CHAPTER NINE
Blacking out the windows took longer than she anticipated, in spite of Bonnie's help (or, tell the truth and shame the Devil, because of it) so that instead of getting a head start on clearing the store room when she was finished, she simply put herself to bed. She was too tired even to get a smoke first, which in turn meant a restless night, rousing at every creaking footfall or the low, static-threaded rumble of voices.
At six, when the animatronics headed for the stage and put themselves to sleep, she rolled out of her precarious bed and into her boots. She meant to fire up the camp stove and get some breakfast going, but somehow going into the store room to get some water ended with taking a load of junk home to the dump trailer and after that, she had a good flow going and it didn't seem worth it to halt her momentum just for food.
So Ana went to work. She had cleaned abandoned houses before, but not like this. With the windows covered in plastic, her only light came from the battery-powered lamps and they were singularly unsuited for the task. Work that was already laborious became treacherous in the shadows; she couldn't be careful, so she just tried to be quick. She cut her hands, bruised her arms, strained her back, but when the restaurant 'opened', she had the store room completely cleared, swept, scrubbed, and painted with mold-killer. Right on schedule…but only just.
By then, the sun was well up. Outside, heat shimmered over the desert, casting the illusion of water as it rose into the baleful sky; trapped inside, the heat grew sullen and stagnant, and nowhere was it worse than in the quiet room, where sound did not carry and the air did not move. Ana would have welcomed even the hot breeze that blew in off the quarry, anything to push back the suffocating shroud that seemed to lie on her.
There wasn't much to remove in this room, just a few posters and the remains of the light fixtures, but the canvas that covered the walls, floor and ceiling needed much more vigorous scrubbing and drank in the mold-killing paint like a sponge. In her original estimates, she had allotted only two hours to ready this room and had thought that over-generous. She was certain she'd be done around noon, when she could take a break, get something to eat, recharge her batteries before attacking the dining room. But no, when she emerged at last, head throbbing and clothes itching with sweat, she found half the afternoon gone and herself three hours behind schedule.
So brunch was a Pop Tart, tasting more of sweat and rust and rot than the chemical additives purporting to be strawberry. It sat in her stomach like lead as she cleared the debris filling the hall at the south end of the dining room, but only until she was dumb enough to venture into the restrooms she uncovered, when she lost it entirely. At least she had the satisfaction of puking in the bathroom with Brewster on the door.
But as bad as the restrooms were, the gymnasium was worse. Upon first opening the door, it blew a rancid gust of hot, wet, rotting air at her so foul, she briefly thought she might pass out from the stench alone. She'd had no idea until that moment that could even happen. After daubing a little peppermint oil under her nose and donning her breather, she was back, but even through these defenses, the smell seeped in, coating the back of her throat with the swampy-sweet taste of Death.
She explored her new surroundings without moving from the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom and her stomach to adjust to the smell. The south-facing wall from about a few feet off the floor to a few feet from the high ceiling was made of glass; before time and neglect had blackened the panels, enough sunlight and moisture had gotten in to sprout every grass seed that ever tracked itself in on some kid's sneakers. A veritable jungle had sprung up, completely covering the floors and crawling up the wall wherever a crack presented a rooting place. On the north end, the jungle had grown clear up to the ceiling in a suspiciously straight-lined, symmetrical shape. But it had all long since died, leaving clumps of brown and black vegetation over every surface, shiny in the light of her lantern, still wet.
Everything was still wet. The windows were steamed and streaked with noisome condensation. The walls bubbled with fungus. Most of the playthings were no more than ominous bumps and bulges in the weeds, but certain objects were big enough that they could not be hidden, even by the jungle's best efforts. A small carousel, its canopy rusted out to orange lace, with seats shaped like Amelia Owlheart's adventuring aeroplanes. A climbing maze of plastic ice caves infested with plastic yetis lead to a wavy slide that once might have deposited kids on a trampoline, but now emptied through a rotted ring into a mass of black grass and sludge. A scaled-down model of Freddyland's Monkey Kingdom, in the form of a great stepped pyramid, ruined first by design and again by time. And overseeing all this from the middle of the room was, of course, another New Face of Freddy's, overgrown by slimy, black weeds.
At her first step toward it, her boots squished down through a carpet of soggy, dead plant matter and pushed up a brown, bubbly ooze; the floor was thickly padded, she soon realized, to prevent broken kiddie bones should one of the restaurant's young patrons fall off those monkey bars, and that padding had soaked up twelve years' worth of stormwater and whatever had drowned in it. It would all have to come out, and if there was a floor beneath it and not just asphalt and earth, it would have to come out too. Gritting her teeth, Ana walked on, squishing and squelching her way to the imitation animatronic and pulling away great, greasy handfuls of dead grass so she could see its fake, stupid face.
It was a weasel or ferret or mongoose, something long-bodied and short-limbed, anyway, with no waist but with a slight suggestion of hips and breasts to indicate this was a girl. Meet Tumble, said the nearby sign. Folks call her a tomboy, but Tumble loves being a girl, she's just a girl who loves running, climbing, getting dirty and playing sports! She and her twin brother, Rumble, make a great team, but she wants to play with you!
Ana read the last line twice, then raised her eyes to meet Tumble's, leering at her through a veil of slick, dead weeds. One of the weasel's paws was extended, but with so much paint eroded, it was difficult to tell whether it was palm-up or palm-down…ready to clasp in welcome, in other words, or to clutch and catch.
The longer she looked at Tumble, the stronger the smell seemed to get, but as much as she disliked the New Faces of Freddy's, Ana knew the leering weasel was not the source. It was close, though. Very close.
Ana turned and studied the pyramid behind her. Real creepers seamlessly inter-braided with the plastic ones stamped into its mold. Monkeys with shaggy dead-grass pelts cavorted along the sides, their grinning mouths stained black and green, shining as if with fresh drool. It was open on top, except for a complicated network of rusted monkey bars and rotted ropes, but the rest of it was all closed in and had proven remarkably watertight. The bubble-shaped windows through which many a child had once playfully peeked were now covered in algae scales or entirely submerged in dark reeking water.
