Anneliese's Arc

Chapter 10 of 2

The next night, the fear ran dry. Anneliese felt it before she saw it. The lower floor held no new children. Freddy's claws scraped the marble, hungry. Penny Giggles paced her tutu in slow circles, waiting for prey that had not come. The floor groaned under her feet, empty and starving. One night without food, and they would turn on each other inside her walls. Pennywise Duplex stood in the crack of the doorway, both faces watching. "Empty floor," it said. "No fear tonight. You know what happens next. Freddy eats the clowns. The clowns eat the marble. The marble eats your house. I counted three ways this ends. All bad." "I'll find more children," Anneliese said. "Not by morning," Penny Giggles said, flat and cheerful. "We get bored. Bored is worse than hungry." Anneliese went to the valley's edge. She had one place left to draw from. A cluster of small souls huddled there in the dark, gray-robed, wide-eyed. The Lost Dreamers. Child spirits stuck on one bad night, still trying to find their way out. She had passed them over before. She could not anymore. "We are not food," one said. They pressed together. "We are leaving." "None of you can leave," Anneliese said. "You've been trying for years." The smallest one, a girl, went very quiet. The others turned their eyes away from her, careful not to look. Anneliese knew that silence. The girl held something in her head, a way out she would not speak aloud. "Come to my house," Anneliese said. "Warm beds. Upstairs, where nothing hunts. You'll be safe there while you keep searching." It was a lie, and she knew it. Any dreamer under her roof was Freddy's to hunt. The beds upstairs were hers only until the floor below went hungry enough. But the words worked. The children followed her across the barren ground and through the door. Inside, the floor felt them at once. Freddy's shape leaned up through the marble. Penny Giggles clapped her bloody hands. "Fresh," Pennywise said. Its hunger eased. The crack in the wall knit shut. Anneliese led the Lost Dreamers up the stairs and put them in beds. She sealed the upper door. For tonight, she had fed the floor a promise and held the peace. The clowns and Freddy would not fight. Her house would stand. But the smallest girl looked up from her pillow, still silent, still holding her secret. Anneliese had housed the one child who believed she knew the way out. And the moment the fear ran dry again, the floor would reach up through the beds and take them all. She had bought one quiet night. She had bought it by promising safety to children she could not protect. Her sanctuary needed dreamers who belonged to it, safe and kept. Instead she kept filling it with the hunted.