"I can't believe we're about to do this, Paul." I whisper. We were standing outside the doors to Simons (a popular bakery that was known for its animatronic singers, life-like wall murals, heavenly baked goods, and cheap party rooms) at around ten forty-three, long after sunset. I was terrified that we would get caught breaking in.
"Just a second, Jack. I've almost..." the lock finally clicked, signaling that it was open. We walked in and he locked the door behind us, condemning us to a full five hours here. We only had to stay until three, and that would be difficult enough, what with the security cameras and all. We walked through the building, shining our flashlights on everything.
The wall murals, I noted, looked very different at night. One, supposedly depicting a cherry-soda river, looked like blood had been smeared all along it; enough blood that at least three men would have had to have died to make it. Most of the flowers in the 'poppy fields' mural looked like bloodstains as well. Old ones.
The creepiest mural, though, was the 'party-man'. He was a tall, pale, masked man wearing a polka-dotted suit with confetti, balloons, and streamers painted around him. At night, the streamers looked like tentacles and the confetti looked like splattered blood. We hurried past the doors that led to the security guards office. Only, there was more than one. There were four doors marked security guard, all with thick, steel, electronic doors blocking them.
We looked around curiously for a few minutes, until we heard footsteps. I checked my watch, "Its eleven twenty-eight, that must be the security guard." We hurried into the room to the right of the entry hall, hoping he wouldn't find us there. We kept silent for twenty-five minutes, waiting to see if he would come in and find us. When he didn't, we got comfortable.
"Hey, wonder if anything interesting will happen?" Paul asked, yawning sightly. "I-." My response was cut off as the door swished open and the night-guard rushed in. "Two minutes before they can move! Great timing, Sean! Great timing!" He closed the door and started towards a vent, several thick wooden boards under one arm and a screw-gun in his right hand. He froze, though, when he noticed us and his face turned pale. "Aww..." he seemed to struggle for a moment before finishing his sentence; "Heck no! No!" he glanced at his watch, frantic. "No time! No time!" he looked back at us. "You have to stay here, okay?!" he sounded frazzled. "Ooh... the animatronics will wake up in a few minutes and they will be bloodthirsty. Why Sunday? The hardest of all the freaking nights!" he kept talking to himself as we stared at him and he gathered all of our stuff in a corner. Then he dashed to the vent and began putting boards over it. based on his heavy breathing, he had either just finished some exhausting workout, or he was terrified. Maybe both.
Both Paul and me scooted away from the nightguard slightly, fairly disturbed by his muttering. "Well... insane night-guard. Didn't expect that." Paul whispered in my ear, after a full minute of watching him screw in the wooden boards. "I heard that!" Sean called as he secured the last hunk of wood. "Listen kids, ever wonder why there's a new night-guard every week? Or why the carpets are different each Monday? Or, the big question, what even happens to those old night-guards?! Why no-one ever see them again?" he checked his watch. "AAH!" his shout made me jump. I was becoming increasingly convinced that this guy was crazy. 'Then why do they let him work here?' asked my curious, infuriatingly emotional side. I groaned inwardly. Was I actually considering his words? It was crazy it couldn't be true... could it?
Sean dashed to the cameras and began flitting through them, frantically searching. "When I say the word 'close', push the button next to the door! If you don't, we all die." He said it so matter-of-factly, his voice so filled with terrified certainty, that, against the voice of reason in my head that was practically screaming at me not to trust him, I found myself believing his words. I ran to the door and stood there waiting.
A minute later he let out a breath I hadn't known he was holding. "Ah, Simon, I've found you...why the kitchen? Ty; on the stage... and... Bryan too. Where's Lyra? And where's..." he froze. Then his voice got quiet and shaky, terror flooding his tone. "Heaven help us, it's that new one. He's..." Sean's eyes widened. "SHUT THE DOOR!"
I slammed my palm against the button as solidly as I could and the door shut more quickly than I could have believed. Not fast enough for me to miss the image of a silent man dashing towards the door, though. Or miss the feeling of a few drops of some liquid on my hand as he lunged for the door, flinging out his hand before it closed.
