Chapter 24

As much as she hated what was happening to Celestine and wanted to run at the woman in the Sprigatito suit and beat at her with her fists, Ava knew she couldn't help that way. The only thing she could do was what she was doing: she had to keep going toward the wall. So, she didn't let her pace slow, even as she watched Celestine struggle with her mother.

Ava finally reached the wall. She quickly looked over her shoulder, just in time to see Celestine press toward her mother, wrapping her in a big, hard hug.

Oh no, Ava thought.

She understood that Celestine was trying to save her, but by hugging the woman like that, Celestine had to have driven the knife much farther into her body.

Ava started to cry just as the woman in the suit roared. She watched her beat at Celestine's back, trying to get free. Celestine, however, didn't let go.

Ava had to make Celestine's sacrifice worth it. Turning to the wall of children's drawings, she quickly found the drawing of the Sprigatito with the five kids. She reached for it. Glancing back, she saw that Celestine was looking directly at her. Celestine's eyes looked weird, like they were lights that were having a hard time staying on. Even so, Celestine held Ava's gaze.

And the woman in the Sprigatito suit continued to fight to get free.

Ava got her hand on the drawing of the Sprigatito and the five kids. She crumpled the paper in her grip, and she whipped her hand away from the wall. When the drawing let go of the wall, it tore. The sound of the long, crackling riiiiiiiipp was much louder than the normal sound of paper tearing.

As soon as the sound ended, Ava saw Celestine's arms start to drop away from her mom. "I'm sorry, Mommy," she said. Her voice was so weak that Ava barely heard it.

"Get off me!" the woman in the Sprigatito suit shrieked. Then, in a split-second, she dropped the knife and put both her hands on the ax. And then, with all her strength, she swung the ax straight through Celestine's neck, slicing her head clean off. Thick blood sprayed out of her open neck, pooling onto the linoleum floor. The severed head went flying through the air, and it landed on the floor just a few feet away from Ava. The frightened little girl let out a disturbed cry when she saw the lifeless eyes staring back at her, still tucked in the sockets of the skull.

The woman in the Sprigatito costume flung Celestine's now-headless body aside, and she turned to look toward Ava. She let out a booming sound that made Ava think of a really angry Arcanine. That rage, she knew, was directed at her. And the woman was now coming toward her, too. Slap-thud. Slap-thud. Slap-thud. The sound of the woman's footsteps filled the room. She was charging toward the girl.

Ava quickly turned and pressed her new drawing to the wall, in the space where the other drawing had been. But the other drawing had been stuck to the wall by tape, and the tape had come away with the drawing. Ava had no way to attach her drawing to the wall. She looked all around the wall, hoping to find a free piece of tape, but all the tape holding other drawings was old. She knew none of it would work.

The woman's footsteps were now really close. Ava didn't turn to look, but she knew the woman was almost on top of her.

I know! She thought.

She kept holding the drawing in place with one palm, and with her other hand, she dug in her overalls' pocket, and pulled out one of her colored pencils and, swinging her arm in a wide arc through the air, she rammed the pencil point through the drawing, jamming the pencil into the wall.

She hadn't been sure if it would work because the wall wasn't soft like a bulletin board, but when she let go of the pencil, the drawing stayed in place.

And every light in the dining room went out.

Ava hardly dared to breathe, much less move, but she had to see what was happening. She turned away from the wall.

Even though the dining room lights were dark, the fluorescent lights in the lobby were still on. They were weak, so they couldn't toss brightness very far. But what bit reached the wall of pictures, and the rest of the room, was enough for Ava to see that no one was moving.

The woman in the Sprigatito costume was just a couple feet from Ava, but she was stopped dead. So were Spriggy and Flamer, who were standing over Joshua. Celestine's body was on the floor, lying very, very still. Ava wanted to run to Celestine, and her brother. But she didn't. She stayed where she was.

Spriggy and Flamer turned their heads. They looked toward the woman in the Sprigatito suit. Then they started moving toward her, their steps slow and unsteady.

The woman's awful blue eyes locked on Ava. "What have you done?" she growled.

Ava was still scared, but she put her shoulders back. "They can see you now," she said, "they know what you did."

