Chapter Text
She’s seven and she sees Charlotte almost every day.
Charlotte is nice. But she's quiet. Vanessa speaks for both of them. Vanessa likes when Charlotte comes because their fathers disappear in a back room, where they can occasionally hear drills or hammering. They spend a lot of time together. At the end of the day, Henry comes in and takes Charlotte in his arms and he carries her outside the door. She leans into him as Vanessa is left alone with her father.
“Do you want to see what we’re working on?” William asks one day, a look in his eye Vanessa knows not to challenge at this point. She nods and follows him to the backroom.
The figure standing in the middle of the room is tall. Its eyes are missing and the sockets beneath are deep and dark from the low lighting. Like its soul has been ripped from it and its eyes have rotted into its skull. Rows of blocky teeth stick out of the upper face plate, the bottom jaw missing. Buttons trail down its chest and a bowtie sits on its neck. It looms over her, the soulless, eyeless animatronic.
“Henry built the robotics.” Her father says it with a reverence and he hasn’t turned to look at her. He trails two fingers down the arm before finally ripping his gaze from it to her. The reverence leaves just as quickly.
He picks up two cue ball-sized eyes, shiny blue irises painted on each. He holds them up to his own face, grinning from behind the false eyes.
She can't help scrunching her face up. “Creepy.”
He laughs like it’s funny, dropping them from his face as he does and the look in his eyes doesn't differ too much from the painted ones he'd just held.
“This,” he says, after he sets the eyes down, “is Freddy Fazbear.” And from the grin on his face, the wild gesture he throws to the giant bear, is one of pride. This is what he'd been working on the whole time. This is what he wants. This is how to make him happy.
Vanessa forces a smile. “He's cool,” is what comes out.
“Yes!” He jumps back excitedly. “And he's just the first!”
Something inside her beats, like a rotting heart fluttering. “The first?”
“Well, he can't be the lead member of a band if he doesn't have a band!” At this, he grabs a small top hat and uses a step ladder to set it on the bear’s head.
“Perfect,” he says to himself.
Vanessa watches.
“Here, here,” he muttered, spinning around the small room and scanning the tables. He snatches a remote from the table, bulky with wires running out of it and to the bear’s chest. He presses a button. The bear lurches forward. It’s a sharp movement and it ends just as quickly as it started, the figure in a new position with his arm outstretched. Vanessa flinches like he’s leaned forward to hurt her. And her father laughs at her display. He laughs as he clicks another button and the bear returns to its idle pose, and sets the remote down.
“He’s not scary, Vanessa. Don’t be scared of him.” Almost a threat. He taps a knuckle on Freddy’s chest, a soft thud resounding. “The magic is inside of him. That’s what Henry’s been working on while you and I have been putting the building together.”
He takes a small tool, inserting it under the edge of the tan stomach and pries the patch open with a screech and a thunk. It flips open to reveal the robotics. It looks so much like a human skeleton that it almost makes Vanessa sick, the metal ribs caging the electronics.
“And what’s special about this design,” he’s still talking, showing her the bear, his creation. One he can be proud of. “What’s special is Henry designed these suits so all these bits—” he runs his hand along a rib and she can almost feel him doing the same to hers. “—can be pushed back and someone can wear the suit.” He presses a button and the ribs open, pushing back other parts of the skeleton with a hiss of metal hinges. He looks back at her, like he’s expecting praise or excitement, maybe amazement. She doesn’t know what to give him.
“You can go inside it?” is what she ends up on. Safe enough.
He stares at her a moment longer, a look coming to his eyes. Lifeless, like the bear in front of her. “Let me show you.”
With that, he picks her up and it’s not like Henry does it with Charlotte. It’s not a gentle arm behind her back. He lifts her from her torso, leaning her towards the open ribs. “Dad!” she gasps. “Wait, please!” She’s panicking and she’s hardly in control. She’s just screaming for help but the only one there to help her is him and he’s not— he’s not helping— he’s—
He sets her back on the ground, roughly and she stumbles to stand. Her face is wet and she hates that she’s crying. She shouldn’t be crying. She should be strong. She hates that he’s seeing her like this. Broken. It gives him just one more thing to fix.
“Vanessa,” his tone is harsh and his glare is worse. “You asked. I was trying to show you.”
He waits for her to speak. She can’t. She tries but there’s a block in her throat. Like her crying has swollen her throat and she can't get the words out. She just makes pathetic, wet noises.
“I’m doing this for you, Vanessa. I’m trying to help you.”
The only words that can push past her tears are, “I’m sorry…”
It’s only then that he softens. “Vanessa…” He leans down, crouching on a knee. “He’s not scary,” he repeats. “You’re okay.” It’s not a comfort. It’s an order. “Give me a hug.”
And all she can do is comply.
She’s eight when all the animatronics are built.
