4

Nobody said a word as they crept out of the security office into the dark maze. The old, empty shell of Freddy Fazbear that stood outside the office door grinned at them from the gloom in false encouragement. There was nothing left to say. They all knew what they had to do, and they all knew how vital it was to be as silent as possible. Clutching their chosen character heads, ready to throw them on at any second, they strained their ears for any sound—any thud or shuffle—that might indicate where the mechanical creature was. Their own careful footsteps seemed too loud as they crept along the long window of the security office.

This place had felt like a game. A playground for families to wander through and relive a piece of grisly local history that had almost been lost to legend. Walking down the flickering corridors, they now felt incredibly vulnerable. The threat of this mechanical creature in the dark was bringing up a primal fear in each of them, one that they were trying still to keep down. After all, it was surely just a faulty prop. How much danger could they really be in? The oppressive silence felt unnatural, like it hadn't been there until just now. Then they realised—the ventilation had stopped working again.

The air was slowly becoming stuffy and thick and their combined fear was beginning to play with their minds. Scott, leading the way, turned to look at Amber. She looked back at him, her wide blue eyes emphasised by the scarf pulled up to her nose. The fear in those eyes struck Scott in the chest with a guilty pang as he turned away. He had led her into a few bouts of assorted pranks and mischief before, but this was the first time she seemed genuinely scared for her safety.

The four of them were creeping down the corridor, unconsciously watching the dismantled Bonnie character that stood at the end, when Ryan stopped. Darcy turned to him, concerned.

"What's wrong?"

Ryan didn't reply. Scott and Amber had now stopped and were watching him, but Ryan was staring straight ahead. One by one, the others turned to look where he was looking. Ryan knew it was absurd, knew it couldn't have happened, but he was sure for a moment that the displayed remains of Bonnie had moved. The light from its eye was flickering on and off, and each stretch of pitch-black darkness seemed to grow longer and longer. Ryan was convinced that in those stretches of black, the blue rabbit had moved towards them.

Shaking his head, Ryan looked around at the others and seemed to remember where he was. They were looking from him to the display, trying to see what he was seeing.

"Sorry," Ryan replied. "I thought I saw… never mind."

The others looked around uncertainly, then turned to continue their trek through the maze. They reached the corridor that was decorated with hundreds of silver stars hanging from the ceiling, each one glinting against the dull light. Amber was becoming uneasy—they should have run into the animatronic by now. She walked down the corridor alongside Scott, past the pizza-decorated walls. The black-and-white tiled floor that ran through the whole building was making her second-guess where exactly she was. If they weren't careful, they could easily get turned around.

Amber paused and squinted. Scott saw it too. It was Ryan's turn to be confused at what they were doing as he and Darcy nearly walked into them. Amber was staring at the silver stars, peering through the glittery decoration at something that didn't quite belong. Beyond the stars was a pair that glowed a dull yellow, and as the four teenagers stared at them, they realised that they were staring back. They stood rooted to the spot as the eyes—that rotted cartoon grin—began to move towards them at a steady pace. Heavy, mechanical footsteps accompanied its movements like a war drum and only when the animatronic was fully revealed by the flickering light did the group turn to run.

The flickering lights were maddening. The stuffy air was oppressive. Their minds were in a fog of adrenaline and fear as each of them turned and ran, spreading out left and right down the next corridor as they bowled out of the doorway. Amber was reasonably sure that it was Scott who was running beside her, but as for the other two, she had no idea where they went. They turned a corner and found themselves back outside the office, the broken Freddy staring cheerfully into the empty room. They squatted down in the corner under it and pushed their animatronic heads onto their own, wearing them like tight helmets. They waited.

Steadying her breathing, Amber peered out through the yellow chicken mask, searching for any sign of movement. She could hear Scott breathing heavily beside her. She turned and saw him huddled up next to her, the blue rabbit head almost looking comical.

"Don't move, Scott. It should think we're just props."

They waited, listening to the various sounds of hurried movement that came from a spot not too far from them, and wondered where the twins were.

Darcy and Ryan had turned left at the doorway and had ended up at the dead end with the old Bonnie display staring at them. They were becoming dizzy and disoriented. The thick air. That floor—that endless, tiled floor. A brief flicker of light revealed another dark doorway to the right which they quickly ducked behind. This corridor was lit only by a light within the old Foxy head, its jaws set in a permanent snarl of silent rage. The twins stopped halfway down the corridor and sat leaning against the walls opposite each other. They put on their heads, Ryan's a brown Freddy head with a missing jaw, Darcy's a similar, yellow bear head, and waited.

