stepped back, breathing hard.

“John, give me the big light again.” He handed it over and she turned it back on, aiming where the shelf had stood. “This is it,” she said.

It was metal and rusting, and spattered with paint, a stark contrast with the walls around it. There was only a hole where the handle had been; someone must have removed it so the shelf could lie flush against the door.

Silently, Charlie handed the flashlight back to John, and he held it above her head so she could see. She slipped around the others and tried to squeeze her fingers into the hole where the doorknob once was, trying to pull it open to no avail.

“It’s not going to open.” she said. John was behind her, peering over her shoulder.

“Just a second.” He squeezed himself into the space beside her and knelt carefully. “I don’t think it’s locked or anything,” he said, “I think it’s just rusty. Look at it.”

The door extended all the way to the floor, its bottom ragged and unfinished. The hinges were on the other side, and the edges were caked in rust. It looked as though it had not been opened in years. John and Charlie pulled on it together, and it moved a fraction of an inch.

“Yay!” Jessica exclaimed, almost shouting, then covered her mouth. “Sorry,” she said in a whisper. “Containing my excitement.”

They took turns pulling on it, leaning over one another, the metal scraping their fingers. It held for a long moment, then came loose under their weight, swinging open slowly with an unearthly screech. Charlie looked nervously over her shoulder, but the guard did not appear. The door opened only about a foot wide, and they went one by one, until all four were through.

Inside, the air changed, and they all stopped short. Ahead of them was a dark hallway, familiar to them all.

“Is this…?” Jessica whispered, not taking her eyes from the dark expanse.

It’s here, Charlie thought. She held out her hand for the flashlight, and John handed it to her wordlessly. She shone the light ahead of them, sweeping the walls. They were covered in children’s drawings, crayon on yellowing, curling paper. She started forward and the others followed, feet shuffling on old tile.

It seemed to take forever to traverse the hall, or perhaps it was just that they were moving slowly, with methodical, deliberate steps. Eventually the hallway opened up into a larger expanse: the dining room. It was just as they remembered it, completely preserved. The big flashlight light bounced off a thousand little things, reflective, glittered, or topped with foil ribbon.

The tables were still in place, covered in their silver-and-white checked cloths; the chairs were pulled up to them haphazardly; some tables with too many and others with too few. It looked as though the room had been abandoned in the middle of the lunch hour: everyone had gotten up expecting to return, but never did. They walked in cautiously, breathing cold stale air that had been trapped inside for a decade. The whole restaurant gave off a sense of abandonment—no one was coming back. There was a small merry-go-round barely visible in the distant corner, with four child-sized ponies still at rest from their last song. In an instant, Charlie froze in place, as did the others. There they were. Eyes stared back from the dark, large and lifeless. An illogical panic pulsed through her; time held still. No one spoke; no one breathed, as though a predatory animal was stalking them. But as the moments passed, the fear waned, until she was back again, as a child, and with old friends, separated from one another for far too long. Charlie walked toward the eyes in a straight line. Behind her the others were motionless: hers were the only footsteps. As Charlie walked, she touched the cold back of an old party chair without looking at it, guiding it out of her path. She took one final step, and the eyes in the dark became clear. It was them. Charlie smiled.

“Hi,” she whispered, too soft for the others to hear.

Before her stood three animatronic animals: a bear, a rabbit, and a chicken, all standing as tall as adults, maybe taller. Their bodies were segmented like artists’ models, each limb made of distinct, squarish pieces, separate at the joints. They belonged to the restaurant, or maybe the restaurant belonged to them, and there was a time when everyone knew them by name. There was Bonnie, the rabbit. His fur was a bright blue, his squared-off muzzle held a permanent smile and his wide and chipped pink eyes were thick-lidded, giving him a perpetually worn-out expression. His ears stuck up straight, crinkling over at the top, and his large feet splayed out for balance. He held a red bass guitar, blue paws poised to play, and around his neck was a bowtie that matched the instrument’s fiery color.