Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(44)

In the last, the child was screaming.

His eyes wide and his heart racing, Jason stepped back. He was transfixed: his body suddenly felt leaden, too heavy to run. A sound arose, like wind rustling the pages on the wall, though they hung motionless before him. The sound rushed and grew, louder and louder until wind gave way to screaming. Jason clapped his hands over his ears as pages began to drop from the walls, landing with loud crashes, as if they were made of something far heavier than paper. As he watched, the fallen pages turned a dark red, soaking through with color as they touched the floor. Jason turned to run, but his path was blocked as pages tumbled from the ceiling in a torrent. One landed on his shoulder, another on his back and then another, and they clung to him, wrapping around him as if they would suffocate him. Jason felt his legs buckle under the weight, dropping at last to one knee.

As he braced himself under the storm of paper, the room began to shake violently. Jason gritted his teeth, trapped—and suddenly it was over. The red-soaked papers were gone, there was nothing on his back, and Marla had him by the shoulder, and was staring at him, wide-eyed.

“Jason, what on earth is wrong with you?”

Jason scrambled to his feet, brushing himself off as if he were covered with invisible insects.

“The pictures were falling on me,” He said it urgently, still panicked, but as he looked back at the wall, he realized that the room was silent and still. A single picture had fallen from its place. Marla looked down at it, then back to her brother, and shook her head. She leaned close, and hissed into his ear:

“You embarrass me.” She let loose her grip after a moment, her face almost blank, and walked away. Jason stumbled as he got to his feet, but followed as quickly as he could, keeping his eyes trained on the walls as they went.

In the control room, Dave had his hands on the buttons, his fingers wandering lightly over them without pressing anything. The movement looked careless, instinctual, like a habit. Charlie leaned close to John, whispering:

“He’s been here before,” she said. “Look at the way he touches the controls.”

“Maybe he’s just good with computers,” John offered, not sounding convinced.

“Can you make them dance again?” Jessica asked. Dave barely seemed to acknowledge the question. His mouth hung slightly open, and he seemed to be staring at something none of them could see. In the bright lights, they could all see that his uniform was grubby and torn in places, his face poorly shaven and his eyes a little unfocused. He looked less like a guard than a vagrant, and he looked at them all as if he had wandered in ages ago, and they were the newcomers. It took him a moment to register the question.

“Sure, let’s see what we can do,” he said. He smiled at her, his mouth askew. His eyes were a little too intent on her face, holding her gaze just a little too long. Jessica swallowed, seized with an instinctive revulsion, but she smiled back politely.

“All right,” Dave said. “I’ve been here a few times before, I think I can work some magic.”

Charlie and John exchange glances.

“You’ve been here before?” John said in a careful, even tone, but Dave ignored him, or did not hear.

There was a keypad to the far left of the control board that no one had touched yet, as it did not appear to be connected to anything. Now Dave reached for it and began to press the buttons quickly, as if he had done it a hundred times before. He gave Jessica a conspiratorial glance. “For special occasions, you can request a dance.” He smiled at her again with that crooked intensity.

“Great,” Jessica said, breathing a sigh of relief. Anything to get out of such forced proximity to this man. She looked at Lamar. “I’m going to go look, will you take over?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, scooting forward to fill the vacancy as Jessica and Dave made their way out to the show area.

Onstage, the lights were flashing in patterns, accompanying music that no longer played, and Bonnie’s mouth was moving as though in song. His eyelids closed for long blinks, then opened again with loud clicks, his glass eyes moving from side to side. One large blue hand rose and fell, strumming exaggeratedly on the red guitar, whose strings had long since gone missing.

“Lamar, how much of this are you doing?” Carlton said, suitably impressed.

“Not much!” Lamar called back. “Most of it seems pre-programmed.”

Bonnie turned to them and Jessica startled as he seemed to look right at her. But he turned away just as quickly to face the rows of empty seats, lifting his head to sing.

“It’s strange seeing them like this,” Jessica said, and took a step back to get a better view. Bonnie’s foot tapped along in rhythm, and his mouth opened and closed with song. There was no voice; there was no music. There was only a strange humming coming from the speakers, and an orchestra of mechanical snaps and squeaks. Bonnie sped up, strumming and tapping faster. His eyes suddenly seemed out of sync, looking left while the head went right, then rolling back into his head.

Dave approached the stage with deliberate steps. “Nervous little fella, aren’t you.” He smiled, seemingly unbothered as the rabbit moved faster and faster.

“Hey Lamar, can you take it down a notch?” Jessica called.

Bonnie’s arms began convulsing violently, his mouth open but stuttering, his eyes were throwing their gaze in seemingly random directions.