Chapter 21
Joshua opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was an orb of bright, bright light above his head. The light was too bright to be in Spriggy's. Or was it?
The next thing Joshua noticed was that he was lying on metal. He panicked. Not that chair again! He screamed in his head.
He put his hands on the cold, flat surface and tried to push himself off of it. That was when he noticed the third thing: his whole body hurt. Why did it hurt, though?
He levered up enough to look down at himself. He frowned at what he saw.
He wasn't in the chair at Spriggy's. He was lying on a stainless-steel table. His shirt was gone, and his chest was wrapped in a swath of heavy bandages. Beyond his chest, he could see that his pants leg had been cut away from his lower left leg. The leg was wrapped up in bandages, too.
He gritted his teeth and sat up. He swung his legs off the metal table.
"Careful," a woman's voice said.
No, not just any woman. Celestine.
Joshua tracked the direction of the voice, and he found Celestine sitting in a folding metal chair about six feet from him. The chair was tucked in the corner of a room filled with white metal and glass-fronted cabinets. It was definitely not Spriggy's. The room's walls were painted stark white, and the floor was a gleaming purple. Everything Joshua saw looked fresh and sanitary.
"I got the bleeding to stop, but you're probably gonna need stitches." Celestine explained.
Joshua looked at his bandages again. "Where are we?"
"This is my house, or rather, my basement. I brought you here from Spriggy's. You were…badly hurt. So, I brought you here to treat you. Remember how I said I was a former EMT?"
A memory of the descending open mask flashed through Joshua's head. "They tried to kill me, Celestine. But I'm guessing you already knew that."
Celestine said nothing, dropping her head. Her eyes got tucked into a pleat of darkness cast by the cabinet next to her.
Joshua leaned forward. "Ann. Her brother. And the other men. Did you know about them, too?"
Celestine lifted her head, and her eyes came out of the shadow. She looked at Joshua, and she saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
"You did know," Joshua said, though he'd really hoped that she didn't.
"It's complicated," Celestine said.
"Complicated? Yeah, you mean even more complicated than a bunch of possessed robots murdering innocent people?"
"Those people were from Team Star, and they trashed Spriggy's!" Celestine shouted. "They weren't innocent!"
"Yeah, well, Ava is," Joshua responded.
As Celestine buried her face in her hands, Joshua didn't bother to say that even members of Team Star didn't deserve to have their faces gnawed off, or their bodies chewed in half. Why, Ann? He thought. Why had she been part of that? He shook his head. It didn't matter. Ava was the only thing that mattered now.
"You've watched how Ava played with those things!" he said to Celestine's bowed head. His voice rose. "And you knew what they were capable of, but you didn't say anything!" He shoved himself off the table and took a weak step forward. He scanned the room. "Where are my things? I gotta go. Now!"
Celestine dropped her hands. When she looked up at Joshua, her face was striped by glistening tear tracks. "Josh-"
"Ava is in danger!" Joshua interrupted. He spotted his shirt lying on a stainless-steel counter under a row of cabinets on the far side of the room. The shirt was bloody, and it was torn, but it was still his shirt, so he limped toward it.
"Josh!"
He stopped and turned toward Celestine.
Celestine put up her hands. "Slow down. Take a breath." She switched to her stern voice, and her face flipped from contrite to authoritarian. "Tell me what happened."
Joshua suddenly couldn't move. The memory of his dream - of everything he'd done - came rushing back to him. It was his turn to drop his head. If only he could take it all back.
It took superhuman effort to open his mouth and confess what he'd done. As he did, he couldn't face Celestine. He talked to the floor. "In my dream," he began. He took a breath and tried again. "They asked me for Ava…and I said yes. I…gave her to them." He pressed his palm against the side of his head. "It was a terrible mistake, and I tried to fix it…but then…" He pounded the heel of his hand against his temple.
He looked at Celestine. "What do they want with my sister?"
Several long seconds passed. Joshua thought Celestine wasn't going to answer. And when she eventually did, he wished she hadn't.
"They want to make her like them," She said.
The pretty yellow taxi drove away. Ava waved to Arven the driver, but he didn't wave back. He didn't even look at her.
Ava shrugged. She gazed up at the yellow Ducky, her friend. The yellow Ducky held out his big furry hand. Ava grinned and took it. They swung their hands together as they walked toward the entrance to Spriggy's. The yellow Ducky's heavy steps crackle-thumped over the crumbly concrete sidewalk. Ava felt like she might burst. She was so excited.
The yellow Ducky pushed the metal door open. He let go of Ava's hand and motioned for her to go through in front of her. Such a gentleman. Ava skipped into the pizzeria's lobby. Behind her, the heavy door clanked shut.
Ava turned back toward the yellow Ducky and-
He was gone.
