Felix the Shark Read online

  Dirk groaned.

  “No, seriously,” Gordon said. “The guy who started the Freddy’s chain was way ahead of his time with animatronics. Clearly, he had to keep things rudimentary for the public, but what if he had an underground laboratory? What if he created the first wave of the android army?”

  No one had a comment about this, so Dirk jumped in. “I was thinking it would be fun to start a Freddy Fazbear club.”

  “Yeah, because you’re not in enough clubs,” Jenny said. She winked at Dirk to let him know she wasn’t dissing him. He appreciated that.

  “Well, we all have good memories of Freddy’s, right?” Dirk looked around the table.

  Everyone nodded.

  “I think I still have a plush Freddy in my closet,” Jenny admitted.

  Dirk grinned. “That’s funny you mention it. I just came across my plush Felix, and that’s what got me thinking about Freddy’s so much. I even had a dream about him, and I tried to—”

  “Who’s Felix?” Wyatt asked.

  Dirk looked around the table at his friends. They all had blank expressions on their faces. Jenny reached out for another piece of pizza. Gordon picked up his root beer to take a drink.

  “Felix,” Dirk repeated. “You know, Felix the Shark.”

  Gordon guffawed and spewed root beer all over the game table. Leo yanked his notebook back a second too late.

  “Hey,” Leo said. He quickly grabbed a napkin and wiped off his scribblings.

  “What’s so funny?” Dirk asked. He could feel his face and his ears heating up again.

  “Freddy’s didn’t have a shark,” Gordon said.

  “Yes it did!” Dirk insisted.

  Gordon looked at the others. “Anyone else remember a shark at Freddy’s?”

  Leo and Jenny shook their heads.

  “How old were you when you went to Freddy’s?” Jenny asked Dirk.

  He twisted his mouth in thought. “I think I was five … maybe?”

  “Where were you?”

  Dirk shook his head. “I don’t remember. We were on the road a lot back then.”

  “What do you mean, ‘on the road’?” Wyatt asked.

  Dirk didn’t want to talk about his childhood, so he picked up his cup and took a sip of cola. He also deflected the question. “None of you remember Felix the Shark and the moat he swam in?”

  Leo stared at Dirk. He picked up his pen and started writing furiously.

  “What are you doing?” Dirk asked.

  “You just gave me an idea for a story,” Leo said. “Great imagination, dude.”

  Dirk slammed his cup down on the table. Cola sloshed out. “It’s not my imagination!” he shouted. “Felix was real!”

  He looked at his friends. They all stared back at him with wide eyes and open mouths. Gordon tilted his head the way he often did when he was examining a suspected android. Great. Now Gordon was probably wondering if Dirk was an android, too.

  Dirk took a deep breath and spoke in a quieter tone. “I don’t mean real real. Felix was an animatronic, just like Freddy and Chica and Bonnie and Foxy. But he existed. I’m not making him up.”

  No one said anything.

  “You really don’t remember?” he asked.

  Everyone shook their heads.

  Dirk could feel his anger rising. Why were they acting so obtuse? How could anyone forget Felix?

  He stood up so abruptly that he knocked his chair over. “You don’t remember the moat thing? The entrance to Freddy’s led to steps that went down under the moat thing and came back up on the other side. Remember?”

  More head shaking.

  “See, Felix was inside this moatlike thing. I mean, it wasn’t really a moat. A moat’s more of a trench than this was. This was like an encapsulated river. It had a current, but the current wasn’t superfast. The tube encircled the entire restaurant. It was a tube made of the kind of glass they use for aquariums. You could see in to the water from anywhere in the restaurant. It was cool.”

  He checked his friends again. They were still staring blankly at him. He rushed on. “The water was totally enclosed. Felix never left the tube, but you could go in to the tube and swim with him.”

  Gordon barked out a single laugh. “You are so full of—”

  “In an enclosed tube?” Wyatt asked. “Wouldn’t you drown?”