Ana looked up, and of all the many stained cracks and holes in the ceiling, the largest was exactly over the Monkey Kingdom. Shreds of insulation wrapped with weeds hung down in clots with ropes of slime dangling even lower, swaying very slightly in the draft that had followed Ana through the open door.
The color of that slime, yellowish-brown, was both familiar and significant.
Ana glanced at the pyramid, then braced herself and climbed the stepped side of the Monkey Kingdom toy. The smell was already so pervasive, but when she actually saw what was inside, it got even worse.
It looked, she thought from a comfortable emotional distance, like skin. Living skin, as opposed to corpse-flesh, as if all the dead things within had simmered long enough to merge together and form a new, leprous life. It was pale and pink, lumpy and tumorous. The seepage of dark water here and there gave the illusion of veins. Her own skin, where it was exposed beneath her goggles and above her breather, registered a faint pulse of heat that she was intellectually sure was just vapor rising, but which she still imagined to be breath. She couldn't tell how thick it was, only that it completely covered the surface of the water that had flooded out the Monkey Kingdom. She supposed she could get a length of PVC pipe from her stock of materials and see if she could poke through, but was in no hurry. She'd be wading through that shit soon enough.
And on that note, it was time to leave.
Once out of the gym, she pulled her breather down, then all the way off, tossing it in the drinking fountain between the chicken-themed restrooms on her way out to the playground. It was hot, but at this hour, on this side of the building, there was plenty of deep shade and a strong breeze blowing in off the desert. The air tasted of the quarry, but the quarry tasted better than the gym, so she propped herself up against the wall and breathed it in. Her eye wandered, futilely seeking something pleasant to look at and finding only the angry summer sky, the empty desert, the lifeless hole of the quarry…and the stumps of two plastic feet bolted to the ground. She'd thought they belonged to a Foxy statue when she'd first seen them, but she guessed this was in fact all that remained of Rumble.
So that was the last of the New Faces. Or, no…she was still missing one. The white wolf or fox whose poster was next to Foxy's in the lobby. She still hadn't found her, which was weird, because now that the gym was open, she'd been everywhere. Except backstage in the parts room, of course, or in the manager's office, but the white wolf wouldn't be there. All the New Faces were fixed in place, meant to be seen by guests.
Maybe she'd been planted somewhere in the parking lot and broken apart years ago, like Rumble here. Or, hell, maybe she hadn't been installed. After all, the restaurant had closed just after opening. And either way, what did it matter? The New Faces were creepy. If it wasn't for the fact that it would be as good as unfurling a giant banner that said, I AM BREAKING INTO FREDDY FAZBEAR'S PIZZERIA ON A DAILY BASIS and hanging it from the dump trailer for the garbage guys to find when they came to empty it, she'd throw them all out.
The door behind her opened suddenly, driving a short spike of alarm through these exhausted thoughts. She turned, ready to bolt if it was a cop, even though she seriously doubted she had it in her to climb the chain-link fence that penned in the playground, but it was just Bonnie.
"HI THERE!" he said, limping toward her through the light drift of sand that was forever piling up against the building. "THERE'S NO BETTER WAY TO BEAT THE SUMMER HEAT THAN WITH SOME COOL JAMS! LET'S ROCK!"
Hearing his operating-hours greeting reminded her that her day was not yet over. Heaving a sigh, Ana trudged toward him, then past him, then changed her mind and came back just as he was turning himself around to follow her. She stepped up close without speaking and leaned into his scruffy, scratchy chest. His arms closed around her at once. Her tired eyes stared into his fur, a soothing field of purplish-grey, as he chatted and laughed and twitched and hugged her. It occurred to her that she probably smelled worse than he did, for a change. She almost smiled, then thought of what it would take to install her camp shower, and groaned instead. That was supposed to be done by tonight. The gift shop, the lobby, the reading room, the employee's break room—all supposed to be done. She couldn't stand here all night, she had to get back to work.
Ana closed her eyes. Bonnie held her and told her all the things he loved about summer. Desert insects shrilled at the sun and the wind blew in off the quarry, hot and sour.
She did not think she was asleep, not on her feet with Bonnie's stage voice booming through his speaker just above her ear, but when she first heard the crash, it translated itself in the way of dreams from the sound it was to thunder. With her eyes closed, she nonetheless saw the sky darken and clouds swell. At the second crash, she imagined lightning. At the third, she felt rain and it was that, not the noise at all, that made her open her eyes and see the sky still bleached-blue and glaring above her.
Another crash, and this time, with her eyes open and her exhausted brain forced into reality, she had to recognize the sound of something heavy being dropped into the utility trailer.
Someone was here. She was asleep on her feet with Bonnie right out in the open playground and someone was just around the corner, going through the trash in her trailer.
Ana pulled free of Bonnie, catching at his muzzle to silence him. "Go inside," she ordered, although God knew, if she could hear whoever it was out by the loading dock, they could hear Bonnie, whose stage voice was calibrated to be heard over a roomful of excited kids. "Go," she said again and Bonnie went, looking back at her with every step like a puppy being ordered to go walkies in the rain.
Ana went as close to the corner of the building as she could get before the chain-link fence blocked her, but couldn't get close enough to see the loading dock. It was almost like whoever designed the building hadn't wanted the kiddies on the playground to be able to see the dumpster, greasetrap and employee's smoking area or something. Nevertheless, she could see her truck's nose and the dark blurs in its dirty windows as whoever was there moved around, but the angle and the wind and the open air made it difficult to know exactly where he was…until something crashed down into the trailer and she realized at last what should have been obvious from the start.
No one was rummaging through the junk; Freddy was up on the loading dock, throwing stuff down. What stuff, exactly? That was anyone's guess. He'd been watching her dump stuff all morning and she knew what their programming was like. She should have been expecting the animatronics to 'help,' although of all of them, she would have thought Freddy the least likely to want to.
