The sound of the telephone startled Mike so badly he fumbled with his beer, spilling most of it down the front of his shirt and cursing before he remembered the promised prerecorded message from the former security officer.

Three rings into the call Clyde picked up. "Hello. Hello?" he asked hesitantly, as though he expected an answer. Apparently satisfied the phone system was recording, he began his message in earnest, introducing the soon-to-be-vacated position and offering his help. Mike listened, entranced, finding that unlike Nathan Faz, he liked this guy right away. Trusted him, even. Clyde came across as not exactly fatherly, but like the type of big brother every kid wished he could have. The type who would run along on your first bike ride, holding the thing steady instead of sending you off with a push only to watch you crash at the end of the driveway.

It wasn't hard to imagine Faz hovering over Clyde as he read off the legal disclaimer, complete with the same death-and-destruction clause that Mike already knew was nothing more than a morbid joke. Stumbling all over himself trying to explain away the non-existent danger and talking more freely, suggesting Faz must have left, Clyde quickly moved on to what seemed to be his true interest, the inner workings of the animatronics.

"Okay, I get it, bud, you respect 'em," said Mike aloud, rolling his eyes and thinking Clyde was overdoing it just a little when he sympathized with the characters in the band, even putting himself in their place and imagining aloud how monotonous the decades of performing must have been for them. He's as much of a fanboy as Faz himself. Why else would Clyde have kept posters and even children's artwork of the characters in the office when he was already in charge of watching the animatronics all night? Didn't he get tired of seeing those same three goofy faces?

"They're left in some kind of free-roaming mode at night..."

"They walk around by themselves?" Mike asked, incredulous at Clyde's latest revelation and a little more interested in the mechanics behind it. "This I gotta see." The monitor's battery had already met with an early and suspicious death, but a power cable dangled from behind the screens on the desk, and although he was now tethered, at least Mike could view the animatronics again. They hadn't moved, standing onstage like a trio of sentries overlooking the party room.

Mike paused, his index finger suspended over the monitor, when Clyde casually mentioned a biting incident that had not only restricted the animatronics' roaming to the nighttime hours, but had cost someone the frontal lobe of his brain. He chuckled darkly, appreciating this guy's sense of humor and his ability to deliver the entire message in such a deadpan voice.

"Maybe he had it coming to him anyway," he said flippantly, taking another sip of his beer but nearly choking when the guard's message suddenly took a sharp turn into the territory of nightmares. The wandering animatronics, out for their midnight stroll, would...mistake humans for the endoskeleton machinery that powered them...and attempt to shove them into an empty costume? Clyde's graphic description of the extensive and fatal head trauma the metal components of the suit would cause was far more gruesome than the vaguely spooky-yet-fun warnings the restaurant management favored.

His head swimming, Mike lowered his empty beer with a trembling hand. As hard up as he was for money, he hadn't drank much lately and forgot his tolerance for the stuff had fallen this incredibly low. He believed Clyde, he realized all at once. The guy was stable and calm, he'd stood up to Faz assuming the boss really had been there when he'd started recording the training call, and so far he was the only one to offer a compelling reason why a night watchman was required at Freddy's.

Biting into his cold pizza slices, the food settling in his twisted stomach like lead, the guard poked a grease-stained finger at the boxes on the monitor screen, checking the surveillance camera in each room and finding something he'd missed when he'd watched Faz leave earlier.

None of the cameras were trained on the exterior doors of the building, not the main entrance or the doors he'd remembered seeing in the back of the kitchen or any other fire exits he might have missed. Faz was not concerned about break-ins, he truly was worried about what was on the inside of his little playland. His precious creations had gone out of control.

Ignoring Clyde's insistence on conserving power, Mike punched the buttons mounted near both doors behind his desk, bathing the hallways beyond in precious light, and shut both steel doors for good measure, the hiss of the hydraulics pure relief to his ears. He was now sealed off in a tiny little room that was the size of a freight elevator and even resembled one with the metallic gray walls and the doors on either end, but he felt safer if somewhat claustrophobic. If Faz expected him to babysit his animatronic band, he would just have to settle for a higher electric bill.

It was then that Mike noticed a tiny device by the west door, powered by a single copper wire running to the desk. Its screen resembled a calculator's and it showed a percentage that was steadily dropping. Oh no, don't tell me... His dread increasing, Mike reluctantly opened the doors again and turned off the lights in both hallways, slowing the descent of the numbers on the screen. To his disappointment the numbers didn't recover, either, leading him to the frightening conclusion that this figure represented the only amount of electricity he would have to work with this night, and apparently holding the doors closed required power as surely as leaving the lights on.

Maybe it's my lucky night and they're too tired to roam. Checking the monitor, Mike peeked at the show stage, staring dumbly at it for a few minutes and trying not to convince himself that Bonnie's animatronic head had turned directly toward the camera. There was no movement, but while he'd viewed the character in profile earlier, now those soulless eyes were locked his way. Was the rabbit watching him?

"What kinda nuthouse is this?" the terrified man whimpered, sliding to the floor with his back against the wall.

May 1980

"What do you mean, you're closing the roller rink?" Clyde demanded incredulously of his boss. Nathan Faz was surprised, to say the least. He had never before witnessed such a passionate response from his employee, who was unnaturally stoic for his age. Nineteen going on forty, Faz had often thought.

