EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT: A Five Nights at Freddy's Fanfiction

Part Four: NEW FACES, OLD BONES

By R. Lee Smith

Dedicated to Scott Cawthon

With my sincerest gratitude (and apologies)

This is Part Four of a 5-Part Series.

For Part One, please read Girl on the Edge of Nowhere.

For Part Two, please read Mike Schmidt and the Long Night

For Part Three, please read Children of Mammon

TRIGGER WARNING! This book contains strong adult themes, including adult language, drug and alcohol references, graphic depictions of child abduction, violence towards children and adults, graphic gore violence and sexual content. You have been warned.

I'd also better take a moment here to say that I started writing this before certain truths were revealed in a certain book and a certain game, so it goes without saying that the story you're about to read follow my Alternate Universe timeline/theory and not canon lore. Sort of not sorry either. If Scott Cawthon wanted to see William Afton or Ennard in my books, he should have consulted me.

Five Nights At Freddy's is the creation of Scott Cawthon. The characters of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Mangle, Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Mike Schmidt, Jeremy Fitzgerald, Fredbear, Springtrap, Plushtrap, the Puppet, Balloon Boy, and the Purple Guy, as well as Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, belong to him. Everything else is a product of my own imagination and no similarity to actual events, locations, or people is intended or should be inferred. Do not reproduce, repost or copy any part of this story without my permission.

As always, a sincere thank you to all those who took the time to rate and review if you liked it (or even if you didn't like it). If you are interested in my non-fanfiction work, feel free to check out my blog (the address keeps disappearing when I type it here. It's rleesmith dot wordpress dot com) or look me up on Amazon.

"Hello, hello? Um, this is just a reminder about company policy concerning the safe room. The safe room is reserved for equipment and/or other properties not being currently used and as a back-up safety location for employees only. It is not a break room, it should not be considered a place for employees to hide…Um, you know…I always wondered what was in all those empty heads back there…"

CHAPTER ONE

January 8, 1988

Snow fell over Mammon—fat, fluffy, white flakes to cover up the last dirty layer and make it all new again. Impatient children tried to play in it, slipping in slush and scraping their fingers on the crust of last week's snow if they weren't wearing mittens. Fathers and sons trudged around their yards, taking down lights and sparkly reindeer now, while these gently falling flakes could still be considered 'good' weather for it. Mothers and daughters kept busy on the inside, packing away decorations, maybe stirring pots of thick cocoa or fragrant cider in their kitchens to warm cold hands when the work and play was done.

Ana stood in the driveway with her arms hugged tight around the crinkly paper bag holding her clothes, watching it all and trying not to cry. Aunt Easter was late. She, who had never ever ever been late, who had sometimes been there before Ana was even out of bed, waking her with whispers and kisses, bundling her into her clothes and then out to the car where David waited, and they'd all go together up to the stone house on its high, lonely mountain and pretend they were a family until it was time for Ana to go home. That was how it should be, how it had always been. Something bad must have happened, if Aunt Easter wasn't coming.

Was it her fault? She had spent the whole winter vacation at Aunt Easter's, almost two weeks, but she didn't think she'd been bad. She couldn't always tell, but she didn't think so. It had been a good visit, full of laughs and hugs, with a tree and lights and special dinner on fancy plates and opening presents on the floor while Aunt Easter and her friend sat together in one chair and watched them. She had cried when she had to go home again, secret tears into her pillow after David was asleep…had Aunt Easter heard her and gotten sick of her whining? David hadn't been at school since Wednesday, or at least, he hadn't come by the kiddie-garden playground at recess to see her. Was he mad at her too? What had she done wrong? Had she been messy, smelly, noisy, a bad girl, a stupid bitch, a rotten little shit? Whatever it was, she was sorry and would say so as many times as Aunt Easter wanted if only she had the chance.

Behind her, she could hear angry noises in the house Ana still thought of as new even though she'd been living there ever since coming home from the hospital in the summer. When the front door opened, she did not look around. Her mother didn't always like to be ignored, but never liked to be stared at. After a long, tense moment, the door shut again, but only just long enough for Ana to sigh out her relief. Then it banged open and her mother's feet came crunching out over the broken snow she had never shoveled.

"Come on," she said, catching Ana's arm.

Ana managed not to cry out—no one wanted to hear her whining—but she lost her grip on her bag and when she tried to grab it, the paper tore, spilling shirts and pants and underwear all over the driveway. She couldn't stop to pick it up, either. She could only watch as her clothes soaked up the slush or blew away on the wind, knowing she'd be punished for ruining them later. Right now, her mother had her, urging her along with painful yanks and dragging her when she slipped on the ice that hid under the snow, and so Ana had to go.

Ana's mother reached the car, opened the door, shoved Ana inside and slammed the door on Ana's sneakered foot.

Caught by surprise, Ana stupidly let out a howl of pain. A few people taking down their Christmas stuff looked around, but they all went back to work when Ana's mother opened the car door again and started punching, screaming at her to shut up, shut up, shut her stupid fat fucking face or she'd give her something to cry about. One kid in the next yard began crying, but his dad took him inside. Everyone else just kept winding up Christmas lights and putting them in boxes. The snow fell, muffling sound, covering everything that was dirty and broken in a pretty blanket of white.

