Gumdrop Angel, page 14
Hudson shrugged. “When Faith asked me if I did it, it brought it all back, you know? Messed with my head.”
Barry cringed. “That’s why I asked if you want me not to see her.”
“You like her?” Hudson asked.
“I do.”
“Well, then, date her.”
“We’ll be gone in a couple months,” Duane pointed out.
Barry shrugged. “No one can predict the future.”
“Granny can,” Hudson said.
The men laughed.
* * *
When his shift break came later in the day, Hudson declined his friends’ invitation to dinner. He needed to go see Granny.
“You need a ride?” Barry asked.
“I’ll walk,” Hudson said. He’d decided he wouldn’t even try to sleep this evening. He’d visit Granny, get her to feed him, and then see if she had something for boosting his energy. If anyone could keep him awake, it would be Granny.
So Hudson left Fazbear’s Frights behind at 5:00 p.m., and he strode the ten blocks to his granny’s place. The day was cool but dry. The first of the fall leaves skittered along the concrete in front of him as he walked. He inhaled the scent of crab apples, which had fallen from trees by the sidewalk. Granny had told him scents have power, and when a scent is appealing, inhaling it will give you strength. “Don’t inhale putrid smells,” she warned him once. “They’re more than just smells. Everything is more than it seems.”
Just shy of the modern apartment building that housed his granny, Hudson caught a scent of something rotting. He covered his mouth with his hand and jogged into the building as some young hip businessman was coming out.
When you thought of a granny like Granny Foster, unconcerned by appearances, who followed “the old ways” and who used voodoo dolls to handle conflicts, you didn’t think of finding that granny in an ultra-modern, open loft apartment.
When Hudson was a kid, Granny Foster had lived in an old house near where Hudson and his parents lived. By the time of the fire, though, Granny had moved. She said the energy was better downtown. And the place was closer to men. Granny Foster had started dating.
Hudson grinned as he took the sleek black elevator up to the sixth floor of the old warehouse that had been converted to lofts. Thinking about Granny Foster dating always cheered him up.
Hudson had never met Grandpa Foster. He’d died before Hudson was born. It was hard to imagine a man strong enough for the likes of Granny Foster. So far, none of her dates had gotten even a semipermanent position.
Hudson stepped off the elevator, listened to the ding as it closed behind him, and strode over a polished cement floor down the far end of the hall. Someone on this floor was baking cookies. They smelled like sugar cookies. He was sure that someone wasn’t Granny. Her idea of baking didn’t result in something as yummy as a cookie.
Two steps before Hudson reached Granny’s door, it opened. Granny was wearing a red-and-green plaid shirt with her baggy jeans. “You’re late.”
Hudson hadn’t told her he was coming.
He chose to ignore her words. He leaned over to hug her. She smelled like exotic spices … and peaches. He inhaled.
Granny Foster’s power didn’t come from her size. She was only five feet, one inch. And she was as skinny as Hudson was. He’d have been concerned about breaking her when he hugged her if he hadn’t learned over the years that she had a power that was much stronger than her barely encased bones. Nothing was going to break Granny Foster.
A fan of being out in the sun, Granny Foster’s skin was dark and thick like cracked leather, and she’d had wrinkles layered on wrinkles for as long as Hudson could remember. She’d also had wild jaw-length hair that was always in disarray. Her hair was white; apparently her hair had turned white when she was not much older than Hudson was now. He’d never asked her why. Somehow, neither the wrinkles nor the white hair made Granny appear old or weak. Combined with her sharp features and unusually bright blue eyes, they made her look tough, which she was.
When he let her go, Granny Foster kicked the door shut and motioned for Hudson to follow her. Instead of leading him to the black leather sofa by the wall-to-wall window that looked out over downtown, she led him to the center of the room and pointed.
“Is that a fire pit?” Hudson asked, staring at the small, stone-walled circle with the burning coals within.
