A Retelling of A Ghost Story

Chapter 7: Animatronics

The black void that Evan woke up to was almost infinite. Evan rubbed his eyes and noticed that he had both of his eyes in his skull, in fact his entire head was intact. He frantically felt all over his face and the top of his head, and with a cheerful smile shouted, "woooooo! I'm alive!!" He immediately stopped when he heard someone open a door behind him. An employee entered the room and started to tinker with one of the animatronics. Evan decided to get the person's attention "Um? Hello? Over here!" The employee did not notice the child. "...T-that's fine, I'll just go." Evan tried to get up and walk out of the room, but when he stood up, he towered over the employee. He was shocked at how tall he was. The employee saw him and immediately stumbled back. "Ohh, ok, malfunctioning animatronic, yay me," he sighed and walked out of the room, unintentionally leaving Evan endlessly confused.

Finally, alone, he sank back into his little void. For what seemed like an eternity, there was only silence in the small room. He then heard a small voice in the corner of his void. "Hello? Hello? Evan, are you there?" He turned around and saw the apparition of a young girl with a mask on her face resembling the puppet. Her long hair went down to her shoulders. It was now a translucent white. In fact, every part of her was different saturations of white and light gray. She sat down next to Evan and put her arm around the boy as if trying to comfort him. "What's going on? Who are you? Where am I?" The boy stammered. "don't worry," she said, "I'll explain everything, everything is going to be okay. I'm Charlie, remember?" "Oh, Charlie! Are you ok? I saw you..." His face went even paler as he remembered the last time he saw his father. "When your dad murdered me." She finished for him. Charlie took off her mask and set it down beside her, revealing her face.

Her eyes were the only part of her that wasn't white. They were completely black with glowing white pupils that burned through the void like a lighthouse on a stormy night. There were two black lines running down from both her eyes and down to her chin. They were almost like tear streaks. "Um, so what is this void?" Evan asked. "It's kinda hard to explain... it's kinda like your head space when you're possessing something." "I'm possessing something?" "Uh huh, I said I'd put you back together, and this is the best I could do. I guided you to Fredbear because you had a special connection to it." "Really? You can do that?" "Yeah, I have the ability to help bind souls to certain objects, kinda like magic!" Charlie said with a warm smile.

"Do you think I have an ability like that?" "I don't know, I've only been dead for a week, I don't know everything there is to know about being a ghost," Charlie conceded, "but I can help you find out if you want." she said with a smile. "Yeah, I wanna find out if I have powers like you!" "Ok calm down, we can figure it out later, I'm kinda tired right now." "Oh, right, my bad." Evan apologized. "No, no, it's okay, do you have any other questions?" Charlie asked.

"Well, uh, why do you have white hair? Last time I saw you, you had brown hair." Charlie was kind of taken aback at the question. She took a moment and she was back in color again. "Is this ok?" Evan's eyes widened at the change. "Oh, so you can do it anytime you want, that's so cool, Charlie!" Evan then tried to change into shades of ethereal white. After a few moments, everything up to his elbows was a translucent shade of light gray. "I did it! I did it Charlie, look!" The boy eagerly showed his arms to his friend. "That's great for the first time! It took me a while to figure it out too."

The two kids decided to play some games around the diner with their newfound ghost abilities. They found out that they had the ability to mess with electronic devices and machines. They tried most of all the games, even rivaling the high score on the Pac man game in the corner set long before the two had died. Charlie was most familiar with the older games, like space invader and frogger, she explained that Henry taught her how to play when the diner first opened. Evan was the best with games that required timing and quick judgment calls like pong and asteroids. He liked the fast-paced nature of those games, same as Charlie.