At last, Ana managed to be quiet enough and her mother stopped hitting her and shut the door again. Ana uncurled and sat, dragging the seatbelt down to clip across her hips and holding it so her fingers had something to clutch and could not fly up on their own and try to cover her face when her mother got in the car. If she did that, her mother would only ask her if she wanted to get hit, is that what she wanted, and no, Ana did not.

Her mother got in and started the car. "Shut up," she said, although Ana hadn't said anything.

She drove. Ana's pounding heart lurched when her mother made the first turn out of the cul-de-sac, then broke at the second turn and bled away. She did not know where her mother was taking her, but it was not to Aunt Easter's house.

Ana sat and watched the snow fall through her window. The foot that had been slammed in the door throbbed, feeling hot and so much bigger than it was. The other foot ached with cold from standing in wet sneakers in the snow. She shivered once before the heater warmed up enough to blow hot air, attracting her mother's eye, but managed to hold very still after that and eventually, her mother had to go back to watching the road.

They drove all the way through town, past the mall and Gallifrey's, past the school Ana had just started attending and had already begun to dread, past the park where men took down the holiday lights and changed red and green bulbs in the streetlamps back to white. All the way out to the canyon, Ana's mother drove, and still kept going, turning off the paved road onto one that was gravel beneath its blanket of fresh snow.

Finally, the car met with a closed gate blocking the road and Ana's mother had to stop. There was a tiny house by the side of the road, just closet-sized, with a narrow window and no door, but it was empty. Beside it was a metal box on a post with buttons and a speaker, so that it looked a little like a radio and a little like a phone. Ana's mother rolled down her window and pushed a button. As soon as a voice answered, Ana's mother said to open the gate. The voice asked for a name.

"Oh, I guarantee I'm not on any fucking list, but you tell him it's Melanie Stark and you open this fucking gate," Ana's mother said, slapping the steering wheel; Ana held very still and did not look at her.

The voice said it was sorry without sounding sorry at all and told her to come back when she had an appointment. It didn't say anything for while after that, no matter how many times Ana's mother pushed the button or shouted, but eventually, it did come on again to say that unless she left, the police would be called.

At that, Ana's mother started up the car and backed it up, but only just around the first corner. Then she drove off on the side of the road and got out. "Come on," she said to Ana, but Ana couldn't get out of her seat belt fast enough and her mother had to come back and get her. "Why can't you ever just do what I fucking tell you?" she screamed, all slapping hands and hard-shoe kicks, but then she just walked away, saying, "Come on," again.

Ana struggled through the snow in her mother's footprints and when they came to the gate, Ana's mother picked her up and pushed her through the curly bars where they were widest-apart. It hurt a little, but Ana did not make a sound. Once her mother had climbed over, they kept walking.

They walked forever, like heroes in a fairytale, miles and miles uphill against the wind as it howled up from the canyon, blowing snow and chips of ice against Ana's slap-hot face, and at the end of that climbing road, Ana's mother just stopped. Ana raised her head and first only saw her mother, white-faced except where the wind had scraped her cheeks bright red, staring. So she looked too and saw a huge house like blocks of ice thrown all together, ten thousand windows and hardly any walls, all corners and slants and straight lines. There were no Christmas lights on the eaves, no Christmas trees in any of the windows, and that was fine; Ana looked and saw only a snowy desert stretching out forever, an empty world in which there had never been a Christmas.

Ana's mother started walking again, giving Ana a yank to get her moving before dragging her to the door. She did not knock, just opened it and went inside, pulling Ana with her and not letting her even wipe her feet. She had to make a mess, leaving dirty snow to melt on the carpets and the floor as her mother pulled her along.

Ana's first impression of the house was that it was cursed. She wasn't sure yet if she believed in fairy tales and curses, but she had heard the stories and if curses were real, then the house was cursed. It seemed dark, although the lights were on. It seemed cold, although it was much warmer than it was outside. It seemed empty, even though Ana could hear voices.

And her mother could hear them too. She listened, turning in the empty hall, then pulled Ana with her to the stairs and up them. There were many doors, open and closed, many halls branching off in every direction, many echoes knocking on Ana's ears as she ran at her mother's side deep into the cursed castle. She saw someone at last, although maybe not a real person. He was dressed like a cartoon, all black and white, and he seemed as surprised to see them as Ana was to see him.

"You can't be here," he said, walking swiftly toward them. "I will call the police."

Ana's mother let go of Ana's hand to push him out of her way, hissing, "You call them! You go right the fuck ahead. Where is he?" She opened the door the man had just come through, revealing another room with several men around a long table, except for one who was standing by the window. They all looked around at Ana's mother, and some at Ana herself, and their faces were all the same frowning face.

Ana's mother stepped inside, pulling Ana with her, and looked around, but there was nothing to see. There was a huge TV on the wall, but it wasn't on. There were no bookshelves, no plants, no furniture apart from the table and the chairs surrounding it, not even pictures on the dark wooden walls. Some of the men had briefcases or pads of paper, but they weren't doing anything with them. The only things to attract Ana's eye were the lamps arranged in a straight line down the middle of the table; they had long narrow necks and tall shades of a curious shape and color—a smoky pale yellow, but shiny with all sorts of pinks and blues hiding in the light. There was something carved somehow into the glass.

