6

The next animatronic that arrived at Rockstar Pizza was an unusual one. The following week, after Mike's scolding for tampering with the storeroom camera, Tim walked into Mike's office and reminded him of the late delivery expected that night. Rockstar Pizza had received several of these crates now, and the practice was becoming commonplace. The previous three characters that had arrived were more 'toy' ones, all part of the one set and were in near mint condition, having only been in use for a few months until the tragedy and subsequent Bite of '87.

Though Mike scarcely saw the man, the engineer had obviously been busy in the back room with them as they were now all laying on the tables with their face coverings off. Once, as Mike signed off on another delivery of bulk food supplies, he spotted the old man at the table. His sleeves were rolled up and his expression was indiscernible behind his beard as he focused on the laptop in front of him. Wires ran from the laptop and were plugged into the exposed head of the nearby animatronic on the table, the 'toy' Freddy. It looked as though he was going through the programming, but it was hard for Mike to know for sure.

Mike knew from the alarm code log history that the man had entered the premises most nights for an hour or so during the small hours, usually between 1:00am and 2:00am, and though he was curious about the man's unusual roster and the exact tasks he was undertaking, Mike knew better than to bother Tim or the man himself about it. The man, Mike knew, was a contracted engineer who had prior experience with the Fazbear animatronics. Head office deemed him trustworthy enough to complete his tasks during the middle of the night after everyone had left. Perhaps it was easier for him to concentrate in the silence, Mike pondered, though a growing thought in the back of his mind had Mike wondering if his lack of video feed into this room was to do with this man's activities. In this moment, Mike considered asking him if he had ever heard any strange sounds from back there at night but thought better of it. The last thing he needed as the head of security was his mental state being questioned, considering the terms of his dismissal from Freddy's many years ago, of which Tim was fully aware.

The next crate arrived that night and both Tim and Mike stood waiting in anticipation as the rear platform of the truck lowered slowly to the ground, the crate balancing on it. The roller door clanged as it uncurled and crept steadily down to the floor and once the crate was safely inside, Tim got to work prying it open with the crowbar. Mike was standing by the roller door, locking and arming it, when he saw Tim's look of disgust at whatever he had just uncovered, and came hurrying over to see for himself. Once he reached him, Mike's face wore a similar look.

Inside the crate was a very old animatronic. Its state of decay made it resemble a partially muscled skeleton and it's faded yellow colour was strangely familiar to Mike. It was a rabbit, but neither of the men staring at it had any idea which character it was nor had they ever seen any reference to it before. Standing there now, crowbar in hand, Tim felt as though he had just opened a sarcophagus revealing a long-forgotten mummy inside. After looking it up and down for a few moments, Tim took his phone out of his pocket and checked through his e-mails looking for the one relating to this character.

"It says here it's called 'Bonnie', but that can't be right…" Tim read through the e-mail carefully. "They think it might be one of the original characters from way back in the day… This thing was at Circus Baby's?"

Mike wasn't listening. He was watching the corpselike animatronic in the crate carefully. The same feeling that had overcome him with the old ones that had walked in the night many years ago, and the amalgamated mess from a few weeks ago, was hitting him full force now. His heartbeat was rising again telling him that he was in immense danger, though logically he could not see any reason for it. The feeling that this thing was real, more than a machine, was rising and taking over his thoughts. It felt as though it was calling out to him, to anyone, begging them to put it out of its misery. The tangled mess of a bear had felt like three confused voices all screaming at once; this thing just felt like one being trapped in torturous pain.

"Well, here goes!"

Tim's voice caught his attention, and he watched the yellow rabbit carefully for any movement as Tim played the first audio clip. It was the usual sound that they had played many times before—the happy party, the laughing children, the sound of slightly warbled carnival music. No reaction came from it. Tim played the second, more intense clip of the grainy sound of squealing children with the loud music in the background. Still, there was no reaction.

The third audio clip was different. It must have been a mistake. Instead of the sound of a lonely child locked out of a party, the third clip sounded like a recorded message that someone had made to themselves, a note-to-self type of recording. It was a man's voice, one that Tim recognised but couldn't place immediately.