The ones her father had shown her were from somewhere else—she never learned where. The real ones were all shaped metal and cold stares. They strip the old ones down sometimes, her father harshly ripping parts off of them as he looks for the right parts. It’s only with Bonnie that he’s careful. He removes all the screws from the faceplate, kneeling in front of the rabbit as he hands Vanessa each bolt. The face plate shifts off and removes cleanly. The bottom teeth are left, and two lights glowing red where the eyes had been. He holds the rest in his hands.
Vanessa and Charlotte are sitting at a table in the main restaurant, right by the front. The stage is inhabited by the three new animatronics, their gazes empty. Their fathers are in the other room tinkering with Foxy, saying something about how they couldn’t get the limbs to stay on right.
“My dad’s told me he’s making another one,” Charlotte finally says.
Vanessa looks up from the picture she had been half-heartedly coloring. “Another… animatronic?”
“Like a conductor.”
“Of a train?” Vanessa knows what Charlotte’s talking about, but she asks anyway. To make her laugh. And it works.
Charlotte tries to hide it behind a rare smile. “No, silly. Of the band. Like those people that wave their arms at musicians.” She holds a colored pencil in a dramatically loose grasp, making a stoic face and flicking it through the air like Vanessa had seen at a symphony once.
Vanessa giggles along. “You could be the conductor.”
“I’d get tired holding my arm up all day.” She looks around the room, like she’s making sure it’s still just them even though it has been for the past four hours. “My dad says he’s making a puppet. Like a marionette—with the strings.”
“Woah… so, it’s like.” Vanessa thinks for a second. “The puppet is puppeting all the others?”
“Yeah!”
“That’s cool!”
A creak sounds from the other hallway, and they can hear footsteps. Charlotte sits up and peers into the doorway. Vanessa shrinks down in her chair, returning quietly to her coloring.
“Charlie?” Henry’s voice calls, and Vanessa relaxes just slightly. Charlotte watches her carefully.
“Yeah?” Charlotte says back.
“There’s a storm coming in and William has to stay late, so we’re gonna run Vanessa home.”
Charlotte grins. “She’s coming with us?”
“We’re just gonna drop her off at her house.”
“Why don’t you bring her with you?” William has appeared in the doorway. The light behind him silhouettes him in the hallway. Vanessa can’t see his face or read the tone of his voice.
“Really?” She asks, warily.
“Why not? But only if it’s okay with Henry.”
Charlotte spins to face her father, a pleading look Vanessa knows he can’t resist.
“Alright,” Henry finally says. “Grab your bag.”
Vanessa’s grinning in a way she can’t help and she exchanges the look with Charlotte as they cheer.
She almost forgets William’s still standing in the doorway as she runs past.
“Vanessa,” he says. It stops her immediately. Charlotte and Henry are at the door already, too far to hear. Vanessa turns to her father. She still can hardly make out his face, but she can see the sharp angles of his cheekbones as he watches her. “I love you.”
He waits. He doesn’t look away from her until–
“I love you, too,” she whispers, and it rips from her like Bonnie’s faceplate.
This begins a habit of the two spending time with each other outside of Freddy’s. Vanessa likes the Emily’s house. It’s warm and bright and cozy in a way hers isn’t. Henry makes popcorn when she comes over. He pours melted butter, cinnamon, and sugar into it and puts it in a large tupperware. They take turns shaking the mixture, trying to see who can dance along best to the radio that’s almost always playing in the kitchen. After a few songs, Henry carefully opens the lid to show the cinnamon and sugar coated popcorn. It becomes Vanessa’s favorite. Not just the flavor, but the company. The sweet warmness that fills the house.
They pick a different movie each week, new ones rented from a shop downtown or one of Henry’s favorites. They giggle along to his silly movies, teasing him for liking all the old jokes but end up watching them all the way through.
“Alright,” Henry says one day. He holds up a worn movie case. "Tonight's film.”
“‘Parent Trap’?” Charlotte reads.
He puts the tape in and fiddles with the TV inputs. “You two will love it.”
Henry falls asleep on the couch 30 minutes in as usual and Charlie and Vanessa sit side by side, already finished with their popcorn.
“I think we should swap lives,” Charlotte whispers over Henry’s gentle snoring.
Vanessa just smiles. “My life is boring.”
“Sounds perfect. At least your dad isn’t embarrassing. Mine’s always got music on and is always dancing.” She lowers her voice even more and hisses, “He’s a terrible dancer.”
Vanessa giggles. “You’ve inherited his skills.”
“Rude!” Charlotte gasps and swats the ground near her like she’s stomping her foot. “I am a wonderful dancer.”
“I would swap lives with you and challenge your dad to a dance battle and I’d win.”
“It wouldn’t be impressive.”
Vanessa pulls the blanket they’re sharing closer around yourself. “We could swap lives and no one would notice because we look so similar.”
Henry wakes up to them both laughing.
Occasionally, they’ll watch episodes of the Twilight Zone. Henry usually picks all the silly ones, scary monsters on a plane wing or a man falling in love with a computer as big as a room. Vanessa and Charlie love this fake world the man with the cigar created. The stories feel smart and meaningful, and Vanessa loves the scary supernatural parts even though they keep her up late.