Granny waved a hand. “Fake. But it will do.”
Her voice did not match her body. Deep and gravelly, Granny’s voice belonged in a trucker’s body. It was one of the reasons she was scary. When she spoke, her guttural tones sounded like a demon was controlling her and using her body to speak to helpless humans.
“Well, aren’t you in a snit?” Granny said.
Hudson said nothing. He’d learned that speaking as little as possible was the best way to interact with Granny. You had to wait for her to say whatever she was going to say and then go away and try to figure it out later.
“Sit.” She pointed at an orange pillow on the floor by the fire pit.
Hudson sat.
“It’s wafting from you like you rolled in excrement, Hudson. You have to let it go.”
“How?”
“Leave it.”
“What?”
“The job.” Granny dropped her eighty-two-year-old body into an impressive-for-her-age cross-legged position. “You need to leave that job, Hudson.”
Hudson frowned. He thought so, too, but he also thought his thoughts were the ravings of an idiot. He was making more money than he’d ever made before … not that it was enough yet, but it was a step in the right direction. What was he going to do? Go back to making minimum wage and dealing with all the jerks who came into the convenience store? Who treated him like he was a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of their shoes?
“I can’t, Granny,” he said.
“Mm.”
Hudson thought about Granny and her predictions. Maybe she knew something.
“Why should I quit?” Hudson asked. “What do you know about Fazbear’s Frights?”
She squinted at him. “All I need to know.” She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I care about you, Hudson. Quit your job.”
There she went again. Saying nothing substantive. It was just more of her silly voodoo. Hudson shook his head. “If I give in …” He shook his head again. “I can’t.”
Granny sighed. “Your path is your own.” She held his gaze for several minutes. Then she popped up. “Come on. Let’s have pizza. I’ll call it in.”
Hudson grinned. “Sure, why not.”
* * *
That night at Fazbear’s Frights passed without incident, and Hudson was so relaxed when he went home after his shift that he actually went to sleep and stayed asleep for five hours. He returned to his job late in the morning, just in time to watch Barry and Duane unload a coffin-size wood crate from their truck and carry it inside the building.
Accepting the key ring from Virgil, Hudson trotted up the front steps of the building and watched his friends carry the box down the hall.
“What is that?” Hudson called out.
“Come and see,” Duane said. “It’s going to be mind-blowing. You won’t believe where this was found.”
Hudson hooked his keys on his belt and followed his friends.
“Where are we going?” Hudson asked.
“The inner hall,” Barry directed. “That’s where they want it.”
“Get this,” Duane said. “This was found inside a hidden room in one of the pizzerias!”
Barry smiled. “Faith is really excited about it. She said they’re going to put it in a hidden room here now, and it’s going to be the best feature of the whole attraction.”
Hudson looked down at his nightstick and adjusted it so Barry wouldn’t see how flushed his face was. “Is she here now?” Hudson asked as casually as he could.
It must have sounded good because Barry just as casually replied, “No. She’s spending the day shopping for fabric and paint or whatever to go with this new prop.”
While they talked, Barry and Duane grunted and shuffled their way down the long hall. It didn’t occur to Hudson to offer help. He was too busy thinking about Faith to be thoughtful.
He noticed the hallway was free of boxes in this section. More character parts had been added to the walls. He thought there were at least a dozen or more new pairs of eyes peering out from the walls.
Barry and Duane dropped the crate on the linoleum with a resounding thud. Hudson flinched, sure he heard, on the heels of the thud, a metallic sound coming from inside the crate.
Duane plopped his butt on the crate and wiped sweat from his face with the hem of his T-shirt.
“I left the crowbar near Pirate’s Cove,” Barry said. “I’ll go get it.”
“You’re not going to open that, are you?” Hudson asked.
