Five Nights at Freddy's, page 10
Jane snorted. “My nephew, the altruist. That’s all very fascinating, dear, but I’m not hearing a plan.”
Maxine glanced at Jeff. He returned her gaze, and he grinned. He looked back toward Jane.
“We toss the place,” Jeff said.
Jane raised her eyebrows, clearly surprised that Jeff had said something semi-interesting. “Go on,” she said.
Jeff shoved aside his soda glass and put both hands palms-down on the table. “Mike’s a security guard, right? His job is to make sure no one gets in. So …” he looked from Jane to Maxine and back to Jane, “… we get in! Mess the place up good, help ourselves to whatever we find along the way.” Jeff lifted a finger and pointed at Jane. “Your nephew gets canned. Judge gives you the kid.” He hesitated, then leaned back and crossed his arms. “And you give us two thousand dollars.”
Jane pulled in her chin and gave Jeff an “as if” look. “It’s two hundred,” she said.
Jeff shook his head. “Two hundred was for going through his underwear drawer. We’re talking about breaking and entering. Destroying private property. Theft. That’s like … five years, minimum.
“Probably more like ten,” Doug inserted.
Jane shot Doug a death glare. Then she tapped pink-painted nails on the booth’s tabletop. The skin at the outer edges of her eyes pulled in.
“One thousand,” Jane said.
Jeff looked at Maxine. She leaned away from him, attempting to fuse with the window … or perhaps pass right through it. She couldn’t believe she was having anything to do with any of this. Still, she gave Jeff a miniscule nod.
Jeff looked at Jane. “Okay,” he said.
Jane stood. Adjusting the hem of her pantsuit jacket, she bent forward across the booth’s table. She leaned in close, just inches from Jeff’s face. Maxine got a whiff of Jane’s perfume—it was sharp and cutting, like it was a fusion of pepper and grapefruit.
In low, menacing tones, Jane spoke. “Do it soon. And don’t mess it up.” Jane twisted her lips. “I mean, do mess it up.” She pointed at the table. “But don’t just mess this up.”
Jane stalked off. Doug hefted himself off the booth bench. Maxine watched Doug trail in Jane’s wake.
Maxine looked at her brother. Clearly confused, Jeff was looking at the spot on the table that Jane had pointed to.
Maxine, fed up with everything, slapped Jeff’s finger. He frowned at her, still baffled. She gave him her best “moron” look and sighed.
Thunder rattled Mike’s bedroom walls. He heard heavy raindrops rat-a-tat at the windowpane behind his blackout curtains.
The brilliant sunlight that had ushered in the day had thrown in the towel when heavy storm clouds had descended on the town just before lunch. Since then, the day had been dark and dreary. Mike’s mood had similarly changed.
The surge of optimism Mike had felt at the start of the day had diminished as the day had gone on. He wanted it back. And he had a plan to reclaim it.
Planting his feet wide on his bouncy mattress, one foot close to the edge, Mike reached up to try to untape his Nebraska poster from the ceiling over his bed. He managed to slide his fingers under one edge of the thick paper.
“What’re you doing?”
Abby’s voice came right on the heels of another clap of thunder. The combination of the boom and her unexpected appearance startled Mike. He jerked, and his foot slipped off the edge of the bed. Mike went tumbling. His fingers caught a big chunk of the poster, and he took the chunk with him to the floor.
Having managed to land head and shoulders first, Mike shifted to his rump and rubbed his head. He looked toward his doorway.
Abby stood just a foot inside Mike’s room. Dressed in her usual overalls—today’s were bright blue—she wore Mike’s Freddy Fazbear security vest.
Even though Mike was annoyed by the interruption and his torn poster, he had to admit that Abby looked pretty adorable in the vest. Like she was playing dress-up … something he’d never seen her do before.
Mike massaged his throbbing shoulder. “Did you want something?” he asked Abby.
Abby looked up at the ceiling, and Mike’s gaze followed hers. The part of the poster he hadn’t just ripped free dangled down toward the bed. The remaining bit read PINING FOR FUN?