I pulled my hand to my face and looked at the strange liquid on my hand. It was a deep red and smelled like iron. As if in a trance I licked a drop from my hand.
It was blood.
My body began shivering. This was not okay, this kind of thing just didn't happen. Ever. It was several seconds before I heard someone calling my name. "JAKE!" I shook myself and turned to look at Paul. "What?" Then I realized that he had his hand on the button and was gasping. "It almost g-got th-through... it was th-the tiger." He shivered visibly. My eyes widened and I took a step back, then I turned to look at Sean.
He was holding the vent shut, and I could see him straining. Little clanging noises came from the vent, and I could hear the wood groaning. I ran over and threw my body against the barricade, attempting to help him hold the wood in place as adrenaline flooded my body. "What kind of idiot would make these things!?" I shouted at him; the near silence and sudden, overwhelming fear were starting to get to me, "And why the heck didn't you make us leave?!" Sean looked like he was about to answer, but then he paled. "Oh no," he whispered, "it's the night they promised me." He dashed to the cameras and shouted "CLOSE THE DOORS!" Paul reacted instantly, slamming the button down. A loud thud sounded from behind the doors and Paul shuddered. "Listen kids," Sean said, almost sounding calm, "just in case I die tonight, tell the next guy to check drawer number thirteen. I keep all of my notes about this place there and he will die without it."
I stared at him, my confusion adding to my panic, "What?! If you die!? Why do you think they won't kill us?! What the heck is going o-". Before I could finish speaking, a deafening shriek rang through the building, followed by the sound of cracking wood. Sean whipped around to face me just as I felt something cold and hard ram through the wood into my back. I jerked forward and nearly slammed my head into the floor, only stopping in time because I physically couldn't bend that far. I heard the crunching of more wood and immediately twisted my body, rolling first onto my side and then towards the desk.
As I jumped to my feet, I saw a large, turquoise, robotic squirrel climb out of the vent. The thing looked broken, beat up, and was covered in dried blood, nothing like what I'd seen the last time I'd been to this bakery. As the squirrel began to climb to its feet; Sean froze, tremors running through his body and his face pale as a corpse. I dashed to my brother and grabbed his arm, pulling him out of the room through the open door as the animatronic nightmare let out a triumphant, broken shriek and began to move towards Sean.
We flew out the door, fast enough to get past the bloodied animatronic I'd mistaken for a man. It froze as we ran past it, turning its head and body to watch us disappear around the corner. Around the corner was a room with two other animatronics in it, the lioness and the tiger. As we entered the room, they turned to look at us. Their eyes, which I remembered as being orange and gold respectively, were deep, empty voids of darkness, and their bodies resembled the dilapidated form of Simon the squirrel. I nearly tripped as I saw the lifeless pits of their eyes, but I managed to keep moving forward. Towards the giant, terrifying, bloodied animatronics with claws and teeth that could cut through a car door.
Panic kept me moving, and I only barely heard my brother when he yelled; "San-Francisco!" Years of muscle memory and reliving the bitter-sweet memories of our ex-dads home let me avoid running into the nightmare machines. My brother and I had had bully problems back in California, and nothing we tried had gotten them to stop. After mentioning the knives we'd been threatened with, our father had taught us how to run away and enrolled us parkour classes. It'd been a good idea since we lived in a city full of ladders, rooftops, rails, poles, and other, harder to get around objects; buildings and alleyways being our main concern. We once managed to get away from them by jumping onto and off of a wall to grab a ladder so we could run out to the street. We did something similar now.
As the animatronics began to move towards us, I angled myself towards the wall, planning to use it as a launching pad; where I was trying to jump to I had no clue. Before we reached the wall, though, I heard a scream echo from the guard rooms. Fresh adrenaline flooded my body and I ran even faster, pushing myself harder than I had in years, only to hear the sound of something big and metallic running even faster than myself. I managed to reach the wall and jump onto it just as the running creature was getting close. I minimized my forward momentum, allowing me to take another step up the wall and try to get as high as I could before pushing off with all my might.
