Chapter 3: The Empty Seat

Chapter 3: The Empty Seat

For a long moment, Leo didn't breathe. He didn't move. The world had shrunk to the space between him and the unplugged, twisted animatronic bear. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead drilled into his skull, a sound that had been background noise moments ago but was now the frantic thrumming of his own overstressed nerves.

His mind, a well-ordered workshop of logic and mechanics, scrambled for an explanation. Residual pneumatic pressure, it screamed. A spring in the neck mechanism must have slipped its housing. Torsional energy released from a sheared pin. He clung to these phrases like a drowning man to driftwood, desperate explanations for the impossible. But he knew. Deep in his gut, where instinct lived, he knew none of it was true.

The sheer, silent deliberation of the movement he’d heard—that smooth, powered whir—wasn't a glitch. It was an action.

He took a slow, shuffling step backward, his boots scraping on the concrete floor. The sound was deafening in the silence. Billy Bob’s upside-down grin seemed to widen. Its dead plastic eyes, devoid of light, held him captive. Leo felt a suffocating pressure in his chest, the primal terror of a prey animal realizing it’s being watched by a predator.

He had to get out.

The thought was a thunderclap, breaking his paralysis. He wasn’t going to fix this. He couldn’t. He needed air, distance, the sanity of the world outside these walls. He fumbled behind him for the doorknob, his eyes never leaving the monstrous figure on the dolly. His fingers closed around the cold metal, and he pulled the heavy door open, stumbling backward into the dimly lit service corridor.

He didn't run. Not yet. He carefully pulled the door shut, the latch clicking into place with a sound of profound finality. He leaned against the cool cinderblock wall, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He could still see the bear’s inverted face in his mind’s eye. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to banish the image.

Get a grip, Martinez, he told himself, his breath coming in ragged gasps. You’re overtired. You’re spooked. You saw something weird. Just go home. Things will make sense in the morning.

He pushed off the wall and began the long walk toward the front of the building. The back hallways, usually just a mundane network of passages, now felt like a tomb. The air was cold and still. The drip-drip-drip of a leaky valve in the soda fountain supply room echoed like a ticking clock, counting down to something terrible.

He pushed through the swinging doors into the main dining hall, and the cold dread that had taken root in the maintenance room blossomed into full-blown horror.

The room was a landscape of monstrous shadows. Under the stark, lonely glow of the emergency lights, the cheerful decor had curdled into something sinister. The long rows of tables and colorful chairs looked like a silent, waiting congregation. The towering jungle gym in the corner was a skeletal cage. The arcade cabinets against the far wall stood like monolithic sentinels, their dark screens reflecting his own distorted, fearful face.

But it was the stage that held his gaze. It was wrong.

Even from across the room, he could feel it. A profound wrongness that went beyond the eerie lighting. The stage, which had been a place of joy and music his entire life, now looked like a sacrificial altar, waiting for an offering. A cold wash of adrenaline, sharper and more potent than any caffeine, shot through him.

His feet carried him forward, as if pulled by an invisible string. He tried to rationalize the feeling away. It was the dark. It was his overactive imagination, fired up by whatever mechanical fluke he’d witnessed in the back. But the feeling wouldn't go away. It intensified with every step he took toward the stage.

He stopped at the low wooden railing that separated the audience from the performers. He looked up at the familiar figures, frozen in their places.

His brain began a frantic, panicked inventory.

Fatz Geronimo loomed over his silent keyboard, his gorilla-like silhouette a hulking block of darkness. He was there.

Dook LaRue, the spacey drummer dog, sat behind his kit, drumsticks poised. He was there.

Rolfe DeWolfe, the wisecracking wolf puppeteer, was in his corner with his little puppet, Earl Schmerle. They were there.

Billy Bob’s spot, center stage, was empty. Of course it was. The bear was strapped to a dolly in the maintenance room, its head screwed on backwards. The empty space was a gaping wound, a confirmation of the night’s insanity.

But that wasn’t what was wrong.

Leo’s eyes darted to the right side of the stage. To the small platform adorned with a giant slice of cartoon cheese. The spot where Mitzi Mozzarella, the peppy mouse cheerleader with her bright eyes and yellow sweater, was supposed to be.

The platform was empty.

A void. A black, gaping hole in the familiar tableau.

“No,” Leo whispered, the word a faint puff of condensation in the cold air. He blinked, rubbing his eyes, willing her to appear. Maybe she was obscured by a shadow. Maybe the angle was wrong.

He scrambled up onto the stage, his work boots thudding on the dusty wood. He walked right up to the spot. Nothing. Just scuff marks where her animatronic base was supposed to be bolted to the floor.

She was gone.

Maya’s words echoed in his head, no longer a silly superstition but a chilling prophecy. It wakes things up.

Panic, pure and undiluted, finally broke through the dam of his denial. This wasn't a glitch. This wasn't a prank. A quarter-ton animatronic bear hadn’t turned its own head around, and a three-hundred-pound robotic mouse hadn’t just gotten up and walked away. The world no longer operated on the principles of physics he understood.

He scrambled off the stage, stumbling over a stray chair in his haste. All thought of a rational explanation had evaporated. The only instinct left was flight.

He bolted for the front entrance, his footsteps echoing like gunshots in the vast, silent room. The double glass doors, with their faded decal of Billy Bob waving a cheerful hello, represented sanity. The parking lot. His truck. Home.

He slammed into the push bar with his full weight, expecting the doors to fly open into the cool night air.

CLANG.

The doors didn't budge. The heavy bar was locked solid. He rattled it again, desperately, the sound a frantic, metallic plea. Nothing. The deadbolt, a thick chunk of steel he’d seen Ms. Jackson slide into place a thousand times, was engaged.

He pressed his face against the cold glass, peering out into the empty parking lot. His old pickup truck sat under the lonely orange glow of a streetlamp, a symbol of an escape that was now impossible.

He was locked in.

A soft, scraping sound echoed from the darkness behind him. The sound of something heavy being dragged across the patterned carpet.

He froze, his hand still on the unmoving door. He was not alone. The chill that ran down his spine had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. It was the cold, sharp certainty of a creature caught in a cage, realizing the predator was inside with it.

The hunt had begun.