3

They watched the old animatronic on the screen for a few more moments, and when nothing happened, Darcy turned away to resume her perusal of the pile of boxes behind them. Ryan, now satisfied that nothing was happening, continued switching through the camera feeds. Maybe it was just the effect of this place, but he couldn't shake the ominous feeling he got from that animatronic character. It was surely just a prop with a swivelling head, one designed to turn left and right, or perhaps watch people as they walked past, but he couldn't shake the feeling that it was staring at him right now from the other side of the building. He could almost feel its gaze through the walls, boring into him.

Darcy rummaged through the pile of parts and props before wandering into the storage room, looking for something to take. The original plan was for each of them to take a prop head and to take them into school tomorrow, but since Scott had grabbed four of the 'toy' character heads, presumably one for each of them—though it seemed like he took them all for himself—the whole excursion felt finished. Now, they were just waiting around for Scott and Amber to get back and they would leave. She felt robbed. She did not want her backpack to be empty when they left. Finding only spare sections of wall and tins of paint, she left the storage room and continued to rummage through the box of animatronic parts next to the locker.

Ryan turned his head towards her as she worked and watched. She had surprised him with her determination to come and do this with them. She had usually been a straight shooter, a follows-the-rules type of girl. She was initially hesitant to go along with this plan—which was essentially breaking and entering—but now it was as though she had decided that she was tired of being ignored.

They were ignored by their parents, they had been ignored at their previous school in their hometown. They had always struggled to make friends and to fit in. They weren't even the weird kids, they were just always forgotten about. They were nobodies. Nothing exceptional about them. Now, they had friends. Friends who wanted them to come with them and break the rules. It was against their nature and what they had always been taught, but it was making them friends. Ryan saw it switch in her the previous night when she lied to their parents so easily. She was done being ignored. She was going to come home with a stolen prop, and she wasn't going to hide it carefully. She would shove it under their parents' faces if she had to—if they could only look away from their phones.

She straightened, brushed her long brown hair aside and tossed something at Ryan. It was a dirty, scuffed, brown bear head with a small black top hat on top. Its jaw was missing. It was a Freddy Fazbear head. Darcy faced him.

"There's one. Hopefully, there'll be another one in here."

She knelt back down and resumed her search. Ryan turned back to the monitor and watched the screen. He stopped flicking through feeds. He had found them. Scott and Amber were in the corridor with the Foxy head at the end, its light flickering occasionally. They were huddled together about halfway down it in a particularly shadowed spot, obviously having gotten distracted on their way through the attraction. Ryan watched for a moment. They were partially hidden in the dark, moving around where they stood, but he couldn't quite work out what they were doing. Suddenly, he felt as though he was watching something that he shouldn't be, but before switching away, he noticed a button on the screen that read PLAY AUDIO.

A smile spread across Ryan's face. This office must also be where they controlled the attraction. Not sure what sound to expect, but anticipating a scare either way, Ryan clicked the button on the screen and watched the two figures in the dark jump in fright as a voice played through unseen speakers, a child's voice saying 'Hello…?'

Chuckling to himself as he watched the two of them hurriedly straightening themselves out, he turned to show Darcy this feature, and paused as he spotted the blinking red light on the desk phone. He looked at the small screen on it. There were two voice messages.

His curiosity getting the better of him, he reached out and pressed the playback button. It beeped, and a male voice emitted from the speaker.

"Hello? Hello…? Looks like I just missed you. Hey, so when you get in tomorrow, make sure that the animatronic is turned off. Our technicians want to have a proper look at it before letting it loose on the customers… They think it might actually be dangerous. They say it's one of the originals, so they want to check over it. It's gotta be about fifty years old. Anyway, just leave it switched off in the meantime. It can still be a scary prop where it is."

The message ended with a beep. Intrigued, Ryan pressed the button again to play the next message. Darcy had now stopped what she was doing to listen more closely.

"Me again. So uh, I've just been contacted by the police about that old animatronic. They want to bring it in and have a look at it themselves. They think it might have something to do with that guy, Afton, who vanished just after the restaurant closed. The CEO? It might also be related to the missing kids incident. I reckon they think it might actually be that yellow rabbit costume the guy wore to lure them away. It's probably one of the two springlock suits they made back in the day. So, when you get in, just put it away in storage and let the police handle it. Also, we'll have to make sure we don't have any other springlock parts in storage—they're very dangerous to handle. Okay, I'll speak to you tomorrow."

Darcy turned to Ryan with an incredulous look on her face as the message ended with a beep.

"They think that robot thing might actually be the suit that the killer wore? Is it wearable?"

"That's how it sounds, yeah," replied Ryan, turning back to the monitor. "I guess Amber was right. I wonder how anyone could wear that—" Ryan stopped, his face now stricken with fear. "Darcy, it's gone!"