I flew through the air, clearing the animatronics heads, though I was moving towards some tables that would easily sprain my ankle; if nothing worse happened. Fear flooded my brain again, making it hard to breath; and then my brother grabbed my hand, turning my fall into a swing. He managed to pull me up enough for me to grab what he was holding onto for dear life; a light fixture. We climbed onto the light, clinging to it for dear life, just as a loud clang sounded and the fixture shuddered violently; nearly knocking us off of it. I looked down, my face paling, and saw the humanoid animatronic kneeling on the ground; it looked like it had nearly replicated what we'd done.
I looked at my brother as the thing straightened and I saw my own panicked look reflected on his face. "Next light?" I asked in a strained whisper. He nodded and we began to swing the fixture we were on back and forth, trying to get close enough to jump to the next light. We jumped as soon as the animatronics began to run towards the wall, barely making it to the next light. It swung forward because of our momentum and we used that to start swinging towards the next light. We jumped just as a loud clang sounded from behind us and when we landed I looked back for a moment to see what had happened. The humanoid one had made it onto the light and was starting to imitate our swinging technique. We jumped again and I started try to match my brothers pace as closely as possible to speed up our swinging.
We made good time, crossing the entire room in minutes, though the animatronic started to catch up. When we reached the other end of the room, he was almost on top of us; a mere two swings from catching us. I grabbed his hand and we jumped for the door, grabbing the frame and swinging into the next room. I saw a button next to the door and managed to turn and push it before the animatronic jumped to the floor. A door slid shut, separating us from the animatronic demons. I turned around and grabbed my brother's hand, dragging him to the front doors of the building.
They were locked.
I turned around and saw the lion and the tiger looking through the small hole in the door, watching us. I didn't see the human-looking one though, which terrified me. I turned back to the door and tried kicking it as hard as I could, hoping to crack the glass. A single crack spread across the glass. Emboldened, I dropped to my back and began slamming my foot into the glass again and again, ignoring the pain that filled my lower-leg because of it. Paul started kicking the glass as well, though he stayed upright, in an attempt to help break it faster. I heard a loud crash in the kitchen just as the glass shattered, leaving a big enough hole for one person to crawl through at a time. Knowing the glass would break off on the first person through, I immediately jumped through it, feeling long lacy cuts form all along my body.
Once I was out, I turned back to the door and reached in for my brother, grabbing his arm and pulling him through the dulled glass. Before he was halfway out of the door, he stopped. He screamed, and began to be pulled back into the building. I pulled as hard as I could, terror now overwhelming my mind for an entirely new reason. Whatever was in that place had Paul. I tried to pull harder.
Suddenly my new cuts all pulsed, causing my arms to spasm and me to let out a gasp of pain. For half a second, my hands opened and I watched my brother fly back into the building. A wordless, grotesque, inhumanly agonized scream burst from my throat and I leapt at the hole. Gripping the sharp biting edge as hard as I could, barely noticing the pain, I stared inside. My brother was no-where to be found, instead I saw the terrifying human-animatronic. I now noticed fresh blood dripping down its side. And it was watching me. It moved towards the hole and I backed away. It placed its face against the hole and stared at me, studying me for what felt like hours. Then it dropped a piece of paper to the concrete and, eventually, left.
I sat there, in shock, for a long time. When I finally shook myself out of my daze, the sun was starting to rise and lights were beginning to come on in people's houses. As the sunlight touched the bakery, every inch of it changed making it look perfect and new. Even the glass was suddenly whole again. I crawled to the piece of paper and looked at it before the sunlight touched it. Finally, what had happened hit home and tears began to flow down my cheeks. My brother was gone and, according to the paper, I'd only ever see him again if I survived seven more nights at this place.
I was the new night-guard.
(A/N) What do you guys think? If you guys have any questions, just ask. I'll clear it up in the next chapter. Till then!
Your scribe,
-Shadefinder ;D