“What?” Duane asked. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of what’s in this box.” He looked up at Hudson. “You think we haven’t noticed how jumpy you are around this stuff? You’re letting this weirdness”—he waved a hand around at the walls—“get to you. And that’s your choice, man, but you’re giving in to the power of suggestion. Basic psychology. What you expect is what happens. Self-fulfilling prophecy and all that. I know you took psych, too, Barry. Remember the experiments they did that proved that what you see when you look at things in the world depends not as much on what’s actually there but more on the assumptions you’re making when you look at things. Remember?”
“Sure,” Barry said, “but it’s not for you to tell Hudson—”
Hudson touched Barry’s arm. “It’s okay.” He kept his face nonchalant and said, “I need to go on my rounds.” He strode away, but he could hear Barry talking as he did.
“You can be a real jerk, you know that?” Barry said.
“What did I do?” Duane asked, sounding genuinely baffled.
Of course, he wouldn’t get it. Duane, as far as Hudson knew, had never been afraid of anything in his life. He was always the first one to jump off the roof when they were trying to “fly,” always the first one out on the ice to check the pond for ice-skating, always the first one to charge into a fight to break it up on the playground. Barry was no slouch at being courageous, either. He once got a $1,000 reward from an old lady when he climbed a hundred-foot tree to rescue the woman’s cat.
And Hudson? What had he done? He’d hid from Lewis instead of fighting back.
Hudson shook himself mentally and stomped down the hall to do his rounds.
* * *
A half hour later, Hudson was on his way to the office when Duane called to him. “You have to come and see this thing. It is creeptastic!”
“Leave him alone,” Barry said.
“Oh, come on. It’s not a demon. It’s an old animatronic, a whole animatronic! It’s amazing. Look at the detail!”
Hudson wanted nothing but to go to the office, shut the door, lock it, and take a nap. But he wasn’t going to give Duane the satisfaction. So he strolled down the hall as if he couldn’t care less about what was in the crate.
When he reached his friends, he stopped dead. Trying to wrestle the animatronic upright and get it propped against the wall, Barry and Duane had their arms around the most bizarre-looking thing Hudson had ever seen.
Right. Bizarre. He was using that word because using the word terrifying would mean that he was afraid. And he was afraid, but he sure didn’t want to admit it to anyone, including himself.
Hudson called on an old trick he’d used when Lewis was on a rampage. He narrowed his eyes until his focus was almost down to a pinpoint. He’d learned when he was young that when your perspective was that narrow, what you were facing wasn’t as horrifying.
Using that pinpoint focus, all Hudson could see propped between Barry and Duane was a set of white staring eyes with heavy green lids. That was enough to freak Hudson out.
But it was also a small enough part of the thing his friends were wrestling with that he could act relaxed and unconcerned. Testing that theory, he spoke. “What are you doing with it? Dancing?”
His voice sounded normal and light. He congratulated himself.
“Faith wants the thing standing here against this wall,” Barry said. He grunted and shifted his side of the life-size animatronic. “Did you get those hooks attached?” he asked Duane. “Or are you just going to flirt with it?”
Duane pulled a couple hooks out of his pocket. “You hold your side in place. I’ll lean against my side, and I’ll attach the hooks to the wall. Then we’ll switch places and set up the other side.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Hudson said, turning to go to the office.
“Want to go for dinner after work?” Barry called out.
Hudson stopped and looked back. “I can’t. Sorry. Virgil isn’t coming in this evening. I’ll be here until tomorrow morning.”
“Sorry,” Duane said. “Sucks to be you.”
“Thanks for that,” Hudson said, shaking his head.
“I’m just sayin’,” Duane said.
“Maybe the SEALS can teach you not to stick your foot in your mouth,” Barry said to Duane as Hudson was walking away.
* * *
Hudson fully expected to have an easy night of it. In spite of the addition of the new animatronic, he was feeling good when he closed the building up for the night. Maybe pretending to be relaxed was actually making him feel more relaxed. He figured he could make the self-fulfilling prophecy thing work for him.
