Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(52)

At last Charlie reached the end of the stairs, and she looked down to see that she had changed: her body was no longer small, nightgown-clad and barefoot, but her teenage body, tall and strong, and fully clothed. When she straightened from her fearful crouch she stood taller than the bannister, and she looked around at her childhood home, startled. This is me, she thought. Yes. This is now.

Something banged in front of her: the front door was wide open and thudding irregularly against the wall, caught by the wind. The rain was whipping in, soaking the floor and lashing the coatrack that stood beside it, rocking it back and forth as if it weighed nothing at all. Leaves and small branches were scattered on the floor, ripped from the trees and swept in, but Charlie’s eyes went to her old, familiar shoes, her favorites. They placed neatly beside the mat, black patent leather with straps, and she could see the rain pooling inside, ruining them. Charlie stood still for a moment, transfixed, too far for the rain to reach, but close enough for the haze to slowly wet her face. She ought to go to the door and close it.

Instead, Charlie backed away slowly, not taking her eyes from the border of the storm. She took a step, then another—and her back hit something solid. She whirled around, startled, and saw it.

It was the thing from her father’s workshop, the terrible, twitching thing. It stood on its own, bent and twisted, with a narrow, reddish canine face and an almost human body. Its clothing was rags, its metal joints and limbs stark and exposed, but Charlie registered only its eyes, the silver eyes that flashed at her, on and off, over and over, blinking in and out of existence. Charlie wanted to run, but her feet would not move; she could feel her pulse in her throat, choking her, and she struggled to breathe. The thing convulsed, and in slow, jerking motions, its hand rose up and reached out to touch her face. Charlie drew in a shaking breath, unable to duck away, and then it stopped, the hand only inches from her cheek.

Charlie braced herself, her breath shallow and her eyes screwed shut, but the touch of metal and ragged cloth on her skin did not come. She opened her eyes. The thing had gone still, and the silver light in its eyes was dimmed, nearly out. Charlie backed away from it, watching warily, but it did not move, and she began to wonder if it had shut down, run out of the finite current that powered it. Its shoulders were hunched forward, hapless, and it stared dully past her as if it were lost. Charlie felt a sudden stab of sorrow for this creature, that same feeling of lonely kinship she felt in her father’s workshop so many years ago. Does it hurt? She had asked. She was old enough now to know the answer.

All at once, the thing lurched to life. Charlie felt her head go light as it took an awkward step toward her, hurtling its body forward as if it had only just learned to walk. Its head turned frantically from side to side and its arms jerked up and down with dangerous abandon.

Something shattered: it was a lamp, the thing had knocked over a ceramic lamp, and the sound of it bursting on the wooden floor shook Charlie from her stupor. She turned and ran up the stairs, scrambling as fast as her legs would carry her to her father’s door, too scared to even call out for him. As she clambered up the steps some small part of her realized that they were too big, that she was nearly on all fours, tripping barefoot over the hem of her nightgown. She was a little girl again, she realized in a bursting moment of awareness, and then it was over, and being a little girl was the only thing she could remember.

She tried again to scream for her father, but he was already there, she did not need to call him. He was standing in the hall, and she grabbed at his shirt tails as she crouched behind him. He put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her, and for the first time, her father’s touch did not make Charlie feel that she was safe. Peeking out from behind his back, Charlie could see the thing’s ears, then its face, as it climbed the stairs in its fitful, jerking steps. Her father stood calm, watching it, as it climbed the final stair, and then Charlie’s father grasped her hand, and disentangled it, gently forcing her to let him go. He went forward to meet the thing in large, even strides, but as he reached out to it, Charlie could see that his hands were shaking. He touched the thing, put his hands on either side of its face for a long moment, as if he were caressing it, and its limbs stopped, head still moving gently from side to side. It looked almost bewildered, as if it, too, had awakened to something strange and frightening. Charlie’s father did something she could not see, and the thing stopped moving; its head drooped, defeated, and its arms fell to its sides. Charlie backed up toward her room, feeling her way along the wall behind her, not daring to look away from the thing until she was safely behind her door. As she looked out one last time into the hallway, she could just barely see the glint from its eyes, cast down at the floor. Suddenly, the little silver lights flickered. The head did not move, but in a slow, calculated arc the eyes swung to meet Charlie’s gaze. Charlie whimpered, but did not look away, and then the head snapped up with a crack like something breaking—

Charlie startled out of sleep, an involuntary shudder running through her. She put a hand to her throat, feeling her heartbeat there, too quick and too hard. She darted her eyes around the room, bewildered, putting together where she was one piece at a time. The bed. Not her own. The room. Dark, she was alone. The window. The woods outside. Carlton’s house. Her breath slowed. The process had only taken seconds, but it disturbed her, to be so disoriented. She blinked, but the afterburn of those silver eyes was still with her, glowing behind her eyelids as if they had been real. Charlie stood and went to the window, thrust it open, and leaned out, desperate to breathe in the night air.