Five Nights at Freddy's Fazbear Frights Collection, page 177
Make it stop, Joel thought. He didn’t know who he was addressing. It was a universal appeal, a weak command from a peon in a universe that didn’t care.
Joel didn’t want to see anymore. He couldn’t take watching another piece of who he thought he was falling away.
Perhaps because he literally couldn’t withstand the trauma of seeing anything else, his “wish” was granted.
Joel’s eyes dropped out of his head. He actually felt them disconnect and roll down his cheeks.
As soon as his eyes left his body, he went blind. As horrifying as this was, at least Joel didn’t have to watch his eyeballs drop to the gravel beneath his feet. He didn’t have to see a sharp point of basalt puncture one of the brown irises.
He did hear it, though. His ears ever-so-helpfully delivered to him the sickening splat of his eyes reaching the ground.
His ears were also still doing their duty when Joel’s fingers fell away from his hands. He heard his fingers clatter onto the ground like sticks hitting rocks.
Before he could even begin to process this inconceivable mutilation, his hands disconnected from his arms. It felt like wires wrapped around the tendons and tore his hands from his wrists.
He heard what was left of his hands land beneath him. The sound was a crunchy thwack, similar to what he once heard when he’d accidentally dropped his empty orange juice glass in his Fazcrunch cereal.
For a second, Joel was nauseated by the sound. But only for a second. He didn’t have time to linger for long over the sound of his hands hitting the ground because his awareness was immediately yanked to a new form of suffering.
Now he could feel something pushing its way out through his empty eye sockets. It felt like some pulsing form was being pumped through the openings, something like a balloon or a ball being inflated. He could feel the pressure around the space where his eyes used to be. The pressure built and built until he could sense whatever had been inflated was protruding out over his cheekbones.
Once again, he didn’t have long to think about this new abomination because the following one started immediately. The next thing to terrorize him was his skin.
He felt his skin beginning to snap apart and slip from his body. The sensation was similar to what he’d felt when sunburned skin started to peel, but it was much stronger than that … because it wasn’t just the top layer of skin that was unraveling from him; it was every layer. His skin was flaying away from his muscles and his tendons. As his skin parted from what was beneath it, he felt the breeze sting his exposed tissues.
It felt like some unseen hand was pulling his skin from his body, paring wet sections from him as if he was a fish being filleted. He could hear the soggy strips slap the ground. He knew long ribbons of his skin were piling up beneath him because every sinew of his body felt exposed.
Joel knew …
Nothing.
Finally, after being subjected to more heinous misery than any human could have been expected to survive, his consciousness succumbed to whatever force was orchestrating his transformation. The person that was Joel ceased to exist.
* * *
The partial moon dripped the palest of white glows above the tall mountain peaks east of town when Chief Montgomery’s SUV rounded the corner and stopped just inside the stone-marked Glenwood Fields entrance. His radio squawked as soon as he turned off his engine. He picked up his mic, keyed it on, and listened.
“Chief,” his dispatcher said, “I just got confirmation from that Glenwood resident that the strange man he saw was headed toward the entrance.”
“That’s where I am,” the chief responded. “I’ll check it out.” He put the mic back into its holder and got out of his SUV.
The angle at which the moon brushed the mountain range told the chief it was about 3:00 a.m. or so. Night still wrapped its blanket around his town.
A surprisingly small man whose personality and authority didn’t match his short stature, the chief grabbed his hat and pulled it over thinning brown hair. He hefted his flashlight and got out of his vehicle.
Chief Montgomery held his flashlight stiffly as he aimed it around the subdivision entrance. He’d been tense all day, ever since Jenna Bell had called him in the early morning hours the day before. The long hours that Caleb had been missing had taken a toll on Montgomery and his officers. He felt like he’d aged at least five years since that call. Several times during the day, he’d told Jenna everything would be all right. But he wasn’t sure he believed it.
The chief turned in a slow circle, scanning the areas illuminated by the glow of his flashlight. He didn’t see anything at first. But then he did.
He froze, concentrating on the strange shape hunched in the shadows just beyond the range of his flashlight. He stepped forward so his light would land directly on the form.
