“Blow out the candles! Blow out the candles!” Jake’s friends, wearing pointy cardboard party hats, surrounded him at the table. Right in front of him was a round, white-frosted cake decorated with nine rainbow-colored candles. Somehow Jake knew that the cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting, his favorite.
Jake laughed at his friends’ cheers, took a deep breath, and then huffed and puffed like the Big Bad Wolf in “The Three Little Pigs.” He extinguished all the candles at once.
Jake’s heart was full of happiness. There were smiling faces all around him, smiling faces that were soon to be stuffed with cake and ice cream.
But wait.
None of this was real. It wasn’t even a memory.
Jake needed to wake up. He wasn’t safe where he was in real life, and this dream had lured him into a false sense of security. And yet it was so tempting to stay where he was now, where everything felt so happy and cozy.
No. You have to wake up.
Larson had found his way out of the field. He wasn’t sure that wandering the streets aimlessly was an improvement over wandering through a field, but at least the lighting was better and there was no danger of stepping in a cow pie. There had to be some way of getting out of whatever this weird space was and back into reality.
An idea popped into Larson’s head. Of course. The ball pit. Maybe the ball pit where he had gotten the blood samples was the connection—the portal—that would bring him back to real life. As soon as he had the thought, it was like his feet automatically knew where to go. He walked several blocks despite none of the landmarks being familiar until he came to the site of the ball pit, Freddy Fazbear’s, as it had been.
The place was hopping. Parents and children were spilling in and out of the doors, and even from the sidewalk, he could hear how loud the place was, the bleeps and blips of all the games, the music, the kids laughing and screaming with excitement. As soon as he entered the pizzeria, he could feel people’s judgmental stares. It was weird enough for an adult man to come into a Freddy Fazbear’s by himself, but it was even weirder when he looked as rough as Larson did. He was still bleeding from his injuries, and his white shirt was stained red. He was sweaty from his exertions, and he knew he stank. It was no wonder the patrons of Freddy’s were giving him a wide berth.
But that was okay. He hadn’t come here to make a good impression. He had come to find the ball pit.
And there it was. But it was a very different ball pit from the filthy one where he had collected the blood samples. This version of the ball pit was clean and new. The balls were bright primary colors, and the pit was full of laughing children, wading or “swimming” through the balls, sometimes throwing them at one another even though there was a sign saying you weren’t supposed to.
“Police. I need everybody to get out of the ball pit, please,” Larson said loudly enough, he hoped, to be heard over the games and music and voices. He wasn’t, so he said it again, even louder and flashed his badge. This time the kids looked at him and made their way toward the ball pit’s exit. Larson figured they were probably acting out of a desire to get away from him more than a wish to be obedient, but hey, whatever worked.
Larson climbed into the pit. He could feel the confused stares of kids and their parents. He relaxed his knees and let himself sink down until he was shoulder-deep in brightly colored plastic balls. Something about it felt like sinking into a bubble bath. But nothing about this was giving him any information that might help him get back to where he needed to be.
“I need to go farther down,” he said to the onlooking parents and children. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to explain himself to them, especially when his words would only confuse them. He burrowed deeper into the ball pit until he was completely buried and surrounded by darkness.
Then, suddenly, it wasn’t dark anymore. It was bright and sunny, and when Larson took a deep breath, his lungs filled with fresh air. He was walking down the sidewalk in a residential section of a pleasant town. The houses on the street were quaint bungalows, and the yards were well tended, with mowed grass and cheerful flower beds. The more he walked, the more familiar the town seemed. He suddenly remembered a newspaper clipping he had seen a while back. In a few steps, he saw something he definitely recognized from the clipping: a junkyard. Somehow he knew this was the place.
Once again, his feet led him as if they had exact knowledge of his needed destination. Inside the junkyard, Larson walked past piles of old tires and broken electronics and cast-off furniture until he came to an old, beaten-up car. Without even consciously thinking about what he was doing, he reached down and opened the trunk.
Eleanor leapt out in a fury, her jagged teeth bared, her hands shaped into claws. She pounced on him and knocked him down, scratching at him with her metal fingers, unhinging her jaws and snapping at his throat.
Eleanor was strong but also lightweight, so Larson managed to throw her off him and into a trash pile. He struggled to his feet just in time for her to come at him again, this time wielding a tire iron she had found. She swung it, and it connected with his jaw. For a second, he was blinded by pain. He was pretty sure she had loosened a tooth or two. He shook off the pain and managed to wrest the tire iron from her grip. He swung it hard and connected with her face, but she just laughed, a horrible, high-pitched cackle that made him shiver. He tossed away the tire iron. It was no use to him but definitely needed to be kept out of her reach.
