Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(16)

She went into the bathroom, and Charlie stayed where she was, gazing at the sorry-looking ceiling. She supposed it was becoming a defect, her earnest refusal to consider the past or future. Live in the present moment, her Aunt Jen said often, and Charlie had taken it to heart. Don’t dwell on the past, don’t worry about things that may never happen. In eighth grade she had taken a shop class, vaguely hoping the mechanical work might spark something of her father’s talent, might unleash some inherited passion lying latent within her, but it had not. She had made a clumsy-looking birdhouse for the backyard. She never took another shop class, and the birdhouse only attracted one squirrel who promptly knocked it down.

Jessica came out of the bathroom wearing pink striped pajamas, and Charlie went in to get ready for bed, changing and brushing her teeth hurriedly. When she came out again, Jessica was already under the covers with the light by her bed turned off. Charlie turned hers off, too, but the light from the parking lot still shone in from the window, somehow filtering past the dumpsters.

Charlie stared up at the ceiling again, her hands behind her head.

“Do you know what’s going to happen tomorrow?” She asked.

“I don’t really know,” Jessica said. “I know it’s a ceremony at the school.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Charlie said. “Are we going to have to do anything? Like, do they want us to speak?”

“I don’t think so,” Jessica said. “Why, do you want to say something?”

“No, I was just wondering.”

“Do you ever think about him?” Jessica said.

“Sometimes. I try not to,” Charlie said half-truthfully. She had sealed off the subject of Michael in her mind; locked him tight behind a mental wall she never touched. It wasn’t an effort to avoid the subject, in fact it was an effort to think of him now. “What about you?” She asked Jessica.

“Not really,” she said. “It’s weird, right? Something happens, and it’s the worst thing you can ever imagine, and it’s just burned into you at the time, like it’s going to go on forever. And then the years go by, and it’s another thing that happened. Not like it’s not important, or terrible, but it’s in the past, just as much as everything else. You know?”

“I guess,” Charlie said. But she did know. “I just try not to think about those things.”

“Me too. You know I just went to a funeral last week?”

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said, sitting up. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jessica said. “I barely even knew him; he was just an old relative who he lived three states away. I think I met him once, and I hardly remember it. We mostly went for my mom’s sake. But it was at an old-fashioned funeral parlor, like in the movies, with an open coffin. And we all walked by the coffin, and when it was my turn I looked at him, and he could have been sleeping, you know? Just calm and restful, like people always say dead people look. There was nothing that I could have pointed out that made me think dead, if you asked me; every feature of his face looked the same as if he were alive. His skin was the same; his hair was the same as if he were alive. But he wasn’t alive, and I just knew it; I would have known it immediately, even if he wasn’t, you know, in a coffin.”

“I know what you mean, there is something about them when they’re…” Charlie said softly.

“It sounds stupid when I say it. But when I looked at him, he looked so alive, and yet I knew, just knew that he wasn’t. It made my skin crawl.”

“That’s the worst thing, isn’t it?” Charlie said. “Things that act alive but aren’t.”

“What?” Jessica said.

“I mean things that look alive but aren’t,” Charlie said quickly. “We should get some sleep,” she said. “Did you set the alarm?”

“Yes,” Jessica said. “Good-night.”

“Night.”

Charlie turned off her light, knowing sleep was still a long way off. She knew what Jessica meant, probably better than Jessica did. The artificial shine in eyes that followed you as you moved, just like a real person’s would. The slight lurch of realistic animals who did not move the way a living thing should. The occasional programming glitch, that made a robot appear to have done something new, creative. Her childhood had been filled with them; she had grown up in the strange gap between life and not-life. It had been her world. It had been her father’s world. Charlie closed her eyes. What did that world do to him?





Chapter Three


Thud. Thud. Thud.

Charlie startled out of sleep, disoriented. Something was banging on her door, trying to force its way in.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Jessica said grumpily, and Charlie blinked and sat up.

Right. The motel. Hurricane. Someone was knocking on the door. As Jessica went to answer the door, Charlie got out of bed and looked at the clock. It was 10:00 AM. She looked out the window at the bright, new day. She had slept worse than usual, not nightmares, but dark dreams she could not quite remember, things that stuck with her, just beyond the back of her mind, images she could not catch.

“Charlieeeee!” Someone was screeching. Charlie went to the door and found herself immediately enveloped in a hug, Marla’s plump arms gripping her like a vise. Charlie hugged her back, tighter than she meant to. When Marla let go she stepped back, grinning. Marla’s moods had always been so intense they were contagious, spreading out to whoever was in her path. When she was gloomy, a pall fell over all her friends, the sun gone behind her cloud. When she was happy, like now, it was impossible to avoid the lift of her joy. She was always breathless, always slightly scattered, always giving the impression that she was running late, though she almost never was. Marla was wearing a loose, dark red blouse, and it suited her well, setting off her fair skin and dark brown hair.