Chapter Two

Being an only child had its pointers and drawbacks, just like most things did, but it was moments like this when Nikki wished she had a sibling to do things with. School was out for the summer, and there was only so much that could be done before the well-known boredom settled in.

Having finished her new book, Nikki was at a loss of things to occupy her free time. She had tried doing a crossword puzzle, only to lose interest after a few words. Movies could only be watched so many times before they became monotonous and boring. Now, she was lying on her back on her bed, tossing a pen into the air, watching it fall, and then catching it before it landed on her stomach, only to throw it up again. With a final flick, she caught the pen, sighed, and sat up, swinging her legs off the bed.

The house was unusually quiet. Around this time of day—mid-afternoon—Mom was usually in the kitchen doing dishes or doing laundry, but she neither heard the washing machine nor running water and clinking dishes. Quietly, she tip-toed down the stairs, careful of making noise, in case her parents were napping. When her feet met the bottom of the stairs, she heard soft classical music coming from Mom's art room. Must be working on a new drawing, she thought to herself.

Mom's art room was one of Nikki's favorite rooms in the whole house. Even though she kept her distance most of the time—because Mom didn't like to be disturbed while she was working—Nikki liked being able to look at all of Mom's drawings that were hung up around the room and filed neatly in portfolios in the bookshelves that lined the room's back wall. The room always had the faint smell of acrylic paint, graphite pencils, and rubber erasers.

From the hallway, Nikki heard the music stop, while the sound of a desk fan broke the near silence. She knew that it was customary to wait to see if the music would start again before knocking. If it was completely quiet for about five minutes, that usually meant Mom was taking a break and welcomed visitors into her domain. After waiting for a few minutes and not hearing any more music, Nikki knocked gently on the door.

"Yes?"

"Hey, Mom. It's me. Can I come in?"

"Yeah, sure."

Nikki pushed the door open and was met with the familiar aromas. Her mom was sitting at her desk, surrounded by pencils, colored and graphite, erasers, and various blending tools. "What are you working on?"

"Just some stuff for Aunt Nicole." A piece of hair had escaped from her ponytail, which she promptly tucked behind her ear. She carefully adjusted some of the pages before her as Nikki came to get a closer look. "I just finished the first one, and I have five more to go."

A drawing was carefully tucked underneath a coffee mug being used as a paper weight. Nikki took another step towards the desk and reached forward to pick up the drawing, but she was quickly stopped. "I don't want it to get smudged. Just look at it from the desk." The picture was at an odd angle, so Nikki had to turn to get a better view. The drawing was of a young woman with black hair, rosy cheeks, and a crooked smile. There seemed to be tear streaks on her cheeks, and she was wearing a short, flared black dress with white stripes down the length of the sleeves and black and white striped leggings. Nikki couldn't tell if the girl looked happy or sad.

"What's her name?"

"Charlotte," Mom answered absent-mindedly. She was reading through the character descriptions again and starting to make a quick sketch for the next character.

As she began to draw, Lizzie turned the music back on, but she didn't ask Nikki to leave. Nikki watched over her mom's shoulder, from a respectable distance, to see which character she was drawing next.

Slowly the character began to take shape. This one looked like a boy. He had a black top hat, shaggy hair, brown eyes, and was wearing an untucked brown button-down shirt, black bowtie, khaki pants, and brown sneakers. Mom drew him winking at the viewer and tipping his hat. A glance at the list of character descriptions proved this character to be Frederick. As Frederick's drawing developed more into the final drawing, Nikki recognized a familiar glint her mom had drawn in his eye—the same one she had seen in her dad's eyes many times. It was a playful, almost childish glint. A sparkle that hinted at a childlike quality that still existed within the adult. A Peter Pan-like quality of the little boy that didn't want to grow up…or didn't get to, as this story would have it.

Nikki turned to leave, but her mom stopped her. "Nikki, I don't mind you looking at all of these once I'm finished with them, but if you do, I don't want you touching them, okay? I want them to look nice instead of being smudged when I give them to Aunt Nicole." She paused for a moment to add some pink and yellow to her next drawing. "I'll leave them fanned out, so you can see them."

What's she so worried about? With a shrug, Nikki responded, "Okay, sure. Thanks." She tried penetrating her mom's thoughts, but either her mom was carefully guarding them, or she was already back to focusing on the drawings. A mental image of a girl in a yellow shirt and pink shorts and holding a chocolate cupcake had already filled mom's mind. Now would probably be a good time to bow out and leave mom to her thoughts. Nikki quietly backed out of the room and shut the door behind her.