There’s one she remembers clearly, where a ship finds a sunken submarine. They hear a clear knocking inside and spend hours trying to get into the submarine. During then, they realize the submarine is from the first world war and had sunk almost 20 years earlier. But the clanking is still sounding. When they finally enter, they find a dead crew of men and one of them holding a hammer.
Vanessa has never been good with horror. She’s known this her entire life. But the episode had caught her attention so thoroughly and she didn’t think to turn it off. She watches it clutching to Charlotte’s arm, the other equally as entranced.
She has nightmares for weeks after, waking up in a panic. She was too scared to get out of her bed. She’d cry, hoping she’d be loud enough for her parents to hear and check on her. Each night it happens, she prays her mother hears her first. When she hears her father’s heavy footsteps leaving his room, she almost wishes she hadn’t called at all. She’s terrified all over again, for a more real reason.
It all peaks when she’s at Freddy’s late with her father. She’s waiting for her father in the main restaurant, the flashlight in her hand the only source of light. A noise from behind startles her. A thud. Followed by another. And another in a rhythmic fashion. It’s like a tapping, a knocking to be let in—or let out. She swings her flashlight around, looking for a cause of the sound and her light settles back on Freddy. He’s standing on stage, a microphone clutched in his hand and his face pulled into a grimacing smile. The knocking sounds again and his chestplate rattles along with it. Vanessa’s hands shake and her light shakes along with it. She steps forward, slowly climbing the stage as she approaches the animatronic making the noise.
“Vanessa!” Her father’s voice causes her to jump, dropping the flashlight and slipping on the smooth stage. “Let’s go.”
She scoops up her flashlight, running down the steps. Sending a last look at Freddy. “There’s something inside of him,” she mutters.
And her father just laughs. “There’s nothing in there except electronics and an endo skeleton. You probably just heard something twitching.”
But even since then, she’d always been scared of the idea of someone hiding in the suits.
This fear haunts her every time she enters the Freddy’s building, every time she tries to sleep at night. She keeps her lights on despite her father’s protests. She’s terrified of the shadows. She begins carrying her pillow and blanket to her parents room and sleeping on the floor next to her mom’s side of the bed. It makes her dad angry, but she doesn’t know what else to do. After almost a week straight of sneaking into her parent’s room every night, her father snaps.
She’s dragging her blanket into her parents room, tiptoeing past his side of the bed and shaking her mother softly. Her mother stirs.
“Hey, honey,” she mumbles into her pillow. “Did you have another nightmare?”
Vanessa just nods and her mother begins to sit up. It’s then that her father wakes up too, and Vanessa freezes. Silently, he stands from his bed and charges at her. She stumbles back but is caught by a tense hand around her arm and he drags her out of the bedroom.
“Bill!” her mother yells, but she doesn’t do anything to stop him as he drags Vanessa down the stairs.
“Dad, you’re hurting me.”
He doesn’t even turn to her when he says, “You’re my daughter. I can hurt you whenever I want.”
He carries Vanessa outside into the cold air and her bare feet scratch along the freezing concrete as he drags her along. He pushes her into the car and starts driving.
“Where are we going?” Vanessa finally asks. She hates that it comes out broken. She hates that he can do this to her. Break her.
“I’m going to show you there’s nothing to be scared of.” The reflection of his glasses shines in the rearview mirror.
“Dad–”
“SHUT UP!”
She flinches back into her seat as he drives them to Freddy’s.
She’s too scared to say anything for the rest of the drive.
Finally, he parks and jumps out of his seat, ripping Vanessa’s door open and pulling her out. He shouts as he drags her to the front door of Freddy’s. “Your mother does everything for you. And you keep her up all night with your nightmares! Do you think that’s fair?”
“I–”
He stops, spinning her around until they’re face to face. “Do you think that’s fair?”
She shakes her head, frantically and loosing the braids Henry and Charlotte woven into her hair the evening before when the movie Henry had chosen, and had chosen specifically as to not frighten Vanessa again, ended.
“Say it.”
“No,” is what she manages past her tears. “I’m sorry.”
He begins dragging her again, past the band on the stage and to the back room.
“Dad, wait. What are you doing?” She’s trying to pull back on his force, but his fingers are tight around her arm and he’s just so much bigger than her.
“You’re going to sit in here until you’re not scared of them anymore.” The prototypes sit along the wall. “They are your friends.” He shuts the door, leaving her alone with them.
At first she just cries, but she swears she hears creaking from where they lay and she can’t see anything and they’re going to hurt her and she screams.
She cries and screams and begs him to let her out and the only tapping she can hear now is her own pounding on the door her father is holding shut. She cries until her throat is raw and she can hardly muster the energy to make another noise. It’s only when she’s silent that her father pulls open the door.
He kneels in front of her and takes her in his arms, and she doesn’t have enough energy to fight him anymore.
The trip home is silent and he carries her to bed, tucking her in and kissing her on the forehead. She wipes the spot with the sleeve of her pajamas after he’s gone.
She’s ten when she realizes something doesn’t have to be fiction to be scary.