Ana moved closer, unnoticed by her mother or any of the men, to get a better look. Fruit. Grapes. They looked like bubbles floating there, and with the light and the yellow color and the shape and all, it reminded her of champagne commercials that had been all over the TV lately. The lamps even looked like the odd, tall glasses people in the commercials drank from. Ana had never seen glasses like that in real life, only on TV. Her mother mostly drank from bottles.

"Where is he?" Ana's mother asked, looking at the men. "Where is the son of a bitch?"

Several men made angry-man sounds, but one of them said, "If you find him, tell him to get his ass up here. What?" he demanded as some of the others turned their frowns on him. "This is ridiculous! He can't just hide from this! It's not blowing over, it's blowing up! My phone hasn't stopped ringing all week!" Fumbling at his belt, he unhooked a small plastic box and tossed it on the table, saying, "If I turned that thing on, it would fucking explode! Does he even know the can of worms he opened with that stunt? Every goddamn mommy in town has a lawyer claiming her kid is traumatized for life!"

"Hey, you go to Disneyland and see Walt chop up Mickey with an axe—"

"Whose side are you on?"

"That's nothing. We can handle that. What we have to worry about is the retroactive fallout. Right now, everyone who ever so much as stubbed their toe in that restaurant is talking to the press. And the Fitzgerald kid's lawyers are throwing more and more bills at us even though the kid's dad won't keep his fucking mouth shut, non-disclosure agreement be damned, and who is this Schmidt asshole anyway? Did you see the story in the Watch last month?"

"The what?"

"The Watch, the Hurricane Watch. Half a page in a four-page newspaper. He says he's got a source, an inside source, talking all about the 'conditions' at the restaurant. You seriously didn't see it?"

"No, I didn't see it. No one saw it. Four pages, Bob. Calm the fuck down."

"Shit like that spreads, Parker. Don't tell me to calm down. We need to find this guy and his fucking source and shut them both the fuck up any way we can! Priority fucking one!"

"Well, sheesh, don't tell the old man. He'll pay the little asshole off and every reporter in the state will be cranking out ghost stories by tomorrow. Get Metzger to handle it."

"What do you think I've been trying to do all week?!" the first man interrupted, actually picking up his glass and throwing it. He threw it at the wall, far from Ana, but her little nerve broke with the glass and she bolted down the hall, away from his furious shout: "Where is he? Where is anyone? Why doesn't anyone in this godforsaken town answer their fucking phone?"

Ana ran. No one noticed. Not the men, arguing with each other. Not the black-and-white man telling Ana's mother she had to leave. Not even her mother, who always noticed when Ana did bad things and nothing made her madder than having to chase her. Ana ran and probably would have run out into the snow, which was blowing thicker and faster and might have easily swallowed up any useless little girl who was stupid enough to run headlong into its open mouth, but she turned the wrong way off the stairs and got lost deep in the house.

She knew she was lost, but she kept running, knowing there would be a door eventually, and eventually, there was.

It was a glass door, like the one that opened on the back porch at Aunt Easter's house. This house didn't have a porch, but it had a long, curvy sunken place that would be a swimming pool if it was summer. The cover was blue and snow had blown up over it in snaky lines like waves on frozen water. Empty furniture was arranged around it—tables and chairs and those long ones like Aunt Easter had on her back porch, where she and the man who sometimes visited liked to lay down together. Snow had melted on the metal lines of the cushionless chairs and the wind blew through them, forming icicles that curled up and outward in defiance of gravity like the spikes on fairy thrones. On the other side of the snowy pool was a little house, like a playhouse at the park, dark and empty, as cursed as the big house in which Ana now stood.

She stared a long time, drinking in the sight of this secret place, forgetting her mother, forgetting even Aunt Easter. She was alone here, alone in all the world, alone in this ice castle at the edge of the snowy desert, and in that moment, all was well.

Then she heard movement in another room—kitchen sounds—and a door opened, throwing light across the floor. Ana ducked behind a curtain and held her breath as shoes, light and hard like her mother's, crossed the room, each step echoed by rattling dishes. When the person was gone, Ana snuck away, leaving nothing but the smudge of her small hands on the glass and the slowly fading puff of her last breath.

Her sneakers made clop-clop-clopping sounds as she walked, too loud. She took them off, holding them by their dirty rainbow laces, and walked in her bare feet. The floor was cool where it was wood, cold where stone, warm and soft where rugs lay over it, and Ana learned the feel of all three because she was very, very lost.

'I will never ever ever find my way out,' she thought and the thought did not frighten her. 'I will be a ghost in this house and stay here forever.'

And as if time had opened up a window and let her peer into that oddly not unhappy future, Ana heard a low, sobbing moan.

She stopped there in the hall to listen, wary but not fearful. She was not afraid of ghosts. She still believed in them at that tender age, but they were only air, after all. You could see right through them, walk through them. Their smoky hands could not catch or slap. They might be scary to look at or hear, but like scary things on TV, they could not really hurt her and so she was not afraid. She listened and when she started walking again, it was to follow the sounds she heard. If it was a ghost, she wanted to see it. She had forgotten being lost as readily as she forgotten her mother and now knew only that not even David had ever seen a ghost and just wait until she told him she had. David was older than her by a whole year and he got all the firsts. Except for firsts like first stitches, first cast, first night in the hospital—all the bad firsts, Ana got. David got the good ones. First ghost was a good first, though, and Ana wanted it.