Once the door had clicked shut, Lizzie turned to make sure she was alone again before restarting her music and continuing her drawing. Amy's figure started to take shape. Within the character's outstretched hands Lizzie drew a cupcake with a single burning candle in the middle. After sketching a regular cupcake, she picked up her eraser and made the cupcake a bit more cartoonish and added a pair of cute eyes to the icing part of the cupcake. She then changed Amy's gaze so that the characters were looking at each other. Amy's mouth was turned up in a joyous smile. Adding character to the cupcake wasn't part of the description, but if Nicole didn't like it, Lizzie could always change it afterwards.

Careful to not brush the picture more than necessary, Lizzie blew the eraser shavings away from the drawing where she could safely brush them off the table. There was something about the cupcake that caught her attention after she drew in another breath to clear away the remainder of the shavings. Squinting, she leaned forward to the drawing and gently blew on the lit candle wick. To her surprise, the small flame flickered, and she could have sworn that the cupcake's eyes blinked at her. Her heart was pounding, and she was waiting for Amy to come to life in the art studio, but the candle flame didn't flicker anymore, and the eyes didn't blink. Attributing the flickers and blinks to her eyes being tired, Lizzie turned off her desk light and fan and put the completed drawings in a safe place before taking a break.

At the dining room table, Shaddid was on his laptop making some adjustments to his company's website. The studio had needed some new renovations for a while, and now that they were underway, some new publicity would be more than welcome. Business had been slow since the studio's opening when Nikki was in elementary school, but he was hoping that the newly refurbished interior design would draw in some more clients.

It had been difficult starting up the business. With it being downtown, he and Lizzie had figured that it would do pretty well and in the beginning it had, but a competing karate studio had opened up a few blocks down the street, and most of their new curious customers had shifted their gaze over to the newer and nicer building. Money was tight, and because of that, any renovations that they could do had to be budgeted carefully.

He shuffled through piles of blueprints and paperwork for a few minutes looking for his calendar, only remembering afterwards that he had left it in the bedroom. Picturing the calendar in his mind's eye, he summoned it, sending the planner floating through the air. It was nearly to its destination when a soft, "Ow! Hey!" made him turn around. The planner was lying on the floor, and Nikki was rubbing the back of her head. Shaddid chuckled and picked the planner up off the floor. "Sorry, honey, I was focused on the website. I didn't know you were behind me. What have you and Mom been up to?"

"It's okay. She's working on some new drawings. Something for Aunt Nicole. I've been in my room, trying not to be bored."

Shaddid peeked into the kitchen and winked at Nikki. "I think there's some dishes in the kitchen that need washing up from lunch, if you can't find anything to do."

With a groan, Nikki sighed and rolled her eyes. "Dad, that's why I said I'm trying not to be bored, as in, I'm looking for something to do." She looked up when Mom entered the room. "Hi, Mom. Taking a break?"

"Yeah," Lizzie replied.

Shaddid glanced over at his wife, noticing she looked more tired than usual as she took a coffee mug from the kitchen cabinet and started making a cup of hot tea. "What's wrong with the drawing?" he asked knowingly.

"What do you mean?" She unwrapped a tea bag and threw the cover in the garbage.

"You never drink tea unless you're upset about a drawing."

Lizzie shrugged as she put the water on to boil. "I just needed a bit of a break is all."

Shaddid could tell that there was more to the situation than that, but he didn't press the issue. "Okay, well, Nikki said you've been working on it for a while, so maybe a break would do you some goo—"

"I saw something."

Shaddid tried to read Lizzie's expression, and even though she tried to hide it, he could see a hint of fear in her eyes. "What are you talking about?"

It took her a minute or so to respond. She stood at the kitchen sink and stared out the window into the back yard before answering. "It may have just been that my eyes were tired, but I could've sworn that one of the characters in my drawing blinked at me."

Shaddid glanced over at Nikki and realized she was in the room. He sent her upstairs to her bedroom before replying, "What do you mean it blinked at you?"

"Exactly that. I was drawing eyes on this cupcake, and it blinked at me."

"Why would you draw eyes on a cupcake? That's an odd detail to add."

