Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(33)

“I don’t know, couldn’t sleep. What about you?”

“Somebody stepped on me.”

Charlie winced. “Sorry,” she said, and he laughed.

“I’m just kidding. I was awake.”

“I was going to go for a walk,” she said, pointing at the tree line. “Out there, somewhere. Do you want to come?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

They headed into the woods, and John hung back for a moment and surreptitiously re-tucked his shirt, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. Charlie pretended not to notice.

There was no path, and so they made their way through the trees at random, glancing back now and then to be sure they could still make out the motel parking lot. John stumbled over a fallen branch, and Charlie reached out with her good arm to catch him before he fell.

“Thanks,” he said. “Strong arm, too.”

“Well, you caught me yesterday, so it’s only fair that I catch you back. Now we’re even,” she said. She looked around; the motel was scarcely in sight, and she felt concealed, made safe by the woods. She could say anything here, and it would be all right. She leaned back against a tree, picking idly at the bark behind her. “You know Freddy’s wasn’t the first restaurant?” She said it abruptly, surprising herself, and John looked at her quizzically, like he had not quite heard her. She didn’t want to say it again, but she forced herself to. “Freddy’s, it wasn’t my dad’s first restaurant. There was a diner, a little one. It was before my mom left.”

“I had no idea,” John said slowly. “Where was it?”

“I don’t know. It’s one of those memories from when you’re a little kid, you know? You only remember the things that are right around you. I remember the linoleum on the kitchen floor, it was this black and white diamond pattern, but I don’t remember where the restaurant was, or what it was called.”

“Yeah,” John said. “We took a vacation to a theme park when I was like three, and all I remember is the backseat of the car. So were they there?” His voice dropped a little quieter when he said it, almost reflexively. Charlie nodded.

“Yeah. There was a bear, and a rabbit. I think. Sometimes the details get mixed up in my head. They’re not like normal memories,” she said, needing him to understand the story’s defects before she told him the rest. “It’s like when you have a realistic dream, and in the morning you’re not sure if it really happened or not. It’s just impressions, little snatches of time. It’s…” She trailed off. She wasn’t explaining it right; she was choosing all the wrong words. She was reaching back too far in her memory, to a time when she did not yet speak. It was a time when she did not have the words to name the things she saw, and so now, when she tried to recall them, the words could never be right.

She looked at John. He was watching her patiently, waiting for her to go on. She wanted to tell him, this story from her life that she had never told. It was not even a story, not really, just something that nagged at the edge of her mind, something flashing by randomly in the corner of her eye. She was not entirely certain it was real, and so she told no one. She wanted to tell John, because she wanted to speak it to another person, and because he looked at her with trusting eyes and she knew he would listen and believe her. Because he had cared for her a long time ago, because he had caught her when she fell, and he had come here to sleep and keep watch all night. And, thought a pragmatic, slightly cruel part of her, because he was not part of her real life. She could tell him this, tell him anything, and when she returned home, it could be as though it had never happened. She wanted suddenly to touch him, have confirmation that he was really there, that this was not another dream. She reached out her hand to him, and, surprised but glad, he took it. He stayed where he was, as if afraid that moving in closer would scare her. They stayed that way for a moment, and then she let go, and she told him the story the way she spoke it in her head, the memories of a small child mixing with the things she had come to understand as she grew older.

There was another restaurant, rustic and small, with red checkered cloths on the tables, and a kitchen you could see into from the dining area, and they all were there together. Her father, and her mother and us. When Charlie was very, very young, she was never alone. There was Charlie, and there was a little boy, a little boy so close to Charlie that remembering him was like remembering a part of herself. They were always together: she learned to say we before she learned to say I.

They played together on the floor of the kitchen, sometimes drawing pictures while hiding under a hard wood table. She remembered the shuffling of feet and the shadows of customers walking by. Light was broken by a slow turning fan and thrown across the floor in ribbons. She remembered the smell of an ashtray, and the hearty laughter of adults lost in a good story while their children played.

Very often she would hear her father’s laugh echoing from a distant corner as he talked with customers. When Charlie pictured him laughing like that now, it was with a little ache, a sucking feeling in the center of her chest, because his eyes were bright and his smile was easy, and because he wanted them all to be a part of the restaurant, to share his work freely. Because he was not afraid to let his children roam and explore. He was yet untouched by grief, and so while he looked a little like the father she truly remembered, they were not the same man at all.