See the end for author's notes.
"He-hey there dude, glad you're back,
The last security guard just couldn't pick up the slack,
So now you're the new guy picking up the job?
So just please understand this nightmare never stops!"
Chapter 2. There's a Place in the Dark
Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria sat alone and slouched under a blanket of clouds.
Rain was pouring down over the world, and something about how dismal and gray it was seemed almost poetic. Somewhere, thunder rolled. Several seconds later, almost a full minute, a streak of lightning flickered from roughly the same direction. The restaurant sat alone and defiant, with its boarded up windows and padlocked door.
Danny Fitzgerald sat in his mom's car and stared through the windshield. The car's windshield wipers swung back and forth, back and forth. Once, between its movements Danny thought he saw a figure behind the glass door, but then the wiper swept by again and took rain and any trick-of-the-light, not quite there ghostly figures with it.
The young man tore his gaze reluctantly from the old boarded up building to look down at the backpack. It was sitting innocently in the seat next to him, slumped over like some mortally wounded animal. Inside laid the flashlight he had brought with him. Two days ago he'd found it—or had it found him?—and now here he was, back again. With built up sick days and a visit to his mother, Danny had ended up wandering back to the restaurant he used to work. It wasn't just to return Mike's flashlight—that was worrying, the guy never went anywhere without it—nor was it because of the strange cryptic message from the Mad Hatter to Alice about a rabbit.
Well, those things had something to do with his arrival, yes. But the biggest reason was easily the message he had found on his laptop. The chilling, crackly audio file that he had listened to the same night he found the flashlight. He didn't want to listen to it again, but he pulled out his phone, found the file and hit Play because maybe there was something he had missed. After a second cough of static, Mike Schmidt's weary voice came in loud and clear.
"Well, if you're hearing this…then I have officially bitten off more than I can chew. I mean, it's my own fault really but the others shouldn't have been dragged into it. Whoever finds this, I'm assuming you found a flashlight, right? Don't bother trying new batteries, it won't work by now." It hadn't, but Danny had tried anyway.A tired sigh sounded from the recording.
"Hang on to it though, if you can. It might start working again. Listen, there's something bad going on here. This message is only as a last resort. Heh, looks like I finally found my curtain call, huh? I've…I've been working around the clock to get my latest project up. But I can't keep these things off my tail any longer. The key is in my locker, my locker is under my desk, and you need to get some back up before you go any farther.
And for fuck's sake, I hope you know what you're getting into."
"…I can't believe how long I've been doing this now. 10 years, sheesh. Where has my life gone? Anyway, before I forget, I want to make sure you understand. Before you go to the address in the flashlight, you need to get to—"
A scuffle of noise, and dull banging that grew rapidly. "Shit, shit! Just, just follow the directions, and everything will be fine. Find Freddy and the others, that's very important! They'll know what to do, they can stop her from—ah, no, c'mon don't—"
The recording cut off, but not before a strange collision of metal and flesh could be heard striking together. Danny killed the playback, suppressing a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold wind outside. Whatever had happened to cut Mike's recording short, it certainly didn't sound good.
The wind threw a splatter of rain drops against the car, dragging Danny back to the present.
The old restaurant. He unlocked the door and got out, hurrying to the overhang to stand out of the storm's path. Whatever had or was happening, he needed to stop here first like Mike said. To go into a situation without any back up would only put his boss in worse danger. To say nothing of what might happen to Danny himself, after all. Besides, Danny would feel better with the old animatronics on his side, because surely they wouldn't let anything happen to Mike.
He needed the key, which was in a locker, which was under Mike's desk. Simple enough.
Danny stared at the padlock, groaning. No, not that simple.
There had to be another way in…
And there was. The window that he recalled was for the Prize Room was busted. Either by teens or something else, Danny didn't know. He was grateful for the fact that most of the glass on the bottom pane was completely gone. So Danny wasn't in danger of slicing himself open even if he did slip. Once he hauled himself up and through, the kid clambered to the sticky tile, wincing as he felt glass on his palms. Luckily he didn't cut himself there either, and his jeans were thick enough that kneeling wasn't a problem either. What was a serious problem was how dark it was. Danny stood slowly, keeping his hands on the wall and following it toward the door sat, this one lead to the long hall which eventually turned into the Left hall. Something crinkled under his sneakers, but he recognized them swiftly as nothing more than leaf litter.
How long had that window been busted?
Danny shivered and left the Prize Room behind, walking into an even darker hall. Every shadow was still, the tile was dusty and scuffed and he couldn't see an inch in front of his face. Even waving his hand yielded zero results, and when he tried the flashlight, nothing happened.
"Oh...kay. Think, Fitz. Standing in the Prize Room, facing out…left is the back exit. Right is the West wing…and the office." With a determined nod, he began groping his way toward the south end of the restaurant. It was slow going and several times he heard a soft skitter ahead of him but nothing that meant killer animatronics heading his way. Besides, the gang was good and the Nightmares were nothing more than a memory.