They could hear it in the dark. They could feel it moving behind the wall, making its way to the doorway they had come through. It had seen them come this way. Ryan turned his head ever so slightly and saw its looming, tall figure silhouetted against the flickering light of the Foxy head behind it. It's head was tilted slightly to the side as if contemplating them. It stepped closer.

Neither of the twins moved. It stopped between them and stood still. Through the muffled confines of their heavy disguises, they could just hear a soft whirring and clicking coming from it and they dreaded to wonder what it was doing. Ryan could imagine that it was looking down at them both, turning from one to the other, but he didn't dare look up to see, lest those dull yellow eyes caught him peeking.

They could smell it. Its faint scent slowly wafted from it as it stood there, daring one of them to move. Despite the old worn technology—the fact that it was simply a dated animatronic character from fifty years ago running on basic programming—they were sure that it was thinking. There was a consciousness within it, fighting to break through to the surface. It was what kept it here for so long, staring at them as if it knew, really knew that they were people under those masks. It knew that they were vandals. It knew that they were thieves. It knew that they had broken into its home to desecrate it.

Finally, it began to walk away from them. It must have heard the other two somewhere. Ryan looked towards Darcy and saw her playing the part of an inactive animatronic, her arms splayed out on either side of her, her head tilted sideways, her long brown hair flowing out from under it. When they were sure the corridor was empty, she stood and turned towards him, still wearing the head.

"We should find the others. I think they went—"

It was fast.

As she spoke, a loud wet snap rang out through the air. Its sticky undertone echoed in Ryan's ears as he watched his sister collapse like a rag doll. He took off his mask and threw on his glasses to see properly. She was face down on the floor, her body completely limp. Deep red blood flowed from within the yellow bear head's mouth and with a shaking hand and dawning comprehension, Ryan turned the head and saw glassy animatronic eyes sitting where only moments ago there were empty eyeholes. The empty head was now filled with mechanical parts that had been held back by old springlocks. Darcy's head was crushed between them, completely gone.

It was the head from a springlock suit. Ryan could see it now. It was the same colour as the rabbit that currently walked the corridors. He stared, hopeless. In a mere instant, her life was ended and his was forever damaged. He wished desperately that he could go back to only a few seconds ago and stop it from happening. But with every painful, choked breath that he took, the sudden moment of her death faded further away, and the blunt reality began to set in. He wanted to save her, but it was already done.

He stayed there, kneeled on the floor next to her body. He kept speaking her name through constricted vocal cords, making too much noise. The flickering light masked the movement of the rabbit animatronic as it made its way back towards him from the far end of the corridor. Ryan noticed nothing. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing outside of this new reality that was staring up at him from behind those glass, cartoon eyes.

The Foxy head on the wall was the only witness to the scene that played out. The rabbit approached Ryan as he shook, distraught over his twin sister's body. It stood right next to him, staring down at him as though calculating its next action. Ryan was hardly aware that someone was near him and, believing it to be Scott or Amber, looked up only to see the worn out cartoon face leering down at him, its broad toothy smile like a gaping slash across its face.

From the rabbit's perspective, Ryan appeared much like a child in distress. Ryan looked up at it with wet, terrified eyes. It triggered a programmed response in the animatronic that would have been very sweet in a different setting, such as a kids' party at a park on a bustling sunny afternoon. It knelt down in front of him and threw its arms out. It was quick, and before Ryan knew what was going on, he felt its arms wrap around his chest in a stiff hug.

It was tight. Too tight.

The old robotic rabbit squeezed its arms around his chest and before Ryan knew it, the breath had gone out from his lungs. He flailed his arms out into the flickering darkness as the cold, metal embrace tightened further, his ribs beginning to crack. There was no air left in him for him to scream. He struggled against it, fear and adrenaline coursing through him like electricity. His brain was on fire as it struggled for oxygen, the Foxy head on the wall now seeming to laugh at him, jeering at his pain.

A crack sounded deep within him, and then another and another. His ribs broke one by one in quick succession, the stinging pain searing through him, each with renewed cruelty. His bulging eyes were red and bloodshot behind his crooked glasses and blood was forming in his mouth. His heart was beating furiously against its ever enclosing surroundings until, with one loud crack, his spine snapped, and he lost all feeling in his body.

Ryan's head lolled to the side, his eyes now clouding with tunnel vision. The creature released its grip on him and let him fall to his side. He was free, but he could not draw breath. Ryan died alone in the dark corridor next to his twin sister, his body fallen neatly next to hers. The rabbit stood and surveyed them both before turning and disappearing again into the dark.