Montgomery gulped and took a step back. He immediately felt silly. His response had been ridiculous. What he was looking at was nothing to be upset about.
The chief’s flashlight beam lit up a large, misshapen plastic boy positioned right at the edge of the road. The plastic figure had a mostly featureless face—no nose, no cheeks, no chin. All the face had was two bulging black eyes and an open, darkness-filled mouth.
Montgomery had seen a few figures like this around town. It was part of some Freddy Fazbear public safety initiative to deter reckless drivers in areas where kids were running around. Most of the figures he’d seen were much smaller than this one, and this one was oddly contorted, as if some of the plastic had been deformed in the molding process.
For some reason, the shape disturbed the chief. He was spooked, but he couldn’t possibly have explained why if anyone had asked him.
He shook his head. He was just overtired; that was all. Too much stress. The chief started to move on and search beyond the bizarre figure, but then his light landed on something piled up on the ground. He tilted his flashlight downward and frowned in confusion. What was that? Mulch? What was mulch doing out on the road?
Leaning closer, he shined his light over what looked like glistening pinkish-brown ribbons tangled together. Not ribbon, obviously. The mass of material appeared to be something organic, and for some reason, it gave him the heebie-jeebies. He shook off the shiver that ran through him.
The ribbon-like lengths looked a little like freshly stripped bark. He glanced to the side of the road, at the trees clustered near the subdivision’s entrance, looking to see if a tree had been ravaged by a vandal or maybe an animal. All of the trees looked okay, but …
From the left of the trees he was focused on, Montgomery heard a whimper. He froze and listened. Was that really a whimper, or the cry of some injured animal?
He tilted his head and concentrated.
And there it was again.
That wasn’t an animal! It sounded like a child.
The chief immediately shifted his light toward the ditch at the side of the road. That was where the sound was coming from.
He hurried over to the edge of the road and aimed his light into the ditch. He couldn’t see anything.
“Hello?” he called out. “Caleb?”
The whimper turned into a cry.
Montgomery turned and ran toward his SUV. Reaching for his mic, he keyed it on. “Rankin, get the EMTs out here to the Glenwood Fields entrance. I think I’ve found the kid!”
He didn’t wait for a response. He spun around and ran past the weird Kids at Play figure. When he got to the edge of the ditch, he slid down its side. “I’m coming, Caleb. Hang on!”
The weak cry that answered him made his heart leap with hope. He scrabbled toward the sound, and when he saw the small boy wedged behind a pile of rock, he dropped to his knees.
“I’m here, Caleb. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
As Chief Montgomery took off his jacket and laid it over the boy’s narrow shoulders, he couldn’t help but grin in triumph. He’d found the kid! Everything was going to be all right.
You are so gross!” Aimee turned her head away from her friend. “I can’t even look at you.”
Mary Jo’s rat-a-tat-tat laugh spewed across the table at Aimee, along with some of her partially chewed pizza. She’d been showing off how she could flip a mouthful of pizza on her tongue, “Just like they flip the whole pizzas in the oven.”
Who did that? It was disgusting.
Without looking at it, Aimee flicked away whatever had just landed on her forearm. She felt a wadded-up napkin hit her on the cheek. She sighed and turned back toward Mary Jo, careful to keep her eyes squinted in case Mary Jo was doing something else that was grody.
“Why do you do stuff like that?” Aimee asked.
Mary Jo laughed again. “Because I can.”
Aimee shook her head. How was it she’d been friends with this freak of nature for eight years?
Instead of being at home, curled up in her cozy room on her frilly pink window seat, reading the book her dad had bought for her on his latest business trip, Aimee sat across from Mary Jo in one of the red booths at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a half-eaten slice on the table between them. On the stage to their right, the pizzeria’s animatronic performers—Freddy, the brown bear in the top hat; Bonnie, the blue rabbit with the red bow tie; and Chica, the yellow chick with the bib and the mouthy pink cupcake with googly eyes—were performing a toe-tapping rock song. The music was loud, but it still didn’t drown out all the other noise in the restaurant. The place was filled with animated conversation, laughter, happy squeals, utensils clinking against plates, and the pings and beeps and warbles from the games in the arcade just off the dining room.
