Five Nights at Freddy's Fazbear Frights Collection, page 109
“We don’t have any,” Shelly repeated.
“I want a soda,” Ory said again.
He must not have wanted one badly because he was still playing with the robotic skeleton. He’d gotten it to climb up to the second-floor of the small house.
Reed jumped up and headed toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Pickle asked.
Reed stopped.
Good question. He didn’t normally wander around the Girards’ house as if he lived there. He’d been upstairs, of course, to both of the twins’ bedrooms, and even in Ory’s bedroom. But he’d only been in their rooms when they were in the rooms. What reason did he have to go upstairs now? What reason … besides his uncontrollable need to know if something was clutching onto the exterior walls of the house by the second-floor windows?
“Uh, sorry. I just thought of a book I need to borrow. I was going to go get it. I should have asked first.”
Pickle studied Reed for a few seconds, and then he shrugged. “Sure. Go ahead. You don’t need to ask. You’re family.”
This, for some reason, made Reed choke and cough, as if the words created an emotional hairball in his throat. But he knew it wasn’t the words that were choking him. It was his guilt. No one in the Girard family would have done what he did to Julius, even if Julius was still just locked into his metal skeleton in the robotics classroom. They sure wouldn’t have let Julius get tortured, possibly to death, by Pickle’s remote. The second they even had an inkling that it might be happening, they would have gone to check.
What Reed lacked was initiative. Motivation. Impetus.
Aha! Nisus. An effort to attain a goal.
Reed shook his head. His brain was weird. Here he was in a total freak-out because he was pretty sure he’d tortured someone who was now climbing up the outside of the Girards’ house in a giant robotic exoskeleton, and his brain was defining words of the day.
Maybe if Reed had had more nisus this evening, he could have saved Julius before Julius started crawling up the side of the house.
Stop it! Reed screamed in his head. Julius is not on the side of the house!
Oh, how Reed hoped he was out of his mind. He had a very, very, very bad feeling, though, that he was as sane as anyone. For some reason, he’d just become clairvoyant. Or was it omniscient?
Or maybe it was just observant and sensory-aware. Because he could still hear something that was definitely not tree limbs crawling against the house.
Reed realized that Pickle had given him permission to go upstairs, and Reed was still standing here. What was wrong with him?
He shook himself and strode to the stairs. Then he ran up the stairs two at a time.
On the landing, Reed stopped and looked around. Now that he was here, what was he going to do?
If he looked out a window and actually saw what he was afraid he’d see, what was he going to do about it?
How could he get rid of Julius and his exosuit without his friends knowing? Heck, for that matter, how could he get rid of Julius, period?
Reed looked up and down the hall in complete indecision. What now?
Shelly’s tidy white-and-green room was to the right. Shelly loved white and green. “The colors of purity and life,” she once told Reed.
Pickle’s cluttered, black-walled room was to the left. Ory’s race-car motif bedroom was across from Pickle’s room. A small pale yellow half bath was straight ahead of Reed.
Light suddenly shined through a window in the bathroom … from outside. Reed gulped.
He remembered that the Girards had motion-sensor lights in the backyard. One of them had just come on.
Reed stared at the window intently. But nothing else happened. Except for the light, he didn’t see anything. Nothing appeared in the window—no shadows, no movement.
He couldn’t hear anything moving anymore, either. He strained to listen. Nothing.
Remembering he was supposed to be up here looking for a book, he figured he should head to Pickle’s room and find something that he could come up with some plausible explanation for wanting. He ignored the prickly sensation on the back of his neck as he took a step in the dark hallway.
Images of Julius’s bloody, maimed body jumped into the forefront of Reed’s mind, and he had to swallow down a scream. It’s just my out-of-control imagination, he thought.
Flipping a switch just inside the doorway of Pickle’s room, Reed gratefully left the dark hall and entered his friend’s domain. Stuffed with books, CDs, and scientific equipment, Pickle’s room more resembled a laboratory than a bedroom. Only the twin bed with its constellations bedspread suggested the room belonged to a boy just into his teens. The rest of the space screamed, “Genius.”
Reed crossed to Pickle’s wall-to-wall bookshelf. He went to the section where he knew Pickle kept fiction. Pickle read more nonfiction than fiction, but he did have a selection of sci-fi books he claimed were as educational as many of his science books. Reed plucked one of those books from the shelf without looking at it. After he had the book, he stepped over to the window and looked out past Pickle’s gray curtains. Unfortunately, the light in the room gave him a view of little more than his own reflection. He hadn’t thought that through, obviously. You don’t try to see outside at night from a well-lit room.
But even with the reflection of the room in the way, Reed could see enough to tell that nothing was outside the window. Clutching the book he’d taken from the shelf, he turned toward the door. He spotted bloody tissues on Pickle’s nightstand. Pickle’s nose. Reed was supposed to remind him to ice his nose. He’d do that when he went back downstairs.
If he got to go back downstairs.
What if Julius, in his probably ruined state, was lurking outside one of the windows up here just waiting for Reed to appear so he could crash through the glass and get revenge? Why was Reed even up here? He should’ve been hiding far away from where he thought Julius and his exoskeleton was. Who went toward danger instead of away from it?