The Foxy head on the wall only smiled its endless smile into the dark, watching them where they lay.

-xxxx-

Scott and Amber sat huddled next to each other in their hiding spot wearing their mascot heads. They hadn't moved from where they were, they only sat still, listening with wide eyes at the sounds they heard in the dark. The creature had seen them—had stepped into the doorway ahead of them and stared. It had only stood there for a few moments before a loud noise from beyond it caused it to return to where it had come from.

They sat unmoving, listening intently to the quiet noises that followed. There was anguish and confusion. The steady footsteps faded as they made their way towards the source and then there was only a short silence that was broken by a dull popping sound. They had no idea what had happened, but there was a dull dread in their stomachs and a dryness in their throats.

More footsteps. It had not forgotten that they were there. Still, they sat trying to comprehend. Still, they sat hoping that it would just pass them by, and they would be able to stand up and run to the stairs at the other end that they came in from.

It had re-emerged from the darkness and stood once again in the doorway at the other end of the corridor. The light from the security office shone through the long window, illuminating the creature from the right, throwing dull streaks of light across it. Though its features were half obscured, there was no mistaking the new patch of red that stained its chest. It was fresh and slowly trickling down to the floor.

Amber felt her breathing quicken and tried to silence herself. Her throat was tight, and her head was becoming dizzy. Scott was only now appreciating the danger that he had put them all in. He could not take his eyes off of that small patch of red on the rabbit's chest. His eyes flicked to a spot just behind the rabbit and he thought of Ryan—he was also beginning to see things moving in the dark as the air got worse.

As he thought it, the alarm in the office indicating the low oxygen blared, the red light flashing on and off. They both flinched and sat terrified thinking that the rabbit had seen them move. It turned and looked into the office before looking back at them and walking forwards. It was momentarily bathed in the red light as it flashed on and off giving them the impression that they were flickering between two different realities at once. This was it. Either they would have to fight it off or it would reach them and turn to go into the office towards the sound as dictated by its programming. It reached them and stopped for what felt like an eternity.

The light was now behind it, giving it the appearance of a dark silhouette standing tall before them, the red light from the office window bleeding around its edges. Its dull glowing eyes bore into their plastic disguises, seeming to judge them, seeming to know exactly who they were. The pull of the loud alarm was too much for its programming and it finally turned away from them and walked into the office.

Scott whispered, "Now!" and they both stood and scrambled down the corridor, staying low beneath the long window on their right.

Their mascot heads wobbled and swayed as they ran, disorienting them. All they could see for certain was the black-and-white tiled floor that rolled out endlessly before them. They didn't turn to see if the rabbit saw them or not—it no longer mattered. All that mattered now was finding the twins and getting out of there. They ran through the doorway that they had seen it come through and turned left. They were sure it had attacked them down there.

The Foxy head stared at them from the other end of the corridor, its jack-o-lantern mouth frozen in an eternal laugh. The light within it flickered, revealing a scene on the floor that Scott and Amber were unable to immediately determine. Two figures lay side by side on the floor in a deep red pool of blood that was slowly spreading. Amber stood and took in the scene from within her character mask—that grinning, cartoon, yellow chicken mask. It felt like an insult to wear it. She took it off and stared at the two bodies, a lump forming in her throat, her breath catching in her chest. It could not be real.

Scott took off his blue rabbit head to see better and stepped forwards to get a better look, to understand what he was looking at more clearly. He knelt down, speechless, at the agonised and bloodied face of Ryan Sheppard who lay next to his twin sister Darcy. Her disguise was fitted permanently in place, now. Nobody would again see her face. His chest hurt and he felt dizzy. Their parents were waiting for them to come home. They had only left to go get a meal and hang out with their new friends. Scott and Amber. Their new friends.

They both looked up and looked towards the office. It was quiet. The alarm had stopped ringing, but they weren't sure when. The light from within the Foxy head flickered one last time and went out, dropping them in pitch-black darkness. The old circuits had finally blown, just as they had with the cameras and the vents.

They both stood perfectly still. The place had gone completely quiet. Scott fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone and turned on the light. As he did, he saw that it had 38% battery remaining. Amber also turned on her phone's light and shone it around. She huddled up closer to Scott and together they stepped over the corpses on the floor and continued onwards. There was nothing else to do.

Their dull phone lights held in front of them, they reached the end of the corridor and turned left through the doorway. Scott gasped, unnerved. In front of him was the remains of the original Bonnie on its stand, the one Ryan had been fearful of. He was sure that its head was turned and that it was now looking directly at him. It had no eyes, though Scott truly felt that it was watching him. They moved on.

