Author's Note: Just to clear up any confusion, this fanfiction was planned using the headcanon that while the spirits are trapped in the pizzeria, they can switch between the animatronics as well as exist outside the suits. (Remember, Derrick used the Freddy and Bonnie suits to torment Clyde/Phone Guy in earlier chapters.)
"I just can't believe it." Cynthia drew in a deep, ragged breath of air, leaning back against the wall behind the checkout counter of her store and staring heavenward while Mike struggled to find a way to comfort her. Even through her visible grief she possessed a preternatural sense of calm for someone who had just been given the worst news she'd ever hear.
"I guess in the back of my mind, I hadn't ruled out the possibility he'd only dropped out of contact because he suddenly wasn't around anymore, not that that was easier to reconcile than the chance that he coldly walked out on everything that had mattered to him before," she finally admitted, wiping her eyes. "Still, I had feared he'd met with foul play elsewhere and it never crossed my mind until you brought me his note that he might not have left the pizzeria alive." Anger flashed in her eyes as she glared at the building across the road. It didn't seem remotely fair that Nathan Faz was setting up for another day of business as usual while his best and most loyal employee remained unaccounted for.
"I sure didn't help the situation," Mike admitted. "I royally screwed things up, becoming a hothead and threatening to tear the place apart to find him." Realizing he hadn't touched the coffee he held in his hand, he shook his head, now regretting his frenzied actions that had left a much older man fearful for his own safety. "Looking back, I don't blame Faz in the least for kicking me out. I trust him about as far as I could throw him, but I'm not so sure he's really the one at fault. Half of the time he seems as helpless as I feel."
There's a difference between feeling helpless and remaining helpless, Cynthia thought, unable to tear her gaze from the cheerful neon lighting on the marquee at the pizzeria.
Night of November 2, 2014
Fidgeting nervously, Nathan Faz sat in his office, his eyes fixed on the locked door directly across from him, then the fancy brass clock on his desk. 11:50 p.m. He still had time; he could make his way to the exit, bolt the door and forget he'd ever hatched his foolhardy plan to confront the spirit his missing employee had become obsessed with.
But he wouldn't, he vowed, even if the odds were overwhelming it was too late to make up for his mistakes. The pizzeria manager leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking, and just before midnight reached for the flask he kept stowed in the back of the desk, taking the smallest swig to steel his nerves. Nonetheless, he was badly startled when the clock chimed at twelve, having never done something so brave and reckless as to witness the animatronics' free-roaming night hours himself, let alone guard the characters as Clyde had. It was time.
"I...I know you're active now," he began timidly but pointedly, addressing the ghost whose existence he had long since accepted, "and I still don't know what you might have done to my worker, but we need him back here. He only had one more night to go." To his ultimate disbelief, an intense chill washed over him, one that he knew he wasn't imagining even in his heightened state of fear.
"What makes you think he's in any shape to come back?" a surly, embittered voice hissed from somewhere beyond the door, leaving Faz fearful of what lay beyond on the other side of the thick steel, as well as rattled at finally hearing the entity and confirming once and for all its existence. "Didn't it ever strike you that we might not have wanted him to leave?" With that, the voice fell silent, leaving the manager to wait out the night hunched sleeplessly and miserably over his desk, occasionally hearing the doorknob rattle as an animatronic tried to enter his fortress.
We. He said "we," as in he's not alone here. Sometime in the midst of his nightmarish vigil, Faz realized that what he had at least suspected all along was now undeniably correct. He never was alone and those rumors the kids from the skating rink era believed in were true; those children's souls never did leave this place. The manager clutched a hand to his heart, now aware that his late worker had known far more than he had let on, and that knowledge had cost him.
November 3, 2014
"Oh no," groaned Clyde, incredulously repeating what had been his last words the night before. "Oh no, oh no, oh no." Sitting despondently in the hallway, the children had huddled close to him, their eyes large and frightened as their captor, inhabiting Freddy Fazbear's suit, carried on his mischief in the nearby security office. Still unable to hire a replacement guard on such short notice, Faz had instead sequestered himself behind a locked door, which left Derrick free to roam through the empty security office unchecked. In a cruel mockery of Clyde's old job, he had seized on the idea of making a final, demonic-sounding garble of a recording, which the night watch already feared he would set in the phone system just to leave future guards certain of exactly what had happened to him and just who had won in the end.
"It's actually more like 'oh, yes,'" the entity sneered, advancing on the group and sounding quite satisfied with himself. "Your old job was quite a sorry situation, but now that you're here to stay, it's going to be so much fun bending you to my will." Eerily phasing out of the costume, he paused for a moment, caught up in devious thoughts. "I'm curious whether you'll hold out longer than the children did."
"That will never happen," Clyde insisted, anger flashing in his eyes. "Besides, what are you going to do to me if I refuse to become your minion - kill me?" The spirit's vicious cackle met his ears.
"It's not what I'm going to do to you if you don't play nice," he said slowly and deliberately, shifting his malevolent gaze to the small forms crouched next to the man. "You should be more concerned with what I'm going to do to them." A tiny hand gripped Clyde's arm.