"The deep scan of the animatronic's surveillance files yielded no results. The memory had been wiped and it appears that there is no hope of recovering any footage from that time. We may never know who the animatronics actually saw—"

The audio file ended there, and the two men looked at each other. After speculating who the voice might have been and what the man was talking about, they decided to play the file again. This time, about halfway through, they both jumped in fright as the animatronic rabbit suddenly moved violently in its crate. It had been slouched to the side with its head tilted down, but supposedly at the sound of the recording, the character suddenly stood up straight and rigid. The eyes, now backlit by a dull, yellow light behind them, looked at Tim and then, with a subtle movement of its eyes, looked at Mike. After a few tense seconds, the lights flickered and dimmed, and the rabbit slouched once again in its crate. Tim cleared his throat.

"Well, that's a response worth noting…"

"Yeah," replied Mike. "Make sure you mention which file you were playing at the time."

They boarded the crate back up, much more securely than they had done with the others and wheeled it against the wall.

"Well," said Tim. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

He hurried out of the building, leaving Mike to close for the night, which he also hurried to do.

The next day the restaurant had a surprise visit. One of the shareholders, the old woman with her hair tied back into a tight bun and a stern face, arrived and had called for Tim. From what Mike could gather from his query with him later on, she held a special interest in the most recent animatronic that the company had received. How she knew about the deliveries was a mystery, but they figured that she was quite involved with the goings-on at head office. Tim had led the woman through the hallway past Mike's office into the storeroom beyond to inspect the yellow rabbit. Though she had been at the restaurant during the test run for the shareholders the day before opening, Mike had only just now realised that she was familiar to him.

The visit was brief and the woman left, leading the way back along the hallway, with the same indiscernible look on her face, though Mike thought he saw the faintest look of disgust on her face, as though she just had to identify a murderer out of a line-up. Later, during the day when everything was quiet, Mike mentioned his curiosity about the woman to Tim, who it turned out had also had that same feeling of familiarity. After a few moments of thought, Mike suddenly cried out.

"Jen the cleaning lady! That's where I know her from! She was the cleaner at the old Freddy Fazbear's Pizza back when we worked there. Wow, I can't believe she's a shareholder now. She must have really loved that company."

"You know," began Tim with a slight smirk on his face. "She used to watch me like a hawk after the stunt you pulled. So did that old guy who was training me, come to think of it. He was always so relieved that I was still alive the next day. The woman, though? Man, I was sure that she hated me. Used to scare the heck out of me."

"I was always so glad when she left for the night," replied Mike as he leaned back in his chair, stretching his hands up behind his head.

"You know what else?" began Tim as he lowered his voice. "One night not long after I got in, I could have sworn I heard her talking to 'em on the stage. I'd just gone out to use the bathroom, before midnight like the old guy said, and there she was, right up in front of the stage looking up at the characters, whispering. Almost like she was asking them if they were okay, you know… after the state they were in after your last night."

Mike winced at this. Despite the fact that he was quite secure in his new position, he did not care for Tim's brazen comment about what happened to him and what he ended up doing to the animatronics that night. Tim always treated it as though Mike just couldn't handle working night shifts, like his mental state was frail and couldn't cope with the isolation and strange hours. It was the main reason why he hadn't mentioned anything to him about the sounds he thought he was hearing from the storeroom every night. Tim would just think that he wasn't coping again. Trying to move on from the awkward pause, Mike kept the conversation going.

"Did she catch you listening in on her?"

"Straight away. She just stared at me as I walked over to the bathroom. Even though she was the one being weird, she made me feel like the weird one for looking at her like she was weird, you know?"

"So, what did she want to look at in there? Was it our new arrival?"

"Oh, yeah. I opened the crate up for her and she just looked it up and down. She didn't ask any questions about it—it was more like she was confirming that we had what we said we had."

Mike's curiosity about Jen the shareholder's interest in their most recently received animatronic faded away completely only a few nights later. It was a usual night like all the others. There were no late deliveries so once everything was done, Tim left and headed home around 9:30pm. Mike had locked the roller door and the exit to the storeroom and did a sweep, checking the bait stations for any vermin, again trying to convince himself that they were the source of the sounds in the night. He locked the door to the offices and rattled it a few times, making sure it was firm. Then, Mike sat down at his desk and watched the cameras for a while, waiting for the cleaner to finish up in the dining room.

