Chapter 1: One Night at Freddy's
One year earlier…
"Fitzgerald, I'm glad you could make it." A sonorous voice boomed from the nearby building.
Jon Fitzgerald slammed the door of his father's Ford pickup shut and walked across the gravel strewn path to the dark, burly man standing by the entrance of his destination: Murph's Garage.
Murph's Garage was an enormous boxy shaped building covered in dull gray and green paint, with several large, extremely grimy windows scattered around its sides and a single low wattage light gracing the entryway. The garage was, in short, the epitome of a well-worn industrial building that had long since fallen on hard times. Andy had told him the place was a museum but to be completely honest, it was the very last place Jon had expected to find old curiosities. In either case, it didn't matter, he was here now and he had a job to do.
"Yeah. I'm sorry I didn't get here on time. I had some personal things to take care of." Jon said as he gave the man's hand a firm shake.
"That's fine. Don't worry about it." The main said in a way that indicated that it wasn't one bit acceptable, "Good thing you didn't get here later." He intoned sinisterly, "That would be very unfortunate."
Jon wasn't sure what to say in response to this so he kicked at the gravel while he waited for the man to speak again. After a brief pause the man glanced at him and cracked a small smile,
"All right I guess that wasn't funny."
"I'm not used to uh, doing night jobs."
"Congratulations. You're about to get some on the job training." The man said, "Lucky you.
Yeah, Jon thought, lucky me.
"It's eleven forty nine right now so your shift doesn't start for another twelve minutes. You know that you're only here for one night, correct?"
"Yeah, yeah I do." Jon replied; one night was enough for him. He didn't really want the job in the first place. "I'm just filling in for a buddy. Andy, he told me he was sick and couldn't work the shift."
"Yes I was sorry to hear about that." the man said, "I'm Marcus. We spoke on the phone earlier."
"Right." Jon said with a casual smile, "You got a last name?"
"Thorndike. Marcus Thorndike. Welcome to Murph's, I'm your supervisor here." Thorndike replied.
"Oh… supervisor?" Jon shot him a quizzical look. Andy hadn't mentioned a supervisor. "But this place is an old garage!" he said, gesturing to the ancient building. As he did so the light above him flickered wildly, temporarily shrouding them in darkness, before it once again enveloped them in its dim glow.
"It's not just any old garage Fitzgerald." Thorndike said slyly, "You did not, I assume, see the cameras around the perimeter?" he asked, gesturing to a darkened lamppost a short distance from the building. Jon squinted at it for a moment before he noticed the dim, rectangular outline of a camera, pointed directly at him. It paused and looked at him for a moment and slowly swiveled away, towards a nearby field outside the chain-link fence that surrounded the site.
"No. No I didn't."
"There are cameras all around this building Mr. Fitzgerald. There's the one that is watching us at this very moment, and five others at various points around the lot. That doesn't make you uncomfortable does it? Knowing that you or anyone else who comes near this building is being watched at every moment?"
Jon shrugged, "Nope, not really. Should it?"
"That would depend on what your motives are."
"I'm not here to steal anything."
Thorndike laughed at this, "I can guarantee you Mr. Fitzgerald, that you wouldn't be here if you were. But to answer your earlier question, I supervise the security around here. If anything goes wrong, I am the person you report to."
Jon thought this over for a moment, what exactly was liable to go wrong for one night that didn't during any of others? He was hesitant to ask. "Okay. Whatever you say Mr…?"
Thorndike chuckled, "Mr. Thorndike is fine."
"Whatever you say Mr. Thorndike."
"Good." Thorndike said as he pulled a set of five keys from his belt and tossed them to Mike, "Let's get started. See these keys?"
"Yeah."
"Each key is color coded. The green one opens the front door, blue opens the back exit, brown opens the basement, white opens your office, and the red one is for the safe room. Got it?"
"Got it." Jon said.
Thorndike smiled, "Let's go inside and get you situated so you know where everything is." And with that he pulled out a green key of his own, turned the lock, and opened the door. Jon followed him inside but before he had taken more than several steps inwards Thorndike stopped him and gestured to the open door.
