Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(39)

She did not remember much of what had happened next, everything was dark, it was all a blur of images and facts she had pieced together later, things she might remember, and others she might have imagined. She was never in the restaurant again. She knew her parents shuttered the doors immediately.

Then they moved to the new house, and Charlie’s mother left a little while after that. Charlie did not remember her saying goodbye, although she knew she must have. Her mother would not have left without a goodbye, it was just lost in the mist of time and grief like so much else. She remembered the first time she stood in the doorway of her father’s workshop, the first day they were alone, in everything. It was the day he began to build her a mechanical toy, a little dog who tilted its head from side to side. She smiled when she saw it finished, and her father looked at her the way he would look at her for the rest of his life: as though he loved her more than life itself, and as though his love made him unbearably sad. She knew even then that something vital inside him had broken, something that could never be repaired. Sometimes he seemed to look right through her, as if he couldn’t see her even when she was standing right in front of him.

Her father never again spoke her brother’s name, and so Charlie learned not to speak it either, as though to speak it would send them back to that time and unravel them both. She woke in the mornings and looked for the little boy, having forgotten in her dreams that he was gone. When she turned to where he would be, and saw only her stuffed toys, she would cry, but she would not say his name. She was afraid to even think it, and she trained her mind to shrink from it until she truly forgot, but deep inside she knew it: Sammy.

A rumbling sound rose, loud and low like a train passing, and Charlie startled.

“A train?” She looked around her, eyes wide; she was disoriented, not sure if she was in the past or present.

“It’s ok. I don’t think it’s anywhere near here. Might just be a big truck.” John took Charlie’s arm and pulled her to her feet. “Did you remember something?” He whispered. He was trying to catch her gaze, but she was focused elsewhere.

“A lot.” Charlie put her hand to her mouth, still staring into the darkness as if she could see the scene. John’s hand on her arm was an anchor, and she clung fast to it. This is real. This is now, she thought, and she turned to him, seized by a fierce gratitude that he was there with her. She buried her face in his chest as if his body could shield her from what she had seen, and let herself cry. John hugged her tight, one hand on her head, cautiously stroking her hair. They stayed that way for long moments, and at last she calmed, her breathing deep and even again. John loosened his grip on her, and as soon as he did, Charlie stepped back, suddenly aware of how close they had been.

John’s hands were still suspended in mid-air from where Charlie had been. After a moment of shock he lowered one and used the other to scratch his head.

“So…” He hoped for an answer to fill the silence.

“A rabbit.” Charlie said calmly, looking toward the doorway. “A yellow rabbit.” Her voice became graver as the image was still fresh in her mind.

The one I saw the night Michael disappeared, the bear, I’m pretty sure he was yellow too.”

“I thought you said it was like the others,” Charlie said.

“I thought it was. When everybody said Freddy was brown, that night we first met up, I just thought I was remembering it wrong. I mean, I really don’t have a great memory for back then, you know? I didn’t even remember what color my old house was. But then you said he was yellow, too.”

“Yeah, they were yellow.” She nodded; it was the answer he was expecting.

“I think it’s connected—the animals from here, and the one I saw at Freddy’s.”

And the one that took my brother, Charlie thought. She took a final look around the place.

“Let’s go back,” she said. “I want to get out of here.”

“Okay,” John said.

As they headed to the door, a small object caught Charlie’s eye, and she snatched it up. It was a twisted piece of metal, and as John watched, close by, she stretched it out, then let it snap back together with a loud snap, like a cracking whip. John jumped.

“What is that?” He said, composing himself.

“I’m not sure,” she said, but she slipped it into her pocket. John was watching her like there was something he wanted to say. “Let’s go,” Charlie said.

They began the trek back to the car. Sammy, then years later Michael and the other kids—of course it’s connected, Charlie thought. Lightning might strike twice, but not murder.

“Can you drive again?” She asked after a long period of silence. The only sounds so far had been their shoes crunching through the dry grass.

“Yeah, of course,” he said.

John managed to get the car turned around in the constricted space, and Charlie settled against the window, her eyes half closed already. She watched the trees fly by outside her window, and felt herself beginning to doze. The metal object in her pocket was digging into her leg, keeping her awake, and she repositioned it, thinking dreamily of the first time she saw one of the things.

She was sitting with Sammy in the restaurant, before it opened for the day; they were under a window, in a dusty beam of light, playing some invented game she could no longer remember, and their father came over grinning: he had something to show them.