At the end of a long hall with snowy windows on one side, Ana found a door. It was partly open, letting light from the hall fall in and those sobbing sounds fall out. They sounded awfully solid, now that she was here. For the first time, Ana considered the possibility that she had not followed a ghost after all, but she could not imagine what else it could be, so she went in.

The room was dark. The windows were shut away behind heavy curtains and no lights were lit. The only source of illumination was the broad yellow-white stripe that came in from the hall, cutting a zig-zagging line across the floor and up the opposite wall. Like walking into a theater after the movie had started, it took her a little time for her eyes to adjust.

The room was strangely familiar, more in the feel of it than its looks. At Aunt Easter's house, on the second story, at the end of the hall, was a forbidden room much like this one: dark wood all around, tall shelves full of heavy books, chair and sofa cushioned with uncomfortable leather, and no TV or toys or anything to really do except sit there and be in a room.

But no, there were toys here, Ana saw with surprise. Here and there among the blocks of books on the shelves were stuffed animals and plastic figures, not left carelessly out, but arranged, some of them in glass cases, reminding her of the pretty plates in Aunt Easter's china hutch. Those plates were not to be eaten off and these toys were not to be played with. Yet they were toys, for-real ones and not just grown-up things that looked like toys. Ana knew this because David had all the same ones and she played with them all the time when she was at his house. They were from Freddy's.

All this, Ana absorbed in just a few seconds, and then she saw the man.

He was sitting in a chair in the darkest corner of the room, and if it had not been for the sounds he made, she might have missed him altogether. He was bent over far enough to have been tying his shoes, although his shoes were the grown-up man kind that had no laces. His other clothes were as grown-up, the sort Ana only saw in real life on those rare occasions that Aunt Easter took them out driving past the church on Sundays. In fact, just looking at him, Ana's eyes took in details that her vocabulary had no way to express yet apart from 'rich,' 'important,' and 'not a ghost,' but at the moment, he was none of those things to her. He was only the crying man.

Ana had seen very few men in her day-to-day life. She knew boys, loosely categorized: 'babies', who, being babies, cried as often as they did anything else and so hardly merited notice; 'little,' meaning younger than David, who cried often, but for predictable reasons; 'boys,' the basic model, being within a year or two in either direction of David's own age, and for whom tears were already a 'girl' thing to be teased for and made ashamed of; 'big,' meaning boys who had begun to stretch tall and get mean, who only cried if they were made to cry, and were then mercilessly mocked for it; and 'very big,' meaning those who attended Blackwood High and could not grow beards although many tried, who had outgrown playgrounds and bicycles and especially tears. As for grown men, huge and solid, she knew only one, and that one could no more cry than he could shout or hit. That one was only ever happy.

This man was crying and although he did it in a dark room away from other people, he was not really trying to hide it. He sobbed with his whole body, shivering, coughing, rocking. One hand wiped at his eyes. The other he kept clutched at his chest, as a small child will cup a scraped knee or pinched finger, holding what hurt the most.

For a long time, Ana only watched, fascinated in spite of her unease, the crying man as captivating in his own way as a dead lizard teeming with ants. She had the feeling he was not a stranger, although she did not know him. Her recognition came from a deeper place than just as someone she might have seen in town. It was as if she had dreamed him to life. 'He sang to me once,' she thought, but could not imagine where or how such a thing could have truly happened.

Then, deep in the house, she heard the slamming of a door and her mother's shout, and fear gripped her. Ana had run, which was a bad thing, and there was nothing worse except to be found, as she must be found, but of all places, she could not be found here. The forbiddeness of the room was stamped into every surface. She was not sure what could be worse than to be hit and put back in the closet, but if little Ana had learned nothing else in her short life, it was that there was always something worse. She did not want her mother to find her here, so she had to make the crying man be quiet before her mother heard him.

Slipping further into the room, Ana closed the door. The man did not seem to hear the soft sound it made or her footsteps on the dark floorboards, but the next time his hand moved away from his eyes, he did notice the light that had come in from the hall was gone. He looked at the bookcases where it had been, then turned his head and saw her.

He wasn't just a man, but an old man. He was not very wrinkled, but the wrinkles he had were deep. They made crooked channels for his tears to travel in, like the miniature canyons that formed out in the desert after a hard rain. And although he had mostly stopped crying when he saw Ana, at least so loudly, the tears kept coming. He did not appear to notice at first (was that how it was with boys? Did it break something inside them to never cry when they were younger, so that when they got old, the tears came out through their cracks, whether they meant to or not?), but after one of the tears made it over his chin and dripped onto his neck, he fumbled out a small sort of napkin from his jacket pocket and wiped his eyes. He couldn't do it very well. His hands were shaking.

Ana went to him as Aunt Easter had come to her so many times in the past and took the napkin from him. It was cloth, not paper, and felt very fine in her hands, but it had been his idea, so she guessed it was okay to keep using it.

