Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(92)

Charlie pulled to a stop in a small, gravel parking lot beside a low fence of short white posts, chains swinging between them.

“I just need a minute,” she said. John gave her a concerned look.

“Are you sure you want to do this now?” He said softly, and she did not answer, just got out of the car, closing the door behind her.

The graveyard before them was almost a hundred years old. There were hills of lush grass and shading trees; sometimes people went on walks there. This corner was at the edge of the cemetery; there was a small house only a few yards past the edge of the fence. The grass was trimmed neatly, but it was patchy and yellowing; the trees had been pruned too far, so the lower branches were bare, too exposed.

There was a telephone pole set just inside the fence, barely on the cemetery grounds, and beside it were two headstones, plain and small. Charlie stared at it for a long moment, not moving. She tried to conjure up the right feeling: grief and loss so that she could mourn. Instead, she just felt a numbness: the graves were there, but the sight did not touch her. She took a deep breath and started toward them.

It was such a small memory, one of those moments that meant nothing at the time, was just one day in a series of days the same as all the others. They were together, just the two of them, and it must have been before everything, before Fredbear’s went wrong, before anyone was dead.

They were sitting out back behind Fredbear’s, looking out over the hills, and a crow landed and began pecking in the dirt, looking for something. There was something about its sharp, darting movements that struck her as the funniest thing she had ever seen. Charlie began to laugh, and her father looked at her. She pointed, and he turned his head, trying to see as she did, but he could not tell what she was pointing at. She could not get it across to him, she did not know the words, and just as her excitement was about to turn to frustration, he saw it too. Suddenly he laughed, too, and pointed to the crow. Charlie nodded, and he met her eyes, looking at her with an expression of pure, boundless delight, as if it would fill him to bursting.

“Oh, Charlotte,” he said.