The water on the stove started to boil. Lizzie shook herself out of her trance, poured the hot water into her coffee mug, and stirred before sitting at the head of the table with Shaddid to her right. "It was just a minor design idea. Nicole hadn't added it, but I thought it'd be cute. But then when I went to fix it and blow the eraser pieces off the drawing, the candle flame on the cupcake flickered too. I tried looking at it again, and it flickered a second time. It didn't do it again after that."

"Did anything change in the room?"

"No, that's the weird thing. Nothing changed. All the other drawings looked like they had originally, and when I looked at the original drawing again, the eyes were looking back where I had drawn them. That's why I think I was just tired and needed to rest my eyes."

"Do all of them have cupcakes, or is it just the one?"

"Just that one."

A few moments later, a piece of drawing paper fluttered through the living room to the dining room where it settled onto the kitchen table. Shaddid picked it up and studied it carefully. The cupcake did indeed have eyes, and it was looking at the girl in the picture, who was holding it in her palms and looking back at it with a smile on her face. "Nikki said these drawings are for Nicole. What's she going to use them for?"

"They're for her new book," Lizzie said softly. She raised the coffee mug to her lips and took a sip, intentionally avoiding her husband's eyes.

"The thriller book she's writing?" Lizzie didn't have to say anything in response to the question. Her silence spoke volumes. "Honey, I thought we were going to talk about this first. We don't know anything about these characters or what the book is about. You've never drawn illustrations for a young adult thriller series before. These characters could be really dangerous!"

"I know I probably should have come and talked to you first before I agreed to do it, but this is the reason I didn't want to bring it up: because I knew you'd be upset and you wouldn't want me to do it." She paused for a moment before quietly adding, "We need the extra money."

Shaddid ignored the last comment. "I'm not upset. I'm concerned." He reached over and covered Lizzie's hand with his own. "When we were younger, this kind of stuff was an adventure I would be more than willing to go on with you. But we have a daughter now that we must think about. Her powers aren't fully developed yet, and they probably won't be for a while. Sweetheart, if she inherits your gifts, she could potentially endanger herself or someone else if she got her hands on these drawings."

Lizzie was quiet for several minutes. Of course, Shaddid was right. She had entertained the thought several times that Nikki might inherit her ability to bring animations to life and as a result had been very careful to not allow Nikki to use the art studio without her permission and supervision. "But what am I supposed to tell Nicole? I already told her I'd have them to her by the end of the month."

"How many do you have left?"

"I'm about half-way finished with the last one." The lie burned like acid on her tongue, but she wasn't about to give the "finished" project back to Nicole without Felix, Goldie, and Billy included with the first three.

"Alright, well, I won't make you stop a drawing you've already started, and even if I did, you'd probably do it anyway." He laughed at his own joke, but Lizzie could only manage a weak smile. "Just make sure Nicole gets the drawings as soon as you're finished with them, and we both have to keep an eye on Nikki to make sure she doesn't mess with them in the meantime. We can't really afford to house any extra guests right now."

"Deal." She leaned over and met Shaddid's lips with her own in a tender kiss. He leaned into the kiss and buried his hand in her hair. After a few seconds, he leaned back, licked his lips, and cringed. "What's the matter?" she asked with a chuckle.

His nose crinkled. "I forgot I don't like black tea."

Watching and re-watching the same black and white camera footage for hours on end was proving to be pointless and tiring. But since the five kids had disappeared a month ago and hadn't yet been recovered, the town's general population had decided that Freddy Fazbear's Pizza wasn't the safe and fun place for kids of all ages that the company had been promoting since it's opening day. With the number of reservations dwindling daily, it wouldn't be long before the restaurant went under and they would have to close the doors permanently.

Since the disappearances, William had mentioned noticing that the animatronics had been acting differently. Any kids that came into the restaurant were treated with the normal cheerfulness and joy of the restaurant, but any time any of the adult staff approached the animatronics, they were greeted with a general air of hostility. He had tried multiple times to reprogram the animatronics but to no avail. As a result, William had requested that staff look through the security tapes to see what, if anything, could be causing the aggression.

The night guard blew a long sigh and rubbed his tired eyes before ejecting the security footage VHS tape from last week and replacing it with the new tape from last night. There weren't any guests here to keep an eye on, and there hadn't really been anyone to guard in the last couple of weeks. Surely this tape would be like all of the others, and it wouldn't show anything, the same as all of the others. After peeking outside the security room down both sides of the hall to make sure that William wasn't anywhere around, he pushed play on the tape, leaned back, put his feet up on the desk, and engrossed himself in a magazine.