Mike sighed. He pointed at Abby. “All right. Come on. Take that off. I need to get to work.”
Abby nodded. “I know. I’m coming with you.”
Mike grunted and stood. He pressed a hand to his temple … another headache was coming on. It hadn’t just been his collision with the floor; his mood had been spiraling downward all day. And now, even though he had a plan to retrieve the hope he’d felt earlier, he dreaded having to go back to the spooky restaurant. He wasn’t up for Abby’s games.
“Abby, please,” Mike said. He held out a hand. “Just give me the vest.”
Abby didn’t move, so Mike walked over to her and reached for the vest. Abby stepped back.
“No!” Abby shouted.
Mike really wanted to scream at her. He hated when she got like this.
Summoning what little patience he had available to him— which wasn’t much—Mike knelt in front of Abby. He took a second to make sure that when he spoke, he wouldn’t explode. Then he said, in what he hoped was a calm but firm tone, “Give me. The vest. Now.”
Abby made a face. Then she mimicked him. “I’m. Coming. With you.”
Mike heard the front door bang open. Even from down the hall, the sound of Max’s footsteps was clear. The tap-tap was joined by a fluttery noise. Given the thrumming of the rain on the roof overhead, Mike guessed that Max was shaking out her umbrella.
“Hello?” Max called out.
Abby turned toward the hallway. Mike lunged for her.
When Maxine heard Abby shriek, she rushed toward the hallway. Looking down the length of the narrow, empty space, Maxine started forward. Was Abby really in trouble or was she having one of her …?
Abby screamed again. As she did, Mike, holding a wildly flailing Abby in his arms, stepped into view.
So that question was answered. Maxine wiped rain off her face—the umbrella hadn’t been much help in the windy storm—as she watched Mike carry his sister to her room.
Mike set Abby down, and as she spun away from him, he grabbed the vest she was wearing and pulled it off. He quickly slammed Abby’s door and locked it.
Abby continued to caterwaul from within her bedroom. Most of her noise was just general wailing, but mixed in were some impressive beyond-her-age swear words and a few scathing opinions of her brother. Maxine agreed with a few of them.
Panting, Mike looked down the hall and met Maxine’s gaze. “Hey, Max,” he said.
She lifted a hand, signaling for him to stop.
Mike pointed at Abby’s closed door. He acted like he couldn’t hear any of the insults and yowling reaching through the flimsy wood barrier. “She’s all yours,” Mike said.
Max raised an eyebrow and quirked her lips. “Great.”
When Mike got to work, he didn’t waste his time freaking himself out by looking around the pizzeria. The lobby and hallway looked the same as they had the day before. He assumed everything else was status quo, too, and if it wasn’t, he didn’t want to know about it.
As soon as Mike entered the office and closed—and locked—the door behind him (he didn’t bother with moving the filing cabinet because he felt silly for doing it the night before), he shed his wet jacket and took his backpack to the desk. Then he made his preparations.
Setup didn’t take long. Within ten minutes, Mike was planting himself in the office desk chair. Once there, Mike swept his gaze over all the monitors. All the power was on (as on as it could get), and he had a clear view of everything on the monitors, inside and out.
A thunder crack assaulted the pizzeria. The building groaned, as if in protest.
Mike’s attention landed on the main exterior camera. He watched a river of rainwater flow out of the parking lot into the street.
Satisfied that all was well with the pizzeria, Mike took his pill, turned on his cassette, and touched his paperback, as if it was a talisman. Then he leaned forward and looked at the Nebraska poster, which he’d managed to repair (shoddily) and tape to the wall opposite the desk. Mike turned up the volume on the cassette player so it could trump the sound of the thunderstorm.
Chirping birds. Rustling tree branches. A gurgling stream. Mike softened his gaze and allowed the pine trees—bisected diagonally by his ineptly repaired tear—to sway. As the pine needles shimmied, Mike’s eyes lost their focus. His lids fluttered, then they dropped.
The tear marring the pine trees was gone. They moved seamlessly in the wind, one flowing wave of gauzy green.