There were eyes in the dark. He was sure of it. All of them were watching as they moved back towards the entrance of this basement attraction that they had broken into. To steal from. To vandalise. The thick darkness pressed against them and they were beginning to feel that there were too many things moving around them just outside the pitiful reaches of their phone lights. The air was getting to them.

Scott and Amber moved slowly, their phones held out high in front of them. The pale white lights revealed only the grey walls littered with old crayon drawings. Soon it fell away to reveal a black doorway further along to the right. A sound. A knock up ahead. They stopped and listened, their heads turned in the direction of the noise. The darkness was so absolute that they were beginning to see dull faces and swirling lights as their eyes strained for stimulus. There it was again. That soft knock up ahead, but now closer. They couldn't stay there. The animatronic in the dark would do to them what it had done to the twins. The animatronic that was most likely staring at them right now from the dark.

Amber took Scott's hand and led him through the dark doorway, their phone lights revealing the glittering silver stars that hung above their heads. As silently as they could, they reached the other end where the two doorways greeted them. One led straight ahead to the small arcade room, the other led to the right directly to the next corridor. Amber aimed for the doorway on the right, which was the most direct way out, but Scott hesitated. For an instant, he thought he saw a figure stepping out of that doorway. It was a yellow chicken animatronic wearing a white bib—the old Chica character—and Amber was about to walk right into it. He grabbed her and led her instead into the arcade ahead of them.

As soon as he did it, he realised that he had imagined it. There were no other animatronics in this building and the only salvaged piece of Chica was the head on the floor of the next corridor, yet Scott had the unmistakable feeling that there were other things in this building than a faulty robot.

They both heard a shuffle from the corridor they had just left, and they stood frozen behind the wall to the right of the doorway they had just gone through. Their eyes could just make out the arcade machines in front of them as they leaned against the wall. Their phone lights glinted in streaks along the edges of the smooth metal and plastic, and they hastily turned them off and waited in the thick darkness, hearing the creature stepping towards them, hoping that it would pass them by and go back the direction it came.

They could feel it. Its presence. Its intent. They couldn't tell where it was nor would they have any hope of seeing it in this oppressive darkness, but it was there. The only thing they would be able to see was the dull glow of its eyes and by then it would be too late. Scott could feel Amber trembling beside him, her hand clasped in his. He gave it a squeeze and felt her go still. The sound of the creature near them had gone quiet and they realised that it could literally be anywhere.

No longer worried about hiding his face, Scott pulled off his balaclava. The air had gotten too stuffy for him and was affecting his perception. There were faces in the dark, swirling in the corners, on the screens, in his periphery. He was seeing things and was beginning to get a headache from the lack of fresh air. He breathed deeply and paused, his fear ramping up at what he could smell. Smoke. He gripped Amber's hand again and turned to her.

"Do you smell that? Something's burning."

Amber pulled her scarf down from her face and sniffed the air. She could smell it, too. If there was a fire, it wouldn't take long for it to rip through the building. Though they looked like concrete, the walls were made of plywood. They had to escape, but they had to know where the lone animatronic was first.

Scott turned on his phone light again and leaned to his left to look down the corridor they had come from. It was empty, the stars glinting above him in a thin haze of smoke. The corridor beyond the far doorway was starting to glow in the flickering light and the smoke crawling along the ceiling from it was getting thicker and darker. One of the fuses in the security office must have blown and caused a spark. Unsure where the animatronic was, Scott took of his duffle bag and held it in his hand, dangling from its strap. Its contents didn't matter anymore. None of this mattered anymore. He swung it back and threw it forwards down the starry corridor, hearing it clang and spill out across the tiled floor.

Scott hid back behind the wall next to Amber and listened for its footsteps, hoping to have drawn its attention. Hoping to have drawn it towards the fire. The arcade room was slowly getting brighter as the flames got closer, but the smoke in the air was getting thicker and was now stifling their breath. Scott peeked and saw the animatronic standing just beyond their doorway staring down into the corridor at the heads with its back to them. He pulled back and indicated to Amber that now was their chance to go. They headed for the other arcade doorway, the one to the next corridor, and crept through it.

The smoke was getting too thick, and Amber began to cough in a panic. They were at the doorway that skipped the arcade and went straight into the next corridor, the rabbit standing just beyond it. Scott stared in horror as it turned and looked directly at them. Its body rotated on the spot as its head stayed where it was, never breaking its gaze from them. Scott grabbed Amber's hand and began to run down the corridor. The smoke was thick and dark, and it was racing along the ceiling ahead of them, floating lower and lower, obscuring their view and choking their lungs.