Gritting her teeth, Ana headed inside, past a pacing Bonnie, through the kitchen, and into the store room where, sure enough, she found Freddy tossing pieces of the fallen stagelights from the dining room into the utility trailer. He'd already dumped the rotting curtains, some broken shelves from the gift shop, and several demolished games from the arcade, but none of her tools, thankfully.
"Stop right there, big…uh, Freddy," she said, keeping well out of arm's reach in case he hadn't heard her come in. "I appreciate the thought, but you can't just haul off whatever. I've only got so much room left in the dump trailer and I have to be careful what goes in it."
He grunted, looking back at her, but not budging from his position on the loading dock.
"But thanks," she said, turning away. "I appreciate the thought." Had she already said that? It kind of felt like she had, but she couldn't remember. Too hot. Had to be careful about that. Couldn't have a repeat of the Kellar job.
Returning to the kitchen, Ana took off her shirt and dunked it in the ice chest, wrung it out over her head, then put it on again and straightened up to find Freddy right behind her.
"Don't start with me," she said defensively, very aware of the transparent nature of a wet t-shirt and the fact that she was not wearing a bra. "It's a million degrees in here. I'm covered, aren't I?"
He put a paw on her shoulder and moved her firmly to one side, then bent and opened the cooler. He took out a bottle of water and shoved it at her. "HAVE A COLD REFRESHING SODA," he growled.
She thought about telling him the smell in here made everything taste like shit, but he had his I-don't-give-a-damn face on already, so she changed her mind and just poured some water in her. It did taste like shit, but it was also cold and clarifying, and although she spat out that first mouthful, she drank the next one.
Freddy was still standing there, so Ana moved back to give him room to pass her in the narrow aisle between the wall and the pizza oven that occupied the middle of the floor. When she bumped the counter, she boosted herself up and sat, letting her aching feet dangle as she had another drink.
Freddy watched her and still didn't move. They studied each other.
"You all right?" she asked finally, just to be polite.
He grunted, then said, "ARE. YOU."
"Yeah, sure. It's just a lot more work than I thought it would be. And no, I didn't think it would be easy, but this place…" She trailed off to shake her head and drink more water. "Even in those damned few places where it isn't falling down, it's still bad."
"MESSY."
"No—well, yeah, but no. I mean bad. Everywhere I look, I see some fundamental architectural element that's been slapped up with so many corners cut, it might as well be a paper snowflake hanging in a preschool window. Seriously, this place had to have been falling apart practically from Opening Day. And it can't be a cost issue because that shit—" She pointed with her water bottle through the wall in the direction of the show stage. "—is not cheap."
Freddy turned his head to stare at the wall, then looked at her again and said, "YOU. MEAN. THE. DOOR."
"Of course I mean the door! There's a ten-dollar deadbolt on the loading dock and there are fucking Jurassic-Park-brand tungsten carbide doors guarding the parts room. And the manager's office!" she recalled. "If that's really there to keep people like me from looting your spare parts, why in the hell did they just leave you four behind wandering loose in the halls? That doesn't make sense. Nothing about this place makes sense."
Freddy tipped his head forward in a frown, watching her without blinking.
"I knew it was going to be bad, but I was not prepared for the reality of this place. The schedule is so fucking tight, I can't afford to get hung up on any one room, but that gym…Christ." She had another sip of water, thinking. "I gave myself two days to clear out twelve years of accumulated crap in a building this size…not very realistic, is it?"
"NO."
She studied him with a crooked smile. "Do you even know what a rhetorical question is?"
"YES."
"Well, you're not quite getting the knack of it. Anyway, time to make some hard cuts. I can let the reading room slide, I guess. And the break room. And this room," she added, looking around the kitchen with a curled lip. "I really wanted to get this room done, seeing as I'm keeping my food here. Although, I am not looking forward to that freezer, let me tell you. But it can wait. The important thing is just to clear what I absolutely cannot work around in order to get at the walls and the ceiling. That's it. That's all I need to do. So what is that, in realistic terms?"
Freddy did not answer, but his ears moved.
"The lobby," she decided. "The gift shop. The bathrooms, both of them."
"THREE," said Freddy.
"Yeah, I know. When I say both, I mean both sets…wait, three? Not four? Is there another set of bathrooms I'm unaware of? There's the ones off the dining room, the ones by Pirate Cove, and…?"
"IN. BACK. OF. THE. ARCADE."
"Christ, I knew something was off on that end of the building," she groaned. Then, a new thought: "Who's on the doors?"
"I. AM."
"And on the girls?"
"I. THINK. HER. NAME. IS. CINNAMON."
"Let me guess. One of the bears from Freddyland?"
"YES."
Ana sipped her drink, looking Freddy over. "You think she's cute?"
Freddy grunted. "I. THINK. SHE'S. A. DRAWING. ON. A. DOOR. WHAT DID YOU SAY? WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?"
"Okay, okay. So all three sets of bathrooms. Pirate Cove, the arcade and the theater…but no, see, now I'm back to the whole fucking building and that's just not going to happen. I've got maybe three more loads before the dump trailer is full and even if I call first thing Monday, it won't be exchanged until Thursday. So what do I do? What needs it the most?"
She drank, shook her empty bottle and tossed it in the sink.
Freddy handed her another one.
"Like I even need to ask," she said and then leaned back with a groan to thump her head lightly on the cupboards behind her. "It has to be the gym. Fuck me. How am I going to do that? I'm going to need a hazmat suit to even work in there."
Freddy grunted.
"No, I absolutely will," she said, although it was his I'm-thinking grunt and not a mocking one. "That room is beyond wrecked. It is a fucking crime scene." She opened her second water bottle, swallowing some and pouring a little into her palm to rub over her face. "God, I hope I'm not speaking literally, but I probably am. Something died in there."
His eyes switched on, their pale glow hitting her like twin spotlights.
"That big toy in the middle of the room is hip-deep in scummy water," she explained. "And every animal that ever fell in trying to get a drink is still there. I haven't seen it yet, but believe me, they're there, just cooking away for twelve years. Think of it…think of it like a Dutch oven. Not the Monkey Kingdom toy, I mean the room itself. The room is the Dutch oven and the Monkey Kingdom is a pot of soup. Do you know what happens when you cook soup in a small pot inside a larger, closed-in oven?"