Mike relaxed into the soothing sounds of the breeze, but he stiffened when thunder muscled its way into the breeze’s swishing rhythm. The sun filtering through the trees began to flicker. Or was that the lights in the office?
Part of Mike’s consciousness was still aware of where he was in his waking state. But it was hanging on tenuously.
Mike, determined to fall into the reality of the pine forest, blurred all the sounds he was hearing. He wove the thunder into creaking tree branches, and when he heard a crackling hiss and pop, he braided that staticky sound into the crackle of the bristling pine needles.
The sun, for one second, bathed Mike’s face in warmth and then disappeared again, letting cool shade slip over him. In and out. The light blinked. The confusion of sounds continued, and Mike frowned.
What was that lower sound … off in the distance? Was that music?
Mike’s awareness succumbed to the fog of sleep. He found himself in a series of quick-take impressions.
An orange toy plane flies through the air.
Ketchup spurts.
Tires spin on gravel.
Mike runs.
Shoving aside branches that slap at his face, Mike pounds through the forest. His movements are familiar, practiced. But something’s strange about them.
Bursting out of the trees, Mike looks down the road just in time to see the black car disappear. Why does the black car look different?
Childish laughter bubbles behind Mike. He turns.
As Mike rotates around, his gaze drops. He jerks in surprise as he realizes he’s looking down at his adult body.
This is different.
But the children aren’t.
Mike looks at the five children. They’re just as they were the last time that he saw them.
Mike watches the children but he doesn’t approach them. They watch him in return.
What now?
Understanding clearly that he’s in his dream but that it is diverging from its norm, Mike hesitates. Then he speaks.
“Please,” Mike says to the children. “Don’t run. I just … I just want to know what you saw.”
The blond boy narrows his cold blue eyes at Mike. His upper lip lifts into a semi-sneer.
“I’m begging you,” Mike says. “Who took my brother?”
The blond boy’s expression doesn’t change. The other children ignore Mike.
Mike runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. Why won’t the kids tell him anything?
He takes a step forward. He raises his voice. “Who took Garret?!”
Mike’s shout spooks the children. They bolt.
“No!” Mike yells.
Facing the same situation that he was in before, Mike makes an instant decision this time. He chases the boy with the paper hook.
Now that Mike is adult-sized, he can easily outrun the small child. The boy has reddish hair, and Mike keeps his gaze locked on that hair as he runs. Even racing over the forest’s uneven ground, Mike quickly closes the distance.
Almost upon the boy, Mike reaches for the kid’s shoulder. The boy spins around.
Suddenly, Mike sees a flash of silver. The paper hook is scything through the air.
Something sharp stings at Mike’s arm. He staggers back, stunned.
Mike looks down at his arm. His shirtsleeve gapes open; the material is slashed apart. A narrow ribbon of red appears on Mike’s skin.
Shocked, Mike looks back at the red-haired boy. The boy, whose freckled face has a pert little nose and soft cheeks, looks up at Mike with staggeringly fearsome green eyes. The boy opens his mouth and unleashes … a distorted mechanical shriek.
Mike recoils.
He opened his eyes.
Mike goggled at the overhead lights. They were flashing on and off with dizzying quickness.
Looking away from the lights, Mike slapped his palms over his ears because the lights were only half of the assault on his senses. Screeching feedback was blaring from the intercom on the ceiling over the desk.
Mike shifted his focus to the CCTV monitors. He gaped at them.
The monitors had gone haywire. Some of the screens were pulsing random flashes of colored lights. Some were streaming indecipherable lines of binary code, which were entwined around twisted, distorted images.
Abruptly, a frenetic ’80s rock song blasted from the overhead speakers. Mike jolted at the sound, nearly falling from his chair. Throwing out an arm to steady himself, Mike knocked his pill bottle to the floor. The cap wasn’t on tight; the little white pills scattered over the black-and-white linoleum.
Mike’s gaze shot from the pills up to the intercom. He grabbed his head with both hands. “Stop!” Mike yelled … even though he knew hysterics weren’t going to help.