Then he saw something a few yards away that might be useful, the trash compactor that was used to crush large metal items into smaller, more manageable cubes for disposal. He imagined Eleanor crushed to the form of a harmless cube, and almost smiled. He took off running in the direction of the trash compactor in hopes that she would chase him there.
“I’ve got something for you to chew on,” he taunted her. “You stupid, useless doll!”
The heart-shaped necklace around Eleanor’s throat pulsed and glowed blood red. Eleanor let out a horrible shriek—a warrior’s cry—and charged at him. When she reached him, he grabbed her by the arm and shoved it into the waiting jaws of the trash compactor. Soon there were only the sounds of crunching metal and Eleanor’s bloodcurdling shrieks.
Larson woke up lying on the floor in the house where he’d passed out. He looked up to see Eleanor still on the table. Her face was a mask of rage. In her anger, she was losing the appearance of the curly-haired girl and looking more like the deranged mannequin she really was. Her eyes were dark wells of anger.
“Renelle?” the man who thought he was her father said. “Renelle, what’s happening to you?”
Eleanor opened her mouth impossibly wide. Gooey black tendrils shot from it, slithered across the floor, then twisted around Larson, binding him. The tendrils were sticky and smelled like copper. Blood, thought Larson. They’re made of blood.
As soon as he thought this, he was back in the other place again, walking the streets. But this time he knew what to do. The ball pit. He had found Eleanor there before, and he would find her there again. And he would destroy her.
The former pizzeria was a dark, empty space with filthy, cracked windows. Strangely, the front door was unlocked, as if someone had been expecting him.
There were a few broken arcade cabinets and smashed-up tables and chairs. The walls had been covered with graffiti. But the ball pit was there in its regular place.
Larson stepped inside the pit. The plastic balls were sticky and adhered to his clothes and skin. They smelled of decay. He held his nose like he was jumping into a pool and sank beneath the surface.
Larson emerged into a dark room. Something metal brushed against his cheek; it felt like it could be the pull chain for a light fixture. He reached up and pulled it, and a bare, dim bulb cast a faint glow over the room. The walls were bare wood and sloped like the contours of a roof, and the room was cluttered with cardboard boxes and plastic tubs labeled WINTER CLOTHES, CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS, and FISHING POLES/TACKLE. There was an old rocking chair and a table full of knickknacks—figurines, a large brass candelabra, a glass paperweight—the kind of stuff that nobody really needed but that people had a hard time letting go of for some reason. A large antique trunk sat in the far left corner of the room. Larson had a feeling that the trunk was hiding something other than useless bric-a-brac. With dread, he walked toward it.
Eleanor was lying curled up in the trunk with her knees hugged to her chest. Her eyes flew open.
She propelled herself out of the trunk and onto Larson, her cold metal hands encircling his throat. Larson grabbed her by the wrists, trying to loosen her grip, but she only grabbed on tighter. Choking and sputtering, he staggered backward, bumping into the table. He grabbed blindly at the table’s surface and grasped the heavy glass paperweight. He raised it up and brought it down hard on Eleanor’s forehead, rattling her enough to make her loose her grip on his throat.
Maybe paperweights weren’t so useless after all.
She shook her head like she was disoriented, and then came at him again, this time with her jaw unhinged, exposing her sharp, jagged teeth. Larson grabbed the candelabra from the table and swung it hard, hitting her in the head and knocking her to the floor. He hit her face again and again, until the thin layer of sickly grayish skin was nothing but pulp, and the silver skull was exposed beneath.
Larson was on the floor in the house again. Looking up, he saw Eleanor on the table. Her eyes were still closed, but her body was anything but relaxed. Her fists were clenched, her teeth gritted, and she shook her head back and forth as if she were saying no, no, no. Near Larson on the floor, the Stitchwraith had started to move, slowly scooting itself toward the table where Eleanor lay.
Larson blinked, and just like that, he was on the streets again. He knew what he had to do.
This time, the pizzeria was called Papa Bear’s Pancake House. The windows were hung with red-and-white gingham curtains that matched the wipe-able plastic tablecloths. Only one table was occupied, with a family of four plowing through some pancakes. Near the coffee station, two servers in red-and-white gingham aprons chatted. He was relieved they hadn’t noticed him yet. He looked in the back corner of the restaurant. Fortunately, the ball pit was still there, and the plastic balls were in a much more pristine state than they had been on his last visit.