She then took a step to the side. Suddenly, one of the stage spotlights came on. It landed right on Ava's new drawing. She looked at her work. Even as panicked as she'd been as she'd drawn, even as worried for her brother and Celestine, even as grossed out as she was by the woman, she had done possibly the best drawing she'd ever done in her life. Or it could have just felt that way.

Maybe the colors weren't perfect and maybe some of the things in the drawing were a little shaky-looking, but the message of the drawing was perfectly clear. She had drawn the Sprigatito, with razor-sharp teeth and beady eyes, holding a bloody knife, standing over the dead bodies of five little children.

Ava glanced at the woman. She could tell she didn't like the drawing. Her grimace looked even meaner than it had before. She took a step toward Ava, who responded by shrinking back toward the wall.

A whisper of movement. A thud.

Captain Fluffy stepped out of the shadows beyond the spotlight. He put himself between Ava and the woman.

"Move," the woman said to Captain Fluffy.

The animatronic Eevee didn't budge.

"I said, move!" the woman shouted again, louder.

A loud click answered her bellow. A second spotlight burst on. It caught her in a circle of white light so powerful that Ava couldn't look directly at it. Neither could the woman. She threw up a hand to shield her eyes. But when she tried to turn away from the light, Spriggy, Flamer, and Ducky were there.

Almost by magic, Ava thought. But not really. They'd been moving in the darkness when Ava and the woman had been distracted by the spotlights.

The next part, though, could only be described as magical. The animatronics started to fade away, as though their physical material was disappearing, but not completely. Now, they looked almost transparent, and from inside them, Ava could see the children, the spirits, moving the animatronics forward.

And all around them, more spirits began to materialize into view. There was Ann, Ava's babysitter, and beside her, her brother Edgar. There were also two other men who, from what Ava could tell, were dressed in Team Star uniforms. Another spirit appeared, a man dressed in a security guard uniform. Even from where Ava was standing, she could see the name over the badge on his chest. His name was Mark.

The woman in the Sprigatito suit was no longer looking at Ava. She was staring at all the spirits. And they didn't seem to care about Ava either. Now, she could move. She sidestepped along the wall. No one looked at her, which gave her courage to keep moving. Keeping her steps as light as possible, she hurried over to Joshua. She dropped to her knees next to him.

"Josh," she whispered. "Josh! Wake up!"

The little hairs of Joshua's eyelashes rippled against his skin, but he didn't open his eyes. Ava leaned over and put a hand on his shoulder. She shook him really hard. "Josh!" she hissed loudly in his ear.

Joshua opened his eyes. He blinked several times, and then he seemed to zero in on Ava's face. "Ava?" he said, his voice strained.

It was okay. He and Ava were okay.

The spirits were closer to the woman in the Sprigatito costume now. They completely surrounded her, creating a circle that was about two feet from her. And they were pressing in even further.

"Look at you," the woman said. Her voice was filled with disgust. She sounded the same way bullies sounded. "Look at what nasty things you have become! Look at how small you are!" The spirits stopped moving. Ava bit her lip. They weren't going to listen to the woman, were they? The woman took advantage of the spirits' hesitation. "You are wretched, rotten little beasts!" she said, her voice even crueler than before. "Look at how pathetic you are!" She looked at each spirit in turn. "Look at how worthless you are!"

She pointed at the transparent Ducky and the spirit inside of him. "I MADE YOU!" she screamed, and then pointed toward Joshua and Ava. "Now get over there," she commanded, "And rip them apart…before I rip all of you apart!"

Ava held her breath. What would the spirits do?

She got her answer in an instant.

The woman screamed as she was suddenly pushed to the floor. Ava, and all the ghosts, looked on to see what had pushed her, and what was about to go down.

Ava could feel her eyes widen when she saw the yellow Ducky animatronic she had met earlier storming over to the downed woman. He then raised a foot over one of her knees and slammed down. A loud crack echoed through the room, followed by the woman's agonized cry.

But her other leg was still functional, so she swung it around, causing the yellow Ducky to trip and fall over backwards. Then, the woman kicked the animatronic in the face. The yellow Ducky let out a mechanical growl of pain. The woman stood back up again. When she saw how the animatronic Quaxly was only halfway up, she staggered over to him, and began throwing powerful punches at his face, as though she were using a Fury Swipes attack.