She reached up, cupping the back of his neck just above his stiff white collar, and he let her pull him down where she could better reach. She did not shush him or sing the Cheer-Up song—that seemed inappropriate to do to a grown-up to her small-child sensibilities—but she wiped his cheek, blowing on his tears as Aunt Easter blew on hers when she cried.

He did not speak either, only watched her. Up close, she could see his eyes were pink from crying, but also very blue—a pale, painted-on shade of blue, brighter and bluer than David's eyes. His skin beneath the tears and wrinkles was also pale, possibly the palest she'd ever seen in Mammon, where families gardened and children played outside and sunburns were a part of life, no matter how much banana oil your aunt rubbed on you. His hair was boy-short and unbrushed, blond where it was not white, with pale specks of stubble on his jaw that made a raspy sound under her napkin. That, and the smaller sounds of breath, his and hers, were all she could hear. He smelled of good smells—laundry smells and perfume smells, different from the ones her aunt used, but still good. She had only ever been this close to one other man, that man with whom she had always felt safe, and so she felt safe with this one, too, even if he was a stranger.

When she was done wiping and he was done crying, Ana gave him back his napkin. As he folded it into a triangle and put it away, she looked around, then took down a stuffed Freddy from the only shelf she could sort of reach (she had to climb onto the wide arm of a chair) and gave it to him.

"Oh," he said, accepting it. His voice was deep and rumbly in his chest, almost like the real Freddy, or as real as he was to Ana on the tapes Aunt Easter made for her. That sense of dream-like recognition grew stronger. He touched the tiny hat sewn to the soft toy's head and looked at her seriously. "Thank you."

Ana nodded, once more aware that she was not where she should be now that the man's crying had been attended to and the immediate threat had passed. She turned to go, and at once, he reached out for her, not to catch and shake, but merely to touch the tips of his fingers to the back of her hand and swiftly take them away again.

"Did your aunt bring you?"

He pronounced it oddly, not like the bug, but to rhyme with 'haunt'. Nevertheless, Ana knew what he meant and shook her head 'no'. It did not occur to her to wonder how he knew Aunt Easter. Children are, by their nature, egocentric creatures. As prodigious as she might be in other areas of her development, Ana was yet of an age when she believed everyone she met knew everyone she knew. And so she did not doubt he would also know what it meant when she whispered, "Mama."

He did not look afraid—grown-ups did not get afraid—but he looked at her like he knew why she was. Again, he reached, this time shifting the curtain beside him at the same time so that the snow-bright day struck her in the face, blinding her. He looked at her as if she were pictures in one of the storybooks Aunt Easter read to her—Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Rumplestiltskin—and when he touched her cheek, his thin, oddly rough fingers unerringly brushed across the place that hurt the most.

"Does she hit you?" he asked and somehow that was scarier than any other question he could have asked, just because he knew to ask. No matter how urgently Ana shook her head, the old man's frown only deepened. He knew already. He knew the secret and he knew the lie.

Ana pulled away from him and fled to the door, but when she opened it, she could hear her mother, not close but not far, shouting and swearing. She hesitated, afraid to stay and feel her lies pulled out, afraid to go and meet her mother.

"Don't run," the man said, still seated, making no effort to chase her if she did. "You mustn't run from monsters. If you have hope, then hide. If you have none, then fight, but you must never run."

Ana looked back at him, standing tensely on her bare toes, ready to bolt. "You're not a monster," she said, whispering so her mother could not hear.

"I'm not? Well." The old man looked down into the Freddy-bear's plastic eyes. When he looked up again, the lines on his face seemed deeper. "That's good to know."

"There are no such things as monsters," she said, as Aunt Easter had told her, but her own voice lifted slightly on the last word and shook. She did not think Aunt Easter would lie to her, and yet, every story had a witch or a dragon or a wolf in it for the endangered child to either outwit or be eaten by. Why should Aunt Easter teach Ana to beware what did not exist?

"Of course there are," said the man, not in a scary way, but only confused, as if she had said there were no such things as giraffes.

"Aunt Easter says there aren't," Ana insisted, again with that slight quaver.

"She should know better. But then…perhaps she's never seen one. They hide, you see." The old man's pale eyes fell back into shadow as he let the curtain drop. "They are very good at hiding. They dress themselves in human skins and wear masks made of human faces and they only take them off when they are about to eat you."

Ana stared at him, the door forgotten even with the knob in her hand.

"Am I frightening you?"

She shook her head and it was true. She was not frightened. Neither was she angry at Aunt Easter for keeping this secret. If anything, she was relieved. What wasn't real could lurk forever in closets and under beds; if monsters were really real, they could be pulled out into the light and killed. But she was unsure. Grown-ups did lie, after all.

"How do you know about monsters?" she asked. "Who told you they were real?"

"My father," said the man.

"How did he know?" Ana pressed.

"He lived among them for many years. He knew them well, their speech and manners, and how they disguise themselves to pass as men. He lived too long among them, perhaps. He learned their ways too well." The old man was quiet for a moment, facing her but not looking at her, not really. After a while, he shifted and said, "My father taught me about monsters, that they are bigger and stronger and they will hurt you. Oh yes," he said as Ana hugged herself. "Even children. Monsters are especially fond of hurting children. Do you know why?"

