
Jessica suggested it jokingly, said she’d seen it in a movie, but Charlie had grinned and helped her measure the room. The clock beside the bed told Charlie that she still had a little under an hour before John arrived-time to work on her project.Ĭharlie and Jessica had divided the room with a piece of masking tape after their first week living together. She straightened decisively and snapped on the overhead light, filling the room with a harsh illumination. Charlie shut the door behind her, checking the lock twice, and leaned back against it. The lights were off Jessica was still in class. Slowly, she pulled her keys from her pocket and let herself into the room. Then Sammy was gone, and the world ended for the first time.Ĭharlie was standing outside her own dorm room, almost without knowing how she’d gotten there. Then the figure appeared in the doorway, looking down on them. She and Sammy, her other self, her twin brother, were playing their quiet games in the familiar warmth of the costume closet. And the other, older memory: the thought that made her ache in ways for which she had no words, sorrow filling her as if it had been wrought into her very bones. Kneeling in pitch-dark on the cold tile floor of the bathroom, and then-that giant, hard plastic eye glaring through the crack, the hot miasma of lifeless breath on her face. A figure looming behind the stage red matted fur barely concealing the metal bones of the murderous creature. The hook above, poised to strike-no escape. Flashes of what happened last year at Freddy’s were batting at her, snatches of memory plucking at her clothing with cold, iron fingers. She turned and walked away toward the dorm, not looking back.Ĭharlie blinked into the sunlight. Arty nodded his head again like a bobblehead doll. “I was just a kid when all that happened,” she said quietly.