But just when it seemed like she had beaten the animatronic into submission, the yellow Ducky pressed his knee into the woman's already-damaged leg, and then grabbed hold of a large chunk of holey fake fur in the costume she wore. And then finally, with an indescribable amount of force, he yanked the section of the costume right off, exposing the inner workings of the costume.

Ava made a face and hugged herself when she saw what was under the fake fur. She'd seen something like it before. It made her insides get all knotted up.

The Sprigatito costume had the same thing in it that the Amoonguss animatronic had, the one the regular Ducky had tried to put Ava into. The suit was lined with row after row of super-sharp metal things. Now that Ava could see them more clearly than she had when she was fighting Ducky, she decided the metal things looked like a bunch of Krabby claws. The claws were closed up tight, curled inward toward the sides of the suit. But if the claws opened…

As Ava stared at the metal things, she heard a snap, like a lock shooting back. One of the Krabby claws opened. Then another. And another. Ava saw blood starting to run into the metal. Then the blood stained the edges of the surrounding Sprigatito fur. She then looked at the face of the woman in the suit. Her teeth were gritted, and her eyes were wide.

Ava thought of Celestine, who was still headless and sprawled on the floor. She was definitely dead.

The horrible woman in the Sprigatito suit deserved what was happening to her. Ava stopped feeling sorry. She even liked it when she heard another snap and saw more blood squirting out of the holes in the costume. She knew that the woman was being hurt even worse.

It felt like a hundred mini-drills were attempting to burrow into Joshua's head and into the rest of his body, too. He couldn't see quite right, and his body felt as floppy and useless as a Water-type Pokémon snatched out of water.

He was starting to get his bearings, though. He knew where he was - in Spriggy's dining room. He knew Ava was with him and she was, as far as he could tell. He also knew that the woman who had tried to kill him was getting her comeuppance.

Joshua recognized the snapping sound he was hearing. He knew what was happening to the woman. She was being skewered from inside her costume. Good.

"What are those things in the suit?" Ava asked. "They're like the ones in the Amoonguss that Ducky tried to put me in."

Joshua felt like a Mudbray had kicked him in the chest. The idea of Ava…

"Don't worry about it," he said. "This is what she deserves."

The woman in the Sprigatito suit…Joshua knew…it was Jessica Sweets, the career counselor who had hired him, and whose voice had been echoing in his skull for so long…although, Jessica wasn't her real name. Her real name was Liko. And fate had somehow brought them together once again. Liko looked over at Joshua and Ava. Even though she was clearly incapacitated, Joshua reached for Ava, wanting to protect her.

He didn't have to worry, though. Liko was just putting on a show of defiance.

Liko's face was misshapen by pain, and her body was being jolted savagely by what was happening inside the Sprigatito suit. Still, through the continuing chain reaction of mechanical parts, she was able to scoot over the floor. She dragged herself forward until she reached the costume's head.

More snaps.

Liko looked at the gathered spirits, now standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of her, the yellow Ducky standing in between them. Then, Liko raised the Sprigatito head high in the air, and with one more defiant smile she managed to groan out four last words.

"I always come back!"

Then, she put the Sprigatito costume head back on.

Joshua heard a series of sharp sounds like a chattering of metal teeth. Clack! Clack! Clack!

The remaining mechanical parts inside were disengaging. And even Liko, seemingly impervious to destruction, couldn't withstand that.

The Sprigatito's body contorted, hunching inward. Liko howled in obvious torture. Her yowls winged through the building like a flurry of Woobat wheeling through a subterranean chamber.

As if channeling Liko's torment, the pizzeria began to agitate. The building felt like it was whipping back and forth on its floorings. At the same time, the spotlights began to switch on and off. The laser lights started up. Then they went out. And they started up again. A muddled patchwork of "Rival Destinies" snippets intertwined with bursts of static coming from the intercom speakers. Sensation overload. Chaos. The building was now rattling at its very core. The remains of Ava's fort were stuttering across the dining room floor. The overhead lights were swinging, and…

…one bank of fluorescent lights came crashing down…

The lights' metal frame landed just a couple feet from Ava. Way too close for comfort.

What was worse was that the fluorescent light had instantly burst into flames, and in an instant, a huge roaring fire was spreading through the dining room.

Joshua forced his body into gear. They had to move. "Come on!" he shouted.