The thunder mumbled absently outside, and despite being indoors Danny realized it was slowly getting louder. The light from an errant bolt of lightning briefly illuminated the hall at the far end, but didn't stick around for Danny to get a good read on the situation. Suddenly his fingers hit something soft but heavy and Danny stood there uselessly.
For a moment all he could do was clutch at it blindly until he realized what it was.
"Foxy! …Foxy?" He held on to the grimy, stiff curtains and craned his hearing to try and catch something. No answer came from Pirate's Cove, and Danny frowned. Something felt…wrong. He stumbled on his way, crying out when his sneaker connected with something and it went rolling away. A clang rang throughout the hall. Danny felt down, hands falling in the darkness along the tile carefully. His fingers met a round cylindrical shape and he quickly pulled it up with him, fingers finding a switch.
This flashlight worked, and Danny wanted to thank whoever had left this it here, near Pirate's Cove. Odd, that it was just lying on the floor, though. Danny turned and shoved aside the purple curtain, thinking to himself that just because Foxy hadn't answered didn't mean he wasn't—
The Cove was empty.
For the first time, a different sort of fear made Danny's heart race and then plummet. No Foxy, no ship prop, no fake painted water. His stage was dusty and dark and grim.
Fitzgerald turned the way he had come, suddenly feeling an unexplainable urge to see the Dining Hall. Which was where the main stage was. That couldn't be empty to, could it?
Standing in the doorway holding the big swinging door, Danny swept the flashlight's beam across the long tall room.
The chairs were mostly gone, and what few remained were broken or on their last legs. The tables were stacked and piled. Only the arcade's games were in their place, but inches of dust and grime muted their colors, and even the titles. Danny thought back to when he used to watch Mike work on them for hours, or how Freddy wiped them down every night. Now their theatrical fonts were no longer legible anymore.
The ex-day guard quickly turned the light toward where the Main Stage loomed to his far left.
Not a robot in sight.
The stage's wide set of drapes was moth and mouse eaten, and so dusty it was gray instead of purple and white. Thunder sounded again, threateningly closer. It sounded rather like a warning, Danny thought to himself. Without the rows of tables and chair or the towering animatronics, the Dinging Hall seemed more like an old ballroom. Abandoned, lost to time and very tired. Any traces of fear had folded to chilly unease as Danny listened to the silence that hung over the restaurant. Time hadn't been kind to Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, but now it seemed like the restaurant had been left behind altogether, as the world moved on and turned its back on it. There was one man Danny new that would never turn away from Freddy's, or its animatronic cast, but he was missing too. That, and the picture that was being painted wasn't one with a good outlook.
"What the hell even happened here?" Danny asked, his voice echoing in the mostly barren room.
He was somewhat expecting—and maybe hoping—for an answer. But none came.
For some reason, that just cemented his apprehension even more.
The office gave Danny a little bit more to explore. It had to, since Mike had specifically told him to check under his desk for a key of some sorts, which would be in a locker.
When he got down on hands and knees and aimed the flashlight, a whole family of spiders stared back at him. Danny made a face and leaned away before he disturbed their cobweb mansion, not finding anything that remotely resembled a locked. He felt confusion take over, but looked past the cobweb clutter to spot a familiar box. Even dusty and threadbare, there was no mistaking that old Present Box with its purple bow. Well, Danny didn't see a key, or a locker and just saw the box. But this was Mike, and the restaurant was in bad shape and seemed pretty exposed to the elements nowadays. His boss wouldn't make finding a key that easy, would he? Of course not. Danny sighed, closed his eyes and reached in and grabbed the box by its bow. When it slid out, there was some resistance, so it wasn't empty like he assumed. He wondered if anyone else who might have stumbled on this—and didn't know what it was or what it had been—thought exactly the same thing Danny had. It was easy to assume after all.
To Mike's credit, there was a key in the Puppet's old gift box. As well as a thin leather journal, some double-A batteries, a Gameboy and the tablet. Worryingly, there was one more thing in the box, and it was Freddy's microphone. Danny left everything alone but the key and, upon second thought, grabbed the journal too.
The key was taped to a piece of folded paper. This paper, when opened, revealed a messy sheet with random notes, measurements and roughly sketched diagrams.
'Parts and Services.' The paper read at the top. Danny frowned but backtracked. Walking through the barren Dining Hall was something he hoped to avoid, but he stuck close to the walls and tried to ignore the sensation of being watched. Flicking the flashlight behind him just reminded him the arcade games were there, and that he was here alone in this suddenly massive seeming room. He hoped he was alone, at any rate.