Someone who wasn’t a hundred percent sure the danger was real.
Reed had to know whether his thoughts were right or crazy.
He made himself return to the hallway so he could continue his search for whatever was—or wasn’t—out there.
It was still dark throughout the upstairs. And it was still silent.
Reed crept across the hall into Ory’s bedroom. At the threshold, he tripped over something and caught himself by the doorjamb. His heart rate sped up. He’d heard a metallic clink when his foot made contact with whatever it was. What if it was an exoskeleton? He quickly turned on the light, almost afraid to see what was on the floor.
It was just a toy firetruck.
Reed exhaled.
He looked around Ory’s chaotic mess. He couldn’t remember seeing so many toy cars in one place, not even in a toy store.
Ory had one of those rugs with a race track on it. Toy cars were scattered all over the track, and beyond the race track rug onto the wall-to-wall carpet, too. Nothing unusual here. A bright red shade with a cartoon race car on it was pulled over Ory’s single window. Reed couldn’t bring himself to open that shade to look outside.
As he flipped the light switch and stood once again in the hall, it occurred to Reed that turning on lights hadn’t been that smart. Not only did the interior lights impair his night vision, but the lights telegraphed where he was. If something was outside, it could be hiding when he turned on the lights.
Well, that was just dumb. Why would Julius be hiding?
If it was Julius outside.
If anything was outside.
Reed wasn’t sure at this point that either possibility would bring him relief: either there was a broken and gory monster clinging onto the side of the house, or Reed was having a complete mental breakdown. Either way, he couldn’t just stand here forever.
“Reed?” Shelly called from the bottom of the stairs.
Reed froze as if he’d been caught reading her diary or something. “Yeah?” His voice broke.
“We’re going down to the corner to get sodas. Do you want to come with?”
“No, that’s okay. You go ahead. I’ll stay here if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure. Just don’t go in Ory’s room. You’ll probably break a foot on one of his cars. I’m pretty sure he has some kind of vehicle assembly line in his room.”
Shelly snorted when Ory protested in the background, “I do not! Wait. What’s an assembly line?”
Reed smiled. For a second, he felt almost normal as he listened to Pickle, Shelly, and Ory head to the door.
“Oh, Reed?” Pickle called.
Reed went rigid again. He cleared his throat. “What?”
“Don’t tell Mom where we went if she comes home early,” Pickle yelled up the stairs.
“You’re an idiot,” Shelly told her brother. “You think she doesn’t know everything we do?”
“She does?” Ory asked in an awed tone. “Everything?”
“Everything,” Shelly said emphatically as the front door opened.
Reed listened to the stomps and shuffles of his friends leaving the house. The door slammed. He waited. He heard the lock slide into place, and he said a silent thank-you for the way Shelly had adopted her mother’s safety consciousness.
At the same time, he became ultra aware that he was completely, one hundred percent alone in the Girards’ house. If what he thought was outside was indeed outside, this could be bad for him. Really bad.
What if Julius had been waiting for an opportunity just like this?
But why? Why would Julius wait if he was a lacerated monster? Wouldn’t he just want to kill anything in sight?
Wait. Now Reed’s brain was really getting way out there. Just because Julius might have been mangled by the exoskeleton Reed had locked him into and Ory had inadvertently made it do things that tortured Julius with mind-crumbling pain didn’t mean Julius had suddenly turned into a killer. He was still just a kid, maybe a horrible kid and maybe now even a badly injured kid, but just a kid.
But was he just a kid? Not really. Julius was a really mean kid.
Reed would never forget the day Julius first showed up in his school, in third grade. He wouldn’t forget it because that’s when his own torture started. Julius had been tormenting Reed for six years.
Julius seemed to thrive on humiliating other kids, and he seemed to get downright euphoric when he hurt them. For all Reed knew, Julius was already a killer. At the very least, he’d probably been murdering and dissecting squirrels for years.
So if Julius was now in unspeakable pain because of what Reed did, it made sense that he’d be even more homicidal now. Reed didn’t know for sure, but he figured agony brought out the worst in a person.
The house creaked, and Reed leaped out of his pointless thoughts and back into the dark hall.
That sound was just the house creaking, wasn’t it?
He listened for several minutes. When he didn’t hear anything else, he crept down the hall to Shelly’s room. He knew he wouldn’t step on anything in here. She was obsessed with order. Going slowly, he felt his way through her room until he reached her window, which he knew overlooked the front of the house. Standing back from the edge of the window, he lifted the edge of her heavy green curtains and peeked outside.
Nothing was out there that shouldn’t have been. Below the window, the porch roof stretched along the front of the house. By the street, the mailbox leaned a little to the left.
Two large cedar trees stretched their branches toward Shelly’s window. One of the branches brushed against the side of the house. Although, as Reed had thought, it wasn’t windy, there was a slight breeze, and the branch moved against the siding. Was this the sound Reed had heard earlier? Had he gotten himself all worked up for nothing?
He hoped so, but he didn’t think he was worried about nothing. Scanning the night, he searched for any sign of movement. He saw none.