He went under.
He was in a kid’s bedroom—a little boy’s, from the look of it. The comforter on the bed was light blue and decorated with race cars. A poster showing Freddy Fazbear and his friends hung on the wall over the bed. There were no kids around now, but the room brought Larson back to all those times he’d checked under Ryan’s bed for monsters. He’d always told Ryan there was no such thing. He was wrong.
Larson sensed Eleanor’s presence.
He dropped to his knees and lifted the bed skirt. Nothing.
He pulled back the floor-length curtains in case she was hiding behind them. Nothing there either.
But as soon as he saw the closet, he knew she was there. He opened the door, and a pair of metallic hands shot out, pulling him inside the dark, tiny space.
Eleanor grabbed Larson by the shoulders and slammed his head into the closet wall over and over until all he could feel was white-hot pain. He managed to jab an elbow into her belly, which knocked her off balance and freed him. He stumbled out of the closet and picked up an aluminum bat that had been stored with the other athletic gear. He dragged Eleanor out of the closet by her wrist, then swung the bat at her head like he was trying his best for a home run. The force of the blow knocked her head partially off, so it dangled crazily from her neck by just a few wires. Larson took another swing, this one even harder, which severed Eleanor’s head entirely.
On the table, Eleanor was writhing as if in agony. The Stitchwraith had dragged itself all the way to the table and appeared to be trying to summon the strength to pull itself up to a standing position.
Larson was pounding the pavement again, already walking the well-worn path to the home of the ball pit. This time the restaurant was little more than a dark, empty hole with broken windows and graffiti. Most of what had been inside had either been stripped away or smashed.
But the ball pit was still there, dusty and dilapidated, the plastic balls covered with an unsightly gunk that had rendered them all the same indeterminate color. It smelled of rot and something worse. Larson breathed in and out through his mouth and tried to stifle his gag reflex. He went under.
The space was huge and cavernous. Moonlight streamed in from a skylight above. It looked like a warehouse of some kind, though it didn’t seem to be storing anything these days. An old mattress and some sleeping bags in a corner suggested that someone could have made the place their temporary home. Larson looked around at the large, empty space. There weren’t many places to hide.
Then he heard laughter, the high-pitched cackle that made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It was coming from above him.
She was peeking through the open skylight.
She dropped downward, landing on Larson, knocking the wind out of him. He lay flat on his back.
Jake was so weak he struggled to pull himself up, but he used the metal table to steady himself, and soon he was standing. When he saw Eleanor, he felt a surge of rage that gave him the strength to climb onto the table. He loomed over Eleanor and tried to muster the strength to do what he had to do.
Eleanor did not seem fully awake, but her face was changing. Her eyes bulged. Black tentacles shot from her mouth, from her fingers, from her toes. The slimy black vines climbed up the walls and slithered over the floor. Tentacles flew from her and wrapped around his face until he couldn’t see.
In the warehouse, Larson tried to push Eleanor off him, but she had him pinned, and she leaned down and bit his cheek, drawing blood, then laughing. He shivered from the sound and the pain.
Larson managed to roll over so that he was now on top of Eleanor. His hands closed around her throat.
In the living room, Jake dodged the black blood that spewed from Eleanor’s nose and mouth. Eleanor sat bolt upright and grabbed his neck with both hands. Jake felt a sudden surge of strength. He pulled her hands away as if he were doing nothing more strenuous than swatting a fly.
Holding Eleanor’s wrists, Jake loomed over her, his eyes burning with fury. He leaned over her until her face and torso were covered by his cloak. She twisted and kicked, but he just pressed in closer, eyes blazing with fury, burning into Eleanor until she was still.
Jake knew that only he could hear Eleanor’s roaring fury now. She wasn’t animated anymore. She was part of Jake, the same way Andrew had been. But she wasn’t like Andrew.
Andrew hadn’t been nice, exactly. He’d been as full of rage as Eleanor was. But Andrew had just been hurt. He hadn’t been bad at the core.
Eleanor was bad at the core. But she had no power here.
Jake concentrated until he was able to access Eleanor’s memories … if they could be called memories.
Using the ability that Jake had discovered after his confrontation with the trash rabbit, Jake reached into those years and found a moment of seething anger and anguish. He figured if he could stuff Eleanor into a bubble of that moment, he could subdue her.