"NO," said Freddy, once more struggling with the concept of rhetorical questions.
"Well, if it simmers long enough, the soup becomes vapor and the vapor goes up into the air and collects on the walls and windows and ceiling until it hits the saturation point and starts raining. Only it's raining soup instead of water. Except in the gym, where it's raining dead rat and bird and raccoon and…" An image formed in the far back of Ana's mind, rising up like bones in dark water. "…and whatever else is in there," she finished. "The more liquidy parts of that rain evaporate when its gets warm and the cycle begins anew, but there's a sediment that stays behind and it builds up each time it rains. Guess what that sediment is made of?"
Freddy must have gained a point in rhetorical question awareness; he did not guess.
"You got it," said Ana, raising her bottle to him in salute. "Presently, every surface in that room is half an inch deep in rotten-corpse-jelly."
Freddy stared at her while she drank, then shut off his eyes and looked over his shoulder at the wall. Through the wall. At the gym.
"Cleaning it is…I just don't even know the word, you know? But leaving it is not an option, so it's got to be cleaned and that means the soup's got to go first. A pump would be my first choice, but I'm not going to find one on the shelves at Lowe's that can take the solids I'm likely to find at the bottom, and I don't have the time to order one online and wait for it to be shipped. But let me tell you, Freddy, the thought of hauling it out bucket by bucket is just not working for me. I don't mind getting dirty doing a day's work, but even I have my limits and that's well over the line. And all other considerations aside, it would take all fucking day and I don't have any extra days lying around to waste on something like that."
Freddy grunted, still looking at the wall.
Ana thought, kicking her legs now and then like a small child, watching the laces of her boots flop and dance while her mind walked in the gymnasium.
"I think I have an idea," she said slowly. "I went to the mining museum here in town…gosh, I guess it's been a couple months ago now. Anyway, they had a little prospector's camp set up there with a placer sluice. I could do something like that. Cut out a piece of the wall, build a little channel, cut into the Monkey Kingdom and let it all drain directly into the parking lot. I could pick up some tubs and some, like, furnace filters, jerry-rig a trommel to strain out any…you know, solids. Yeah," she mused. "That would work."
Freddy said nothing.
Ana sipped at her water and built a sluice in her mind.
"There's still the issue of what to do with it afterwards," she said eventually. "That and the other ten million fucktons of Freddyland crap cluttering up this place. I don't have room for it in the dump trailer at home, and even if I did, Jesus Christ, as soon as the garbage guys see it, they'll know where I got it. I can't spend an entire day driving shit to a landfill in another town…and I don't want to just pitch it off the bluff. The odds of someone seeing it are slim, but there's always a chance, you know?"
Freddy nodded.
"A heap of stuff sitting where no heap of stuff ever used to be is as good as a welcome mat, especially in this town, extra-especially outside this restaurant. I mean, call me paranoid, but sometimes a little paranoia is only prudent, right?"
Freddy grunted and nodded again.
"And I can't leave it here," she concluded, releasing her frustration in a sigh. "Leaving aside the diabolical stink of the stuff, it's so big that I can't work around it and so utterly impregnated in toxic bacteria that trying to paint it in Killz would be like that scene in Willard where he gets a cat."
Freddy cocked his head.
"Yeah, you probably didn't see that one. Well, it didn't end well for the cat, is the point of that little metaphor. Monkey Kingdom's got to come out. More than any other room in this building, that gym has got to be cleared. So…so fuck it. I can't take the shit home and I can't take it down the road. I have to dump it in the quarry. I mean, obviously, right?"
Freddy grunted.
"Right," she said. "Except it'll still take a hundred trips to haul it all off piecemeal, plus if I'm caught, I'll be arrested not just for trespassing in the quarry and trespassing here, but also toxic dumping and pollution, probably…plus I know for a fucking fact there's a fucking body in that quarry that I can absolutely be tied to!"
Freddy's ears locked in on her again.
"I didn't do it," she told him. "But I sure know it got done. And Mason Kellar knows I know, so if I'm caught and arrested and, by some miracle, released, I can expect that shitstew to bubble up again. And for that matter," she went on, letting out a cheerily disgusted laugh, "what do I do when I find a fucking body right here?"
Freddy's brows pulled slowly together. He did not make a sound.
"Don't look at me like that. All horseshit aside, if I drain that fucking Monkey Kingdom cesspit and do not find a body, I will buy you a new hat. The color of that jelly says it all, big…uh, Freddy. You know how you can tell the difference between a, like, a field fire and a house fire just by the color of the smoke? House fire is blacker, because it's dirtier, you know, with all the synthetic crap like clothes and paint and plastic that's burning. Well, it's the same for that sediment I mentioned. They smell about the same, but animals liquefy cleaner than people and the grease that people leave behind is just…greasier."
"HOW. WOULD. YOU. KNOW. THAT."
"You don't believe me?"
"I. DIDN'T. SAY. THAT."
She chuckled, then went on, "It is all too easy to imagine some punk getting his urb-ex boy scout badge and falling in, just like the rats and raccoons. Imagine drowning in that shit," she said, now to herself. "Jesus, imagine not drowning in it…just standing in it day and night until you died of fucking heat and thirst, praying someone would come along and find you. Only, look around."
Freddy did, to her weary amusement.
"No one would ever find you," said Ana, watching him. "This is the one place in the whole town everyone knows about and no one ever goes. A body could lie here a hundred years and no one would ever know. At least at Aunt Easter's, the debt guys got involved eventually, but not here. It got to be a pizza parlor for one week and it's been a tomb ever since. No offense," she said belatedly, knowing she was on thin ice with Freddy and she might just be one rude remark away from another backhand.
But Freddy merely nodded, still staring distractedly at the wall behind him.
"I got to get back to work," said Ana, sliding off the countertop and wincing as her feet took her weight. She had the last swallow of water, tossed the empty into the sink with the first bottle, and headed for the dining room. "Remember what I said. No more helping."