  “No, I don’t mean swim,” Dirk corrected. His voice was getting loud again. He could hear it, but he couldn’t stop it. “I mean, like scuba dive. You’d put on swim trunks, and they’d hook you up to a breathing tube. There was this hatch that opened up, and you hopped in, and the attendant closed the hatch. Then you swam along the tube.”

  “You’ve got to be making this up, dude,” Leo said. “Are you sure this wasn’t some dream you had when you were little?”

  Jenny nodded. “Yeah. It sounds like maybe a little-kid fantasy that you mistook for real life.”

  “I don’t think he mistook anything,” Gordon said. “I think he’s totally making the whole thing up just to mess with us.”

  “I’m not making it up!” Dirk yelled.

  Gordon raised his hands in a placating gesture. Everyone else just kept staring at Dirk.

  Dirk frowned. “I might not have the details right about the tank, but I know I swam in it, and obviously, I didn’t drown, so there had to be some kind of oxygen hookup. And I sure didn’t imagine Felix. Felix would swim alongside you when you were in the tube.”

  “What did this supposed shark look like?” Gordon asked.

  “Supposed?” Dirk ground his teeth. He could feel his shoulders rising up to his ears, and he forced them back down.

  Gordon shrugged.

  Dirk gave Gordon a scathing look and said, “Felix was kind of bluish-gray, about six feet long. He was a shark. You know what a shark looks like. He was animatronic. He opened his mouth. He looked around. He swam. Just like a real shark.”

  “Wouldn’t a real shark eat you?” Leo asked.

  “Sharks don’t eat humans!” Dirk said. “Sharks don’t even like the taste of humans.”

  “Tell that to the surfers who’ve been attacked by sharks,” Gordon said.

  Dirk shook his head. “When a shark attacks a human, it’s usually because it’s confused or curious. They basically take a test bite to see if we taste good, and unfortunately, that bite can be fatal or can at least remove parts people would rather keep. But really, humans are far more dangerous to sharks than they are to us. Think about it. Humans hunt sharks for everything from shark fin soup to lubricants to health supplements.”

  “Well, we can always count on Dirk for useless trivia,” Gordon said.

  Dirk ignored him. “Felix was a programmed shark and obviously, they didn’t program him to eat the kids who got in the tank with him.”

  “That would be bad for business,” Jenny said.

  Leo tried to contain a giggle by scribbling something down in his notebook.

  “But did he have teeth like a shark?” Wyatt asked.

  Dirk nodded. “Sure.”

  Gordon shrugged. “Well, I can think of at least a dozen ways an animatronic like that could go wrong.”

  Jenny nodded. “I agree.” She looked at Dirk. “You do realize how crazy dangerous what you’re describing would be? I can’t even imagine how they could safely build such a thing, especially back then. And for little kids? Even without the shark, the swimming tube would be a horrible idea for kids. We’re talking liability issues galore.”

  Of course, you’d go there, Dirk thought. The twins’ parents were both attorneys.

  “I’m not making it up,” Dirk insisted.

  “I don’t think you’re trying to mess with us,” Jenny said. She screwed up her face. “I just—”

  “So, you’re saying little kids, like five years old, like you were, wanted to get in this enclosed tank and swim with a big robotic shark?” Gordon asked.

  “Yeah,” Dirk said in a what-of-it tone.

  Leo looked up from his no
tebook. “That would be scary as hell for a little kid.”

  “Never mind a little kid,” Jenny mused. “I’d be terrified now being in an enclosed thing of water like that with a shark swimming with me. I wouldn’t care if it was animatronic. And I know what you said, Dirk”—she smiled at him—“but sharks are just plain scary.”

  “Felix wasn’t scary,” Dirk objected. “You could see in his eyes that he was friendly. I mean, he was programmed to be friendly. I liked Felix. I have good memories of him.” Dirk felt himself getting choked up, and he cleared his throat. “I thought of Felix as a kindred spirit. We were both outcasts, both misunderstood. Not wanted.”

  Dirk pressed his lips together and blinked so he wouldn’t get teary. He lifted his gaze and looked at Jenny. She bunched up her eyebrows. “Maybe Felix was your childhood way of creating an ally when you didn’t have one.”