"Rule number one Fitzgerald. Never forget to lock the door." He said, turning the key in the lock with a soft popping sound. "Never."
"Sorry."
"It's fine, but do not do that again." Thorndike said, "We've had a few break-ins in the past couple weeks, mostly from local kids who got a little too cocky. Nothing's gone missing yet, but it's only a matter of time with these things, so I make a point to emphasize that every door must be locked at all times. Remember that Fitzgerald."
"Yes Mr. Thorndike."
"Hmph… well now that's aside, welcome to Murph's!"
Jon gazed at the surrounding garage. The first thing that came to his attention was that the place was very dimly lit. Most of the lighting seemed to be at the ceiling, which was at least twenty feet above them, and was emitted from a few sparsely placed, rectangular lights, which gave the place an eerie ember glow. There were three levels to the place, the ground floor where they were at, the second level that was about ten feet above them and the third, with several long metal staircases at each end of the garage leading from one to the next. For its part, the ground floor was sparsely furnished, with little more than several dozen massive metal crates, fencing, wiring, and shelves gracing its concrete floor, which divided it up into a miniature, rusty, grimy old maze of metal.
"This, this isn't really what I was expecting." Jon admitted, although exterior of the building had led him to believe the interior would be particularly different but he had hoped for something a bit better.
"What did you expect? It's a shitty old garage." Thorndike grunted.
"Well, I thought it was going to be some kind of museum or something." That was what Andy had told him at least.
"Really? Good one. No Fitzgerald, this is cold storage. The owner of the pieces here, Mr. Vadim, is storing them here temporarily before he can find a building suitable enough to properly store them all and display them to the public for the auction. This place is scheduled for demolition." Thorndike snorted, "Your shift starts in eight minutes so I'll give you the basic tour so you can get situated."
"Thanks."
"Okay," Thorndike said, "As you've likely noticed this place is divided up into three floors. The first is where most of the items and curiosities are stored, in those metal crates and on the shelves…" he gestured to the large crates scattered around the floor, "There's not much too the second floor. That's where your office is, that's about it. We've stored a few things on the third floor, mainly higher value stuff that the manager wants kept safe since it's harder for intruders to get up there than anywhere else. Speaking of stuff, we just got a shipment of some old junk from a horror attraction that burned down a few weeks ago, you might have heard about it?"
"Nope." Jon said, "I didn't hear about it."
"It doesn't matter. There's not much too the story, but whatever was left from the place got packaged and sent over here, where it's almost entirely stored in the basement."
"The basement?"
"The basement Fitzgerald. Odd I know, but I thought you should know about that. This place is full of oddities." Thorndike paused, catching himself in his ruminating, "The exit's across the hall. Over there, see the exit sign?" Thorndike pointed across the ground level to a dull green exit sign above a rusted steel door on the other end, "Right there. In case of an emergency where the front door is blocked, jammed, or whatever, that's your way out. Originally the people who built this place had that as the only emergency exit, but we've added another one on the third floor in case you need it. It's next to the gutter, which you can climb down if you need to."
"The gutter?" That didn't sound like a very good escape plan to him. If anything the escape route Thorndike had just proposed sounded unnecessarily dangerous, as if little thought for personal safety had gone into planning it.
"Like I said, this place was originally designed to have one emergency exit. We had to improvise so we wouldn't get shut down by the fire department."
"No kidding." Jon murmured. "Thanks for the information."
"That's my job." Thorndike said as if he wanted Jon to stop talking and let him finish his task, "Unfortunately we're a little strapped for time Fitzgerald. I had planned to show you the basement, it's difficult to find you way around down there, but instead I'll show you your office and leave you to it."
And with that the head of security marched off towards the staircase and started up towards the second floor of the garage, with Jon following close behind. Jon's first step on the staircase emitted a loud clang that reverberated around the garage for several seconds, catching him by surprise and throwing him momentarily off balance.
"Shit!" Jon swore, "Damn thing is creaky as hell…" he muttered, hoping his supervisor hadn't heard him.
