Almost Feels Like Home
Chapter Eighty-Four
Jeremy got to Scott's house right before dark. He hadn't intended to come that late but settling the animatronics in- and helping pick up the dozens of candy wrappers- took a little longer than he anticipated. He knocked on the front door eagerly, ready to get into the house and into the game. Scott answered the door shortly after.
"There you are. I thought maybe you got lost on the way," Scott lightly joked. He let Jeremy in before closing and locking the door behind him.
The younger man looked around for the animatronics that he knew lived there but they were nowhere to be seen. "Where's Ennard and Baby?" he asked.
"In the garage. Don't worry, they're not avoiding you. Ennard's working on Baby's thigh tonight and I'm probably going to be spotting, so you'll be free to test the game without anyone peeking over your shoulder. Which will probably be a good thing once you get the headset on," Scott explained before beckoning him to the office. Jeremy originally assumed that 'headset' was a fancy term for headphones, but he soon realized that wasn't the case when he saw what was resting on the office desk.
"This is the headset that came with it," Scott introduced as he lifted the headset. It almost looked like a square shaped screen fused to a pair of goggles, bulky and clunky, with five or six cords hanging off it. "Now you don't have to use this. It just came with it and I had to use it to make sure everything was showing up right. All it's for is "full immersion", and, well, it's not really too helpful."
"No, I can try it. Can I put it over my glasses?" Jeremy asked as he sat down in the office chair and picked up the controller that was hooked to the computer.
"You shouldn't need them. I didn't." Scott handed the headset over and Jeremy removed his glasses before trying to put it on. The older man helped him and at first there was nothing but darkness inside. "Okay, here's where the keyboard is if you need it." He guided Jeremy's left hand to the keyboard. "Let me start the game for you so just sit tight for a second…"
Jeremy was in the dark as he could hear Scott clicking with the mouse and the computer tower begin to hum. Then text suddenly appeared in front of his eyes. As Scott had said, it was just close enough and bold enough that he could read it fine without his glasses. The text spelled out that it was a demo, along with a slew of numbers designating which version of the demo it was. Then, without any fan fair, the screen suddenly switched to what looked like the inside of a room.
The room looked to be stereotypically futuristic with metal walls and a grated floor. A white cot was right in front of the screen, like his character had just woken up, and above the cot was a window that showed stars in the distance. It seemed like it was supposed to be inside of a spaceship.
"Here's the story: you're a crewmember on a spaceship and you wake up to find everyone missing and the ship driving towards the nearest sun. You've got to make your way through the ship, rescue the people locked up in the brig, and get to the bridge to change course. But the captain has gone insane and is trying all he can to stop you. Basically, all the doors are locked, and you need to find your way through. As easy as that! You move and turn with the buttons on the controller… And brace yourself, because you're going to turn really slow."
Jeremy tried the side button and watched as the screen sluggishly began to turn. "I don't walk this fast, do I?"
"Oh no, you walk fine. Not sure if the turning was on purpose or not, but you'll get used to it. The right trigger opens the inventory and the right button, the one under your thumb, is what you use to open doors and look closer at things. Now, the audio in this copy isn't finished. There's some ambience music once you get out into the halls, but most of the other sounds are just placeholders. Don't be surprised when opening vents sounds the same as doors, closets, computers- pretty much everything sounds the same."
"I don't think that's a problem. Unless I'm listening for something?"
"If you are, it's not in there now. So, I'm just going to leave you to it and go check on how Ennard and Baby are doing," Scott said. He patted Jeremy on the shoulder. "Just tell me if you have any glitches at all, okay?"
"Can do," Jeremy assured. He could hear Scott walk off as he continued turning his character until he was facing the door of the room. He approached it and pressed the button, only for a text box to pop up.
"The door is in shutdown mode. There must be another way to leave the room." To which Jeremy spotted a vent on the wall and approached it. "It looks big enough to squeeze through, but I need something to open it with." Now he wandered around the room before returning to the bed and clicking on it. "I don't feel like sleeping right now. Look under the bed?" He did. "There's a screwdriver under the bed." Which was taken and used to get through the vent and out into the hallway.