It was a night like most others. The quiet made him tense and his hearing always seemed to increase as he picked up on every small creak and knock that emanated from the walls, dreading the day he actually heard a voice call out to him from behind them. He clicked his mouse quietly and typed on his keyboard gently, again being as quiet as possible. On the camera, the cleaner had finished up with the dining room and had just finished mopping the bathrooms. He left through the front door and Mike then got up to do his final round.

Stepping through the empty dining room, he could appreciate just how large the place was. Each footstep echoed as he walked past the arcade games and play equipment which held still in the dark, waiting to brighten up the building with their lights and music. The animatronics stood like four dark statues on the stage, standing there almost as tributes to the original ones from many years ago. The bathroom and kitchen were empty and devoid of any life or movement. Never shaking the feeling that he was being watched—a feeling that he was becoming accustomed to—Mike walked back to his office to turn off his computer and clock out for the night.

The night was still. There wasn't even a breeze against the walls to seep into the cracks and crevices. The absolute silence made it possible for Mike to hear the sound that caused him to check the dining room camera. A noise from the dining room on the other side of the hallway wall. It was a metallic snap followed by a thud on the floor which caused an immediate pang in Mike's stomach, as though he had just heard the sound of a terrible injury. He looked at the camera feed and couldn't make sense of what he saw. It was an image that would later appear distorted with interference when he tried to watch it back.

On the floor in front of the mascots lay a figure of a man, staring up at them. It was dark and it was hard to see, but the man appeared to be naked and Mike saw that his legs were horribly disfigured. They were crushed thin and bent crooked at several points all the way up to his waist. He tried to stand, but each attempt caused him to collapse and writhe in silent pain as his useless legs repeatedly gave out under him. In those moments that he stood into the light Mike could see that his skin was a dark, rotten purple. The man's attention was squarely focused on the four mascots on the stage, and he kept trying to move away from them as though he was scared of them. Then, to Mike's horror, the purple man turned and crawled quickly away from them towards the office door. He reached the wall and managed to stand himself up against it and as he moved, Mike could hear the soft scuffing along the hallway wall just outside his office. Mike watched in horror as the deformed figure made its way to the door and began to pull on the handle. Mike heard it shaking down the hall and he dropped to the floor as he heard the door creak open.

It made no sense. Mike had just been out there not two minutes ago, and the place had been as empty as it had always been. The thought of that thing appearing while he was out in that dining room with it made him light-headed. Mike heard a thud on the carpet halfway down the hall as the purple man collapsed again and he willed with all his might that none of this was real, that it was an intense hallucination brought on by his imagination and the sounds he thought he heard at night. He held perfectly still curled up behind his desk waiting to hear the figure make its way past his office and wondered what he would do if it got no further than the locked door into the storeroom. All had gone quiet but the sensation that it was just outside never waned.

Gradually, Mike mustered up the nerve to look out past his desk towards the open doorway of his office into the still-lighted hallway. He turned his head and slowly peered out so that he could just see past the edge of his desk, and what he saw took him a moment to process. The purple man was lying on his front just outside Mike's open office door, his arms outstretched before him and his head resting on the ground as he stared directly back at him. The whole time the man had been silent, he had been there watching him. Mike's stomach lurched hard as though he had been dropped off a cliff and he felt himself get dizzy. The purple man on the floor then writhed violently and quickly towards him —dragging himself along the floor—then slowed as his arms began to twitch and crush within some invisible force into thin, broken limbs. Before completely being crushed into a mangled nothingness, the purple man screamed a single word.

"Henry!"

-xxx-

William Afton died alone among the scattered remains of the original four animatronics just before the first snow of 1996. Freddy Fazbear's Pizza had closed for good and the building had been cleared out of all decorations and furnishings. Only the animatronics remained as he had planned to see to their disassembly himself. As he pulled them apart, he reminisced about the victims of 1987—the four small children that he had lured with him into the back room where these animatronics were stored. They had been in use since the start of the franchise but finally, after his partner Henry's disappearance, he was able to take full creative control and bring in his own versions from Afton Robotics.