"Fitzgerald!"
"Um, yeah?"
Thorndike glared at him, "Are you okay down there?"
"Yeah I'm fine. The stairs are just a bit old."
"They take a little while to get used to."
"I'm working on it."
"Great. Hurry up." Thorndike said, as if their lack of time was entirely his fault.
"I'm working on it!" He must really want to get this over with, Jon thought as he hustled up the stairs to keep pace with his supervisor. "I'm working on it."
At short length the two had reached the landing, upon which Thorndike gestured to the right at a long, dark hallway, "Your office is that way." and with that he started down the corridor with Jon in tow. "I know it's a bit dark down here." He said.
"No, it doesn't bother me." Jon lied.
"It shouldn't." Thorndike said, "In any case, you'll be glad to hear that we've installed two cameras along this hallway. That's the reason for the darkness actually, so intruders will have a much harder time knowing if they're being detected or not as opposed to if this hallway was as bright as day. Also, you won't need to worry about your office going dark; it's pretty well lit. In fact, it's the best lit place in the entire building."
Well that makes sense Jon thought.
"In spite of the limited time and resources, we have put a premium on security around here, especially in your office." Thorndike added as he pulled out a white key of his own and opened the office door labeled SECURITY along the letterhead.
"Oh…" Jon said as he entered the office.
It was not exactly what he had been expecting. Instead of anything near some grandiose security system, the place was largely bare save from several pictures on the walls, a decrepit swivel chair, and an ugly pale green desk in the middle, with a desktop computer, a fan, a map, a clock, and a landline phone on it. Some office.
"Welcome home." Thorndike said sarcastically.
"Uh, yeah. This is it?"
"This is it." Thorndike nodded, "I know, it might not look like much, but it works and that's all that matters to Mr. Vadim. Your shift starts in a few minutes so I can't show you a whole lot but there's a few things you should know," he paused and walked over to the desk and picked up the map, "We didn't have time to program the basement's layout into the security system so if you need to go down there for whatever reason, use this. It's not great but it's better than nothing at all."
"Okay." Jon said, although he was not okay with that at all. What Thorndike had just said was a huge alarm bell in his book, not being able to reliably monitor the basement of the building at all. Jon sighed as Thorndike continued his monologue; well he would be here for one night so it would have to work for now even if it was on the super cheap end. Having a map was definitely better than having none at all.
"The security system for everything outside the basement is much better." Thorndike continued, gesturing to the computer screen, "Take a look."
Jon glanced at the screen; on it was a collection of eleven boxes on what appeared to be a virtual map of the building. Each box also had its own label, with the one nearest to the office labeled CAM 10, and could be interacted with as Thorndike clicked on the CAM 10 box and a fuzzy, black picture appeared on the screen at once.
"I can't see anything."
Thorndike nodded, "Not right now. Until I do this," he clicked on a white bubble at the top left corner of the picture and the picture was illuminated at once, "night vision. Lasts as long as you need it."
"Wow." Jon smiled; relieved to be able to have the technology. "I guess that works."
"It will," the security man replied, "As long as you don't use it for too long. See the grid over here?" he gestured to a glowing green bar at the bottom right of the screen, which bore a 100% on it in large black letters, "During the night this place runs on limited power-"
"Limited power?" Jon interrupted, eyebrows raised. That was not an issue he had expected to hear about.
"Don't interrupt me Fitzgerald." Thorndike said coldly, "Yes this building has a power limit. I don't necessarily agree with it, but Mr. Vadim wanted to keep costs down."
Fantastic, Jon thought. Just fantastic. You guys claim to care so much about security yet you're running a place on a bare bones budget. No wonder Andy hadn't told him about all this stuff when he called. He probably knew there would be no way in hell he would have accepted the offer. Dumb bastard.
"Is there a generator at least?" Jon asked hopefully.
"Nope."
Damn. You have got to be kidding me…
"There's practically no chance of running out of power before the end of the shift. Still, its something you need to keep an eye on. Got it?"
"Yeah." Jon murmured.