The game followed like this, starting with simple puzzles that grew slightly harder. Most of them involved him finding a tool and then using it to get further down the corridors. It was going pretty well, and he was having fun exploring the ship as he made it to an elevator that led him down to the cafeteria area. It was a large room with a wall of windows, this time showing the large star that the ship was flying towards. When he approached a textbox automatically appeared.
"It looks like we're flying straight towards that sun! I have to get up to the bridge and change course fast!" He agreed and slowly turned the character around to face the archway into the kitchen. In the last frame of the turn, he saw a shadow in the kitchen, or a fuzzed out grey mass that was supposed to be one. He took it as his cue to follow into the kitchen. The room was smaller and better detailed than the large dining room but was mostly empty except for a chopping block on the counter that sparkled like it housed an item. He walked up and pressed the button.
"That's funny. The block seems to be missing a knife. There is a keycard stuck in its slot though, I should take it."
"That's pretty ominous…" Up until now, the game had been playing like a typical adventure game crafted for anyone, even children. That detail was oddly out of place. "Maybe I'm overthinking it. They could've just needed an easy place to stick the card that was up on the counter." It seemed fair enough, and he used the card on the second door out of the cafeteria.
The game progressed on without much drastic change. After the cafeteria, he moved through a storage room, which required him to go through a maze of shelves like walls to find tools to fix and unlock a broken door. Then he entered a larger lobby and found his way into a library, where clicking on different shelves talked about different planets, the ship, and even the mad captain himself. Little details that built the in-game world before getting a keycard to the laboratories.
It was while looking for the door to the labs that something peculiar happened again. Though this time it was less of an odd design decision and instead a noise. It was quiet and repetitive and almost sounded like the same noise used to activate the vents and doors. It almost seemed like a glitch until Jeremy went further down the lobby corridor and realized it was growing louder, then quieter, signaling one specific door.
"Okay, I get it. I follow the noise." A placeholder noise; it might've been something more distinct in the final product. So, he approached the door and unlocked it, then stepped into another metal hallway. He slowly inched down it and to a ramp that led to a lower hall. There were a few doors but trying them said they wouldn't open, which usually happened on a door that was just there for decoration. He continued to trudge down the hall and turned around the corner.
There was a blip of something dark around the next corner. The shadow again and as he followed it he could hear the sound returning, quicker and faster. It sounded like tapping more than door opening.
"Wait, are those supposed to be footsteps? Guess I'm supposed to follow him. Scott said I was supposed to find people, right? Or maybe it's the captain leading me into a trap," he thought with amusement. A trap, yes. A small room with more puzzles to solve to make a quick escape. After wandering aimlessly some direction seemed like a good thing. He activated the doors and the game loaded the new section.
With it came a new noise. It was nothing like the stock noises from before. A loud vibrating noise that seemed to echo out of the attached headphones. It was so grating that his eardrums felt like they were throbbing. A warbling, static noise echoing through, so loud and present that he lifted the headset enough to listen outside of them. It was coming from the game itself.
"That's got to be a glitch," Jeremy noted as he slid the headphones back on. He reached forward and felt around for Scott's plugged in speaker and turned it down, hoping it would affect the volume. It did not. It was already giving him a slight headache and he slowly turned around towards the door he came in. He doubted there was another way but was willing to try it. But when he approached the door it didn't open, and a new message appeared. "The door is shut tight. You can't go back."
"So, it was a trap after all… I've got to admit, that's a good way to get me to give up. Or maybe that's what made the captain go insane." He hated to think there was a story reason for this horrible noise. With little options, he started to slowly turn back around. One slow inch at a time until suddenly, there was darkness at the edge of his vision and couldn't turn anymore. "What did I get stuck on?" He moved forward a little, but the darkness was still there, like he had hit the wall. Then he backed away.
The figure was there. Only for a split second, a single frame, and then it was gone. The noise faded with it, but it didn't go away.
Suddenly Jeremy had a strange feeling in his stomach. A strange sensation that he couldn't put his finger on. It took a few seconds to realize it was anxiety, and to realize exactly how uncomfortable the game was making him. Yet something pushed him on and he found that he could turn again. There was another hallway and he began to move down it to another turn.
The next hallway had a few doors and a sparkling mark on the floor. It finally looked like the game was returning to normal and Jeremy headed down to the sparkle to collect the item. He clicked the button. "It's the knife from the kitchen. I wonder who brought it here?" That discomfort returned instantly as Jeremy took a slow breath.