Ana shook her head.

"Because a child cannot fight and can rarely hold themselves still enough to hide. So they run. And monsters like to chase almost as much as they like to catch and eat. My father taught me that if I stand, the monster might still catch me, but it cannot chase me. And if you stand and face it, the monster might just crawl away. Monsters hate to see their true faces and of all things, they most hate to see themselves in your eyes."

"Have you seen one?" Ana asked. "For real?"

"Oh yes. I've seen several, I should think, although I…I did not always see through their disguise. Yet I have seen a few, their true faces I mean."

"Did they hurt you?"

"Yes."

"Did you kill them?"

The shadows hiding his pale eyes seemed to grow bigger as he bent his head. "I'm told they died, but I…I'm not sure. Monsters tend not to die, you know, unless they are killed. They can be trapped, if you are very clever and very brave, but even the strongest trap will fail eventually. And monsters tend not to die."

Out in the hall, Ana's mother roared.

The old man looked at the door, then held out his hand. "Come here. Stand here with me, with us—" He moved the toy Freddy onto his knee, turned so that it seemed to be looking at her and holding out its own arm. "—and don't flinch."

Ana looked at the stuffed bear, its glass eyes and sewn-on smile. "He isn't real."

"Of course he is," the man said with that same confusion. "As real as you or I. He doesn't breathe, he doesn't feel, true. Nor do stones, but they stand. Do you think he can't help you just because he's a toy?"

Ana hunched her narrow shoulders in a shrug.

"But toys have power," he told her intently. "Not on their own, I admit, but they have all the power a child can give them. So if you give him power, Ana, he will have it." He moved the plushie higher on his knee; its handless arms opened wide, ready to take her in. "Come."

She went, step by unsure step, and then dropped her shoes and ran to him, crashing against the arm of his chair. She buried her face against its cool skin and hugged its unwelcoming curves painfully to her narrow chest. The man petted her as she might a dog, then rested his hand on her shivering shoulder and just watched the door with her, the two of them waiting together in the dark to be found.

It wasn't long in coming. Ana heard more voices, men's voices, and then her mother's rapid footsteps, hard shoes on hard floors. Doors opened and slammed shut, each one closer than the last.

The man's hand on Ana's shoulder squeezed, not to hurt her, but to comfort. "Stand," he murmured. "Don't flinch. Make her see herself in your eyes."

The door burst open and there was her mother, black against the hall's light. Her head swept side to side, then she backed away, and then she stopped and looked back in at them.

"What the hell…?" Her mother hit the wall until she found a lightswitch, then just looked at the two of them.

Ana shivered, but she stood and kept her eyes open wide.

"You know what? I don't even care," her mother said finally. "Do whatever you want with her. Where is he? Where is the motherfucker? I know he's here. You tell him to talk to me!"

The man lifted his hand from Ana's shoulder and shook it back and forth once at the black-and-white man coming up the hall behind her mother. The black-and-white man stopped, frowning, and went away. The hand returned its warmth and weight to Ana's shoulder.

"Yeah," said Ana's mother, laughing as she watched the other man go. "The whole fucking town comes and goes when you whistle, doesn't it? Well, I don't. You think I'm afraid of you? I'm not afraid of you, you fucking queer!"

The idea that her mother was afraid of anyone or anything had never before occurred to her, but even at five, Ana knew that insisting on a thing was as good as admitting the opposite. She stared at her mother and at the man her mother feared; his eyes were still red from crying, but he did not blink as he faced her mother.

"We had a deal," said Ana's mother. "So you call your butt-buddy and tell him to get his cock out of my sister for five fucking minutes so she can pick this little bitch up. This was not the deal. I get weekends off! Every weekend! Do you hear me?"

"You don't want her," the man said. "Is that what you're telling me, Melanie?"

Instantly, Ana's mother's entire demeanor changed, although Ana could not have said how. All she knew was that the anger withdrew, not cooled but wrapped up and hidden. "I never said that," she said sullenly. "I said we had a deal and the deal was, I get child support and he gets visitations." Her eyes darted to Ana. She reached out her hand, showing her teeth and her flashing, furious eyes. "Come here, honey."

Ana didn't move.

Ana's mother took a step toward her, but stopped when the man stood up. She looked at him, laughing but still so angry. "What are you going to do?" she demanded. "Huh? What could you possibly do that's worse than what you already did to me?"

"I am…heartily sorry—"

"You're sorry?!"

"—for what happened—"

"Oh, it happened, huh? It just happened?" Ana's mother let out a shrieking peal of laughter. "No one knows how! It's just one of those things that happened!"

"Melanie, I never—"

"You never!" her mother screamed. "You never! You never!"

"—meant," the man said after a short silence, "for anything to happen to you."

"Oh no! You didn't mean it! You didn't meeeeeean it! It was just an accident, huh?" In a few swift, long steps, she crossed the room, grabbed Ana by the wrist and yanked her arm up, shaking her as she sneered, "My unfortunate little accident!"

Ana forgot and let out a wail. Her arm had been out of the cast for a long time now, but her shoulder still hurt sometimes, especially when it got moved certain ways, and right now it was making a creaking sound like green sticks twisting.