Thorndike ignored him and pulled out his phone, glanced at it for a moment and put it back in his pocket, "I wish I could tell you more but it's eleven fifty eight so I'll be on my way. If you're not clear on how everything works don't worry about it, we had the previous night watchman leave a message for you just in case."
"Oh…" Jon glanced at the blinking red light on the landline, indicating he had a message, "Thanks, I'll check it out."
Thorndike gave him a wave, "Good luck. I'll be back at six. Call me if you have any problems you can't take care of yourself."
Call you? "Wait! Mr. Thorndike!" Jon called. Thorndike stopped at the door and slowly turned around,
"What is it Fitzgerald?"
"What's your number?"
"It's on the desk." Thorndike growled as if to point out the obvious.
Jon flushed with embarrassment at this as he noticed the piece of paper with the seven-digit number scrawled on it next to the fan, "Right. Um, I'll get on with it then."
"See that you do Fitzgerald." Thorndike said, briefly lingering at the door before he turned and slowly closed it behind him, "Have a nice… and safe night."
"Thanks, I'll try." Jon said, as his supervisor left the office and exited the building. God, he thought has he looked at the power bar and the decrepit map, what have I gotten myself into?
…
"Well it's only one night I guess." He sighed and punched the 'replay message' button on the landline. All right, this is going to be fine, just fine, he thought as he leaned back in his desk chair, and settled in for the night. It's just like camping. I'm going to be just fine…
"Hello?" a mousy voice emitted from the landline.
"Hi." Jon said sarcastically, "How are you?"
"You - you there? The manager… Mr. Vadim, he told me to leave you a message here." the phone guy paused at this point as static flooded the phone line, "So um, my phone won't let me send you a video message, it's all out of data or something so I'll leave you one on the landline. Okay, uh welcome to your new job as a night watchman! My name's Max, I'm the dayshift guard around here sooo let's get you settled in around here!"
"Great." Jon said, wishing Max the phone guy would get to the point already.
"I don't know how much Mr. Thorndike told you," Max continued, "but you probably know where the entrance and exits and your office are since you're getting this message!" he said, briefly laughing at his own joke, "Anyway um, there's not a whole lot to know, but let's begin with the security system? I guess? Yeah, that's a good place to start I guess." He paused again, "There's really not a whole lot to it. There's like fifteen boxes on the screen, one for various places, or rooms, in the building, and you can click on them to see what's going on in each one. The screen will probably be dark at first, so if you want a good visual click on the white icon on your screen… that, um, that should work okay."
"Yeah I've already heard this too!" Jon said; this call was clearly going to take a while.
"Uhh, you should have as much power as you need so just flash those lights whenever you need them …"
Wait what? Jon looked up in surprise, as much power as he needed? That was odd, hadn't Thorndike told him that his power was limited during the night? Maybe this guard didn't know about that. But how could he not know that? Didn't Thorndike say he had been a night guard too? His supervisor's gruff voice replayed in his head we had the previous night watchman leave a message for you. Jon frowned and glanced at the power bar. It was already at 98%.
"Must have been a poor choice of words." He murmured.
"Aside from that there's um, one other thing you'll need to keep an eye on and those are the vents. They're kind of big… like someone could fit inside them and stuff; although it's probably unlikely anyone would be inside of them. Anyway, you've got several smaller boxes on your screen, along the white lines connecting each big box, those monitor the vents. Click on one and it does the same thing with the other cameras. The lightings a bit dim for the vent cams and kinda fuzzy but they're vents y'know?"
"Uh-huh." Jon muttered, as he clicked on one of the vent cams, labeled CAM 19, right next to the office. At first the picture was black, but upon activating the night vision it yielded a gray, fuzzy picture of the vent, which as far as Jon could tell was dusty, dark, and empty. Some picture, he thought.
"Yeah, the picture's never been so good …" Max said, "It's kind of weird. I don't really know why they're like that. I mean, they're supposed to work a lot better than that." he paused as static flooded the line once again, "Sorry about that, my phone, it's kind of messed up right now. Um, anyway there are three other things, a switch near the door you can use if you need to turn the hallway light on and your flashlight. I always do that since it's pretty dark so yeah… I'd really recommend trying that out. Unless you like the dark?" he gave a nervous laugh at his own comment, "Nah you probably don't. Heh … who does anyway?"