Ava frowned. She turned in a full circle. "Where'd you go?" She looked at the door. Had he left? No, she'd have heard his turned toward the archway. She'd have heard his footsteps no matter which way they'd gone.
She shrugged. She'd seen some of the yellow Ducky's magic. He must have used that to disappear. Maybe he was with the others. Ava started across the lobby, heading toward the dining room. She couldn't wait to see Spriggy and the others. The lights around the archway seemed to flicker on and off in a specific pattern, as if the building itself was welcoming Ava in.
The scuff-tap of Ava's footsteps seemed to bounce off the dining room walls as she walked into the room. She looked toward the stages. The curtains were drawn back but the stages were empty.
She frowned and looked around. "Hello?"
Most of the dining room was so dim that she could barely see it. Instead of the usual half-on-half-off fluorescent bulbs that lit the room, just one single flood light came from the stage. It stretched out like a fat, yellow, ghostly finger, which pointed across the room at the wall of children's drawings.
"Spriggy?" Ava called. "Ducky? Flamer? Anyone?"
Ava's calls circled around the room and returned to her. But no one answered them.
Looking at the light finger, she gazed toward the end of it. Why was it pointing at the drawings? Curious, she walked over to the wall and looked up. She had noticed the drawings before. It was impossible to miss them. The curled, brittle papers covered nearly one whole wall of the dining room. And the air currents in the room were always tickling the drawings, which made them crackle.
Ava had never really looked at the drawings before, though. Now, she did. Drawn by kids younger than her, the pictures were mostly stick figures, but it was possible to tell what the figures were supposed to be. Ava could see, in the images, kids playing. Families eating. The animatronic Pokémon performing.
The pale circle of light at the end of the yellow ghost-finger was centered in the middle of the drawings. And in the center of the circle, one drawing stood out.
Ava stepped over to it. The drawing was of a giant Sprigatito, which was holding hands with five smiling children. Even though they were clumsily drawn, Ava recognized the children. They were her friends. The ghosts in the robots.
After she'd dropped her bomb, Celestine had left her chair and started pacing back and forth by the cabinets. Joshua, still stunned, could only watch her in silence.
Once Celestine stopped pacing, she stood with her back to Joshua. Then, she began to talk, this time with her gentler side, and she spoke so softly that Joshua had to strain to hear her.
"All those years ago," she began, "when those children went missing, the police searched Spriggy's from top to bottom. Every square inch of the place was accounted for. But they never found them."
Something about Celestine's voice or her words turned Joshua's shame on its head. Anger swelled up from his bandaged chest. He clamped his teeth together and clenched his fists.
"The person who took them, I mean, the woman who took them," Celestine went on, "She's…very bad, and very cruel. She's such a bad and cruel woman."
Joshua watched Celestine reach into the pocket of her pants. She took out a folded piece of paper.
"She's also a very clever woman." she continued. "She knew the children's parents would be devastated and cry bloody murder, and she knew the police would come looking for her. And…she knew that there was one place that they would never think to check. Because…well, why would they?" She turned to face Joshua. "Why would anyone?"
Joshua's legs almost went out from under him as his mind replayed the gut-wrenching moment when he'd watched the animatronics opened up in the torture chamber of the Parts and Service room. His memory flashed on Ann's bloody, cleaved-in-half body…inside the animatronic.
As if she was seeing what he was envisioning in his head, Celestine said, "It's not just the children's spirits that are inside of those machines."
Joshua's stomach heaved. He kept his mouth shut.
"It's their bodies. Their corpses. That horrible woman…stuffed them into those machines."
The yellow light finger disappeared. That made it seem like a dark shade had come down over the drawings.
The shade came down over everything. For an instant.
Then four new light fingers extended down from the ceiling. They pointed at an angle, toward the two stages.
Ava turned around, looking toward the stages. She clapped her hands. There were her friends. Spriggy, Ducky, and Flamer stood on the main stage. Captain Fluffy was set up on his smaller stage. They were all ready to put on a show.
Celestine took a few steps toward Joshua. The folded paper was compressed in her closed hand, held to her chest. The hand was visibly trembling."You have to understand," she said. "The kids, they don't want to hurt anyone. It's her. She…influences them…somehow. She controls them."
"Who?"
"It wasn't their fault!" Celestine's tone was pleading now. "They were so scared, and alone, and they didn't know any better." She held out her empty hand. "She took everything from them, but they don't remember. You have to believe me."
Why did Joshua think that Celestine wasn't talking just about the children at Spriggy's?
He knew why. The urgency in Celestine's tone was too intense. It sounded like she wasn't just trying to justify the behavior of some ghost kids. Her tone was too personal for that. It sounded like she was begging for absolution.
Joshua stepped forward and put his hands on Celestine's shoulders. And he could feel them quaking in his grasp. She's scared out of her mind, he thought.
