Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(53)

Did that happen? The dream felt like memory, felt like something that had happened just moments ago, but that was the nature of dreams, wasn’t it? They felt real, and then you woke up. She closed her eyes and tried to catch the thread, but it was too difficult to tell, what was the dream and what was not. She shivered in the breeze, though it was not cold, and brought herself back inside. She looked at her watch. Only a couple of hours had passed, and it was still hours more until daylight, but sleep felt impossible. Charlie put on her shoes and shuffled quietly through the hall and down the stairs, hoping not to wake her friends. She went out to the porch, sitting down on the front steps and leaning back to look up at the sky. There were traces of clouds overhead, but the stars still shone through, scattered overhead, uncountable. She tried to lose herself in them as she had as a child, but as she gazed up at the pinpoint lights, all she could see were eyes, looking back at her.

There was a noise behind her, and she jumped, whirling to press her back against the railing. John was standing behind her with a startled look on his face. They stared at one another for a moment, like strangers, then Charlie found her voice.

“Hey, sorry, did I wake you up, again?”

John shook his head and came to sit beside her.

“No, not really. I heard you go out, or I figured it was you. I was awake, though—Jason snores like a guy about three times his size.”

Charlie laughed.

“I had a weird dream,” she said. John nodded, waiting for her to go on, but she did not. “What did people think of my father?” She said instead. John leaned back and looked at the stars for a moment, then pointed.

“That’s Cassiopeia,” he said, and she squinted in the direction of his finger.

“It’s Orion,” she corrected. “John, I’m serious. What did people think about him?”

He shrugged uncomfortably.

“Charlie, I was a little kid, you know? Nobody told me anything.”

“I was a little kid once myself,” she said. “Nobody tells you anything, but they talk in front of you like you’re not there. I remember your mom and Lamar’s mom talking, making bets on how long Marla’s new stepdad would stick around.”

“What did they come up with?” John said, amused.

“Your mom was banking on three months; Lamar’s mom was more optimistic,” Charlie said, grinning, but then her face grew serious again. “I can tell you know something,” she said quietly, and after a moment, he nodded.

“Some people thought he did it, yeah,” he admitted.

“What?” Charlie was aghast. She stared at him, eyes wide, scarcely breathing. “They thought what?” John glanced at her nervously.

“I thought that’s what you were asking,” he said. Charlie shook her head. Some people thought he did it.

“I—no, I meant what did they think of him, as a person. Did they think he was odd, or kind or… I didn’t know…” she trailed off, lost in the magnitude of this new truth. People thought he did it. Of course they did. It was his restaurant. The first child to vanish was his child. In the absence of a confession or a conviction, who else would anyone think of? Charlie shook her head again.

“Charlie,” John said hesitantly, “I’m sorry. I just assumed. You must have known people would think that, though—if not then, then now.”

“Well, I didn’t,” she snapped, and felt a hollow satisfaction when he drew back, hurt. She took a deep breath. “I know it sounds obvious,” she said in more even tones. “But it just never, ever occurred to me that anyone would think he was responsible. And then afterward, after he committed—” But that would have only reinforced their suspicions, she realized as she said it.

“People thought it was because of the guilt,” John said, almost to himself.

“It was.” Charlie felt anger welling up inside her, the dam about to burst, and she held it back, biting off words in short, sharp bursts. “Of course he felt guilt, it was his restaurant. His life’s work, his creations, and it was all turned into a massacre. Don’t you think that’s enough?” Her voice sounded vicious, even to her own ears. Apologize, she thought, but she ignored it.

People thought he did it. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t. But if he had, how would she even have known? I knew him, she thought fiercely. But did she? She loved him, trusted him, with the blind devotion of a seven-year-old girl, even now. She understood him with the knowing and not-knowing that comes of being a child. When you focus on your parent as if they are the center of the earth, that thing on which your survival depends, and only later do you realize their flaws, their scars, and their weaknesses.

Charlie had never had the dawning moments of realization, as she grew older, that her father was only human; she had never had the chance. To her he was still mythic, still larger than life, still the man who could deactivate the monsters. He was also the man who made them. How well did she really know him?

The rage was gone, ebbed back to wherever it rose from, and she was empty of it, her insides dry and vacant. She closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and John touched her shoulder for a brief moment.

“Don’t be,” he said. Charlie put her hands over her face. She did not feel like crying, but she didn’t want him to see her face. She was thinking of things that were too new, too awful, to think in front of someone else. How would I have known if he did?