He was right. With that one intention, Eleanor was defeated, contained. Her foul spirit folded in on itself and was silenced.
When Jake saw her lying on the table, she had the dry, withered appearance of an ancient mummy. She was more than dead. She was empty. A husk.
Exhausted, Jake lay back and let his mind go blank.
Two Weeks Later:
Larson was no longer destined to wander around lost in different places and times. He was in the here and now, which in this case was the ball field at the time of his son’s game. The air was crisp, but the sky was so blue it looked like the painted backdrop of a play.
Larson’s fights with Eleanor had opened some stitches, so he was bandaged up again. Stiff and sore, Larson gingerly climbed into the bleachers and took a seat at the end of a row. He looked out over the green diamond. There was Ryan. He was in the outfield, and as often was the case with Ryan, he looked bored. He was playing with his baseball glove and kicking at the grass with one shoe, which appeared to be untied.
Larson grinned when Ryan looked up into the stands and spotted his dad. Ryan waved wildly, and Larson waved back. Then Larson pointed at the batter. Still grinning, Ryan nodded and focused on the task at hand.
The batter at the plate took a swing and connected.
Crack!
Under the bright sun, the ball soared toward the outfield. Larson stood, cheering when his son caught the ball.
Jake wasn’t sure why he felt so drawn to the abandoned restaurant, but he did. So much so that with what little strength he had left, he’d painstakingly made his way across town to get here.
His battery had recharged, just a little, enough for him to walk. But his walk was actually more of a shuffle; he wasn’t going to make it far. Every movement took all the strength Jake possessed.
Now Jake pushed inside the empty building. His feet dragged across the dusty floor as he aimed toward his destination. In a way, she was leading him here, he knew. But not really. She had no will left. He was in control. But he’d learned enough about her as he’d overcome her to know that this was where she had to be laid to rest.
Jake shuffled across a barren dining room and made his way to the ball pit he’d been seeing in his mind’s eye since he’d integrated Eleanor’s remains into his consciousness. It was a horrible place. He could tell. Not just that it looked horrible—all dusty and faded and smelling of decay—but it was horrible. It was like a graveyard for the souls of victims of a wicked wrongness that he didn’t fully understand. What had happened here? Where did Eleanor come from? Had she caused all this chaos, or had the chaos somehow caused her?
Jake paused in front of the dingy yellow rope that warned away anyone crazy enough to come in here and try to enter this pit of terror and pain. This was where Jake had to be to do the last bit of good he could do. It felt kind of like the end, but he hoped it was going to be more of a beginning—the start of the one journey he really wanted to take.
He’d finished everything he’d had to do. He’d managed to reunite Dr. Talbert with his real daughter. And he’d found the real homeless girl Eleanor had replaced. The real girl with the reddish-brown hair had been locked in a trunk in the abandoned building where Jake had originally found Eleanor. Depsite her terror at being rescued by him, he’d made sure she got to a hospital.
Jake stepped into the ball pit, and as soon as he did, the pit started taking him. He let the ball pit pull him down. And down. And down. It felt kind of like sinking into a pool of water. All he had to do was relax and let himself drift downward.
So that’s what he did. He sank lower and lower. As soon as he did, he was no longer aware of the pit. He wasn’t aware of anything physical at all.
Millie flinched when a low-hanging fir branch brushed against her cheek. She batted it away and peered into the darkness beyond it. Where was her grandpa’s house? She’d just been there, hadn’t she? How could she have gotten this lost?
Millie tugged her black sweater tighter around her. She rubbed her arms to get warm. She felt really chilled—even though the night wasn’t that cold.
Before she’d left the house, she hadn’t wanted to be at the stupid Christmas dinner with all her stupid relatives. But now, for reasons she didn’t understand, that was the only place she wanted to be.
And, of course, because she wanted it, she couldn’t have it. She never got what she wanted. She was always forced to do what everyone else wanted her to do. Her parents. Her grandpa. The teachers at school. It wasn’t fair.
Nearby, a crow cawed. Millie jumped and spun around. She heard a rustling in the undergrowth, and she tried to see into the darkness.
When nothing moved, she started walking again.
Millie thought she’d only been out here for a few minutes. So why did it feel like she’d been wandering for a very long time?
Before she could ponder that question, the foliage rustled again, and this time, a hand reached through it. Millie gasped and stopped dead.
A little boy was stepping out from the middle of a huckleberry bush. Millie stared at him, poised to run if he was a threat.