Ava frowned at her friends. Why weren't they moving?
The animatronics were frozen in place. They looked like sculptures.
Ava's gaze shifted from one lit-up friend to the next. She took a step forward. "Guys?" she said.
They still didn't move.
The Celestine switch clicked again. The almost childlike "please forgive me" crimp between her brows disappeared. Her jaw took on the hardness Joshua had seen so many times before.
She shrugged out from under his hands. She stepped back, and when she spoke again, her voice had an edge. "I tried to warn you."
Joshua gave her a "you've gotta be kidding" look.
She nodded once, empathetically. "I really did try, in my own way. But you were just too dense, too…single-minded." She shrugged. "It's too late now. She knows you're looking for her." The resolve wavered. Little-girl Celestine reappeared, hunching her shoulders. "She'll be coming," she said in a hushed tone.
"Who is she?" Joshua asked.
Celestine pressed her lips together.
"Celestine, please," Joshua implored her. "You need to tell me who she is."
Celestine held out the folded paper she held in a vice grip. "This is my mother." she said. "Liko."
Joshua took the paper. His hands beginning to shake, he unfolded it. The paper was an old, folded and refolded and refolded photograph. When he looked at it, he felt his eyes widened, and a short gasp escaped his throat. He stared so hard at the photograph that his eyes started to hurt. And the photograph began to blur. But it didn't matter. He'd seen it. He could never unsee it.
In the photo, a little girl with streaked purple hair stood in front of a bright and shiny Spriggy FazSprig's Pizza. A screaming yellow GRAND OPENING banner fluttered from the eaves of the building. Standing beside the young girl was an older woman, whom Joshua presumed to be her mother.
Everything started to become clear to him. The girl in the photo was a young Celestine, and Joshua could instantly recognize the other woman. The same navy blue hair and green hair clip, same baby blue jacket, same thick, black-rimmed glasses magnifying her eyes.
It was Jessica Sweets. The career counselor Joshua met before. The one who first offered the job at Spriggy's in the first place. All the pieces started to fall in place. Joshua could almost see the scenario playing out in his head. Jessica, no, Liko, was the one who committed this heinous crime. She was the one who murdered those children, and shoved their dead bodies into the animatronics. She must have changed her name to Jessica to hide her identity so she wouldn't get caught.
How could Joshua have not seen it before? It was too obvious. Liko sent him to Spriggy's as her way of revealing her crime. Or maybe she just wanted the animatronics to kill him, since apparently, she had control over them.
But why? Why would she do something like this in the first place? What would possess anyone to commit murder and think they can get away with it? And for this to happen to five innocent children? It was almost unthinkable.
Joshua looked at the photograph again. Behind Liko and Celestine, all four animatronics stood around them, surrounding them like they were all one big, happy family. It made Joshua sick to think that Liko and Celestine were family.
But then, something else in the photograph caught Joshua's eye. Something that made what he was seeing all the more devastating. In young Celestine's hand, she held…Sunny's green toy airplane.
Joshua dropped the photo and watched it gently float to the floor. He took a step back as if the photo was a fire bomb that would incinerate him. He then lifted his gaze to Celestine. He had to clear his throat twice before he could get his vocal cords to work. When he could finally speak, his words sounded like they were rattling over a gravel road.
"You…knew?"
Celestine held out her hand. "Josh…"
"My brother. This whole time. You knew."
Celestine shook her head. "Not about Sunny, no. At least…not when I met you."
"But the others?"
Celestine looked down. There was no hiding the truth anymore. "I'm sorry, Josh. I'm so, so…sorry."
The photo hadn't turned into a firestorm, but Joshua's emotions did. All the shame, confusion, shock…they all fused together. And they exploded into a ball of pure rage. Celestine had been keeping secrets from him, and now she had to help him make everything right.
Without the ability to stop himself, he lunged forward and grabbed Celestine by the collar of her jeans jacket. "Tell me how to stop them," he growled into her face. "Tell me how to save my sister!"
If ever he expected to see the serious side of Celestine, it was now. But she didn't react with power. She shrank inward like a victim. Her eyes were so wide that they almost filled her face. There was nothing left for her to hide now. Joshua knew the truth. Now, she had no choice but to help him rescue Ava before the animatronics did something to her.
Ava took a stutter-step back when the stage speakers crackled. An assault of whiny feedback forced her to cover her ears.
The multicolored performance lights sprang on, sweeping over the stage like whipping ribbons. Red ribbons. Blue ribbons. Yellow ribbons. Orange ribbons. Purple ribbons. Light ribbons went every which way.
And finally, the animatronics came to life. They exploded to life.
They all launched into the rock song that they were most famous for, "Rival Destinies". Ava, relieved, clapped her hands and started dancing.