The man seized her mother's wrist and for a moment, it was the three of them locked together.

"You want her?" her mother asked, grinning. "Do you? So you can dress her up and bring her out at parties? Huh? Like you did to me?"

"I am sorry—"

"Right. Heartily sorry. Just so, so sorry."

"—but I will not allow you—"

"Oh you won't, huh? You won't allow me. You allowed him, you allowed your friends, those laughing assholes, those goddamn animals…but not me, huh? Well, what are you going to do?" her mother asked, grinning. "Are you going to call the cops? And tell them what? What are you going to tell them that they don't already know? I could beat the little bitch half to death in the middle of the damn street and as long as it's only half to death, no one would give a shit. You think anybody in this fucking town cares what happens in my house? Huh? A Blaylock's house? And what about what I could tell them about you? What about what happens in your house? Huh? About the parties you throw here for all your rich friends? Maybe you think no one will listen to me, but let me tell you something, motherfucker. Nobody gives a shit what happens to people like me until it's people like you who are doing it. Then everybody wants to hear about it. Say goodbye to your money then. Say goodbye to your big house. Say goodbye to your restaurant and all your cute fucking toys. You think your rich friends will save you? They hate you more than I do. The whole fucking world has always been waiting for one good reason to take everything away from you."

The man held her challenging stare and did not answer, but Ana felt something in him change, too. After a moment, he let her go. "Enough," he said quietly. "Isn't it enough? I'm tired, Melanie. I know you're tired, too."

"You don't know me. You never knew me." Her savage smile faltered and for a moment, even looking up at her, Ana didn't know whether her mother was laughing or crying. "You…You son of a bitch, you did it all to someone you didn't even know!"

"Let me fix it."

"Fix it?! How the hell are you going to fix it?"

"Let me take care of you. Of both of you."

"Oh sure. That's all you want. Suddenly, after six fucking years, all you want is just to take care of me!"

"Things…have changed. Please. You can stay here, if you want."

"Ha!"

"Or you can go away, anywhere, as far as you like—"

"I'm not going anywhere. I want you to see me. I want you to see me every day and know that I know what you did, what you let them all do!"

"I'm—"

"Sorry! You think that makes it right? You think that makes it even? You don't give a shit about me! Why don't you get to the point?" Ana's mother yanked her arm up higher, until Ana's toes left the carpet and all her weight hung on her creaking shoulder. "You want her! So? Just say it! Ask me how much I want for her!"

The man looked at Ana's mother while Ana held her breath and just when her chest began to hurt, he said, "How much do you want?"

"Give me a million dollars!"

"Done."

And just like that, the nightmare was over. This was her home now, and this was her father, and she would have a room with no closets and her very own refrigerator that was always full of her very own food, and when David came over, she would let him play with her toys and in the summer, they would swim together in her pool. She would never be hurt or scared or hungry again. It was over. She was saved.

But her mother just laughed and said, "Fifty million!"

"All right."

Ana's heart sank.

"A billion! One billion dollars and this house! This house and everything in it!"

"I need time to arrange that, but you'll have it."

"I'll have it, huh? Just like that, I'll have it? I! Don't! Want it!" her mother screamed and threw Ana to the ground behind her, pointing with a shaking finger. "You don't get her! I will drown her like a sack of kittens before I let you do what you did to me and reward yourself with her!"

Ana watched, wide-eyed, silent, as her mother covered her own face and cried in great, gulping hoarse breaths. The man reached out once, as if to touch her, and as quick as a snake, her mother uncoiled and slapped him.

The man had been hit before after all; he never flinched, never made a sound, just watched as Ana's mother paced away, hitting lamps and vases and anything small that could break.

Ana lay clutching her throbbing shoulder and held herself very still.

At last, her mother turned around and said in almost a normal tone of voice, "Besides, you think anyone would let you within a hundred fucking feet of a child now? The whole fucking town thinks you're crazy and they don't know the half of it, but they will. They will know all about what you do with little girls on party night. You try to take her away from me, you just try, and I'll make sure you and him and all your laughing friends spend the rest of your fucking lives in jail!"

"And you will lose your means."

"Ha! I've been poor before. I'll survive." She paced some more, glanced at Ana, who huddled back and tried to be invisible, then looked at the old man and smiled with all her teeth. "Besides, I have something I can sell. I'll get by just fine, so try me. And if you're thinking about reaching into your wallet and pulling out a man with a gun, all I can say is, if I thought for one second you really had the balls, I'd snap the bitch's neck right now! Ana, get over here!"

Ana, years of obedience beaten into her, went and let herself be seized, first by the arm and then by the throat.

The man took a step forward.

Ana's mother lifted her higher, so that Ana's bare toes hardly touched the floor, and her choking hand tightened. "You'd better be faster than I am," she snarled. "Because I'll do it. I will. I don't give a fuck anymore."

The man stopped.

The two of them stared at each other for a long time. Ana tried to breathe and could only make dry gagging sounds, but she did not struggle. She waited, tears of strain leaking in silence from her wide-open eyes.

"You think I won't do it, don't you?" Ana's mother said through gritted teeth. "You're going to make me."

