The Twisted Ones

by Scott Cawthon

“Why? Does it have to do with Freddy’s?”

Hurricane.

“Well, this is the first murder of the semester. So things have been going fine.”

May not have been this semester instead several years ago

“I think Carlton had dreams about it,” Clay said finally. “Sometimes in the morning he would come downstairs looking like he hadn’t slept in a week, but he never told me what was going on.”

Charlie set her jaw. “I’m not my father,” she said.

“I have dreams about it, I guess,” she muttered. “You guess?” he asked in a careful tone. “What kind of dreams?” Charlie looked out the window again. There was a weight pressing on her chest. What kind of dreams? Nightmares, but not of Freddy’s. A shadow in the doorway of the costume closet where we play. Sammy doesn’t see; he’s playing with his truck. But I look up. The shadow has eyes. Then everything is moving—hangers rattle and costumes sway. A toy truck drops hard on the floor. I’m left alone. The air is growing thin, I’m running out. It’s getting hard to breathe and I’ll die like this, alone, in the dark. I pound against the closet wall, calling for help. I know he’s there. Sammy is on the other side, but he doesn’t answer my cries as I begin to gasp, choking for air. It is too dark to see, but even so I know my vision is going black, and in my chest my heart is slowing, each pump swelling me with pain as I struggle to call his name one more time—

He’s wishing he hadn’t brought me,

yellow

“Charlie,” Clay said, not looking directly at her. “I’m sorry to ask this of you, but you’re the only person who can tell me if this is what I think it is.” “Okay,” she replied, suddenly alert. Clay sighed and got out of the car. Charlie followed close behind him. There was a barbed wire fence all along the road, and there were cows in the field beyond it. They stood around, chewing and staring in the vacant way of cows. Clay lifted the top wire for Charlie and she climbed gingerly through. When’s the last time I got a tetanus shot? she wondered as a barb caught briefly on her T-shirt. She didn’t have to ask where the body was. There was a floodlight and a makeshift fence of caution tape strung between posts that jutted from the soil in a scattered formation. Charlie stood where she was as Burke climbed through the fence after her, and they both surveyed the area. The field was flat, and the grass was short and patchy, worn down daily by dozens of hooves. A single tree stood some distance from where the crime scene was marked. Charlie thought it was an oak. Its branches were long and ancient, heavy with leaves. There was something wrong with the air; along with the smell of cow dung and mud wafted the sharp, metallic scent of blood. For some reason, Charlie looked at the cows again. They weren’t as calm as she’d assumed. They shifted back and forth on their feet, clustering in groups. None of them came anywhere near the floodlight. As if sensing her scrutiny, one of them l...

Freddy’s?”

she asked. “I hear it was torn down.” She scratched her fingernail on the car seat nervously. “Is that true?” “Yes. Well, they started to,” Clay said slowly. “We went through the whole place, clearing everything out. It was a funny thing; we couldn’t find the body of that guard, Dave.” He paused and looked directly at Charlie, as though expecting her to answer for something. Charlie felt the warmth drain from her face. He’s dead. I saw him die. She closed her eyes for a moment and forced herself to focus. “That place was like a maze, though.” Clay turned his eyes casually back to the road. “His body probably got stuffed into some crevice no one will find for years.” “Yeah, probably buried in the rubble.” She looked down, trying to put the ...

Fre...

was thrown away or burned. Technically I should have treated it like what it was: a break in the missing kids case, over a decade old. Everything would have been bagged up and gone over. But no one would have believed what happened there, what we saw. So I took some liberties.” He glanced at Charlie, the suspicious look gone from his face, and she nodded for him to continue. Clay took a deep breath. “I treated it only as the murder of my officer; you remember Officer Dunn. We recovered his body, closed the case, and I ordered the building to be demolished.” “What about …” Charlie paused, trying not to let her frustration show. “What about Freddy, and Bonnie, and Chica, and Foxy?” What about the children, the children who were killed and hidden inside each one of them? “They were all there,” Clay said gravely. “They were lifeless, Charlie. I don’t know what else to tell you.” Charlie didn’t respond. “As far as the demolition crew was concerned, all they’d found were old costumes, broken robots, and two dozen folding ta...