And it did … until he decided to poke the bear; that was when he got all courageous and resolved to face his fears.
He’d spend the rest of the night paying for it.
Normally, Hudson did his rounds in the same direction and the same order. But tonight, he was eager. So he started at the end, intending to reverse his usual direction. This brought him to the new animatronic near the beginning of his circuit, instead of the end.
As he approached the scruffy thing, he planned to face it right off and get it out of the way. He was going to rob it of its power to upset him.
Good plan, but he forgot to squint his eyes.
And he wasn’t planning on the thing talking to him, either.
Hudson strode down the inner hall, and he found the new animatronic hooked to the wall just where Duane and Barry left it. Posed in a friendly hand-up-to-wave position, the animatronic’s posture wasn’t threatening. But really, anything that looked like this was threatening, no matter what it was doing.
Hudson faced the animatronic, then stumbled back and sucked in his breath. What in the world was this thing supposed to be?
At first glance, the robotic character attached to the wall appeared to be a rabbit. Sort of. With fur of greenish yellow, this was no ordinary rabbit, though not even a cartoon rabbit. It was the kind of rabbit Dr. Frankenstein might have created if he’d wanted to build a rabbit instead of a man.
Ears torn, dozens of pieces of the body’s and limbs’ yellow-green fur ripped away … or chewed away—it was hard to tell—this was a rabbit that would never be cuddled by any child. It shouldn’t have been seen by a child, either.
Where the fur was torn, you could see metal pieces of the animatronic’s structure. Exposed wires linked to an oxidized metal frame and … something else. What was that?
Hudson couldn’t help himself. He leaned in to get a better look.
Was that?
No, it couldn’t be.
He studied the reddish and grayish areas that could be seen through gaps in the fur and metal. It looked like …
Hudson took a step back and clutched at his nightstick. He realized he was breathing too fast, and he bent over to get a grip on himself.
He needed to go back to squinting. But he couldn’t. He had to know.
Stepping closer again, Hudson tilted his head to get a better look at what was hiding under the fur and metal. He was going to show himself that his crazy flight of gruesome fancy was just that: fancy.
But it wasn’t. Hudson lifted a finger and carefully extended his hand far enough to touch what was inside the ravaged fur and the exposed metal. He put the tip of his finger against the reddish material.
And he jumped back so fast he lost his balance and fell against the opposite wall.
It was! It was tissue. Maybe not, no, probably not human tissue. But it was some kind of bodily tissue.
Who would want to terrify someone with gore like this?
It couldn’t be real!
“It’s real,” a scratchy voice said.
Hudson scrambled back.
It spoke! The animatronic spoke?
No, that wasn’t possible. Duane and Barry told him the thing was completely nonfunctional. Experts were going to be brought in to work on it, and even then, they figured it was beyond repair.
“If you weren’t so stupid, I’d tell you more about it,” the voice said.
The voice was distinctive, way too distinctive. A base voice with a burr-like rasp, the voice had a hint of a Southern accent.
Hudson knew that voice.
It was Mr. Atkin’s voice.
Hudson drew his stick.
How could Mr. Atkin’s voice be coming out of this thing?
Or did the voice come from the animatronic? No. Hudson didn’t think so.
The voice seemed to fill his head, coming more from inside his ears than outside of them. He couldn’t pin down a direction.
“Who said that?” Hudson asked. He looked around, then looked back at the animatronic. It hung on the wall, its tooth-filled mouth completely still.
Hudson turned his head to look up and down the hall.
“Stupid,” the voice said again.
Hudson whipped his gaze back to the animatronic’s mouth. It was exactly as it had been before.
Hudson stared at the mouth for several minutes. The voice didn’t speak. The hallway was silent.
Hudson blinked and looked down the length of the animatronic, staring at the jagged lower edge of the fur ending above exposed ankle … bones? Were those bones?
Nah. That was stupid. They had to be metal supports discolored by age.
