Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(77)

“Run!” She screamed, and they took off, looping around the prep table, the metal furniture clattering as they rushed clumsily past it. Behind them, Chica’s steps were long and slow. At last they reached the door, and they burst out into the hall, and ran for the main dining room.



John and Jessica were silent, listening to the clamor outside. John was resting his hand on the door of the control room; whatever had been on the other side was gone, or was pretending to be. The lock had been wrenched out of the floor, and he tried the knob, but the door, twisted out of shape, still stuck.

“Are you crazy?” Jessica exclaimed, alarmed.

“What else are we going to do?” John said calmly. Jessica didn’t answer.

John backed up against the control panel and gave the door a calculated kick, moving it an inch closer to opening.

“Here, let me,” Jessica said, and before he could reply she had delivered a kick of her own, the door again moving just a little.

They took turns, not speaking, until finally John kicked, and the top hinge broke. John quickly wrestled the door the rest of the way off until they could crawl out.

They hurried out, and stopped, exposed in the main dining room. Jessica looked at the main stage in misery: it was empty.

“I don’t know how this is safer,” she said, but John was not listening.

“Charlie!” He cried, then covered his mouth with his hand, too late. Charlie and Carlton were running from the dark hallway at a furious pace.

“Come on,” Charlie yelled at them, not slowing down as she passed, and John and Jessica ran after them as Charlie led them out of the dining room into the opposite hall, toward the storeroom they had come in through.

Charlie ran down the hall with a purpose, stopping in front of a closed door and trying to get it open. Behind them loomed the open mouth of a pitch-black party room, a wide empty space that could have hidden anything. John turned his back to the group, keeping an eye on the abyss.

“Is it locked?” Carlton said, an edge of rising panic in his voice.

“No, just stuck,” Charlie said. She forced it, and the door popped open. They hurried inside, John lingering to the last moment, his eyes still on the darkness behind him.

When the door was shut, Charlie reached for the light switch by the door, and John put a hand on her arm.

“Don’t turn the light on,” he said, looking back for a moment. “We have enough light, let your eyes adjust.”

There was a window high up on the door, thick glass with a bubbling frosted pattern, letting a trickle of light and color into the room from the hallway.

“Right,” Charlie said. A light on in here would have marked them out clearly. In the semidarkness, she surveyed the room. It had been an office, though not one she remembered visiting often; she was not sure who had used it. There were cartons here and there on the floor, overstuffed to bulging with papers, their lids perched sheepishly on top of the mess inside. There was an old desk in the corner, a grayish blue metal with visible dents in the surface. Jessica boosted herself up to sit on it.

“Lock the door,” Jessica said with an irritated tone, and Charlie did. There was a button set into the knob, which she knew would be useless, and a flimsy bolt lock, the kind in bathroom stalls and on picket fences.

“I guess it’s better than nothing,” she said.





Chapter Eleven


In the little office, they sat silently for a few minutes, everyone eyeing the door, waiting. It’s just another place to be trapped, Charlie thought.

“We have to get out of here,” Jessica said softly, echoing Charlie’s thoughts. Suddenly Carlton made a small sound of distress. Spasmodically, he grabbed a cardboard box, tipping it over to dump out some of the contents, and vomited into it. His stomach was empty; he retched futilely, his guts clenching and seizing to no effect. At last he sat back, gasping; his face was red, and there were tears in his eyes.

“Carlton? Are you okay?” John said, alarmed.

“Yeah, never better,” Carlton said as his breathing returned slowly to normal.

“You have a concussion,” Charlie said. “Look at me.” She knelt down in front of him and looked at his eyes, trying to remember what the pupils were supposed to look like if someone had a concussion. Carlton waggled his eyebrows.

“Oh, oh ow!” He ground his teeth and ducked his head, clutching it as if someone might try to take it away from him. “Sorry,” he said after a moment, still bent over in pain. “I think it was all that running. I’ll be okay.”

“But—” Charlie started to protest, but he cut her off, straightening with a visible effort.

“Charlie, it’s fine. Can you blame me for being a little out of sorts? What about you?” He pointed at her arm, and she looked down, confused.

There was a small, bright red patch leaking through the bandage on her arm; the wound on her arm must have opened while they were fleeing.

“Oh,” Charlie said, suddenly a little nauseated herself. John moved toward her to help, but she waved him away. “I’m fine,” she said. She moved the arm experimentally; it ached with the same dull pain that had been radiating through it for the last few days, but did not seem worse, and the spot of blood did not seem to be growing very fast. There another rumble of thunder outside, and the walls trembled.