Rejecting his body's weakness, he levered himself up from the ground. He had to lean a little on Ava to get himself in motion, but once he took a step, he got some momentum going. He started forward, aiming toward the lobby in a limping run, keeping a tight grip on Ava's hand. But Ava resisted his attempt to urge her forward.

"Wait, what about Celestine?" she cried.

"Celestine? She's here?" Joshua frowned and looked around. Why was she here? She was adamant that she wouldn't come.

"She saved me!" Ava shouted. Now she was tugging on Joshua. "Come on."

Joshua let Ava lead him, not toward the lobby, but farther into the middle of the dining room. As soon as they'd taken a couple steps, Joshua spotted Celestine. His feet faltered, and his breathing hitched. Celestine was prone to the floor, decapitated. A pool of blood that was far too large to make Joshua optimistic about survival, extended from Celestine's open neck, and spilled out in all directions around her.

She's gone, Joshua thought.

Hindered now by not just his injuries but a choking grief, he was barely able to make it to the rest of the way to where Celestine's body lay. But he got there. When he did, he painstakingly lowered to one knee, which he planted in the thick, sticky red spill that surrounded Celestine's headless corpse.

She really was gone.

Joshua then saw movement on the other side of the room. Even over the continued mishmash of crackling flames and billowing smoke, he heard the clod-clod-clod of animatronic footsteps. His muscles tensed, and he lifted his gaze.

He had been sure the animatronics were coming for him and Ava. But they weren't. They clearly could not have cared less about them. They were otherwise occupied.

Joshua watched as the yellow Ducky bent down to drag the seizing Sprigatito behind him, letting out a triumphant mechanical shriek. The other four animatronics followed the yellow Ducky and the Sprigatito into the back hallway. The other spirits had vanished, and were nowhere to be seen, and the animatronics' mechanical bodies appeared solid again. Joshua also noticed that their eyes looked different, too. They appeared pitch-black with small pinpricks of light, and they were all focused on the Sprigatito that the yellow Ducky was still dragging behind him.

"Josh?" Ava said, shaking her brother's arm.

Joshua whipped his gaze back to the headless Celestine. It was too late. She was gone. All that was left was her corpse. But he couldn't just leave her there. It didn't feel right to him.

"Come on," he said. "Help me."

Neither Joshua nor Ava should have been strong enough to lift a headless body. But they did it anyway. They managed to brace the body between them as they both got back to their feet, splattering their clothes with blood in the process. Then each of them hooked one of Celestine's limp arms around their necks. Holding tight to her arms, they managed to start dragging her across the incinerating dining room.

Joshua glanced toward the back hallway as they went, but he saw nothing but growing flames. The animatronics and the Sprigatito costume were no longer within view.

The orange glow of the fire was growing larger now. The smoke was spreading even faster than before. The floor began to move under Joshua's and Ava's feet. It felt like the fire was beginning to make the building collapse.

Joshua heard a tinny zing above his head, and he looked up. Amid the surrounding flames, he saw the brackets holding two sets of spotlights to the ceiling rend loose. The spotlights came crashing down, and they landed just a foot to Joshua's right.

Without a word, he and Ava picked up the pace. They were both grunting with effort, both panting. Their faces were covered in soot, and they kept having to blink sweat from their eyes.

On the heels of the increasing fire and smoke, whole banks of fluorescent lights began exploding. A glass monsoon poured over the room.

"Look down, Ava!" Joshua yelled. He followed his own advice, which kept glass from getting in his eyes. But he felt barb-sized shards poking at his scalp as the glass showered onto his head. Just a few more steps, he told himself. He strained to keep hold of Celestine's arm. Her skin was slick with blood. So were his hands.

He glanced at Ava, worried that she wouldn't have the strength to keep going. But his sister was a trooper. Her lips were set, and she was frowning ferociously.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

They made it to the lobby just as a guttural, hellish moan curled up from what felt like the most hidden recesses of the flaming building. The sound reached for them like a killer's hands.

Joshua shot a look back over his shoulder. He nearly let go of Celestine when he saw a wraithlike bulkhead of smoke closing in on the lobby. The smoke was coming fast. Too fast. It's going to overtake us, Joshua thought. It would-

Cha-chunk. Joshua pulled his gaze from the smoke-monster and saw that Ava had released the front door handle. She was leaning into the door, pushing it outward.

Joshua tried to move forward, and he tripped. His head hit the door, and he saw…

…black.