"Charlie!"
Charlie looked up, straightening out her slack posture.
She waited until Elizabeth was a bit closer before she said anything.
"You decided to come early." She said. "And you've got a look on your face that's making me a little nervous. Something happen?"
"Y-yes."
"You had another encounter with it? Someone else got attacked?"
"Y-y-yes."
"Yes to which one?"
"Both."
"Ah. Well, do you think you tell me about the details of both of those events?"
The roller coaster whizzed past them, carrying the screams of its passengers with it.
"...I c-can't."
"You can't?" Charlie repeated. "What do you mean when you say you that? Are you uncomfortable talking about it out loud, or -?"
"I physically can't. Whenever I t-try to g-give any sort of details about that th-thing, or wh-what it's done, the w-words refuse to come out."
Charlie's expression changed to something indecipherable.
"Oh... that's interesting. That might change things."
She reached into one of her numerous coat pockets and pulled out a pen, holding it out Elizabeth.
"Do what you did last time. Steal some napkins or something, write down everything that happened tonight. I also wanna know exactly what the other attack victims said and did before the attacks happened, all that you know about how they played out, what you were up to around that general time frame, stuff like that."
"Alright."
Elizabeth awkwardly took the pen and walked off to write everything down.
When she returned, Charlie was in the middle of sending off another group of people. She waited until she was done before handing the pen and a small stack of napkins to her.
Charlie read through everything way faster than Elizabeth expected her to.
"I'm an idiot." She mumbled to herself. "I should've -, I think that whole nearly getting cut into ribbons thing scrambled my thoughts around. I wasn't thinking as straight as I should've been. Maybe I'm wrong, though. It'd be even weirder that it got all attached if I'm right. They care less about people than all of the other kinds do..."
Seemingly remembering that Elizabeth was standing there, Charlie began to actually speak to her again.
"Okay, listen, I don't wanna... really freak you out and tell you something that I'm unsure of, but I will tell you to really stick by that friend of yours... Jenny?"
"Jesse."
"Yeah, that one. And uh, maybe try not to talk with too many people -," Charlie paused for a moment and went to release the lap bars so that people could get off the ride. "I've got... okay, I feel horrible for pushing stuff back again, but I really can't tell you unless I know that my suspicions are true."
"Why not?"
"Because if it finds out that you know, and we don't already have a plan to get rid of it, things will... let's just say that things'll go in a direction that you really won't like." Charlie paused again, this time to stare down at the grass. "Well, actually, you probably wouldn't even be able to realize, but... yeah."
"Things are w-worse than y-you thought, aren't they?"
"Um... it... might be?" Charlie answered awkwardly. "Again, I don't know for sure yet. If I'm right, I've got the wrong documents. I need to go back and find a completely different file folder, to see if I have to give you a different solution to your problem... I hate to say it, but could you maybe come back again tomorrow night?"
Elizabeth shook her head.
"My troupe is supposed to l-leave for the n-next stop tomorrow morning."
"Uh... okay. That's okay. Could you call me as soon as you get to the next stop?"
"Y-yeah. I can do that."
"Okay." Charlie wrote her number down on the back of one of the napkins and gave it back to her. "Call me as soon as you get the opportunity, alright? It's really important that call me."
"R-really important. G-got it."
Because there was nothing else that either of them could say at that moment, Elizabeth left.
She headed all the way back to where the troupe had set up, which was swarming with cops.
There was nobody around that she knew, so she asked a few different officers if any of them knew where Freddy was taken. It took a while before Elizabeth finally got an answer, and when she did, she left yet again.
There were no demons following after her during the walk to the hospital.
Or at least, she didn't see or hear any.
As soon as she passed through the doors, she could feel somebody staring at her.
The feeling was familiar in a way, and Elizabeth knew who it was before she even turned to face the person.
"Where were you?"
"I left to go s-see Charlie."
"Without saying anything to anybody?"
"Y-yeah. I w-wasn't really thinking. Sorry."
Jesse ran a hand through her hair.
"It's fine, I guess. At least shoot me a quick 'I'm heading out' or something next time, fuck."
She pushed against the redhead's shoulder in what was probably an attempt at a shove, but there was barely any energy behind it.
"So... what happened? What'd she say?"
Elizabeth recounted everything that had happened during her visit to Charlie's work, including her talk with the demon. Luckily, everything she had written about that was on the same napkin that Charlie had written her number on, so she didn't actually have to say much about it out loud.
"Geez, I don't like the sound of all of this vague crap."
"Me neither."
A full minute passed before either of them spoke again.
"So... h-how's Freddy?"
"Well... aside from... y'know, the cuts, he's also got a broken nose," Jesse said. "and a skull fracture, which is the cause of the raccoon eyes and the fluid that was pouring out of his nose... they don't think there's gonna be any brain damage, luckily."
Another short stretch of silence passed between them.
"We really should've known that the dummy would ignore us. He's completely unfiltered. Nothing stops him from saying what he wants to, and Fred's got his hand up his back almost twenty-four seven."
"Yeah..."
"Everyone's talking about the note. Or at least they were when I last checked. They're definitely scared now. They're waiting for Fred to wake up so that they can see if he remembers what happened, and if he caught any important details of the attack... but that definitely won't happen tonight. I don't think so, anyway."
"Jesse!" Mister Afton appeared with two individuals in tow; one with the same sharp, well-defined facial features as Jesse, and the other with a head slightly curly blue hair that was pulled back into a bun. "Oh, and Elizabeth. I wanted to let you know that they'll be keeping Freddy here for three to five days."
"Okay... so, we're gonna push back the date that we leave this stop?"
"No."
"We're just g-gonna leave him h-here?"
"No, of course not." Mister Afton chuckled. "We'll come back for him. The next stop isn't that far from this one. I've got a friend over there who's agreed to lend me his car."
"I still think someone should stay here with him," Jesse said.
"I'll stay w-with him."
Not only did Elizabeth genuinely not want Freddy to be alone, but staying would give her the opportunity to meet with Charlie sooner.
"You can't stay, Elizabeth. I need you."
"But -,"
"It's not open to discussion. It is mandatory that everybody in the troupe (excluding Freddy) is on the train before we leave tomorrow."
Both Elizabeth and Jesse opened their mouths to try and argue again but were cut off by Arlen.
"There's no point in trying to change his mind. We've already tried."
"It's true." The ringmaster said before squeezing past them and going out the door.
"What the -? C'mon, now. Y'all are just gonna give in?" Jesse frowned. "Imagine if that were you, Arlen. What if, when you got hurt, you woke up in the hospital and all of us had left for the next stop without you."
"As much as I dislike the presence of a lot of our fellow troupe members, I would dislike being alone after something so traumatic even more," Arlen said. "But, knowing how Mister Afton is, I'd probably chalk up everyone's absence to his doing, and I'd assume that somebody would eventually come back for me because there's no way in hell that he'd completely ditch one of his moneymakers."
"This is ridiculous..." Jesse muttered under her breath.
"It is," Laura agreed, "but there's not much we can really do about it. Mister Afton has the final say in this kinda stuff. We left him a letter, though. It was the least we could do."
"And by we, she means everyone. One of the nurses said he'd read it to him when he wakes up or whatever."
"Do y-you think I c-could maybe add something to the letter?"
"Yeah, me too."
"Go right ahead."
Laura stepped aside, letting them pass by.