Stepping away from the window, Reed picked his way out of Shelly’s room. In the hallway, he hesitated. Should he go into Mr. and Mrs. Girard’s room?
He looked around.
As long as he didn’t touch anything, why not? It wasn’t like he was going to turn on the light and snoop around. He just wanted to look out their big window, which overlooked the backyard.
Reed crossed the hall and stepped into the master bedroom. A night-light near the master bath cast a dim glow throughout the room. It created creepy shadows, but at least it made maneuvering to the window easy. All he had to do was swivel a rocking chair away from the window and nudge aside the curtain. Then he was able to see …
Nothing unusual. Again, the yard looked the way it should. All was quiet.
Enough of this!
Reed dropped the curtain and strode from the room. He looked over the hall, then ran down the steps and returned to the family room.
The family room looked the way it had when he’d left it, minus the Girard siblings. Apparently, Pickle had a put a small log on the fire after Reed went upstairs, because the fire was flaring up behind the metal screen that protected the room from stray sparks. Pickle’s book was on the end table next to his dad’s easy chair. Shelly’s book was lying on the sofa.
Reed sank to the cushy carpet.
He looked around. Where was the little robot?
He didn’t see it. Did Ory take it with him?
Reed spotted the remote on the floor next to the sofa, but the robot wasn’t in sight. Maybe Ory got it stuck under a piece of furniture.
Reed turned and looked at Shelly’s miniature house. It really was an amazing thing. It seemed to be accurate in every little detail. All the furniture he could see on the front porch and inside the house through the open windows was exactly like the real furniture in the normal-size house. What about the art and stuff? he wondered.
He scooted over to examine the house more closely.
As he figured she would have, Shelly had re-created all the art and knickknacks inside the house. Anything in this real house was in the toy house. She’d even put pencil marks with dates on the wall just inside the kitchen doorway, the marks and dates that chronicled the Girard kids’ growth over the years. And outside, one of the downspouts was bent just like the real one out front was. It got bent when Reed and Pickle were trying to learn how to throw a football. One of their errant tosses, though forceful, went badly askew and left a permanent indentation in the metal.
Reed shifted again so he could look at the miniature version of the room he sat in.
“Wow,” he breathed.
There was a super-miniature house inside the miniature house! Talk about realism!
It shouldn’t have surprised him that Shelly was that thorough with her model house. Shelly never did anything halfway. And if she couldn’t do it well, she stopped doing it.
Reed remembered finger painting with Pickle and Shelly in kindergarten. The teacher had been wandering around telling everyone they were doing great, but when she got to Shelly, she didn’t say anything.
“Aren’t I doing great too?” Shelly asked.
“Of course, kiddo,” the teacher said.
“You’re lying,” Shelly accused. “I can tell by your tone of voice.” She stood up and put her hands on her hips, careful to avoid getting paint on her red pants.
Reed remembered watching the teacher think it over. She finally decided on truth. “Well, you aren’t really getting the point of finger painting. It’s to be free with the color and have fun. You’re trying too hard, making everything too perfect.”
“Fine,” Shelly said. She reached up, grabbed her paper, and marched over to put her finger painting in the trash.
Reed grinned at the memory. Then he saw something silver and shiny glinting through the window at the back of the mini-model house’s family room. He leaned forward and canted his head so he could see behind the mini-model house.
Aha. That’s where the little robot went. It was inside the miniature house, behind the mini-miniature house.
Reed started to reach into the miniature house to rescue the robot. Before he could get a hand in through the front door, though, the little robotic skeleton raised up off the floor of the house.
Reed jumped, then started to shake his head at his edginess.
And that’s when Julius sprang up from behind the model house.
Reed scrambled backward, screaming.
In his mind, he called what he was seeing Julius because his vivid imagination had prepared him to see the boy the way he looked now. But Julius didn’t look a thing like Julius.
He was, in fact, exactly what Reed’s mind had known Julius would be. Now nothing more than a fleshy octopus-like mass of pulpy limbs attached to a metal frame, Julius could no longer be called a boy. He couldn’t be called human.
Reed wasn’t even sure Julius was alive.
Yes, Julius moved, but Reed didn’t know if that was Julius initiating the movement or if his corpse was just being controlled by the metal framework latched onto Julius like a loathsome external parasite.
Julius’s face was slack, so there was no life there. It was slack because it looked like the bone structure of his forehead, cheeks, and jaw had been pulverized. His features were so distorted he resembled some kind of crudely sewn cloth version of himself. No longer framed by wavy blond hair because that hair was now sticky and stringy with congealed blood, Julius’s face was like a repulsive doll’s face, a doll much worse than Alexa’s baby doll with the staring black eyes.
Julius’s eyes were a thousand times more disconcerting than empty black ones. His eyes had rolled back in his head so all that was showing was the whites—the murky, cloudy whites. Those ghostly whites made him look like a sightless zombie.
But, like a zombie, Julius, alive or not, was moving. He was moving determinedly toward Reed.
Reed willed his legs to work, and he struggled to find his feet. Looking wildly around the room, he tried to decide on the best escape route.
The windows?
They had a complicated latching system. He wouldn’t be able to get them open in time.