Freddy grunted, following her as far as the doorway. There, he stood, watching her as she began to dismantle the barricade blocking off the cashier's station. Even after Bonnie and Chica took the stage for the next set, he stayed put, silent and motionless but for the occasional rotation of his ears or the shifting of his eyes. She wasn't sure when he left or where he went when he finally did. She just looked back and he was gone. It bothered her for a little bit, but she had heavier things weighing on her mind than a temperamental animatronic bear, and soon she forgot all about him and lost herself in work.
All day long, from 11 a.m., when the restaurant should have opened, until 9:02, when the sun officially set and Foxy was locked down to wait out the rest of the hour, he was alone. For ten hours (and two minutes), ten Saturday sets (and two minutes of an eleventh), he talked, joked, sang and told stories to no one. He could hear Ana moving around, sometimes close enough to catch her voice, but she never came to the Cove. When she'd stayed over before, she'd been in and out all day—looking the room over, watching the show, or just passing the time with him between sets. Foxy had seen her schedule and he did not expect her to visit just to be neighborly-like, but she had to take a break sometime, didn't she?
He had the thought, once the sun set and he was forced still and silent for fifty-bleeding-eight minutes more, that Freddy might come by and release him early, but the thought never quite elevated itself as high as a hope. Freddy was that rarest of birds—one who could empathize with the sentimental needs of others without indulging them. Foxy had to wait it out.
At ten, released, he hopped over the deck rails and jogged off to find her.
The quiet room's door had been propped open, so Foxy stuck his head in and switched on his eyes. She wasn't there—she wasn't likely to be keeping her own company in the dark—but he had a good look anyway. She'd been busy.
The room had been emptied, not that there'd been much to remove beyond a few posters and the sort of general trash that had tracked itself into all the odd corners of the restaurant. She'd left the padding, but painted it white, every inch of it. She'd set up shelves along one wall, her toolchest and tablesaw along the opposing wall, and a worktable in the middle, wiped clean. The sum of these parts was strangely familiar to Foxy. After a moment's thought, he got it: the basement at Mulholland. Take away the tools arranged on the wire racks of the shelves and replace them with mock-heads, daub a little blood around the room, and tie a girl to the table with the Purple Man leaning over her, and the resemblance was uncanny.
Disturbed, Foxy moved on. He could hear voices—Bonnie's, mainly—and he figured the girl would be with him if she was anywhere.
She wasn't.
It was only a minute after ten and Chica was still working her way down the stairs off the main stage, so Foxy went to offer a hook if she needed it.
"I CAN DO THIS!" she said—proud, sweet, stubborn Chica—which brought Bonnie in from the lobby and Freddy from the kitchen to see just what it was she was trying to do, but not Ana.
"Where is she?" Foxy asked, gesturing toward the table with Ana's bed made up on top.
"I d-d-don't know," said Bonnie, now limping toward the West Hall. "She was sitting right-t-t—FOOT IN—there during the last-t-t set, but she left after closing. I c-c-couldn't tell which way she went. The echoes in here are weird since she c-c-cl-cleaned up."
"She all right?"
"SHE'S. HI!" said Freddy before Bonnie could answer.
Ears flat, Bonnie swung around. "She is not-t-t!"
"SHE'S. BEEN. TAKING." Freddy clicked several times, then gestured mutely toward Ana's bag and mimed putting something small in his mouth.
"You don't know what she was t-taking-ing-ing. It could have been aspirin! She's hurt-t-t," snapped Bonnie in an oddly accusatory tone. "You ought-t-t to know that!"
Freddy's ears twitched. He turned around without speaking and went back into the kitchen.
"Just help-p-p me find her," Bonnie grumbled, shoving the West Hall door open. "She's got to be in the b-b-building somewhere. I never heard her t-t-truck leave. Did you?"
"No, and she'd have g-g-gone—TO DAVY JONES—right by this end o' the building if she'd d-d-driven off."
"Did she come through the C-C-C-C—"
"No, she ain't there," Foxy said as Bonnie slapped angrily at his stuttering speaker.
Bonnie kept going anyway, limping faster right past the other doors in the hall on his way to the Cove. "Maybe you didn't-t-t hear her c-c-c-come in."
"I would have."
"Maybe she went-t-t out the side door."
"I would have heard-d-d that, too."
Bonnie stopped and looked back at him, eyes narrowed. "Why the hell would-d-d you be listening that hard-d-d?"
First startled, then annoyed, Foxy said, "I were waiting to c-c-carry her off, weren't I? Don't be daft, man! What the hell else is there to listen for in this p-p-place?"
Bonnie's answer was a slow curling of his hands into fists and the jittering of one ear as it tried to get flatter to his head.
"Oh for…look, ye can't be quiet-t-t going in and out that door," Foxy said as mildly as he could, which wasn't very. "And them b-b-boots o' hers make a hell of a noise."
"The C-C-Cove is carpeted," said Bonnie, not moving.
"Not that bloody deep. I ain't arguing with ye, g-g-go on and look for yerself if ye want-t-t-t to. It be yer t-t-t—TIME TO SAIL—time to waste, ain't it?" Foxy turned around, opening the reading room door and switching on his eyes for a quick scan, as if unaware of Bonnie's suspicion drilling into his back. "All I'm saying is, if she were in the C-C-C—PIRATE COVE—I sure as hell wouldn't-t-t be passing me night pretending to look-k-k for her."
Bonnie's head tipped, his cameras whining as they irised a little further open. "And what would-d-d you be doing, Foxy?"
"Oh, for Ch-Christ's sake—"
"WE'VE GOT A BIRTHDAY GIRL!" Chica sang out in the dining room.
"St-St-Stay away from her." Bonnie pushed past him and back down the hall to the dining room.
Foxy gave him a goodish lead, giving himself time to rest the mouth that was forever getting him in trouble, then followed, passing through the West Hall door just as Freddy came in from the East Hall with Ana in his arms, looking like a poster for a particularly stupid horror movie. Her head lolled and limbs dangled, swaying with each step Freddy took, but she wasn't asleep; her efforts to rouse were lethargic and ineffectual, but they proved she was awake, even if she wasn't much aware.