Although Aimee liked the pizza, she didn’t enjoy the raucous chaos at Freddy’s. She was a quiet girl, more content by herself than in crowds.
Mary Jo, on the other hand, loved the craziness at Freddy’s. She especially loved the music. At the moment, she was bobbing in her seat, right on beat with the music. Her frizzy brown hair had a different, syncopated, rhythm—bouncing on the offbeat. Mary Jo’s hair, like Mary Jo herself, had always had a mind of its own, even when she was three. When Aimee had worn her blonde hair in pigtails, a braid, or a ponytail in preschool—like nearly all the other three-year-old girls, Mary Jo never wanted to restrain her hair. She refused to let her mother control it with hair ties or braids or clips. She wanted it to fly out from her head like a lion’s mane, wild and free, the way Mary Jo liked to be. And even back then, Mary Jo usually got what she wanted.
Mary Jo and Aimee were exact opposites. That’s why they had been friends for so long, according to Aimee’s mom. They balanced each other out.
Like right now. Aimee was frowning, her face screwed up in protest of the noise and her weirdo friend’s antics. Mary Jo was smiling widely, flashing her big mouthful of equally big teeth, now stained with sauce from the pizza. Yuck. She had sauce on her round cheeks, too. Aimee didn’t bother to tell Mary Jo about the sauce. Mary Jo wouldn’t care; she might even go so far as to put sauce on the other side, too, and call it war paint. Whatever was normal was often the opposite of what Mary Jo wanted to do.
Mary Jo took another big bite of pizza, chewing with her mouth open. Aimee made a face and pushed away the remains of the piece in front of her. She’d lost her appetite, which was never as big as Mary Jo’s anyway.
“Are you done?” Mary Jo asked.
Aimee nodded. She didn’t bother to explain why.
“You need to eat more. You’re bony,” Mary Jo said.
“So what? You’re pudgy. You’re always saying not everyone should be alike.”
Mary Jo swallowed her pizza—thank goodness—and picked up her soda to take a long suck through the straw. The clackety-suctioning sound that indicated the bottom of the glass prompted her to pull back and scowl at the ice cubes that remained.
“You’re right, I’m wrong,” Mary Jo said. “Okay, so if you’re done, do you want to play in the Hiding Maze?”
Aimee shrugged and nodded. She still would rather be home reading, but she’d predicted Mary Jo would want to play in the Hiding Maze, so she’d brought a new book with her. It was tucked into the cute fanny pack her mom had bought her, along with strawberry-flavored lip gloss, her hair brush, and some money.
The Hiding Maze, short for Freddy’s Hiding Maze, was a fancy hide-and-seek game played in a network of tunnels that ran between the walls enclosing Freddy’s main areas—dining, arcade, kitchen, restrooms, storage, stage, etc.—and the exterior walls of the restaurant. It was pretty cool, actually. The hiding places were little cubbyholes with doors; the doors had tiny windows you could peer out of when you were hiding—probably so kids didn’t feel trapped. The windows were made of that special glass that looked like a window on one side and a mirror on the other. If you were a seeker, you could only see the mirrors on the cubbyholes as you walked down the tunnel, while hiders could look out without being spotted. Even though the game and its cubbyholes sometimes made Aimee a little nervous, the hidey-holes were cool for a different reason: They appealed to Aimee’s natural desire to be by herself. Only two people played the Hiding Maze at a time, so when you were in the game tunnels, you were far from all the craziness in the rest of the restaurant.
When she and Mary Jo played, Aimee always preferred being the hider, and Mary Jo loved being the seeker. Mary Jo was never happy sitting still. She liked to be doing something, and she loved a challenge. Aimee assumed this was why school was so hard for her friend. Mary Jo was bored out of her mind in the classroom. She was constantly getting caught doodling in the margins of her notebook instead of taking notes while the teacher was talking. But really, it’s more than doodling, Aimee thought. Mary Jo didn’t draw actual things, like recognizable things—she made patterns and shapes was all—but they were supercool patterns and shapes. Aimee had seen stuff like it in an art museum her mom took her to once. She had tried to tell Mary Jo she had talent, but Mary Jo shrugged it off. “Nah. I’m not talented. I’m just a pain in the butt with a good friend.” Aimee had hugged Mary Jo then, feeling a big wave of affection for the girl who often made her want to scream.