He didn’t look like a threat, though. With a round freckled face, bright green eyes, a big smile, and a thick tangle of brown curls that fell into his eyes, the boy looked really nice actually. Millie found herself smiling at him, in spite of herself.
“You lost?” the boy asked.
Millie shook her head even though she was.
“I’m Jake,” the boy said. Then he took Millie’s hand.
To her surprise, Millie didn’t resist at all. Instead, she let the boy—Jake—lead her through the woods.
He didn’t lead her for long, though. In what felt like an instant, Jake was there and then gone. He disappeared, and Millie found herself on her grandpa’s front porch.
Through the big picture window, Millie could see her family gathering around the table. Behind them, the Christmas tree was lit up just like it had been when she’d left the house. And for some reason, Millie was happy to see it. She was happy to see her family, too.
Not sure why she felt so good all of a sudden—but not really caring, Millie rushed across the porch. She threw open the door and ran into the room. Her grandpa greeted her with a smile and a hug, which Millie … for once … was happy to receive.
For the first time she could remember, Millie felt like she was home.
Inside the abandoned restaurant, dust motes danced in the silence. The ball pit hunkered in the corner as usual—totally still.
Or, maybe not totally.
Although the plastic balls weren’t moving, suddenly, one of them lit up. It lit up and turned from ruddy red to shining gold. Then it turned clear, like a sparkling crystal ball.
Within the glistening glass orb, a tiny scene flared into view. The scene was that of a family Christmas—laughing people gathered around a table near a Christmas tree. In the center of the group of people, a young girl dressed all in black smiled as if she hadn’t smiled in a long time.
Around this bright clear ball and its inviting scene, other balls in the ball pit began morphing from filthy plastic to brilliant transparent glass. Every glass ball lit up with its own little happy scene.
Soon all the plastic balls were shimmering. They all twinkled like dazzling stars in a clear night sky.
Larson sat in Dr. Talbert’s living room. It seemed strange to be sitting on the sofa in the very room where he had lain on the floor as the Stitchwraith finally put an end to Eleanor. At that time he would have said he would never return to this house.
But he had to. He was a detective, and he still had questions.
Dr. Talbert sat in the armchair across from him. “How can I help you, Detective?”
“There was just one more thing I wanted to clear up,” Larson said. “It’s out of my own personal curiosity, really. Remnant—what is it? Is it some kind of … magic?”
As a younger man, Larson would never have thought magic was even a vague possibility. But he had seen lots of strange things since then.
Talbert sighed. “Remnant is …” He paused.
“In nonscientific terms, it’s like the metal is haunted. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but it’s similar to the way that water conducts electricity. Remnant is the mixing of the tangible with the intangible, of memory with the present. The people and things that are lost—it makes them almost real again.” Talbert had a sad, faraway look in his eyes. “You know, when Renelle was a little girl, she was sick. She was in and out of the hospital on an almost-constant basis. I was scared—terrified, really—that she would die. I stayed up nights trying to think of ways to protect her. I made this little pendant for her out of Remnant. That way, I figured I could never lose her entirely.”
“Do you still have the pendant?” Larson asked.
“Yes. Would you like to see it?”
Larson nodded.
Talbert left the room and came back holding a chain from which a heart-shaped pendant dangled. He held it at a distance from his body, between his finger and thumb, the same way one might hold a dead mouse by the tail. Still, the necklace looked like an ordinary piece of jewelry any young girl might wear. Larson was sure no one ever gave it a second glance.
“It was a terrible mistake to create this,” Talbert said, looking down at the necklace. “It was my obsession in creating this that caused me to lose Renelle in the first place.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” Larson said. “If it’s haunted, then haunted by what?”
Talbert didn’t meet Larson’s eyes. He held out the pendant. “Here, why don’t you take it?”
Larson was confused. “Me?”
“Yes,” Talbert said. “Take it. Do what you want with it. I honestly can’t even bear to look at it anymore.”
Talbert dropped the pendant into Larson’s palm. It felt so small, so insignificant.
Talbert walked Larson to the door. “Thank you for stopping by, Detective. And thank you for taking the pendant off my hands. Maybe now I can turn the page and start a new chapter in my life, with my real daughter.”
Once Larson was on the sidewalk, he heard a soft, high-pitched sound. He looked around for the source of the noise and discovered it was coming from the pendant in his palm. It was like it was singing a song but too softly for Larson to make out the words. He held up the pendant to inspect it, and the sun shone through it. It was dazzling.