Most of the tape had played through when the night guard sat up to grab his cup of soda off the desk to get a drink. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something in the camera move, grabbing his attention. He pushed the rewind button on the VCR until the tape had rewound several minutes. His eyes widened as he noticed the Puppet moving around the restaurant. That in and of itself wasn't that surprising. He was one of the few staff members who knew what had happened to Charlotte.

What had caught his attention was what the Puppet was doing. She had moved from her station at the Prize Corner to the stage where she took a spot in front of the animatronics. Even without sound in the video, it looked like she was talking to Freddy. The night guard rewound the tape again and sat closer to the screen, trying to decipher the grainy images in front of him. He squinted his eyes and could have sworn that he had seen Freddy's arm move.

Keeping an eye on the screen in case something else happened, the guard took his feet off the desk, picked up the desk phone, and dialed the number for the front desk and waited as it rang. William answered on the third ring.

"What is it?"

"Could you meet me in the security booth? I think I found something."

William inhaled sharply and then quietly said, "I'll be there in a second," before hanging up.

While he was waiting, the guard rewound the tape again to the part that first showed the Puppet moving through the restaurant. Afton entered the room and stepped closer to the television screens. "Show me what you found."

After pressing play, the guard leaned back to let William get a closer look. The video played to the end, but William's demeanor didn't change.

"What am I looking at?"

The guard pointed at the screen. "When the Puppet is in front of the stage, watch Freddy's arm. I know it's grainy, but he moves."

As the tape played through again, William squinted at the screen and paused the video when Freddy moved his arm. He opened his mouth to reply, but running footsteps interrupted him. Quickly, he reached over and flipped the power switch on the monitor, blacking the screen. Seconds later, Charlotte appeared at the door, eyes wide. "Dad, the police are. here They're banging on the door."

"Police! Open up!" The glass entryway of the restaurant seemed to shudder with each thud on the front door.

"Charlotte," William said calmly but with authority in his voice, "go to the Prize Counter and stay there until I tell you. Whatever you do, don't let them see you."

"But, Dad-"

"Now!"

William headed towards the front of the restaurant, past the animatronics on the stage. As he passed, he felt like each pair of eyes followed him with hidden malice. Behind him, the security guard followed at a reasonable distance. "If I find out you had anything to do with this, I promise you you're going to pay for it," William growled to his employee.

"William Afton, we have a warrant for your arrest! Open up!"

Cautiously, William descended the stairs before opening the restaurant's glass door and coming out with his hands raised in surrender. Police pointed their guns at him and shouted for him to get down on the ground. Obediently, he laid on the floor on his stomach and clasped his hands across the back of his head. An officer knelt next to him and roughly handcuffed his hands behind his back.

"What exactly is it I'm getting arrested for? I have a right to know!" For the first time, William fought against the officers pulling him back outside.

"You're under arrest for connections in the death of Jeremy Fitzgerald."

"That's absurd! That was over eight years ago!"

The officer continued as if he hadn't heard him. "You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law."

Before they could drag him outside, William caught sight of his employee standing at the foot of the stairs and yelled, "Michael, take care of Charlotte! You owe me that much!"

One of the officers who had just noticed the newcomer stepped back inside restaurant foyer with a notepad. "What's your name?"

"Mike Schmidt."

"What is your affiliation with Mr. Afton?"

Michael looked past the officer to the parking lot where the officer's co-workers were helping William into the back of the police car. "He's my employer." After a pause, he added, "Or former employer it looks like." The car door slammed shut.

The officer made some notes on her notepad. "Your employer—Mr. Afton—mentioned a name. Charlotte? Who is that?" She looked up from her notes and made eye contact with Michael.

"She's nobody. Some robotic version of his deceased daughter that he created to fill the void he felt after his wife left him years ago." Michael shrugged. "He treats her like she's real."

"Right..." After finishing her notes, the officer scribbled a name and phone number on a piece of paper and put the notepad away in her pants pocket. She handed the paper to Michael. "Here's the name and phone number for a contact at the employment agency. I doubt with the downfall of the company that your employer has any money left to leave you any kind of severance package. I would suggest calling them as soon as possible," she said, motioning to the sheet of paper in Michael's hand.

"Thanks," Michael mumbled as he shoved the paper into his back pocket. He may be out of a job, but for the first time in his life he felt freer than a bird.

Upstairs in the restaurant Charlotte stayed hidden in the dark, barely daring to breathe. She had heard shouting on the first floor, followed by heavy footsteps and a car door slamming shut. A few minutes later, the car had started up and driven away.