"I'm overthinking this," he told himself loud enough to almost hear over the background noise. "Maybe I need to cut something. That would make total sense. That thing in the kitchen was just an excuse to put the knife here so I can use it to cut a wire or jimmy open a door or something. I just made a big deal out of nothing," he said as he clicked the button and the screen raised again. "It's just an unfinished game that's got broken sound effects-… Where did the doors go?"
The doors in the hall were gone. Instead it was just a sterile hallway without any details, save some checkered print. Jeremy slowly turned his character around to look at the rest of the hall and found that every door, except the one he had come through, had vanished. Instead there were dark lines where they once were that flickered and moved as he shifted his character. Like the doors had completely glitched away, including the one he had been heading to. It felt like a trap.
Jeremy's mouth was starting to grow dry as that unsettling feeling returned in full force. He didn't understand it; anxiousness or not, what was happening was not scary. It shouldn't have been creeping him out as much as it was. Yet he still felt like he was in danger, and not just in the game itself.
Beginning to grow more frantic, he started to hurry down the hall towards the door he had come through. Suddenly he felt like he was walking as slow as he turned as he inched towards the door. It felt like an eternity before he arrived and pressed the button. He was rewarded with another message: "This isn't the way out. You should turn around."
"How am I supposed to turn around? The doors are gone!" Jeremy asked out loud. Naturally, the game did not respond, and he started trying to turn around. This time his character didn't turn slow, it just didn't turn at all. "…What? But it just said-!" Now he found himself stuck at the end of this hallway, facing a locked door, and unable to turn around when the game was telling him to go back. "Can I move backwards?" He tried it and his character slowly moved backwards. "Okay, I can move backwards… But can I open a door backwards?"
It wasn't like there was much choice but to walk backwards and hope for a way out. He was only a few slow paces when there was a sound like a door opening. For a second he thought it was the one in front of him, but there was no way to tell. He continued backwards agonizingly slowly.
That was when the noise, which had quieted to an uncomfortable murmur, began to grow louder. It grew in volume with each pace backwards, like he was approaching the source of it. It grew louder until it reached that same point of vibrating in his ears. Pain shot up his temple as he continued moving back towards the source of whatever it was. Until he was stopped and couldn't move any further.
"Is this- This isn't where the door is. The hallway wasn't this short." He could barely hear his own thoughts over that intruding noise. Trying to turn around elicited no response. "Well, what am I supposed to do, Game? I can't turn around, there's no doors, there's nothing here-!"He clicked the button and a text box appeared. "There's- There's something here."
"The captain used to fly on some of the first trans-galaxy ships that left Earth! It is an honor to serve him!"
"And that's a text I already got…" Jeremy sighed and clicked again. His heart was pounding, and he was beginning to sweat nervously.
"I see something shiny in the back, but it's too far to reach."
"That too. What's…?" He started to spam the button. "Come on, do something!"
"The lift won't work because-."
"I don't feel like sleeping-."
"It looks big enough to-."
And he was stuck there, midway down the hallway, pressing the button quickly, scrolling through text box after text box.
"Nothing but endless space and-."
"This is the button for the-."
"The door is shut tight-."
Right then, right as he was spamming the button, right as he was rushing through and so close to shutting off the game, it happened. It happened so suddenly that he almost missed it.
"Maybe there's another way-."
"It's the knife from the kitchen-."
"Jeremy."
It was so quick that he had clicked past it and his brain registered it only a second afterwards. That said Jeremy. It had said his name.
In an instant, Jeremy ripped off the headset and threw it onto the keyboard. He shoved back in the office seat and rolled until his back hit the shelf, knocking things off and over, and still pressed back into it. His ears throbbed now that the horrid sound was gone, and his eyes were blurry from having the screen so close. It was disorienting, and that was on top of the growing panic from what he had seen in the game.
It had said his name. Without ever entering it or being programmed to, the game had said his name… Hadn't it?
Rational thoughts started to creep in. Had someone else put his name in? Specifically Scott, maybe to enhance the experience or to set up the game, and then he never forewarned Jeremy. Then it just hadn't appeared until now. Or with his eyes blurry maybe it had said something else. He was clicking through so fast that it could've been possible that it said another word and he read it as "Jeremy".