Jon sighed, great. Barely a minute into his job and some idiot on the phone was already nattering about being afraid of the dark. Jon hoped the guy would finish up the call so he could get on with the job without having to listen to any more nervous rambling.
"Your flashlight's on the table, Mr. Thorndike, he probably already showed it to you,"
"He did."
"It's pretty nice actually. If you need to go to the basement, that's the only part of the building without any light, it, uh works pretty well …" Max paused here as the line was once again filled with static, "sorry uh – I went down there earlier. It's pretty – pretty weird y'know? There are noises down there from time to time; I don't know what it is … it's like banging or something. Probably the dark getting to me, it's uh pretty dark down there, and kind of wet with all the leaky pipes so yeah ignore that part I guess. Mr. Thorndike says it's nothing anyway but um, just in case you suspect anything, make sure to bring your flashlight and the map and you'll find your way around there pretty … pretty good."
Banging noises in the basement? What for? The guy said Thorndike didn't make much of it, so maybe it was nothing but the dayshift guard being a nervous wreck around the workplace. He shifted in his seat as he listened to Max wrap up his spiel on the phone,
"Anyway, that's all I had to say. Just keep track of the cameras, the vents, and the lights … yeah, all that good stuff. Nothing to it man. Nothing to it. So yeah, take care and have a great night!"
The landline let out a loud electronic beep and an 'end of messages' recording as the phone guy's message ended in a hiss of static.
"Thank god that's over with." Jon muttered, the phone guy, Max, sounded like a bundle of nerves. Jon had no idea why, the place was just a warehouse, not something weird and even though the place was a bit dark it certainly wasn't scary. Oh well, he thought, the guy was probably just one of those people who got scared of everything so there was no point dwelling on it when he had a job to do.
The time was 12:15 A.M.
…
Jon sat up and started flicking through the cameras on the monitor to get familiar with his surroundings. He preceded in this manner for the next twenty minutes before a loud noise jolted him from his hunched position over the monitor.
Krasssssshhh!
"What the - ?" Jon exclaimed as he stood up and glanced around the office but did not see anything out of the ordinary. What was that noise? The security guard went back to the monitor and flicked through all the cameras, but as he quickly deduced, nothing was out of place, nor were there any intruders anywhere in the building. Was something in the hallway? Maybe … He thought as he walked over to the switch near the office door and flicked it on. A dim white glow illuminated the corridor at once, but as Jon quickly deduced from squinting through the glass, nothing was out of order.
He scowled, turned the light off, and returned to the monitor. Damn building, Jon swore, shit was probably falling apart all the time in the place and here he was getting distracted over a single sound. It was almost certainly nothing that deserved his attention.
How much power did all that use up? He wondered, glancing at the bar in the corner of his screen, it read:
75%
Seventy five percent? Jon scratched his head at this, and at only 12:44 AM? That was over one percent every two minutes! At that rate he'd lose all power by 5 AM and be stuck in a massive, unheated building with no lights for the remaining hour. Jon swore again, he needed to be far more conservative with his power than that; otherwise he'd be sitting in the dark for far longer than he felt comfortable doing.
He slumped back in his chair and gazed at the monitor, what were his options to conserve power? Jon thought on this for several minutes, before coming up with three possible options: lowering the screen brightness on his computer, using the night vision on the cameras as little as possible, or almost never turning on the hall light. The most beneficial of these options would probably be being very conservative with the night vision, as he had used it most of the time while checking the cameras so it was the most likely source of the power drain. Still, Jon thought, I need to reduce my power usage and fast.
