Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(2)
The last time she was here, the house was dark, and everything felt wrong. She was being carried up the stairs to her bedroom although she was seven years old, and could have gone quicker on her own two feet. But Aunt Jen picked her up as they stopped on the front porch, and carried her, shielding her face as though she were a baby in the glaring sun.
In her room, Aunt Jen set her down and closed the bedroom door behind them, and told her to pack her suitcase, and Charlie cried because all her things could never fit into that small case.
“We can come back for the rest later,” Aunt Jen said, her impatience leaking through as Charlie hovered indecisively at her dresser, trying to decide which t-shirts to bring along. They had never come back for the rest.
Charlie mounted the stairs, heading to her old bedroom. The door was open, and as she opened it she had a giddy feeling of displacement, as though her younger self might be sitting there among her toys, look up and ask Charlie, who are you? Charlie went in.
Like the rest of the house, her bedroom was untouched. The walls were pale pink, and the ceiling, which sloped dramatically on one side, following the line of the roof, was painted to match. Her old bed still stood against the wall, beneath a large window, the mattress still intact, though the sheets were gone. The window was cracked slightly open, and rotting lace curtains wavered in the gentle breeze from outside. There was a dark water stain in the paint beneath the window, spreading to the mattress, where the weather had gotten in over the years, betraying the house’s neglect. Charlie climbed onto the bed and forced the window shut. With a screech it obeyed, and Charlie stepped back, and turned her attention to the rest of the room, to her father’s creations.
Their first night in the house, Charlie was afraid to sleep alone. She did not remember the night, but her father had told her about it often enough that the story had taken on the quality of memory. She sat up and wailed until her father came to find her, until he scooped her up and held her, and promised her he would make sure she was never alone again. The next morning, he took her by the hand and led her to the garage, where he set to work keeping that promise.
The first of his inventions was a purple rabbit, now grey with age from years of sitting in the sunlight. Her father had named him Theodore. He was the size of a three-year-old child, her size at the time, and he had plush fur, shining eyes, and a dapper red bow tie. He didn’t do much, only waved a hand, tilted his head to the side, and said in her father’s voice: “I love you, Charlie.” But it was enough to give her a night watcher, someone to keep her company when she could not sleep. Right now Theodore sat in a white wicker chair in the far corner of the room. Charlie waved at him, but, not activated, he did not wave back.
After Theodore, the toys got more complex; some worked and some did not, some seemed to have permanent glitches and others simply did not appeal to Charlie’s childish imagination. She knew her father took those back to his workshop and recycled them for parts, though she did not like to watch them dismantled. But the ones that were kept, those she loved, and they were here now, looking at her expectantly. Smiling, Charlie pushed a button beside her bed. It gave way stiffly, but nothing happened. She pushed it again, holding it down longer, and this time, across the room, with the weary creak of metal-on-metal, the unicorn began to move.
The unicorn (who Charlie had named Stanley for some reason she could no longer remember) was made of metal and had been painted glossy white, and it trundled around the room on a circular track, bobbing its head stiffly up and down. The track squealed now as it rounded the corner and came to a stop beside where Charlie sat on the bed. She got down and knelt beside him on the floor, patting his flank. His glossy paint was chipped and peeling, and his face had given over to rust, so that his eyes gazed lively out of decay.
“You need a new coat of paint, Stanley,” Charlie said aloud. The unicorn gazed ahead, unresponsive.
At the foot of the bed there was a wheel. Made of patched-together metal, it had always reminded her of something she might find on a submarine. Charlie turned it. It stuck for a moment, then gave way, rotating as it always did. Across the room the smallest closet door swung open, and out sailed Ella on her track, a child-sized doll bearing a teacup and saucer in her tiny hands like an offering. Ella’s plaid dress was still crisp, and her patent leather shoes still shone; perhaps in the closet she had been protected from the damage of the damp. Charlie had had an identical outfit, back when she and Ella were the same height.
“Hi, Ella,” she said softly. As the wheel unwound, Ella retreated to the closet again, the door closing behind her. Charlie followed her to the closet wall. The closets had been built to align with the slant of the ceiling, and there were three of them. Ella lived in the short one, which was about three and a half feet tall. Next to it was one a foot or so higher, and a third, closest to the bedroom door, was the same height as the rest of the room. She smiled, remembering.
“Why do you have three closets?” John had demanded, the first time he came over. She looked at him blankly, confused by the question.
“’Cause that’s how many there are,” she said finally. Then, defensive, she pointed to the littlest one. “That one’s Ella’s, anyway,” she added. John nodded, satisfied. Charlie shook her head, and opened the door to the middle closet—or, tried to. The knob stopped with a jolt: it was locked. She rattled it a few times, but gave up without much conviction. She stayed crouched low to the floor and glanced up at the tallest closet, her big-girl closet that she would someday grow into. “You won’t need it until you’re bigger.” Her father would say, but that day never came. It now hung open slightly, but Charlie didn’t disturb it. It hadn’t opened for her, it had only given way to time.