They focused on the tiled floor and felt along the grey walls. They were moving steadily until Amber tripped on the yellow Chica head that was on the ground. They stumbled and fell. The rabbit was behind them, shrouded by the smoke. Scott had Amber by the waist and tried to lift her, but she let out an incredibly painful scream. It had reached them. Scott looked back and saw that rotting cartoon smile, the eyes boring into his own. It had grabbed Amber by the ankle, and it held it in a death-grip. The image of Ryan's lifeless, crushed body flashed through Scott's mind and he lunged at it.

They tumbled over. It was, after all, an old first-generation animatronic. Surely it would take it a while to stand back up once it's knocked over onto its back. Scott scrambled to get back to his feet and kept low to keep out of the smoke that was now billowing in from the doorway behind them. He turned back towards Amber and found her hobbling on the spot. Her foot was beyond use. He put his arm around her waist and supported her as she limped towards the final corridor ahead of them.

The fire was roaring behind them and the grey painted wall to their right was glowing red and yellow through the cracks and edges of the plywood. The heat and hazy smoke was stifling and though they didn't have far left to go, it was hard to tell where they were going.

They were just through the last doorway when they heard it. Scott paused and turned around in disbelief. The rabbit animatronic was on its back where he had left it, the flames close behind it. It was staring at them intently, almost pleadingly. In that moment, it seemed all too human. Scott almost felt pity for it, as if there were actually a person inside that suit. What made him think this was not so much its posture or the helpless position it was in, but rather the sound from it that Scott and Amber had both heard.

It spoke.

They were sure of it. Amongst the chaos of the fire and the destruction, the loss of lives and the devastation that was still to come, they were sure that they had heard a clear human voice come from it.

"Help me."

The flames had reached it and were now licking at its side, ready to engulf it in a matter of seconds. Amber pulled Scott away and they made their way finally towards the stairway at the end of the corridor. The climb up the stairs was tediously slow with Amber's useless foot. On the ground floor, the photos of the missing children and the old owners smiled at them from the walls as they hobbled their way to the side exit back into the alleyway, the floor beneath them threatening to crumble. One of the pictures stuck out in Scott's mind as they passed it but there was no time to dwell on it.

They spilled out into the alleyway and breathed in the fresh air. The smoke was pluming from the warehouse into the night sky and there were sirens in the distance. They reached the car and, after Scott fumbled with the keys for a moment, both climbed in and Scott started it up. He reversed the car out onto the main road and parked on the other side, seeing the fire trucks barrelling down the road towards them. They had no thoughts of running. They both needed medical attention. The twins needed to be recovered. All of their parents needed to be notified.

Scott checked his phone. Now that he had reception again, voice messages and texts from his father were now coming through, one after the other. Amber's phone was much the same. He spared a thought for Darcy's and Ryan's phones once they were pulled out. If they weren't destroyed, would they both vibrate and ring repeatedly as soon as they got signal? It was 1:35pm. All of their parents would have been in contact with each other by now trying to find out where they were. The twins' parents phone calls would go unanswered by them, but their phones would ring tonight.

Scott turned off the engine and looked over at Amber. She sat next to him in the passenger seat, curled up and shaking. She would not meet his eye.

They both sat in silence and stared at the burning building that they had just escaped. Smoke and flames were billowing out from the roof and they thought they heard some part of it collapse inside. They could still feel the heat from it as they sat in the car. The fire trucks had pulled up and the firefighters were dousing the flames, the jets of water rising up in white streams. A firefighter was approaching the car. He wanted to talk to them.

The rest of the night was a haze for Scott. All of their parents had been notified and had arrived quickly. The twins' parents were inconsolable. The others were horrified but they at least still had their children to hug. Never had Scott felt so young and foolish as he looked out at the devastation he had caused. The owners had arrived and were talking to the firemen in charge. The police had arrived. Blue and red lights from the parked vehicles flashed persistently in his eyes. Amber hadn't spoken to him. Hadn't looked at him. She was in a different vehicle wearing an oxygen mask and having her ankle checked over. Her parents were with her. Scott's father, Carlton, and his grandfather, Clay were with him.

His mind came into focus only when two stretchers were wheeled out of the smouldering remains of the warehouse and the gut-wrenching wails of the twins' parents filled the air. His eyes blurred and his cheeks trickled as he watched. His throat clicked and his breath caught in his chest as he looked away.

It was all his fault.