With that in mind, Jon went to 'Systems Settings' on the computer, which was easy to locate thanks his familiarity with Windows systems, and turned the brightness all the way down to the point where he almost had to squint to see the screen. Once that was done, he returned his attentions to the security panel and flicked through the cameras, specifically checking on the cameras near the entrance, CAM 1, his office, CAM 19, and the exit, CAM 3 and CAM 20 occasionally with the night vision. Every thirty minutes, Jon got up and flicked on the hall light to check for any possible intruders, but each time nothing was forthcoming.
It was 3:39 AM.
…
Jon whistled a brisk tune, one he had learned from his parents as a child, as he flicked through the cameras, occasionally using the night vision for brief intervals, and continued on through the mind-numbing shift. There was hardly any distractions save from the occasional hum from the vents, which blew out nothing but cold air, and the sounds of animals scampering around in the night. He smiled, he was making good time, the power was stable, and soon, in barely two hours he could go home with a few extra bucks in his pocket for his trouble. This was easier than he thought it would be, even with the questionable security system, the dim lighting, and the nonexistent heating.
Jon got up once he had finished checking CAM 1, which was once again uneventful, save for a few flickering shadows he had almost mistaken for intruders because of the crummy picture, and strode over to the switch to check the hall. He flipped the switch and turned to the door, only to yelp in surprise and jump back several feet,
"Jesus! What the hell?!" Jon swore as he peered into the hall.
A bloodied, bearlike face was staring at him through the window. Jon stared at the thing for a moment; its face was a ghastly white and pink and splattered with what looked like blood in numerous areas. One of its eyes was missing whereas the other was bright white, and it was huge. It stood at least seven feet tall, judging by how it seemed to stare down at him, as if he was little more than an ant, and somehow, it had arrived outside his office without him ever noticing. Just looking at the thing sent a chill down Jon's spine, what on earth was he supposed to do? How did it get there? How? How? What was it? The endless questions flew around in his mind as he stood, paralyzed with disbelief and fear, as he stared at the bearlike monstrosity outside, not knowing what to do.
"Wha – w- what are you?"
The thing gave no indication that it had heard him, but instead inched closer to the door. Before Jon could do anything in response the lights in the hall abruptly went out and a loud, deep laugh boomed from the hall,
Uuu huuu huuu huuu
"W-w- what the …" the security guard stammered as he vaguely saw the thing's jaws open and close with the noise. "No …" No, this wasn't right. He had checked all the cams, there was no way he could have missed anything like this. Jon stumbled back and shook his head, this wasn't happening, some kid, someone was playing a prank on him… he grasped the switch and flicked it again, but to no avail, the hall light refused to turn back on.
"Shit." Jon cursed, "Shit, shit, shit. Why doesn't it work?!" he cried, slightly panicked.
Uuu huuu huuu huuu
The thing laughed again, this time louder than before,
UUU HUUU HUUU HUUU
"STOP! Stop it!" Jon yelled, as he snatched his flashlight off the table and flashed it directly at the thing's face. The thing let out a loud groan at the light and disappeared. Jon stared at the hall for a moment and then hesitantly opened the door and waved the flashlight around. "Hey! Come back!" Jon opened the door and stumbled out into the hall, "Hey! Is anybody there?" he called. There was no response. "Hello?"
Once again, there was no response.
What was that? Jon thought, what was that?
"Hello?"
Jon flashed his light a final time but he saw nothing but the cool dark interior of the garage. He gulped and fought off a wave of panic. You're fine, you're not hurt, you're okay. You're okay. Jon thought as he turned off the light and turned to the door. It was closed. Jon grabbed the handle and jiggled it several times but it was locked.
"Damn it, didn't Mr. Thorndike unlock this thing?" he cursed, fumbling at his belt for his keys. They weren't there. Jon stared at his waist in disbelief, I had them right here a minute ago, he thought. He checked his pockets but came up empty.
He glanced through the office window and the realization hit him at last as he saw his keys strewn on the floor. In his panic he had locked himself outside of the office, and he couldn't get back inside.
Uuu huuu huuu huuu the deep laugh boomed in the distance. No… Jon thought, filling with dread as he heard the sound once more. Closer this time.
UUU HUUU HUUU HUUU
Closer and closer… closer and closer…
He had to get back in the office.