The little key cheerfully opened Parts and Services without much hassle. And while the Dining Hall had seen better days, Parts and Services was clearly more lived in. Well, not lived in persay, but there was less dust. Danny's flashlight fell on a large metal box on the wall, shiny and relatively new looking. Above it read 'power' which was odd since Danny thought the circuit breakers were by the back door. Had Mike moved them? And if he had, why were they behind a locked door now? Mike had either gotten paranoid as the years passed or he was playing it safe for a good reason. The mystery was ever growing, but everything was better when you could shed a little light on the subject. Danny decided the only way he was going to get more answers—and ever feel remotely comfortable—was to get the lights on.
Easier said than done.
After flicking two switches and realizing nothing was happening, Danny remembered the paper he had found with the key. He had thought the giant breaker box looked familiar, and he was right.
It was drawn on the faded piece of paper.
The paper itself was scribbled over with notes and calculations on things Danny couldn't make heads or tails of. The one thing he did recognize was that it was all in familiar handwriting. Not only that, there was a short phrase at the very bottom, written in pen while everything else was in pencil. Unless Mike had switched tools in one session, it was safe to assume the pen had been written at a different date than the pencil, right?
Rattle his bones over the stones. He's only a poor bunny, who nobody owns. -M
"Rattle his…?" Danny sucked in all his air and let it out through his nose. He glanced helplessly from the piece of paper to the set of switches. There were eight in all, but when Danny turned them all on there was the sound of an electrical disjuncture and the place flashed to life, then abruptly—and rather irritably—just went dark again.
"Overloaded it, damn." Danny flicked them all off, and tried half of them. He leaned out of Parts and Services, noticing half the Dining hall was illuminated, and so was the kitchen too, possibly.
"Close…" He added another, and frowned when one row of lights turned on but another that was previously light flickered and died. The kitchen was dark now.
"Dammit, Mike." Danny cursed softly. "What the hell is this for?"
After a few more failed attempts, he flipped open the journal as a last resort. Danny aimed the ugly black flashlight on some pages. There was a list of rules on the very first page, which struck Danny as odd. Mike wasn't really a big rule follower, though he did enforce safety precautions. Not only that, was that the first rule, which was highlighted, was this:
1. Conserve Power.
"Thanks. Big help, Mike." Danny grumbled, flipping absently through the rest of the book. Finally he came on a page that had another loose drawing that looked like the switches before him. Except these had something else the key's paper didn't have. Underneath them were words. Bones, Poor, Bunny, Stones, Nobody, Who, Rattle and Owns.
Danny mouthed the random string of words twice until it hit him. He jerked to life and grabbed the one that would be above to the word Rattle on the drawing.
"Rattle…his bones," Danny pulled down another one. He ignored the light show behind, and instead focused on pulling the correct levers that corresponded with the weird little rhyme. "Over the Stones…he's just a poor bunny…who nobody…owns."
There was a sudden growl of a generator, and it held steady. The restaurant's lights came fully on, and Danny squinted.
"What did that even mean—?" He didn't have to wonder for long.
Suddenly there was a whine of servos behind him, and the kid turned slowly to his left.
There was a hulking figure leaning on the bench, and now Danny could finally see it. There was also the mess of wires connecting the rotted monster to the walls and ceiling, and even a laptop.
A broken ear switched upward, followed by the roll of a great rotted head. Chipped, stained eyelids lifted but stopped at half mast, giving the robot an eternally exhausted and tired stare. The eyes locked onto Danny and for a moment the world was silent.
It was then Danny realized what rabbit the Hatter had told Alive to follow in Mike's rhyme. It hadn't been about his Bonnie at all, but a different sort of Bonnie. The first one, if he recalled correctly.
Springtrap's illuminated silver gaze fell on a confused and rather frightened Danny Fitzgerald.
Springtrap pulled its torso away from the wall, sitting up better. The rotted rabbit's head lolled, something in its neck cracking and creaking as the rabbit went through what were apparently habitual movements to loosen its joints from its stiff prison.
"W-what are you-?!" Danny squawked. After a beat, Springtrap's rotted smile—which didn't meet its glowing optics—moved with the crunch that resembled rawhide breaking. Bits of tendon fell away like ice cracking off a roof from its mangled up mouth.
"What was I is a more appropriate question." Springtrap looked around slowly, lazily. It flexed its hand and stared at it resignedly. "How odd. Do you know what this means?"
"No…what?" Danny asked after he could breathe again. But Springtrap's response made him feel cold all over again. When Springtrap moved, it came forward with a great creaking force, leaning close to tell Danny softly, seriously:
"It means the night guard is lost."
Chapter 2's song is 'Not Here All Night' by DAGames. Of course, it is a song about Phone Guy and Phone Dude, that's true. But for this story, I think it's mentioning a certain other security guard we just can't seem to find. I'm sure Mike's alright, he has the flashlight after—oh, wait.