Before this story begins, I want to quickly talk about its context and intentions.
This story is meant to serve as a sequel to the novel trilogy (The Silver Eyes, The Twisted Ones, and The Fourth Closet), and it's also not meant to take place in some sort of AU version of those books.
Everything that happened in those books, as well as any concept or revelation they introduced (Remnant, Illusion Disks, and the twist of Charlie being a robot), still exist in the context of this story.
The intention with The Red Hand is to take all of those crazy concepts and ideas, add even more insane ideas on top of them, and yet still try to make sense of all of them. So some of these concepts will probably be changed, or at the very least different from how others interpret them, since this is all being based off of my own interpretations.
And one last thing. For the context of this story, the ending of The Fourth Closet where John seemingly sees Charlie again at the graveyard is just being written off as a hallucination, something that John saw as a result of his grief. That moment won't be completely ignored, but it won't have as much of an impact on the overall story as it maybe would've otherwise.
Now, with all of that out of the way, I hope you enjoy my first ever fanfic. -Onyx Owl
The Red Hand
A Thief In The Night
It'd been two days since William Afton was presumed dead. Clay Burke stood in front of the house in Silver Reef that Charlie's aunt Jen had been hiding out in. He turned to look at Officer Cameron, who was standing beside him.
"Ready to head in?" He asked him. The officer nodded.
As they walked toward the front door, Cameron spoke up. "Remind me again what's supposed to be in here?"
"John said that this is where they found Charlie a few days ago." Clay reminded his fellow officer. "This may be the last place we can find evidence pointing to where she went."
In the last few days, Clay had little to no luck finding Charlie. Jessica had told him that her and John had found Charlie kept in a box in her aunt's home, and while John had remained distant and standoffish, he'd finally opened up and told him that he and Charlie had gone back there the day she went missing, and that they'd had run-in with Circus Baby, the animatronic that was posing as Charlie.
Just as the two officers were about to enter the house, Clay stopped and turned to Cameron.
"Before we go in there," Clay said, "You should know that according to John and Jessica, the body of Charlie's aunt is still here."
Cameron took a deep breath. "Alright, I'm ready."
They opened the door and walked inside, and sure enough, a putrid stench clogged their nostrils, and they laid eyes on aunt Jen, lifeless on the ground, starting to wither.
"Well," Cameron said, holding back bile in his throat, "that's one box ticked."
"I want you to investigate the living and dining rooms first." Clay ordered. "Holler if you find anything."
Cameron walked into the living room, while Clay continued past Jen's corpse and into a room at the end of the dark hallway.
The room was sparse. The only objects scattered around were a bed and a few empty cardboard boxes and wooden trunks. For a moment Clay assumed that this was where a scuffle with Baby occurred, and maybe it did. But that didn't appear to be the full story. The fact that everything had seemingly been emptied, every box and trunk, and scattered all across the room, led Clay to believe that someone had come here afterward and taken everything. Maybe it was Circus Baby, or Charlie, or maybe someone else entirely.
Stepping over the boxes, Clay moved over to the closet on the side of the room. He opened the door, and stepped back in surprise of what was inside.
But there wasn't anything inside, nothing except for the dried blood that coated the inside of the closet. Clay noticed, however, that the blood hadn't turned a brownish-red like real blood is supposed to, and had remained a deep crimson. But it wasn't fresh in the slightest. That could only mean one thing: more fake blood.
Clay returned to the dining room where Cameron was looking through the drawers.
"Nothing in the living room?" He asked him.
"No, nothing." Cameron said before closing the last drawer and looking back into the kitchen with a raised eyebrow.
"Something bugging you." Clay asked.
"Shouldn't there be silverware somewhere in here?" Cameron asked in response. "I didn't see any forks, spoons, or knives anywhere."
"That is strange." Was Clay's only response. Then he had an idea. "Did you see anything metal in there?"
Cameron shook his head. "Did you find anything?"
"A closet full of fake blood." Clay answered. "Other than that, it looked like whatever was in there was taken not too long ago."
"This is just like the last place we searched." Cameron realized.
It was. They had searched Circus Baby's Pizza World just yesterday with a larger number of officers, and had come up with similar results. Carlton and the others had noted everything they'd seen in there. The surgical equipment, the animatronics, whatever was left of William. But they had seen nothing. The building was as empty as a home on moving day.
"So that's just it?" Cameron wondered aloud. "Someone just came through these places and took everything of note?"
"That's what it seems like." Clay answered. "I don't think it was Afton either. From the way the kids described him, he didn't sound like he was in any condition to just vanish with everything."
"What about that Circus Baby animatronic? Couldn't it've taken that stuff?"
"Some of it, but not all of it. Not this quickly. There was more than one or two people that took all of this stuff, and I don't think it's anyone we know."
"So you're saying we know nothing?"
"Yes, we know nothing."
From a nearby window, a hooded man pocketed a tape recorder and quietly walked away.
'That's right. You know nothing.'
Four Years Pass