"Where was she?" Bonnie asked, rushing over to try and take her.
Freddy didn't give her up. "OUTSIDE."
"Smoking-ing-ing?" Bonnie ventured, ears low again, but not with anger.
"IT. STARTED. OUT. THAT. WAY," Freddy grunted, nudging Bonnie none-too-gently aside to lay Ana out on the table. She tried to roll onto her side; he pulled her back and pressed her down as he lifted one of her hands and turned his eyes on. Even at this distance, Foxy could see the fresh red marks between her first two fingers. Burns. "TELL. ME. AGAIN. SHE'S. NOT. HI!" he snapped, dropping her arm so it fell with a weak splatting sound onto the rubbery cushion she called a bed.
Ana shifted, half-raised her arm, and let it fall again. Her mouth moved, wordless. Her eyes rolled beneath their lids, but didn't open.
Freddy watched her until she quieted, then threw Bonnie another glare and went into the kitchen. The three of them waited, finding other things to look at and nothing to do, as the plastic hinges on the new camping cooler in the other room creaked open and ice clacked wetly together. Freddy returned without a drink, but with one hand dark and dripping. He lost a few notes of the Toreador March, but his hand seemed gentle enough as he touched it to her forehead.
She jerked, her entire body all at once, and clutched at the air in spastic grabby motions well away from Freddy's hand while he washed her face, then dropped limp again and dragged her eyes open at last. Looking right up at Freddy, she said, "Bonnie?"
Freddy grunted and stepped back, folding his arms to watch as Bonnie shuffled forward.
"Yeah," he said, taking the limp hand Ana groped toward him. "It's me."
Her eyes slid shut again. "I thin' I fell down," she said and laughed. Even the laugh was thick and slurred. "Pi' me up mebbe? Can you? Shoul'er…acro…acro…"
"Acromioclavicular," said Bonnie and he said it without hesitating or stuttering at all. The hand that held hers did not twitch. "You okay, baby?"
"Uh huh," she said, nodding for good measure. "Jus' super…like…super-high and don' wan' Freddy to know."
Freddy grunted again. One hand flexed on his bicep, scratching through the unkempt fur to the plastic. He was starting to wear a bald patch there.
"Your secret's safe with me, baby girl," said Bonnie, watching him as he stroked Ana's hair back from her damp brow. "What-t-t-t did you take? Did you t-t-take something?"
Ana's flushed face twisted into an expression of exaggerated innocence, but the effort to hold it was more than she could sustain. "Vic'din," she said and shrugged. "Wassn working. Couple Lortab. Nothin' hurz now. Nothin' hurz. I'm fine. Jus' gimme minute, I gotta get ba' t'work."
"No, baby, you're done."
"I'm not done! I'm not!" Again, Ana tried to rise and actually managed to struggle up as far as her elbows before she collapsed. "I got so much to do," she moaned. "I been at it all day…I didn't do anything!"
Foxy looked around as Bonnie petted her quiet. Didn't do anything. The barricades were gone, the floor swept, the trash either carried out or bagged and set in the corner next to Swampy. He had a feeling if he walked around, he'd see plenty more, but she'd done enough in this one room for a team of three, let alone what she'd done in the quiet room. But she didn't do anything and she hurt too much to keep at it, so she took herself a handful of pills and wanted to get back to work.
"You're done," Bonnie was saying. "Gonna put you to bed now, okay? Lie still."
Ana stiffened, or tried to. Her eyes, still closed, pinched in fear. "Don' wanna go home. Don' wanna go. He's there. Plush…Plushtra'. He bites."
"You're not-t-t going home, baby. You're staying right here."
"He bites," she slurred again, writhing deeper into Bonnie's arms. "I can't…I can't…I'm so fu'ing high, Bon, you have no idea."
"I got a clue," sighed Bonnie, rubbing her shoulder as she huddled against him. "Freddy…what do I do?"
"Don' tell him," Ana whispered. "He hates me enough asa is."
"DON'T. LEAVE. HER. ALONE," said Freddy after a somewhat lingering glance at Ana. "DON'T. LET. HER. SLEEP. ON. HER. BACK. TRY. TO. MAKE. HER. DRINK. IF. YOU. CAN. BUT. DON'T. LEAVE. HER. ALONE. FOR. ONE. MINUTE."
"I CAN HELP!" offered Chica, waddling closer. "I CAN MAKE THE CUPCAKES! I LIKE TO HELP MY FRIENDS. WHAT DO I DO NOW?"
"C-C-Can you get her boots off? Every time I let-t-t go of her, she tries to get up."
Shaking his head, Freddy tapped Foxy's arm and nodded toward the hall, already walking away.
Aye, best leave them to it. She hadn't even noticed he was in the room. And if she did, she'd only think he was there to drown her. He did that a lot, according to her.
Still, Foxy only took one step back and then just stood watching until Freddy grunted a warning. Ana still didn't know he was there, but now Bonnie did, glaring at Foxy over Ana's slowly writhing form until Foxy reluctantly turned all the way around and left.
Freddy walked him to the Cove, perhaps just to be companionable, but more than likely to make sure he went. He did not say, 'Stay out of the dining room,' which only proved that sometimes silent words were louder than spoken ones.
The sound of their footsteps filled up the whole of the building. Bonnie was right; the echoes were weird now that she'd started cleaning. Quiet and Foxy were mostly on friendly terms, but tonight, it was hard to take.
"She all right, do ye reckon?" Foxy asked, too suddenly, too loud.
"NO."
Well, ask a stupid question…
"SHE. SHOULDN'T. BE. HERE," Freddy growled and rubbed a restless hand across his muzzle. "THIS. CAN'T. BE. GOOD. FOR. HER."
"For her, eh?"
Freddy shot him a scathing and not entirely undeserved glower. "I'M. NOT. A. COMPLETE. GLASS. HOLE. FOXY."