Already feeling broken, the security guard fixed him with a defeated look. "What do you want me to do?"
"Hello, hello?" Derrick taunted Clyde as the group lurked in the backstage room several nights later. "Welcome to your new job as an undead security officer and haunting spirit of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Tonight I'm going to show you how to phase in and out of your suit."
Oh, stow it, the guard wanted to tell him, but he was too anxious about where this was headed to put up much resistance. Faz had finally procured a rookie worker, a young man who looked barely old enough to have driven himself to the place, and while Clyde figured the children's spirits inside the animatronics were about to give him a run for his money once his shift started, he was dreading far worse whatever his planned role in attacking the new guard might be.
"I bet you had no clue this was ever here," Derrick said delightedly as Bonnie slid aside a table from the corner of the room, revealing a wooden trap door that was flush with the floorboards. "Your boss sure never noticed it, but it's a handy little storm cellar, and a good hiding place. I should know; I used it myself to stash the bear suit all those years ago, so well that nobody ever found it."Clyde watched in disbelief as Freddy reached into the shallow space, effortlessly lifting the yellowed and tattered bear costume from the darkness. He shuddered despite himself, taking in the sight of the angry-looking eye sockets and the bear's slumped, lifeless position. It was impossible to imagine someone had once designed this creation to entertain children.
"Meet Golden Freddy, and if you're guessing that your mangled corpse is in there, you're absolutely right," said Derrick, his merriment quickly giving way to irritation. "In the end, I changed course and thought Freddy's suit would be a better choice for you, but they didn't exactly follow directions and used my old costume." He fixed the animatronics with a seething glare, then abruptly seized Clyde and forced him backwards, plunging his very soul into the plush bear. "But hey, it all works out. Some workers get a gold watch when they retire, and you get an entire gold suit."
Now viewing his captor through the eyes of the headpiece, the security guard held out the paws of the costume in front of him, surprised to see that whatever shape his remains might be in, he was entirely capable of movement and in control of the suit itself. He paced through the small backstage room, trying to appease the entity and at least create the illusion he was willing to obey his every order.
"Good, you learn quickly. And now it's time to pay our new guard a visit. You look just scary enough that you might be able to rack up your first kill."
Disgusted by the way he had been forced to wear the costume Derrick had utilized to carry out his abhorrent crimes, Clyde noiselessly crept to the office, peering in the open doorway. Something about the earnest young man seated in his old chair behind the desk immediately reminded him of himself in earlier years. He was leaning forward with his back to the doors and listening raptly to the recording, no doubt trying to glean as much information as possible from the instructions that must have been nothing short of bewildering. A stack of college textbooks rested on the desk, suggesting he had been naive enough to believe he could sneak in some study time while on the clock but had no doubt been discouraged by Faz.
Here goes nothing, Clyde braced himself, hoping his plan wouldn't horrifically backfire. Crouching into a pouncing position, he waited for a brief pause in the recording and let loose with a resounding growl, courtesy of the ancient voicebox that activated somewhere inside the costume. The rookie officer spun swiftly around, his ballcap flying off, and with expert finesse fled out the opposite door, just as the reluctant spirit had hoped he'd react.
Good for you, kid. Now scram before Derrick forces me to do something I'll really regret. I hope you can put this behind you. Hearing the panic-stricken guard's sneakers beat a path along the tiled floor, he was even more relieved at the sound of the exterior door slamming shut, far away at the other end of the pizzeria. In a moment of mercy or perhaps to avoid any unnecessary death investigations, Faz had left at least one door unlocked for his officers-in-training.
"That was downright lousy," grumbled Derrick almost immediately, not yet suspecting Clyde had intentionally bungled his attack as an act of sabotage. "Who do you think you are anyway, Casper the Friendly Ghost? Don't go easy on them, because between the two of us and the children, we need to leave this place utterly unable to hire another security guard ever again. Only then will I really have the control I need around here. Just go back down to the crawlspace so you can try again tomorrow." His eyes narrowed menacingly. "You would do it for the kids, wouldn't you?"
At the sound of the phone, Mike rolled over in bed, shrugging out of the quilt he had wrapped tightly around himself like a warm, secure cocoon. He shivered, grabbing blindly for the handset and cursing his inability to turn up the heat much above a minimal comfort level without breaking the bank. The weak, mid-autumn sunlight filtering through the window nonetheless stung his eyes.
"You'd never guess where I am right now," Cynthia challenged him on the other end of the line, forced cheer in her voice. Wide awake now, Mike sat bolt upright, the springs in his worn mattress protesting.
"You didn't," he groaned, hearing the unmistakable sounds of the animatronic band performing in the background, mixed in with the melee of screaming children already out of school for the day. "Better you than me, though. I'd get thrown out and fired if I dared to show my face around there during the day. What are you plotting?"