The computer screen showed what looked like a basic title screen, either because he threw the headset so far or just as its default when the headset was plugged in. There was nothing to suggest anything weird going on, and finally Jeremy started to comprehend that he might've overreacted. Slowly he took up the headset again and listened to it. The noise seemed to have tapered off and for a moment he wondered if he had let it get out of control and overreacted. He lifted the headset up.
"I don't want to put this back on," he told himself. His hands kept raising it to his head. "…Just one look."
So, he did. He slipped on the headset, was brought back into the hallway, and saw a single textbox waiting.
"I want to carve off your face."
Flinging the headset down again, Jeremy jumped up and darted out of the office. "Scott!" He hadn't even grabbed his glasses and squinted his way through his panic as he sprinted into the kitchen. "Scott?!"
"Jeremy?" The garage door opened behind him and Scott stepped in. Jeremy turned towards him with a wild look and he was taken aback. "What happened? Did the game break? Is it the computer?"
"Scott, that game- there's something wrong with that game! Seriously wrong! It's not- it's possessed- It's like it's possessed!" Jeremy choked out. He was babbling and knew he sounded nonsensical. It was enough to cause Ennard to lean out and look at him. "It said my name and then it said- the noises, you wouldn't believe the noises coming out of it. A-And it kept bringing up this knife and it said- it said this thing- it said this horrible thing-!" So horrible that Jeremy couldn't even repeat it. He kept choking up until all words failed.
All the while both Scott and Ennard were staring as Jeremy devolved into wordless babbles.
Finally, Ennard looked to the still shocked Scott and blurted out, "Yeesh, Scott. What kind of R-rated slaughterfest did you show him? You almost traumatized the poor guy!"
"It was just a space game. Like one of those adventure puzzle games," he started to defend, cut off by Jeremy.
"It started off fine! I-I think I played for like an hour before all this- before all that started!" Jeremy exclaimed as he gestured wildly towards the office. "And then all of a sudden there's this shadow and this sound that's just ripping into my ears, and it just kept talking about this knife-!" He was hyperventilating as he stumbled over his words and now Scott reached for his arms, concerned he was going to get so worked up that he inadvertently hurt himself.
"Jeremy, you're going to have to try to calm down. Maybe it's just… Maybe it's a horror game. I didn't test far into it, maybe it's a horror game that starts out normal?" he tried to rationalize. This could be true, but Jeremy still shook his head rapidly in denial. Adamant that something more than that was wrong. Even horror games didn't act like that; didn't say things like that.
Ennard suddenly nudged Scott towards Jeremy and squeezed by. "I've gotta go see this game. Here, hold the Phone." Before the older man could stop him, he was off into the office trying to see for himself.
"Ennard, would you just…?" Scott sighed in defeat and turned his attention back to Jeremy. "Just take a few deep breaths. Let's go sit down in the living room, okay? Just sit down and relax a minute."
As much as Jeremy didn't want to sit down since he felt so wound up, he agreed and went along with when the Phone Guy said. He was still disoriented from the effects of the headset, leaving his already blurry vision even more askew to what he was used to. The couch offered little comfort as he thought about the unsettling comments the game had thrown at him. He could just imagine the feeling of a knife cutting into his skin, just like the headset had left marks on his face. He shuddered at the thought.
Jeremy had managed to physically calm down by time Ennard came back. "Well, it's busted alright," the clown said.
"Wait, you saw it too?!" Scott exclaimed with wide eyes.
"I wish! All I saw was a black screen and "no input". Fooled around with it, but every time I try to pull the game up it just doesn't do anything. Soooo if we're looking at a haunting, it's cause the game offed itself." Ennard came over and leaned over the back of the couch. "You sure the game wasn't just broken? I've seen some messed up arcade cabinets, and they make noises that sound like they spawned from hell."
"But it wasn't just the noises. I-It was saying things like it was intelligent enough to piece things together and not just random things mashed together," Jeremy explained. He shivered inwardly. "I know I sound crazy but trust me, I know what I saw."
"Huh… Well what did it say?" Ennard asked. He leaned over the back of the couch and cocked his head, then craned his neck further to look curiously at the blond.