"No one is making you—"

"Shut up! Now I've got to go to prison!" Suddenly, her mother was crying, harsh as the cawing of a crow, but her grip never eased. "Now my whole fucking life is ruined! All because of you! This is all your fault, all of it!"

"I know."

"You know, you know! You don't know shit! You woke up and it was like nothing ever happened! I'm the one who had to live with it! I'm the one who had to feel it growing inside me! I had to squeeze it out and take it home and what did you expect? Was I supposed to love it?"

"Melanie—"

"All I want is a little fucking time to myself once in a while. Is that so bad? But oh no, you never stop. After everything you've done, you still want more! Well, you don't get any more from me!" she screamed. "There isn't any more!"

"Enough, Melanie. Let her go."

"Stop telling me what to do!" she snapped, pulling Ana's head all the way to one side, as far as it would turn. Further. "Do you hear me? I am not the one who fucked up! We had a deal!" Her voice wavered on the last word, then dropped to a sulky whine, although her grip never slackened. "Why should I be the only one who keeps my fucking word? Look at you, up here in your fucking mansion while I live in a fucking shoebox with this little bitch constantly whining in my fucking face!"

"Calm down, Melanie," the man said quietly. "Just be calm. We can come to an arrangement. Just tell me what you want."

"Don't you fucking say it like that, like I'm the one breaking the rules! I did everything you told me to, everything! All I want is what I was promised!" Her voice rose again to a shout. "And if I'm not going to get it, I might as well go to prison! I might as well! So try me! Just fucking try me and see what happens!"

"I believe you," the man said, even softer than before. "I believe you, Melanie. You win. Now please…let her go."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"I'm not telling. I'm asking. Please."

"That's better."

The grip at Ana's throat tightened even more, but only for an instant. Then she was shoved away, hitting the wall with her face, a table with her back, and the floor with everything else. She gulped air, shaking like she was cold, and tried to sit up.

"Leave her alone," her mother snapped, kicking Ana back and away from the old man's outstretched hand. "You don't get to touch her, understand?"

"Yes."

"Good." Her mother paced and paced. "Now where is he?"

"He isn't here."

"Call him."

The man seemed about to speak, stopped, then sighed and took a mobile phone out of his pocket and pressed a button.

"I want one of those," said Ana's mother.

"All right," said the man and that was all he said until, "Hello, Marion."

"Oh, she answered you, huh? No one was home for me."

"I didn't call her phone," the man said, then said, "Your sister. She's here. In my house. With…her daughter."

"Tell her it's Friday. It's Friday!" she added in a shout. "And where the fuck are you? You can't do this to me, Marion! We had a deal!"

"It's Friday," the man said and listened, his expression fading through changes, essentially unchanged, like sand in the desert. "I know. But you have children to think about…I know…I don't know…Marion, I don't know. But we both have obligations. We can't just stop. We have to go on…Can you turn down the radio please? It's difficult to hear you through the feedback on the line…Yes, that's better. Now, please, Marion…Yes, I think that would be best…Are you all right to drive?"

"What do you mean, is she all right?" Ana's mother stopped pacing and looked around, her eyes squinty. "Where is he, anyway? If he's not here, he's got to be there…right?"

"I know." The man's voice roughened slightly. "So do I."

"He's not, is he? Did he…? Did he run off with another girl? Or another guy?" Ana's mother uttered a high, wondering laugh. "Are you consoling each other? Jesus fucking Christ, do you have any idea how fucked up you are?"

The man ignored her, speaking softly into the phone. "I agree and I would certainly support you if she could be convinced. If she can't…I won't provoke her."

"Are you talking about me? You are, aren't you? Don't fucking talk about me."

"All right," the man said to the phone. "Yes…I will…Drive safely, Marion. Goodbye." He pressed a button, closed the phone and returned it to his pocket. "She'll be here shortly. If you'd like to leave her, I'll see that she—"

"Oh no. No, me and my accident will just wait outside." Ana's mother grabbed Ana by the shirt and pulled her off the floor, giving her a push out into the hall. "Don't concern yourself with us. You've got concerns of your own. You've got a whole roomful of angry motherfuckers waiting upstairs to talk to you about last week's fun day at Freddy's."

The man's expression flickered again. "Yes. I suppose I do."

"Have fun explaining that. Or just buying them off. That's what you do best, isn't it?" Ana's mother started walking, towing Ana by her bad arm and forcing her to all but run to keep up with her mother's long strides, only to come to a sudden and painful stop. "Did you really hack them apart with an axe?"

What? Ana's breath caught. She looked back at the man, feeling as if her mother had punched her in the stomach. Freddy? With an axe? Images from some Mickey Mouse cartoon tumbled through her mind—Mickey with an axe, shadows on the wall, splinters flying as the axe chopped and chopped…

The man took a long time to answer, but the answer was, "Yes."

"I wish I could have seen that." Ana's mother laughed and for a brief, bewildering second, she looked like Aunt Easter—young and pretty and smiling. Then she laughed again and it was the old laugh, angry and full of teeth. "I hope you got the blue one first."

Then she picked Ana up and threw her over her shoulder to carry her away, letting Ana see nothing of where they were going, only the long hall growing longer behind her, and the man at the end of it watching her go before the heavy door shut between them and trapped him alone in his dark room.