"Look, I can either take action or quietly go nuts, and this one of those situations where it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. I for one do not intend to wait until Nathan decides to show you that backstage room - and that's if he doesn't go back on his word and refuse." Explaining the plan she had devised that morning, she sat inconspicuously at a table in the dining area, looking for all the world like an ordinary guardian of a young customer, and motioned encouragement to her niece, who was just leaving the prize counter clutching some plastic toys, a long strip of leftover arcade tickets trailing from the pocket of her jeans.
"I have a co-conspirator with me. She's my cousin Laura's daughter, Jenny, and don't worry, I didn't tell her anything she couldn't handle at her age. For all she knows, we're investigating what happened to 'my friend's' final paycheck, which Nathan wouldn't let him pick up." Cynthia looked down at the preteen's backpack slumped over on a nearby chair, no doubt filled with the Nancy Drew detective novels she adored. The child was a born sleuth and unnaturally clever, and her aunt knew she was the perfect one to disarmingly match wits with the shady owner of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, but well within the bounds of safety. She would see to that herself.
As her aunt talked on the phone from a distance, Jenny dropped to her knees near the door to the backstage room, tearing open the package of jacks she had chosen from the trinkets available at the prize counter. Arranging the brightly-colored plastic pieces, she gave the little rubber ball included in the set a bounce, swooped a hand forward to catch the jacks, and expertly caught the ball before it could land. Flashing a subtle signal to Cynthia, she slipped a cell phone from her pocket and slid the thin device under the tiny gap between the base of the door and the tiled floor, hoping it would film whatever was visible in that strange room where she'd been told paychecks were held.
"This kid is something else," Cynthia mused, impressed at how slyly Jenny had executed the plan they had hatched together. "She's really going to take over the world someday."
"She takes after her aunt," Mike complimented her, biting his lip as the harrowing scene played out in his mind in real time. Please don't get caught, he quietly pleaded.
"Why, what a great choice when everyone else is engrossed in video games, a game of jacks!" a jovial voice interrupted Jenny. A pair of polished dress shoes came to a halt just before her facade of a game, and she looked up into the face of the man who had supposedly stolen from his former employee, surprised to see he had the look of a kindly grandfather. "I chose those myself to stock at the prize counter, because I have the best memories of playing jacks outside on the sidewalk when I was a child myself." He frowned, noticing the girl had one hand underneath the door to the room where he kept his spare costume heads. "What's wrong, honey, did you lose a jack under the door?"
Feeling a sharp tug on the pink bejeweled phone that had been a birthday present, Jenny dropped to the floor, watching it disappear into the darkness on the other side. Resolved not to appear suspicious, she tried to shrug casually.
"I thought so, but they're all here after all," she said, casting an apologetic look toward her aunt. Putting the loss of her phone behind her and pretending to notice the manager's name tag for the first time, she reverently asked, "are you the Mister Faz, the owner of this place? Because if so, I could interview you for a school assignment! We're supposed to ask a local business owner about his or her company. Please could I ask you a few questions?" To her relief, the manager positively beamed, proudly agreeing to the interview.
Moments later, she was pulling a notebook from her backpack, unable to answer her aunt's silent questions just yet. "It's your turn," Jenny urged Cynthia in a hushed tone before bolting over to a party table where Faz sat patiently. "I know you said you wished you could check his old office, now go for it!"
"Mike, you really wouldn't guess where I am right now," the convenience manager said in an awestruck tone. "I believed you from the start, but to see all this for myself; it's all real!" Her voice trailed off as she took in the security monitors, the tablet monitor, the controls for the doors and lights and even the power meter, exactly as Mike had described them. He hadn't made up a thing; the place truly was as out of control as he'd made it out to be.
"Cindy, be careful," Mike pleaded. "There's probably nothing in there to find, anyway. So Jenny lost the phone under the door? I guess there's no getting that back."
Assuring Mike that was the least of their worries, Cynthia paused briefly as she rustled through the desk drawers, trying to imagine what it would have been like fending off the animatronics armed only with one's wits and some low-level technology. Finding nothing of importance, she hastily slipped out through the hallway and back into the dining area, relieved to find Faz still regaling Jenny with stories of his company, his hands in rapid motion as he droned on about the history of the animatronic characters, and her niece scribbling furiously to take notes for what may or may not have been a legitimate school assignment.
"Did you find anything important?" Jenny demanded eagerly of her aunt once they'd retreated to the privacy of the car. "Was his paycheck in the office?"
"No, it wasn't," sighed Cynthia, "but I'm still glad you gave me the time to look for it, even if I never knew you had a 'Plan B' up your sleeve. You're one clever kid!"
Jenny huffed, falling back against the vinyl seat and looking genuinely worried. "Not clever enough to keep my phone from getting lost."
"Yeah, I'd been meaning to ask about that. Did you push it too far under the door? I'm sorry about that, and I'll personally get you a new one right now-" Cynthia nearly hit the brakes at her niece's final revelation.
"It wasn't that at all," she said, visibly shuddering. "When I peeked under the door to see why it was yanked out of my hand? Well, there was this furry...paw...that dragged it away." She crossed her arms over her chest. "I know what I saw. There's another animatronic locked up in that room."