  “I think Jenny has a point,” Wyatt said. “It sounds like your subconscious made up this character to help you cope. It makes sense. Our minds do incredible things to get us through life.”

  “My subconscious mind did not come up with Felix!” Dirk shouted.

  For several seconds, no one said a word. The music on the stereo continued to play some rock band wailing about love. The fire continued to dance in the fireplace. A log shifted, and it hit the bottom of the grate with a thump and several pops and cracks. Dirk could barely hear these sounds, though, because blood was rushing through his head so quickly it sounded like a fast-paced version of Felix’s swimming tube.

  “So, none of you believe me?” Dirk asked. Because everything seemed muted, he spoke loudly.

  He looked at each friend in turn, starting with Jenny. She frowned and looked away. Beside her, Gordon crossed his arms and shook his head. Dirk wanted to punch his friend in the nose. The guy who believed the creator of Freddy’s invented an android army refused to believe Dirk’s story? Yeah, that made sense.

  Dirk looked at Wyatt. Wyatt’s smile was still in place, but it looked a little wilted. He gave Dirk an apologetic shrug. “Maybe if you could remember where the Freddy’s was. I mean, Fazbear Entertainment came up with some pretty cool things. It’s possible one of their pizzerias had the moat thing you’re describing. You really have no idea where it was?”

  Dirk shook his head, and his shoulders slumped. Then he straightened them. “But that’s one of the reasons I wanted to start this club. If you help me, I’m sure we could find all the old Freddy’s locations, and we could track down where Felix was.”

  He waited for his friends to tell him what a great idea that was.

  No one said anything for a couple seconds. Then Leo spoke up. “That sounds kind of like tilting at windmills or searching for Atlantis, dude.”

  “Yeah, it’s just like that treasure hunt you wanted us to go on last year,” Gordon said. “Would have been a lot of work for nothing.”

  Dirk looked at his other friends. “No one wants to help me find Felix?”

  Jenny sighed. “No one wants to look for something that probably exists only in your imagination.”

  “You do have a great imagination,” Leo said. “I can work Felix and the moat in to my latest story. I’d give credit to you, Dirk, obviously.”

  Dirk didn’t respond, but Leo went on, “Maybe we can sit down together and you can tell me how you envisioned the moat thing.”

  “I didn’t envision anything!” Dirk bellowed.

  That was it. He was done.

  Dirk went to stand up and realized he was already standing. He’d never sat back down. Good. That meant he could leave faster.

  Dirk swiveled and strode away from the game table.

  “Dude!” Gordon called. “Where’re you going?”

  “Maybe to find Felix. I don’t know!” Dirk flung over his shoulder.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so outraged. He felt totally and completely dismissed. He hated that feeling!

  Dirk charged across the basement, grabbed his coat from the bench by the door, and reached for the doorknob.

  “But I wrote a new character for the game,” Leo called out. “If you leave, we can’t use it.”

  Dirk didn’t even bother to answer. He just flung open the door, dashed through it, and slammed it behind him.

  When Dirk got back to his pathetic garage-apartment, there was no warm glow in the windows. No one was ever waiting at home for him.

  Dirk stepped out of his old, battered car. The driver’s door squeaked when he closed it.

  He wanted to slam the door, but when he slammed the door on his temperamental compact sedan, it tended to stick. He wasn’t in the mood to crawl back in to his car from the passenger side tonight … because he was going back out as soon as he could pack a bag.

  Unlocking the door, Dirk stepped in to his place. He called it an apartment, but that made the space sound fancier than it was. It was just a square room with a tiny bathroom stuck in the back corner. His “kitchen” was a sink, a small fridge, and “counter” made from an unfinished door, set on sawhorses. A hot plate on a tile on one end of the door’s surface was his “stove.”

  Dirk’s whole place still smelled like the eggs and bacon he’d made for breakfast that morning. The digital clock next to his sofa bed told Dirk it was only 8:35 p.m. On Saturday evenings like this one, he was never usually here at this early hour. He was always at Gordon and Jenny’s place.