"I know ye ain't-t-t," Foxy said, chastened. God, everything he said tonight was the wrong thing.
"WHERE. THE. HELLO. IS. HER. FAMILY," Freddy demanded. "WHO. IS. SUPPOSED. TO. BE. LOOKING. OUT. FOR HER."
"They look-k-k out for themselves after a certain age, mate."
"SHE'S. DOING. A." Freddy stopped there, clicking through sound files.
"Fuck-lousy?" Foxy suggested.
Freddy's reproachful stare ended on a grudging nod. "JOB. OF. IT," he concluded, reaching for the door to the Cove. "I. DON'T. WANT. HER. HERE. BUT. I'M. STARTING. TO. BE AFRAID. OF. SENDING. HER. AWAY. ARE. WE. IT. FOXY," he asked angrily. "ARE. WE. ALL. SHE. HAS."
Foxy paused just inside the door and looked back at him. "Aye, I think so, mate."
Freddy stared at him, his expression of frustration slowly bleeding away. "THAT'S. AWFUL," he said at last.
"Aye."
"ON. A. LOT. OF. LEVELS." Freddy looked back down the hall, ears rotating to listen to whatever there was to hear in the dining room. "BUT. ANY. WAY. YOU. LOOK. AT. IT. THAT'S. SAD."
"Ye coming in, mate, or ye just-t-t going to hold-d-d—HOLD FAST TO THE RIGGING!—the door all night?"
Freddy looked at his hand on the door, then at Foxy again and shook his head. "I. NEED. TO. KEEP. WATCH. IT'S. SUMMER."
He wanted to offer to come along, but he knew Freddy preferred to patrol alone, so Foxy merely stepped awkwardly back and nodded a goodbye that Freddy didn't see, having already let go the door and turned around. The door wheezed shut, narrowing the view of Freddy walking away into the darkness until it closed him off completely.
Alone again.
Hell, he was always alone, or if not always, more often than not. It didn't bother him.
Still, he felt silly just standing here by the door, so he went back to his stage. It felt even sillier standing there, so he went on up the gangplank and settled into his favorite leaning place in the pointed prow of his ship. He looked at the backs of the curtains for a while, then shut his eyes off and didn't look at anything. He scraped his thumb along the tip of his hook, just to have something to listen to, but the noise got on his nerves, so he stopped.
His internal clock counted out sixteen minutes before he heard Freddy, now in the West Hall, but he only went as far as the door and then went away again. Foxy listened for as long as he could hear the drag of Freddy's feet, then scraped at his hook some more.
An hour passed. Freddy came and went at regular intervals without ever coming all the way into the Cove. No one stopped in to tell him how Ana was doing. He didn't really expect anyone would.
At midnight, Foxy pushed himself out of the prow and went into his cabin. He sat on his bunk and put one foot unerringly up on the rounded lid of the Booty Chest in the pitch-blackness. He knew where everything was. He didn't need to see.
After a few minutes, he reached up for the lantern he'd taken from Ana, oh, months ago now, and switched it on. There was nothing to look at it in here, but now he could see it clearly. Treasure maps with great thick Xs inked at the end of a dotted line, with heaps of gold-painted coins, idols and oversized plastic gems to prove past successes; swords supposedly taken from all the enemies he'd dueled, with the lion-hilted cutlass of Captain Blackmane in a place of honor on the wall above them; a wooden table scarcely broader than the chair pushed up to it, with sextant and sea charts artfully strewn across it and glued down to keep them wandering off in little pockets; a dark blue bottle that had been empty when he'd been given it and a tin tankard etched with a skull and crossbones. And beside him in the bunk, a single gold-colored plastic doubloon.
Foxy studied the doubloon as if he'd never seen it before, or any of the thousands like it that had poured through his keeping over the years. After a few minutes, he picked it up. He held it in his palm until he had thoroughly examined each line of his own leering face stamped into the coin, then hooked his thumb under it, gave it a flip, and had a look at the other side. He flipped it a few more times, then balanced it on the back of his forefinger, 'walked' it across his knucklebones, flipped it again, and 'walked' it again, and so on. There was a time he could have performed this little trick all night, from closing until opening, with nary a hitch, but tonight, he managed no more than a dozen repetitions before the doubloon slipped between his exposed knucklebones and hit the wooden boards of the floor. He picked it up, put it on the bunk beside him again, and resumed staring.
Seconds. Minutes. Another hour.
Foxy hummed. Not one of his show-songs, although not for lack of trying. He started singing, sounds without words along a simple tune, first thinking and then remembering. White walls. Bright light. Sound of a guitar being played, badly, in another room. Two men, one in front of him and one behind. A plastic head on the table beside him, crudely sculpted, sharp-fanged, one-eyed—his.
"Come on! It'll be funny!"
"Oh. Yeah. Hilarious. He's singing about raping a girl, for crying out loud!"
"He's a pirate! Pirates go wenching! It'll be fine!"
"No. I'm not putting him onstage singing that! This is going to be a kid's show, Erik!"
"Hell, no kid is going to know what he's saying. It'll go right over their tiny snot-nosed little heads."
"They'll know. The older ones will know. Their parents will definitely know. And most of all, I'll know."
"Come on!"
"I said no. You wanted a pirate that had nothing to do with the other mascots in the band, I said fine. You wanted the hook, I gave him a hook. You wanted the teeth, I gave him the teeth. I've gone along with every single part of this whole pirate thing, but I am not putting him onstage so he can sing to a roomful of toddlers about running some girl down and screwing her in the middle of the street. That's sick, Erik. How can you even defend that?"
"He's a pirate. Pirates have their own ideas of right and wrong."
"So do serial killers, by that logic."
"Yeah, well…oh, lighten up, Freddy. It was a joke. Fine, fine, I'll take it off the playlist. I don't care."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I just thought it would be funny."
"You have a weird sense of humor, man."