The Hiding Maze was a great way for both girls to do the things they liked, together—sort of. It worked because Aimee had figured out a way to cheat … in reverse. Because of the way she played, Aimee got some quiet time, and Mary Jo got a challenge.
“So, are you going to sit there, or are you coming?” Mary Jo asked.
Aimee blinked and looked up at Mary Jo, who was dancing around at the end of their booth, shrugging into her backpack and doing odd gyrations to the music at the same time.
“Oh, sorry. I was thinking.”
“You do too much of that.” Mary Jo laughed loudly and punched Aimee in the arm.
Aimee squealed and rubbed her arm. That was another thing Mary Jo was good at: throwing an unintentionally hard punch.
When Aimee and Mary Jo had met at age three, they’d both been small for their age. Other than that, they hadn’t had much in common … and they still didn’t. Aimee was light haired and pale skinned and had small features with bright-blue eyes. Mary Jo had that brown frizzy hair and large mouth, along with caramel-colored skin, big brown eyes, and a wide nose. As they grew up, their size similarity changed, too. Aimee remained small, but Mary Jo shot both up and out. She was six inches taller than Aimee now, and as Aimee had reminded her, she was pudgy. She was also a lot stronger than Aimee, both physically and in all other ways, actually.
Sometimes, Aimee thought about not being friends with Mary Jo anymore. They had so little in common. But Aimee would never have the heart to dump Mary Jo as a friend. Mary Jo had gone through enough dumping.
Mary Jo’s parents were really young when they got married and had their daughter. Too young, according to Aimee’s mom. Mary Jo’s dad left his wife and daughter when Mary Jo was just a baby. Mary Jo’s mom had tried to take care of her daughter after that, but she gave up when Mary Jo was five. One day, she just left, and Mary Jo ended up in foster care. That’s where she still was, now on her fifth foster family.
Aimee had asked her parents to take in Mary Jo on more than one occasion, but her mom said they didn’t have the “resources” to “handle” Aimee’s friend. She didn’t mean money. Even though she was just a kid, Aimee knew her family had plenty of money. Aimee’s mom meant time and patience. Aimee’s parents both worked important jobs. Her dad was a “high-level manager,” which meant her dad told other people what to do. Her mom was a “marketing consultant,” which meant her mom advised other people on how to sell their brands and stuff. Aimee’s parents had a lot to do and a lot of people depending on them.
If Aimee had to be honest, though, she was sometimes glad Mary Jo hadn’t come to live with them. She loved Mary Jo, but Mary Jo could be very annoying … displays of partially chewed food being just one good example. Mary Jo could be really yucky when she wanted to be. Sometimes Aimee wondered if that was a by-product of her tough upbringing. It was like she wanted people to look at her, whether for a good or bad reason.
“Well?” Mary Jo asked. “Do I need to punch you again?”
Aimee blinked. “What? Oh, no. Don’t punch me again! I swear I’ll stop thinking. Let’s go play in the Hiding Maze.”
Mary Jo grinned and took Aimee’s arm. Skipping, she began pulling Aimee toward the arcade. All Aimee could do was follow, scowling at Mary Jo’s back as Mary Jo yanked her between the tables and around other kids. Mary Jo’s overstuffed backpack made it look like she had a hump on her shoulders.
According to Aimee’s mom, Mary Jo would have a real hump if she kept carrying her backpack around everywhere. “The way she hunches her shoulders to carry all that weight,” Aimee’s mom often said, “it’s not good for her.”
Aimee had told Mary Jo about what her mom had said, but Mary Jo laughed it off. “So what if I end up with a hunchback, like some old witch?” She curled forward, squinted her eyes, put her hands into claw shapes, and cackled like a wicked witch. “That’d be fine. No one would mess with me if I looked like that.”
