“Creepy,” Carlton said mildly. The dining room in front of them was lit with the same dim, florescent light, giving the brand-new place an odd dullness. There were tables and chairs at the center, and arcade games and play areas along all the walls, but their eyes were drawn immediately to the small stage at the back corner. Its purple curtain was pulled open, and it was empty, except for a bright yellow rope strung across the front and a sign with a picture of a clock on it. NEXT SHOW: it read in neat, handwritten letters, but the clock had no hands. Marla shivered, and Carlton nudged her. “It’s not the same,” he whispered.

“It’s exactly the same,” she said. Carlton looked around at the rest of the room, his eyes lighting on a ball pit that stuck out from the front wall in a half circle, a round red plastic awning arcing over it, trimmed with white.

“Look at the monkey bars.” She pointed. Across the room, three small children steadily climbed the tangled structure of red and yellow bars. Carlton, startled, looked at Marla with surprise, then ran to them.

“Are you okay? Where are your parents?” he asked breathlessly, then his mouth went dry. The children were not human, or alive. Their animatronic faces were painted like clowns, their features absurdly exaggerated: One had a round, red nose that covered half its face and a white wig of synthetic curls; another had a molded smile on its face and a painted red grimace. The third, a red-cheeked, smiling clown with a rainbow-colored wig, looked almost cute, except for the gigantic spring that replaced the middle of its torso, boinging up and down each time it moved. All of them had black eyes, with no iris or pupil, and they did not appear to see Carlton. He waved his hands, but they did not turn their heads, just kept grasping the bars with their pudgy hands, and pulling themselves along the structure with uncanny precision. All of them emitted a loud whirring sound, as if they were wind-up toys that had been set loose to climb. The child with the spring suddenly flung its top half over the top of the bars, the spring extending into a long, wavy wire, then it grabbed a bar, and its feet shot into the air wildly, and came snapping back into place on the other side.

“My mistake, you’re not the kids we’re looking for, carry on,” Carlton whispered shakily, as the creatures continued, weaving over and under, back and forth through the structure. “They don’t see us,” Marla whispered, and it took him a moment to register her voice.

“What?” he said, his eyes still on the clown-children.

“They don’t see us,” she repeated. “These little things are working.” She tapped her ear.