"Disco's dead, chum, and roller disco's not looking any better." He gestured out to the skate floor of Fred's Fazstwheels Rollerena at a small crowd of children clacking their way over the wooden boards. "Even for these Saturday afternoon matinees, what's the real draw?" He turned toward the banks of skeeball lanes and pinball tables he had gradually added to his enterprise over the years. The largest attraction by far was the new arcade games, with a crowd of children and teenagers alike waiting impatiently around the cabinets for their turn to play. "These. This is the only part of this rink that's halfway profitable, so we're going all arcade."

Clyde nodded glumly in forced agreement, sticking his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He couldn't have helped but notice that the allure of the games had far outshone that of the rink since the arrival of the latest in electronic games.

"We had a good run - thirty years. And we're not closing, just redesigning," Faz corrected him, no longer unable to contain himself. "It's all decided and it should be a quick transition: we're shutting down for the last three weeks of August when it's quiet here anyway. I'm having the rink carpeted, the arcade's going to get pulled out of this alcove onto the main floor and expanded with more games, and the skate shop's going to become a backstage. The kitchen and snack bar stay. Then this place reopens not as a tired, throwback roller rink but as a state-of-the-art arcade and birthday party venue!"

"Guess this puts me out of a job then. Who needs a rink monitor in an arcade?" Before his boss could respond, Clyde wheeled away, weaving among his younger charges on the wooden floor in an effort to collect his thoughts. His mind never far from their welfare, he moved fluidly, even catching some of the children up as their arms began pinwheeling and steadying them before they'd had a chance to complete their fall. One hand in a fist before him, one behind, his body slightly tucked, he slid through the shards of colored light from the mirrored balls hanging above, already imagining everything around him changed beyond recognition.

In his three years on the job, the rink had suffered only an occasional broken wrist or arm, and he felt proud to keep everyone safe. The oldest in a large family, Clyde didn't mind being surrounded by little ones, though it was never far from his mind that he was extremely unlikely to become a father himself. A bad childhood illness had seen to that.

Sensing his worker had blown off enough steam, Faz did not approach him until after closing time, coming up behind him in the arcade and clearing his throat. Clyde was hunched over a pinball table, deep in concentration but back to his unnervingly collected self. If kids didn't admire him already for saving them from countless rough falls out in the rink, they envied his status as the arcade's pinball wizard even more. He held the high scores on every machine and never lost his cool as he ran through mind-blowing marathon games.

"Son, I think you already knew you still had a job here. I'd never kick you to the curb like that. I know, you're sentimental about this place. Good memories and all, and I'm a little sorry to let it go myself. But what we're going to have is better, and I'm at a business decision now where I can either change and expand or just run this whole venture into the ground, and it will be a dark day before I allow that to happen." Faz moved in front of the machine so Clyde wouldn't have to abandon his play as they talked.

"I understand, sir," Clyde said in deference to his boss, his eyes flickering up briefly from the action of the game. He even managed a weak smile. "So, after I hang up my skates, what's next?"

"That's more like it!" Faz replied, beaming. "I need a security officer to watch over all these kids. You'll walk the floor, help kids who lost change in the machines, make sure nobody's climbing on anything he shouldn't be or wandering out the door, and..." His voice trailed off as he prepared to announce the key part of his business plan. "...You'll watch over our animatronic characters.

They'll be the stars of what is not merely going to be a restaurant, but a pizza palace. Places like these are the latest and greatest in children's entertainment, and while there's many concepts out there they always have an animal band as the centerpiece."

Clyde nodded; he'd been dragged to a younger cousin's birthday party at just such a pizzeria and had been impressed. His own childhood birthday parties had consisted of a backyard celebration with cake at the picnic table and balloons tied to the clothesline. And this new position did sound good. Maybe he was getting a bit old to be playing the hokey-pokey and lucky corners on the skate floor with all the little kids.

"I guess you've been ahead of the game, then, with your clowns and all," he said, pointing to the DJ booth. A quintet of circus clown figures stood on top, each holding an instrument like a harmonica, accordion or drum, and for special occasions Faz would power up the robotic figures so they could perform for guests - which they did, quite badly. The ancient machinery inside the figures creaked and groaned, the record player hidden behind the drummer never kept tune with the movement of the clowns and the tune it coaxed from the warped vinyl record was strained and tinny. The clowns were filthy from decades of neglect, their painted faces chipped and flaking, and frankly Clyde found them as unsettling as most of the children.

Supposedly they had once been able to walk, but he was glad they'd been saved from witnessing that horror; the robots did have jointed limbs suggesting they were capable of this, but their inner machinery had apparently deteriorated too far. Nonetheless, they seemed to hold a special fascination for his boss, who had claimed they were a holdover from the rink's previous incarnation as a dance hall.

"Great minds think alike!" exclaimed Faz, pleased but not surprised his employee was catching on so quickly. "I'm going to finally agree with you and admit there isn't much for these fellows to do at a roller rink, but with a complete refurbishment and upgraded machinery, they'll finally take their place in children's hearts. Clowns were big in the Fifties with Bozo and all, but talking animals are the new thing, especially for these pizza joints. I'm actually going to get started this weekend, if you can help me lug the band to the supply closet." He grinned mysteriously. "But after that, no peeking. It's going to become my little laboratory and I'll unveil them at the grand reopening."

Deep into his game, Clyde had the entire pinball table lit up with activity as spinners whirled and bumpers sent the five metal spheres he had in play through the ramps and chutes. "Sure thing, sir. If you're content locking yourself up in a room full of clowns, it's not my business to question that."

Faz squinted at his youthful employee. If only you knew. He watched with growing interest as he played, coolly hitting the left or right flipper button at exactly the crucial moment to block the ball from entering the drain.

Never wasting his energy on needless moves.

Left.

Right.

Can't let it get in.