"What's gone?" she replied, walking up behind him to look closer at the screen, her voice nervous.

"The damn robot's gone!"

They stared at the feed from the camera pointing down into the arcade room from the ceiling. Through the intermittent static, they could see that the room was quite empty. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Ryan switched through the feeds, following along the corridors towards where he thought Scott and Amber where. The animatronic rabbit was standing in the corridor with the broken Bonnie at the end—the corridor that was parallel with the one the pair was currently hiding in. Its head was slightly tilted at an angle, making its broad, toothy smile look somehow deranged beneath its dark eyeholes.

Ryan switched back to the arcade machines and played the audio feature in that room. A child's voice laughed joyfully from a speaker, echoing down the cement-grey corridors. He switched back to the other camera and watched as the old, ragged animatronic turned its head and torso towards the sound. It looked and moved like a reanimated carcass. Ryan was breathing hard—the air was becoming stuffy again. Was the animatronic actually dangerous? What would it do if they ran into it in one of the corridors?

The animatronic had made its way back to the arcade and was staring at the machines' flickering screens, perfectly still. If Ryan hadn't seen it move, he wouldn't have believed that it could walk. It might have been his imagination or simply just the effect of this place working on him, but he was beginning to feel a sentience from it. Though it seemed to react and move towards sound cues, there was something ominous and sinister about the way it looked around its environment. It looked like it was aware.

Scott and Amber were now peeking around the doorway between the Foxy head and the Bonnie head, looking spooked but grinning as though they were playing a game of hide-and-seek. They crept towards the corridor that the animatronic had just walked down and peered through the mess of hanging silver stars at the dark figure standing facing away from them in the far doorway. Ryan went cold. He pulled out his phone to warn them, but as he did, he saw that he had no phone signal. Darcy tried hers and found that she had no signal, either.

They watched the screen in horror as the pair crept up to the animatronic. Ryan went to lure it further away with the audio feature, but what would happen when it reached the far end? How could they warn the others without making any noise?

The air was becoming stuffy and thick, and the picture on the screen faded to static. They were blind. Suddenly, an alarm blared from within the office. A red light was flashing and on the screen was a pop up message warning of a ventilation failure. Evidently, this attraction was built with old technology and used parts that weren't up to code. Ryan hastily clicked the reboot button and worked to restart the camera feeds. The alarms stopped and they heard the vents shudder and flow with fresh air again. When the picture finally returned, he couldn't find anyone on it.

Scott and Amber had run off and hidden behind a doorway just as the animatronic turned towards them. The alarm had startled them into hiding, though Ryan doubted whether they knew that they might actually be in danger. He switched through feeds, but he couldn't find the animatronic—the corridors were empty. Darcy let out a gasp and he looked up. There it was, staring at him through the long window that ran along the front of the office.

Its stare was piercing, its broad grin ghoulish as it studied him. The glass eyes were softly backlit by an internal light, giving it the faintest yellow glow. The glass separating them now seemed so flimsy and weak. Though he couldn't explain it, Ryan felt a deep, raw loathing coming from it. It wanted to get to him. To hurt him. It had seen him, it now knew for certain that he was there, and it wouldn't stop until it reached him.

It turned, its gaze scanning past Darcy, missing her, who was still standing against the darkened back wall. They could hear its slow, lumbered footsteps as it made its way knowingly towards the office door. They were frozen. As it reached the far corner of the corridor, Darcy slipped beside the ajar office door and crouched. Ryan, unable to move, looked down at the old animatronic head in his lap and did the only thing he could think of. He took off his glasses and put it on.

Wearing it like a helmet, he sat in the chair and watched as the animatronic reached the door. Everything was silent. He heard a dull thud as its hand pressed against the door followed by a soft creak as it swung slowly inwards, hiding Darcy from view behind it. Ryan held his breath. Unable to see properly, he could just make out its dark, rabbit-eared silhouette as it stepped towards him.

He did not know what was going to happen. Standing there perfectly still, it seemed to be contemplating him. The piercing stare that it had before seemed to dull as it studied him, or rather studied the brown bear head that he was wearing. Ryan hoped that the vents wouldn't fail again. The animatronic slowly moved out of his line of sight and he could hear it walk past him into the storage room beyond. He could hear it bumping and thudding in there until it went silent for an unbearable amount of time, then finally it turned and left the storage room, walking back past the twins as it moved back through the security office. Neither Ryan nor Darcy moved until it was out of sight of the window.

-xxx-

When Scott and Amber rushed out of the office to go back to the other end of the horror house, it wasn't long before they got distracted by each other and found themselves in what they thought was a dark, secluded area to fool around in. It was hard to see the cameras dotted throughout the maze, so they believed that they were hidden. It was another idea of Scott's—something to check off before they all left to go back home. After all, who else would be able to say that they had done the same thing?