  Dirk hadn’t had a home, a real home, well … ever. Sure, his aunt had tried to give him a home, but she wasn’t cut out to raise a kid. She’d always been distant and formal with him. In the nine years he’d lived with her, he’d always felt like a guest; he lived in fear of breaking one of her knickknacks or staining her upholstery.

  And before that, when his parents had still been alive? He’d never had a home then, either.

  None of Dirk’s friends knew about his past, and he wanted to keep it that way. It was too weird.

  Dirk’s mom and dad had put together a magic act before Dirk was born. They’d run away from home together right after high school graduation, and they’d supported themselves by doing magic shows all over the country. When they had Dirk, they weren’t about to let a baby hold them back. They just included him in their show, and that’s when they started making really good money. People flocked from all over to see the “Amazing Disappearing Baby” and later the “Amazing Disappearing Toddler.”

  All was going well until a social worker took exception to five-year-old Dirk being sawed in half. Child Protective Services got involved, and his parents took him out of the act. From that point on, they’d started leaving him with either his aunt or some babysitter while they did their thing. They’d probably still be on the road if it wasn’t for a blown tire. Their car had gone over the side of a long drop-off, and this time, Dirk’s parents were the ones who did the disappearing. Dirk had never forgiven his parents for going back on the road without him. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have died and left him alone. He’d never gotten over his belief that their magic act was more important to them than their son.

  Dirk knew he’d let this belief pretty much run his life. He was self-aware enough to realize his past fueled his need to be right all the time. He also knew that spending his formative years in a magic act was responsible for his obsession with puzzles, mysteries, and the unexplained. It was like he was a magnet for the bizarre. Maybe that was why he’d loved Felix so much. And now his need to be right, his interest in mysteries, and his love of Felix was sending him on another journey.

  Dirk opened the rickety fake wood cabinet that served as his closet. Pulling out a canvas duffel bag, he crossed the green indoor-outdoor carpeting covering the garage’s hard concrete floor. At a small desk on the opposite side of the room, he set down the duffel and opened the top drawer. He pulled out a ledger-type leather book. He put that in the bottom of the duffel bag and packed what he’d need for a couple weeks’ travel. When he finished packing, he dug out the shoebox he kept his savings in.
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  A quick count of his money came up with just over a couple thousand dollars. It sounded like a lot, but gas and food and motel room costs could add up fast. He’d have to be careful.

  A few moments later, he began gathering some other things—his sleeping bag, a jacket, a hat and gloves, a flashlight and batteries, and his phone. Once that was done, he stuffed in a grocery bag’s worth of munchies like crackers, chips, nuts, and dried fruit.

  Dirk looked at his packed duffel bag and the stack of supplies next to it. He glanced around his place one more time. His gaze landed on a framed photo of his parents, sitting on his desk. He stepped over and picked it up.

  He snapped his fingers and opened the chest that sat under his only window. Lying on top of a pile of games and old toys, a matted and threadbare plush blue-gray shark with a limp dorsal fin lay on its side. Dirk picked it up and tucked it in his duffel.

  He was ready. He would find the Freddy’s that was home to Felix the Shark.

  Dirk was hesitant to tell his friends for fear of opening up the wounds from his childhood, but he already had a few good guesses where Felix could be. He’d been using good old-fashioned research to retrace his parents’ travels for months now, ever since he started having dreams about Felix.

  Dirk wasn’t sure why the dreams started. Was it because he was becoming more and more aware of how stuck he was in his life, how he was going nowhere? Had that made him want to go back to his origins for some reason?

  Whatever had caused the dreams, at one point he’d gotten out the box that contained the few things his parents had left to him. Under his dad’s goofy top hat, a small jewelry box filled with his mom’s costume jewelry, and a couple of warped, yellowing photo albums, he’d found a ledger that kept track of their performances. That was the leather book he’d already put in his duffel. It was filled with lists of places and dates.

  He was pretty sure he’d been five when he swam with Felix, but he might have been a year or two younger or maybe a year older. Not any older than that. He remembered the last two years of his time with his parents pretty well, and Felix wasn’t one of those memories. So, he figured he had a three-year window to look in, and in those three years, his parents had performed in seventeen states.