The old ones, however, still had some use. As he worked on them in the back, under the guise of retrofitting them with the new technology to make them compatible with the new ones, William had rebuilt the torsos to fit them with an openable cavity similar to the design of his own wearable animatronic suit. One by one, he lured the children. One by one, he would drug them, and one by one, he would gently place their unconscious, small bodies into the torsos, curling and folding them wherever necessary. All of this he achieved by wearing the yellow rabbit suit that Henry had made for him to match his own yellow bear suit, which they both wore as the company's mascots. After placing the child inside, he would replace the cover onto the opening, a cover which was designed to be permanently fixed once the internal parts were back in their original positions. Positions that were incompatible with human life.

William would then sit in the back room, in his yellow suit, hidden in plain sight amongst the other decommissioned characters and wait for the loud, wet crunch from the animatronic that would signal his victory. It was almost a game to him. He would tell himself that it was fair because the suit he wore was just as dangerous as the ones he placed the children in. It had the same fault in that if he moved too vigorously, the spring locks that held the mechanical parts back allowing for human use would give away and the parts would snap back to their original position, filling the voids inside the suit. It was a game that he always won—until one night, when he didn't.

Looking down at the scattered remains of the original four, he reminisced about how easy it all had been. One thing that he had always been unaware of was that his first victim, Charlotte, had gifted each of the children a second chance. His fond memories became fear as the flickering images of those children crept closer and closer to him on the edge of his vision and in a moment of madness and panic, he ran to the back room and retrieved his old suit from within a hidden compartment in the wall and climbed into it. It had been many years since he had worn the old thing and he wasn't his usual calm, collected self. Those children, or what remained of them, were surely still afraid of his old, alter ego that he had used when he took them. The yellow rabbit was the last being that any of them had seen.

They had gotten the better of him. The suit failed and the locks released, one by one, from his legs slowly up his body until only his brain remained intact. His scared eyes darted around the dark room, the only part of him that was left for him to move as the rest of his body now felt like a searing dead weight. Those eyes caught glimpses of the four children who faded one by one, now finally at rest. A fifth one appeared at his side, looking down at him with malice, one who he had nearly forgotten about, and she too faded away.

William Afton had died alone in a dark, empty restaurant on the night of the first snow in 1996. Though he was dead, his presence on this world lingered on. From that night onwards, the Puppet that Jen had kept in her house had constantly radiated fear and urgency into the air, fear that would fill the rooms of the old house and seep into the wallpaper. Charlotte, though trapped in this world in much the same way that William was, had at least been content. Now, she existed in fear of the 'Purple Man' who knew she was still here, somewhere flickering in and out of this plane of reality.

His body remained in that old building, returned to the hiding place in the wall by Jen, where she hoped he would never be found, until one day almost twenty-five years later, he was discovered, the head locks having long since sprung. Some demolition workers who recognised the rabbit as an old character from the franchise retrieved it and sold it for a steep price to an up-and-coming company called 'Fazbear's Fright' that aimed to make a horror attraction out of the stories and legends of the franchise's history.

His use there had not been long. Word had gotten out about the rumoured animatronic that the attraction had acquired and those with longer memories than most sought to have it taken in as forensic evidence to help close the cold case of the missing children. It would not be. The night before the animatronic was due to be taken in, four teenagers had broken into the warehouse and activated many of the components of the attraction, causing a fire that tore through the place, resulting in the deaths of two of the teenagers that were later ruled as being caused before the fire had occurred.

The soul of William Afton was trapped, tethered to this world by the suit that was made for him over forty years ago. In moments of lucidity, he was able to project his form as he remembered himself being, though his tortured mind was always trapped in its last moments alive, doomed to repeat his death endlessly in his own personal hell. In those moments when he could leave the earthly tether of his old rabbit suit and enter the other plane as the Purple Man, he searched only for one thing. Spurred on by Charlotte's fear of him, though she was not the one he was after, he searched for the one person who he was sure was dead and in that plane with him, one who he had always blamed for his own son's death. The death that set the whole chain of events off.

Charlotte's father and William's former business partner, the one who started the whole franchise.

Henry. It was always Henry.