A soundbite of a child's voice had suddenly, and more loudly than expected, sounded from the ceiling above them, forcing them to untangle themselves from each other with fearful urgency. Quickly, they figured it was just part of the attraction. The initial shock wore off quickly and, feeling a different kind of excitement brewing within them, they began to resume their exploration of the building.

It was a game. A funhouse. Fazbear's Fright! They wanted to see what else it had in store for them. As they made their way up to the doorway between the lighted animatronic heads, however, they heard a shuffle of movement coming towards them, stopping on the other side of the wall in the parallel corridor. They paused, hesitant. In that split second their hearts skipped a beat and began to thrum deep inside their chests as a fresh burst of adrenaline coursed through them. Was there someone else in here with them?

Amber held on tight to Scott's hand. She couldn't explain the raw fear that she suddenly felt in those few seconds, but him being there gave her small comfort. They waited where they were, staring at the doorway at the end that led off into the corridor where the sound had come from, the lighted Foxy head grinning at them. They waited for the shuffling footsteps to resume towards them, but they never came. Amber, thoroughly immersed in the artificial environment, wanted to stay where they were and be hidden. Her primal fear was conjuring a monster on the other side of that thin wall—one that was still because it was listening out for them, too.

Scott, however, was less concerned. This was a plyboard funhouse loosely modelled after the old pizzeria franchise where five children were known to have disappeared. The footsteps were just part of the attraction and he wanted to see what had caused it. In the back of his mind, he thought that it might be a security guard, but the thing's movements didn't seem quite… human. That thought had struck his chest like a poison needle as a small dose of fear began to spread through him.

The only other thing they had seen in this place was that mouldy old yellow rabbit animatronic that they had walked past. Though nobody said it at the time, he was sure that they all felt the same thing as they walked past it. There was something off about it. He reached the end of the doorway with Amber in tow and was getting ready to peek around it, his duffle bag full of character heads swaying on his shoulder. He wasn't sure what he was expecting. A security guard would have surely called out by now, or at least continued walking. This thing seemed to be holding perfectly still and if they hadn't already heard it moving, wouldn't even know that it was there.

The child's voice sounded again, a laugh coming from down the corridor towards the arcade room. They waited, listening out for any response. A soft whirr and quiet clicks came from just beyond the dark doorway, followed by lumbering, metal footsteps heading away in the direction of the child's voice. When the sounds went quiet again, they crept into the now empty corridor and up to the doorway of the next one, this time with the empty Bonnie carcass watching them.

There it was. Right at the other end, behind the hanging silver stars stood the dark figure of the animatronic rabbit. It had its back to them and was staring at the arcade machines in front of it. Amber was fearful and uneasy, but Scott still wasn't sure what to make of the thing. He almost wanted to test it, to see if he could lure it around the building after him. Amber could just about read his mind and grabbed his arm.

"We should get back to the others and get out of here."

Scott didn't respond. He seemed to be studying the character at the other end of the corridor. Just then, an alarm rang out from the direction of the office where the twins were. The animatronic began to turn back around just as the pair pulled away from the doorway. They headed towards the office but instead of turning right into the passageway beyond that looked into the office, they turned left back into the corridor where they were hidden the first time.

The alarm was loud and rang out for several seconds before falling silent. Had they tripped a security alarm? Were the police now on their way? Either way, that sound had attracted the character and they could now hear its footsteps moving down the corridor they had just slipped out of. They waited behind the wall, listening as it moved past them and on into the next room. It went silent. Scott leaned out to have a look through the doorway. It was standing side-on in the passageway, staring through the long window into the office.

It seemed to study the area for a moment before turning to follow the path to the doorway. Scott and Amber held still where they were, waiting to hear something happen. The place was completely silent and still. The character had now gone around the corner and disappeared from their view. It would be in the office by now. Where were the twins? Were they able to hide? They waited, holding their breath, listening for any sound of distress to come from the room.

They heard its footsteps again and they quickly hid behind the wall as the animatronic walked back out into the passageway. There had been no sound in the building, so now they didn't know where it was heading. They listened as it walked in their direction, getting closer with every step, ready to turn and run if that smiling face appeared around the corner. Instead, it turned and walked back towards the arcade room, past the wall that they were hiding behind. Evidently, that was the noisiest room in the building. They relaxed, and Amber even managed a smile.

-xxx-

"Holy hell!" Ryan breathed again, taking off the Freddy head. "That actually worked!"

He put his glasses back on and stared at it, slowly brushing his fringe from his eyes. The old animatronic head in his lap was old and worn out, its missing jaw making it look like a macabre opera mask. He looked up as Darcy crept out from her hiding spot behind the door. She looked pale.

"That… felt wrong," she whispered. "It felt like there was actually a person in the room with us."