The following silence seemed to stretch on for ages. Finally, hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs. But instead of her dad, it was Michael, and his face was stony and cold. In his left hand he carried an old, empty duffel bag. "What happened?" she asked around the lump in her throat.

He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he strode over to the front desk and started rummaging around in the drawers, looking for something. After snatching a piece of paper from the desk, he crouched beneath the desk's top and dialed in the combination for the company safe. The tumblers unlocked with ease and the door swung open, revealing hundreds of dollars in cash. Michael began scooping bundles of hundreds and fifties into the empty bag. As he worked, he spoke quietly, his voice void of emotion, "Your dad's been arrested. Something to do with Jeremy Fitzgerald's death."

"Who's Jeremy Fitz-"

"He was an employee at a sister location. Got killed by one of the animatronics when the programming software that controlled the facial recognition malfunctioned. Really simple fix when you know what you're doing." He finished arranging the money, zipped the bag up, and hoisted it over his shoulder.

"So, you could have prevented Elizabeth's death if you had wanted to."

Michael had turned to walk away, but her comment stopped him dead in his tracks. He could hear her voice breaking and didn't want to turn around and see her crying, but he did anyway. "I wasn't working here then. Henry was." It was a lame excuse of an answer, but what else could he say? Her family had literally fallen apart before her very eyes.

With first Elizabeth's death and then Danny's soon afterwards, William's wife had told him she had had enough of watching her children die at the hands of her husband and had left Charlotte with him. All the better for her, Michael supposed, since Charlotte had been killed only two years later, the only child of the three that William had successfully brought back to the land of the living. At least in the figurative sense. With a sigh, he dropped the bag of money down on the floor and stooped down to her level, which wasn't much, seeing as how she was taller than the average thirteen-year-old.

"Listen," he said quietly, making eye contact with her, "if I could change what happened to you and Elizabeth…and Danny"—the last name caught in his throat a bit— "you know that I would. I wish that things could have turned out differently. I really do. But we can't do anything about it now.

"And those kids that went missing? You know I'd give anything to know what happened to them, and I hope that they're alright. And if they're not, well, I hope whoever is responsible rots in jail for it."

Charlotte looked down at the floor and nudged a dust bunny with the toe of her shoe. "You're sure you don't know anything about the kids? You didn't see or hear Dad say anything about it?"

Michael scowled at her. "I wasn't working that night! You know that. How was I supposed to know what happened if I wasn't even here?"

"You're right. I'm sorry." She glanced over at the bag of money that sat alone in the dust. "But what are you going to do with all that money?"

A look of determination flashed across his face. "I'm making a new start. I've been trapped here for too long, and now that your dad isn't here to keep me here any longer, I'm leaving. The sooner the better, in my opinion. He and I could never get along anyway. It's for the best."

Charlotte's eyes widened. "You're leaving? But what about me? You can't leave me here all by myself!"

"You won't be alone. You've got your little…posse of animatronics to look after you. I mean, not to sound macabre and morbid, but you're dead. You don't really need that much looking-after." He hadn't meant the comment to come out so cruel, but he could see he had hurt her feelings. "All I meant," he hurried on, "was that you don't really need that much. You only eat and drink if you want to. It's not a necessity. And it's not like you have to go anywhere for anything." He wasn't really getting anywhere, and his attempts at trying to soften the blow weren't helping. He sighed heavily again and finished with, "Look, I'll come visit you and check up on you every so often just to make sure you're okay. Alright? How does that sound?"

She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Fine."

Michael tried comforting her with a gentle pat on the back, but even that small gesture felt forced and unnatural. Without another word, he slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and carried it downstairs to finish packing.

It had only been an hour since Michael had gone downstairs to pack and half an hour since he had left in his rusty old '57 Chevy, but it already felt like an eternity. With each passing minute, the reality of how alone she was in this big house and adjoining restaurant became more stifling. Charlotte's chest felt tight, making it hard to breathe, but she forced herself to focus. She might be the only "human" left on the premises, but Michael had been right about one thing: she wasn't truly alone with the animatronics here with her.

Slowly she made her way from the Prize Corner, where she had in a haze planted herself for the last hour, over to the stage. She knelt down in front of Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica, while Foxy watched from a distance. "Well, guys," she said quietly, "looks like it's just you and me from now on." And for the first time since finding the bodies in the safe room, she wept.