Ford had once spent what turned out to be a month in Earth time navigating a dark, labyrinthine cave system, deep beneath the surface of a world of ash. It was one of those dimensions trapped in a fantastical bygone era, one he was sure he had encountered in his college days playing Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons, where electricity was beyond even the wildest dreams of the most powerful mages. Torches and candles hardly proved adequate in lighting; if anything, the shadows the dim flames cast created more hiding places for monsters and traps. That cavern had been carved from gypsum, whether by years of toil or simply natural erosion, and his boots made little noise against the soft rock.
The tunnel he walked through now felt similar: the soft surfaces (though this one was dug from clay), the eerie stillness of long-forgotten catacombs, the pervasive paranoia of an otherwise unsensed presence, the unsettling openness, and the unknown. This place, fortunately, lacked the convoluted twists and turns that dominated the other, and he had yet to see even one eldritch horror. He even had an electric light. Yes, it was only a pen light, but it didn't cast those untrustworthy shadows along every surface.
He walked for some time, grateful that there were no directional decisions to make, when the tunnel opened. A simple intersection faced him, one path leading to the left, the other to the right. After a moment of irrational fury (hadn't he just praised this area for not making him choose?), he looked around both passageways. The ground showed no footsteps, and Stan's blood trail had dried up ages ago. With a fifty percent chance of being correct, he chose the left path.
Nothing about the passageway differed from the earlier portion. It continued onward, linear, until he finally came to the end, where a ladder leaned against the wall. He climbed a few rungs, pausing just below a trap door; after straining to hear anything above to no avail, Ford cautiously pushed it upward.
The room, mercifully, was dark, allowing him to slip in undetected. His flashlight trailed across the room, illuminating the workbench, toolboxes, cluttered tables, and shelves and boxes of mechanical supplies. He found a light switch and flipped it on.
A quick survey of the room under the fluorescent lights allowed Ford to recognize the workshop from the security footage. While he could see that his brother wasn't currently in the room, he hoped that, if Stan had come this way, he would have left some indication of his presence—what that might be, Ford definitely didn't know. He had to search as thoroughly and quickly as possible.
His eyes immediately went to the workbench beside him. Various papers littered the surface in a chaotic mess not dissimilar to his own study. He grabbed the first thing he put his hands on, an old newspaper clipping. An obituary, actually, for one Charlotte Cawthon, age six, victim of some unspecified accident, closed casket, private funeral. Beneath it was a medical file, labeled Samuel Afton.
Ford's interest piqued. He took a cursory glance through the five days' worth of documentation, from the boy's admission (severe cranial trauma, intermittent hemorrhaging, persistent vegetative state) to his death (cessation of brain function, removal of life support). Every section requiring an agent's confirmation displayed William Afton's shaky signature. The documents dated twenty years prior.
More schematics sat at the bottom of the pile, showing the innards of the simulacra at Circus Baby's. Though tempted, he didn't have the time to investigate. Something would surely find him soon; already, that painfully familiar feeling of eyes upon him had settled in. Twitchy, he glanced around the room. No one revealed himself.
But the eyes…
They were there. He could feel it. They were—someone was there—but he couldn't call out—it was unsafe—not when he didn't know what was there—not when he didn't know where it was—not when he didn't know what it wanted—not when he didn't know—when he didn't know—
Ford clamped a hand over his mouth, sharply inhaling through his nose. For a moment, he held his breath, then slowly pushed the air from his lungs. His heart gradually settled to its usual rate. Panicking wouldn't help. Aside, he could handle whatever eyes followed him in the dark; he had dealt with worse.
His breathing tempered, he surveyed the room once more. Partially assembled animatronics littered the room—none that could see. Perhaps their lack of eyes should have made them more unnerving. Given Ford's extensive history with eyes and watching, he found it comforting. Imagining his brother's cartoonishly perturbed reaction brought the glimmer of a smile to his face. He still felt the stares on his back, but he brushed the feeling off and returned to the workbench.
A ratty, spiral-bound notebook practically screamed at him to be read. He hesitated after picking it up, suddenly feeling invasive. It was one thing to rifle through medical files and schematics, but a man's journal was sacred; he certainly knew the violation of a stranger reading his corpus of research. Then again, this was just a cheap notebook. It could contain anything. Maybe it was someone's studies. Or maybe it was grocery lists and appointment reminders. It might even be empty. He could claim ignorance if it became an issue. Curiosity quickly won out and he opened it.
Surprisingly, he recognized much of the work within. Page after page of alchemical formulas, transmutation circles, complex mathematical equations, and, eerily enough, incomprehensible, rambling mania. The similarities between this notebook and his previous journals weren't lost to him. He eventually landed on a section labeled "soul bonding," the process by which a freely roaming spirit is bound to an object, organic or otherwise. In his heyday of curses and hexes, Ford remembered studying a similar concept; Journal 2's entries on the matter had called it "soul trapping" and "forced possession." It was a messy business, a bit gruesome even to him, requiring freshly released souls for best effect.
Something rustled behind him. Ford dropped the notebook, whirling around and instinctively grabbing for the gun that was no longer there. He shouldn't have let Stan talk him out of carrying it, even if he had nearly gotten them arrested after brandishing it at an officer. Nothing initially stood out from amidst the junk; a few extra moments of examination made a particular object in a cardboard box distinct from the others: a face, rather like a hockey mask, placid, white, eyeless, with blue paint streaming down its face as if it were crying. Cautious, Ford stepped closer to it, saw it among soft black cloth attached to nearly invisible strings. A simple marionette, if not a large one.
He stared at it, waiting for it to move again. The longer he looked, though, the surer that the puppet was doing just the same to him. Frowning, Ford leaned closer to it, hoping to glean something from its eyeless voids. ("I'll be honest, I never liked that puppet thing. It was always…thinking, and it can go anywhere…") It didn't budge.
"You…aren't alive, are you?" Admittedly, he felt rather foolish asking it anything. The feeling didn't abate when the thing didn't respond. "You…wouldn't know anything about Freddy's, would you?"
The marionette didn't speak; it did, however, pull something from the depths of its box. It held a piece of paper in its spindly fingers. The motion had all the eagerness of a child showing its parent a picture it particularly prided.
Ford blinked, genuinely surprised. Without much thought, he took the page, a crayon drawing of a yellow Bonnie with five children around it. There was a lot of red.
"What…?"
But the marionette had collapsed. Ford reached out to touch it, stopping at the sound of footfalls overhead. Instinctively, he flipped the lights off and listened. The steps drew nearer, and he could barely make out a furious voice. Clicking on his pen light, Ford hurried to the tunnel. He dropped back into it, pulling the trap door over him.
Ford stuffed the paper into his pocket and started walking.