“We found blood at the scene, in the main dining room where Dave …” He looked around cautiously. There was something unseemly, talking about gruesome things on the sheltered grounds of the campus. “It wasn’t real blood, Charlie.” “What are you talking about?” Charlie took a step back toward the car. “It was, like, costume blood, or movie blood. It was pretty convincing, though. We didn’t realize it was fake until the crime lab looked at it under a microscope.” “Why are you telling me this?” Charlie asked, although she knew the answer. The terrible possibility was pounding in her mind like a headache. “He survived once,” Clay said plainly. “Well, he didn’t survive the second time.” Charlie turned to walk away. “I’m sorry you have to be involved in this,” Clay called. Charlie didn’t answer. She looked down at the pavement and clenched her teeth. Clay raised the window without another word and drove away.

Freddy’s,

father’s footsteps. She didn’t want to tell him she was studying robotics until she had some idea of how he would respond. Just like with her project.

Hurricane

Do you have nightmares, too?

Freddy’s.

Freddy’s?”

His dead face, the dead skin of his throat.

Freddy’s,”

was different. What was it?

Really?

Enough room, that’s it. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the image in her head. The wounds were slightly larger and more spaced out. The suit he was wearing was bigger than the suits from Freddy’s. The man was probably five foot ten or five foot eleven, which means the suits must have been at least seven feet tall.

It wouldn’t be like that,

It’s not that easy to get out of a grave.

You can’t get out that fast.

Zombies. Lifeless things. The closet was full of costumes, lifeless yet ever-watching, with plastic eyes and dead, hanging limbs. Somehow their corpselike stares had never bothered her, or Sammy. They liked to touch the fur, sometimes put it in their mouths and giggle at the funny way it felt. Some was old and matted; some new and soft. The closet was their place, just for the two of them. Sometimes they babbled together in words that had meaning only to them; sometimes they played side by side, lost in separate worlds of make-believe. But they were always together. Sammy was playing with a truck when the shadow came. He ran it back and forth on the floor, not noticing that their ribbon of light had been cut off. Charlie turned and saw the shadow, so still he could be an illusion, just another costume out of place. Then the sudden movement, the chaos of fabric and eyes. The truck clanked as it fell to the floor, and then: loneliness. A dark so complete that she began to believe she’d never seen at all. The memories of sight had only been a dream, a trick of the utter blackness. She tried to call his name—she could feel him nearby—but all around her were solid walls. “Can you hear me? Sammy? Let me out! Sammy!” But he was gone, and he was never there again.

That man wouldn’t have been able to walk on his own in a suit so oversized. He didn’t walk into that field; the suit did. The animatronic was carrying him inside. It walked into that field of its own accord.

Dreams about being trapped are common,

But this didn’t feel like a dream.

There must be tracks. He didn’t walk there himself. There must be some clue of what carried him into that field, and where it came from.

John’s going to think I’m nuts.

What if someone put him in the costume, like some kind of wind-up deathtrap? Stuck him inside that thing, then sent it walking until the spring locks went off. But who would know how to do that? Why would someone do that?

awful.

Freddy’s. Fake blood.”

Dave’s alive?”

“So what then? Dave is alive and stuffing people into spring-lock suits and killing them?”

what?”

Jessica will go with me.

Zombies vs. Zombies!”

part

something

I know, said the first, more quickly than usual. So what? said the second. Know what? You know so what? Know what? Now what? What now? Know how? Why now?

That didn’t make sense.

She removed the pillowcase gently, taking care not to let it catch on anything. Beneath their shroud, the faces, blank and sightless, were placid; they looked like they could wait, ever listening, for eternity. Charlie switched them on, and bent over to watch as they began to move their plastic mouths without sound, practicing. Where? said the first. Here, said the second. Where? said the first again. Charlie drew back. Something was wrong with the voice; it sounded strained. Here, repeated the second. Where? said the first with a rising intonation, like it was growing upset. That’s not supposed to happen! Charlie thought, alarmed. They shouldn’t be able to modulate their voices. Where? the first wailed, and Charlie stepped back. She leaned down slowly to peer under the desk, as though she might find an entanglement of wires that would explain the strange behavior. As she stared, puzzled, a baby began to cry. She stood at once, knocking her head painfully on the edge of the desk. The two faces looked suddenly more human, and more childlike. One was crying, the other watching with an astonished look on its face. “It’s okay,” said the calmer face. “Don’t leave me!” The other wailed as it turned to look at Charlie. “I’m not going to leave you!” Charlie cried. “Everything will be okay!” The sound of crying swelled, higher and louder than human voices should be, and Charlie covered her ears, looking desperately around for someone to help. Her bedroom had darkened, and heavy thi...

It was just a dream.

robotics.

I can tell him.