Ryan didn't reply. He knew exactly what she meant and was glad that he wasn't the only one who had felt it. He looked at the pile of parts, then back to her.

"You'd better get yourself one of these," he said, indicating towards the mask on his lap. "It seemed to mistake me for one of the props." He didn't want to think about what it would do if it recognised them as human.

Darcy nodded and reached into the large box. After a few moments, she pulled an old, worn-out bear head out from under a bundle of mechanical parts that must have been the mangled remains of a 'toy' animatronic, its white-clad limbs splayed out at odd angles. It looked just like Ryan's, but it was a pale, almost yellow colour and was wearing a purple top hat. This prop still had a price sticker on its cheek, put there during some recent auction. She smiled. It looked too big to fit in her bag, but one way or another, she was leaving this place with it.

Ryan was looking back at the screen, watching Scott and Amber as they began to wander around again.

"Okay, I'll lure that thing towards the other end. You go and grab those two." He peered at the small map in the corner of the screen. "They're only around the corner from us.

He selected the farthest room from them, that being the entrance that they walked in through, and played the audio. The child's voice called out 'Hi!' into the empty space, then Ryan checked the animatronic on the cameras to make sure it was heading towards it. He thought it was ironic that he could lure it around with the sound of a child's voice, when this suit was most likely the one worn by the killer who had used it to lure the kids away all those years ago.

Darcy hurried past the window towards the corridor where Scott and Amber were and got their attention. The three of them made it back to the office and closed the door behind them, locking it while the old Freddy Fazbear prop continued to watch them from the other side. None of them had any real faith that the door would keep that thing out if it wanted to get in, but the act of locking it had eased their worries somewhat.

The four of them sat on the floor of the security office, staying low to avoid being seen. They spoke into the hushed silence, murmuring to each other about their speculations. The tension in the air thickened slightly with every fearful whisper. Darcy told Scott and Amber about the voice messages left on the phone while Ryan kept watch on the computer screen. They had all reached roughly the same conclusion—the animatronic rabbit that was wandering the dark halls of this horror attraction must have been involved with the case of the missing children. It was most likely the same suit that the killer wore.

What they were less certain of was how dangerous it actually was. It should by now just be an old, lumbering, barely functioning piece of hardware from the '70s, but there was something about the way it moved about the place, always aiming towards the nearest source of sound. When it was near, there was the distinct presence emanating from it of a living, breathing person who was desperate to find them. They felt a human longing from it. A longing to hurt.

What the four of them had to do now was get out. They had their stolen goods, they no longer had any interest in vandalising the place, and all they wanted to do now was leave. The exit door that was at the top of the stairs outside the office was locked fast, a heavy, windowless door that was bolted from the outside. Scott had quickly attempted to open it but was reluctant to make too much noise in the silent place.

Ryan watched the screen. The animatronic was standing in the arcade room in almost the same place it had been when they first walked past it, but now facing the machines. It was completely still and almost impossible to make out in the flickering static of the old camera system. The plan now was to lure it to the parallel corridors, specifically the one on the far right that was further away from the arcade. Once it was there, the four of them were going to sneak past it along the other corridor and head out through the entrance door they had walked in through.

They were all crowded around the computer screen studying the small digital map in the corner. Though the maze of corridors had thrown them the wrong way a few times as they wandered down them, the map showed that it was basically just an 'S' shape with some extra rooms added to the hairpin corners and on each end. The map made their next trek look easy. The four of them each had a character head to wear if they ran into the rabbit. Scott had a 'toy' Bonnie head and Amber had a 'toy' Chica head while Darcy and Ryan had their older, bulkier bear heads.

Now was the hard part. Ryan selected the room he wanted and played the audio. The child's voice rang out through the empty corridor, laughing into the darkness. Ryan switched the camera feed back towards the old animatronic and watched as it stood still in the arcade room, head tilted low as if contemplating the machines. The picture was flickering and becoming grainy, but he could still make out the dark figure, its long ears making it loom in the darkness. It didn't move.

Ryan played the audio again, hearing it almost in stereo from the nearby room and from the computer. They all watched the screen, waiting for it to take the bait. The picture quality was worsening, but they could just see it moving. Through the flickering static they saw the old rotting rabbit turn its head towards the camera. They all froze as they watched it stare directly at them through the screen. Its eyes, backlit with dull yellow light seemed to pierce into theirs and bore themselves into their memory as the camera feed finally faded away into the void of static. The outdated technology had finally given up.

One by one, the four teenagers stood and looked at each other in the silent office. Each had a character head hanging from their hands. They listened for any sound from the being that lingered in the corridors, their hearts pounding in their ears. After a few moments, Scott hoisted his bag of loot over his shoulder and opened the office door. They slowly filed out into the darkness, wondering what they were about to walk into.