But he couldn’t help himself. His senses were saturated. He was totally overwhelmed.
Standing, Mike spun one way and then the other. What should he do?
On the verge of totally losing it, Mike got help from his memory banks. His brain provided him an inner Raglan replay: “Fair warning,” Raglan’s voice said in Mike’s head. “The power can be a bit … screwy. If you have any issues, you’ll find the system breaker in the main office. Just give it a flip.”
Mike stood. Starting to turn toward the circuit box, Mike did a double take. His gaze flitted toward the window in the office door.
The frosted glass looked perfectly normal. Mike could see well enough through the glass to reassure himself that nothing was out there.
But had it been? Mike could have sworn he’d just gotten a glimpse of one eye watching him through the glass. One eye and one eye patch. Could …?
Mike shook his head. No way. He’d imagined it … probably because of his dream.
The rock music crescendoed. The lights started going on and off even faster.
That’s enough.
Giving the frosted window one more glance—nothing was there—Mike sprinted to the circuit breaker. He grabbed the lever and shoved it downward.
Everything went black. And the building was filled with blessed silence. Even the thunder had stopped.
The red emergency bulb above the circuit box clicked on. Mike leaned back against the wall and tried to get a grip on himself. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. His pulse was so fast that it felt like a Formula One race was being run in his veins. His ears were ringing from the raucous auditory assault.
Mike stood in the near darkness for a few seconds. Then his skin prickled. The darkness was unfriendly, suffocating.
Mike put his hand back on the lever. He shoved it upward.
A comforting ka-chunk relit the office. Mike looked at the bank of fluorescent bulbs. They were dim, but they were steady.
Stepping over to the desk, Mike looked at the monitors. They were back to normal.
Mike exhaled loudly. His pulse began to steady itself, and …
An insistent buzzer revved up Mike’s pulse again. The buzz came once. Twice. Three times.
Mike leaned over and scanned the monitors. He frowned.
Centered in front of the entrance camera, a uniformed police officer stood in the steady rain, finger on the building’s doorbell. The thunder might have abated, but the storm was still dumping torrents of water on the pizzeria.
Mike peered at the wavy CCTV feed. Between the poor resolution, the rain, and the officer’s hooded poncho, Mike couldn’t make out the officer’s face. All he could see was pale fuzziness within the hood … even when the officer looked up at the camera and waved.
Bracing himself for whatever was going to come next, Mike pulled open one of the pizzeria’s heavy entrance doors. He peered out at the rain-parka-clad officer. Close up, in real life instead of on an old, hazy CCTV screen, the police officer’s face was clear … and it belonged to a woman.
The female officer smiled at Mike. “About time!” she said in a pleasing, smooth voice. “I was starting to think you fell asleep on the job.”
Mike, still disoriented by the commotion in the office and puzzled by why a cop was at the pizzeria’s door, blinked at the woman like an idiot. He couldn’t seem to get his brain to engage properly.
It didn’t help that the unexpected cop at the door was a very pretty cop. Even though Mike couldn’t see the woman’s hair or body under the bulky rain gear, he could see enough of her big blue eyes, her high flushed cheeks, and her wide, upturned mouth to find her looks unsettling. Mike, having had little time or inclination to date, often got flustered when he was around a pretty woman. A pretty cop was even more muddling.
But he had to say something. Mike cleared his throat and managed, “Can I help you … officer?”
“Please.” Pulling off her rain parka, the cop brushed a few strands of streaked blonde hair from her pale face. The hair was shiny and appeared to be long but was currently confined in some kind of twist. “My name’s Vanessa,” she said as she shook water off the parka.
Water sprayed Mike’s pants. He couldn’t have cared less.
Vanessa looked at Mike. “And you must be …”
Now that Mike could see Vanessa’s sleek hair and the slender but curvy figure in her snug, dark blue police uniform, he was even more tongue-tied. All he was capable of was more idiotic blinking.
Vanessa smiled at Mike with what might have been pity. Or maybe she was being friendly. “… the new security guard,” she concluded. She glanced down at Mike’s arm. “You’re bleeding, by the way.”