The voices laughed and the laughter faded, sinking back into that internal quarry where his memories buried themselves. In the silence, the same silence that had always been with him here, Foxy again began to sing. He kept it quiet, fighting with each word against his damnable programming that wanted him to be belting it out at top volume, waving his hook and punctuating every pause with Yars and Avasts, because this one was a show-song, the first he'd ever been taught. The first he'd ever taught her.
"For a bottle o' rum," he sang, and stopped, listening.
Nothing.
He sang a little louder. "I'd sell me own mum …"
Something moved, not here in his cabin, where there were no hiding places, but on the other side of the hidden door in the back wall that led to the parts room. Something scraped, metal on metal, just where the crawlway opened backstage.
"I were born under black cloth and bones."
Something heavy dropped with a muffled thump into the unknown nest she had made for herself there. He heard a short burst of static, scarcely discernable, which meant it must be ear-splitting inside that little room.
Foxy sang louder. "Give me rolling seas and a stiff briny breeze, for me ship be me only home!"
A muted screech of feedback, terminating in a series of clangs and whistles and stuttering electronic noise. Something bumped the wall, slid along it, and crashed down into what sounded like a pile of sticks but probably wasn't. Static swelled and stuttered, and if a man were so inclined, he might fool himself into thinking it sounded like words.
"There's them what loves land, tall trees and white sand, and a life what's cozy and quiet," he sang, getting up from his bunk and sitting down again with his back against the door. He couldn't hear her much better, but he could feel the vibrations through the metal door as she scratched at it. They were supposed to sing this together, his arm around her waist and hers around his shoulders, hooks high and that bloody puppet parrot of hers squawking along. "But there's no country as free as the wide-open sea, say hey for the life of a pirate!"
They sang—and she was singing now, he was sure of it, the sound of her static chopped into pieces the same size as his words, perfectly in sync—but she only lasted two verses more of the ten the song comprised before lapsing into silence. He heard/felt her hook scratch once, slowly, down the door, so he kept singing, hoping she would join in again, but as he came to the bit about knaves and liars and cannons a'fire, she suddenly slammed into the door directly behind his head. Her teeth scraped and gouged at the metal, thrashing and screaming static, only stopping long enough to rear back and lunge again. The door, like the walls and the floor and the whole of the parts room, was tungsten carbide and she wasn't coming through it, but she kept trying, smashing her poor body into it over and over until it was a wonder she didn't break herself completely apart.
The light began to dim. Foxy forced his eyes open and pulled his camera shutters as small as they would go, but he wasn't going black. The lantern was. Battery was going, he thought as Mangle bit and bit and bit at the door behind him. He shouldn't have left it on this long. The light had been yellowing and drawing in for some time now, but he just kept using the blasted thing like he thought it would shine forever.
Foxy did not get up to shut the lantern off. He sat, knees drawn up and arms loosely bound around them, watching it die and listening to Mangle bash herself against the door. She and the light faded together over hours and at last, it was quiet and dark. The darkness was not total; the lantern's glow was no more now than a reddish-brown blur, like blood on the surface of the black rather than a light, even a dim light, within it. The quiet had the same quality, the same color.
Then she said, clear as a brass bell behind the noise that was her only voice: "Foxy?"
He raised his head, turning toward her as if the wall were not between them…but very glad it was. "Aye, lass. I'm here."
Her hook hit the door on his first word, scratching and slashing to the last. Then it fell away and there was quiet again.
"It hurts," she said finally.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I'm b-b-bl-bleeding."
Foxy sighed. This again. First time she'd talked in years and it was this. "No, yer not-t-t."
"I feel-feel-feel myself bleeding." Static slipped along her words, popping like bubbles in champagne. "I feel it p-p-pouring out my fingers and my-y-y-y eyes."
"Yer not bleeding."
"I can hear it d-d-dripping," she insisted. "It's all I hear. I t-t-taste it. In my mouth."
"Ye can't-t-t bleed, luv," he told her gently. "Ye don't-t-t have blood anymore."
"I'm not d-d-dead! I'm not-t-t! I can't! I've tried-d-d!" Her voice rose on bursts of static to a shrill, distorted howl. "There's not-t-t enough of me left t-t-to die!"
"Hush now, luv," he said, speaking softer so that she would have to quiet herself to hear him. Sometimes that helped. "All's well. B-B-Be still."
"I can't build-d-d me back fast-t-t enough. I eat and eat, but the p-p-pieces just fall out. Help me. Can't-t-t you help me? You said-d-d you'd take care of me. That was you…" Her voice washed out in noise and came back querulous. "Wasn't-t-t it?"
"Aye," he said. "It was me."
She was quiet then. The static came and went, wordless, like labored breaths. Sometimes she shifted, metal scraping against metal as she huddled closer to the door. Sometimes there were rattling sounds, as if she were biting at herself or scratching through skin she didn't have to the metal bones beneath. But she was quiet, and that could be good or bad, depending on whether she'd pulled herself higher out of the black or sunk deeper in.
He took a chance.
"Foxanne—"
She screamed back at once, speakers blatting and popping, and attacked. Dull thumps were all he could hear as she threw herself against the wall separating them, scrabbling and biting now this way and now that in an effort to find that one weak place in the unfathomable obstruction that would allow her to chew through and rip into him.
Foxy stared into the lantern and tried to wait her out, but he knew she wasn't coming out of it again. And maybe that was best. God help him, but he'd almost rather she stayed full black and feral than come out just enough to know what she'd become.
"Go to sleep, then," he said, louder now, deliberately stoking whatever dark fire burned in her. Her attacks increased in violence until he could actually feel the door trembling when she hit it. "Go b-b-back to sleep. It's late and the nights ar—ARR! ME HEARTIES!—are long here. Go to sleep and d-d-dream of better men than me."
She bit the door once more, then receded, climbing whatever was back there to climb—he thought he could remember wire shelves, like the ones Ana had put in the quiet room, but it had been a long time and he might be thinking of the parts room in Circle Drive—until she reached the hatch to the crawlway. As she dragged herself up, the lantern flared to a kind of tired life, still not bright enough to illuminate anything, but brighter than it had been in hours. Then, with a dull pop, the bulb went out and left Foxy alone in the dark.