Jeremy's tongue dried out at the thought of even repeating it. Yet right as he was going to try, there was a small thump from somewhere behind him. Jeremy flinched while Ennard looked past him towards the garage door. "Hold that thought. Sound's like Baby's waking up and if I'm not in there she's gonna get up too fast." Ennard passed by the back of the couch and headed out to the garage.
"I should go check in with her too, but you just sit tight and when I get back I'll see if I can get the game running… I can't say I want to, but if there's something like this in the game- uh… Let's just say that I've found risky things hidden in games before and sometimes you can let them slip by, but this isn't one of those things. This I'm going to have to report," Scott said. He kept his calm tone but it sounded like he believed him.
"So… You think someone put this in on purpose?" Jeremy looked to him quizzically. "Why'd it know my name?"
"I… I don't know what to tell you on that one… But yeah, I've seen scares snuck into non-horror games. Little things that are usually only found by cheating or looking really hard. Maybe since the game isn't finalized you managed to trigger it early." Scott almost seemed convinced by this and it would explain everything that had happened, save his name appearing.
"Maybe I misread it. I was already on edge, so I could've seen something else and thought it was my name…" Jeremy admitted. He was quick to add, "But I'm positive about everything else it said. Just not that."
"That could be it. Not much of a relief knowing someone would put that in a game that's going to be sold to children, but better than the alternative," Scott said, trying to ease the pressure. He could tell that Jeremy was still on edge. "I'll double check, don't worry, but I think that's what we're looking at: a tasteless joke."
"Yeah…" Jeremy was starting to believe it too. He looked up as Scott started to head to the garage to check on Baby and considered his own little family at home. He felt unsafe and he needed to be with them, so he stood and quickly called after the older man. "I think I'm just… Going to go home, okay?"
"What?" Scott turned back and leaned out the garage door. "Are you sure? I don't know if it's a good idea to get in the car right now. Maybe you should sit down for a few minutes? You can put on the TV or read."
"Thanks, but I think I'll be okay. I think I just really need to get home," Jeremy admitted. He looked back towards the office reluctantly. "Let me just… Get my glasses and I'll be out of your hair."
"Jeremy, really, you don't have to go. I'm not going to be in here long," Scott tried to convince him. He could hear Ennard chime in from somewhere in the garage.
"Yeah, stick around! The Immortal and the Restless comes on in like twenty minutes!"
"There's no way I'm sticking around for that," he thought, biting his tongue. "I, uh- No. No, I should really get back. I'm still shook up but I'm okay to drive. Just need to get home to my Bidys and Reenas, and… Max."
"I think I'd take a pass on that one, ha ha!" Ennard remarked. He then started to explain to Scott and presumably Baby about whatever he had done to her leg. Jeremy took this moment to rush into the office and grab his glasses. He didn't look at the computer screen or his headset, and he was brisk in his walk to the door.
"Okay, bye! Thanks for having me over!" Jeremy rushed out before closing the door and speed walking to his car. He was backed out of the driveway and off down the street before anyone could really process it.
"Okay, okay, deep breaths," he mentally coaxed himself. He took a deep breath, a relief after the shallow hyperventilating. "It was just a bad prank by a developer who wanted to mess around. Or it was actually a horror game that just kind of rushed into the scares halfway through. That wasn't my name I saw." He took another labored breath. "But the face carving was." He exhaled in a shaky cough.
It was fine. It would all be fine once he got home. He knew he was going to reach his turn soon and focused on the road, feeling like it was taking forever.
All of a sudden, something darted across his path and he hit the brakes hard. Definitely a small dog, but it shook him up enough to keep him at a complete halt, and he dropped his head on the steering wheel.
"Just calm down. This is exactly what Scott was saying. I got spooked and now I'm driving like a maniac," Jeremy scolded himself. Another deep breath and he looked up, then around, and then noticed something. "…Wait, where am I?"
He was still in Hurricane, no doubt about that, but he couldn't recognize the road he was on. Just some random patch of suburbs lined with empty houses and no street signs to speak of.
"Well, that's just great! I got hysterical and now I'm lost!" Jeremy vented as he looked around. With a huff, he started to drive ahead again, looking through the houses he was passing. All of them had darkened windows. "I guess this town really does shut down after six," he muttered. He wasn't even considering knocking on a door for directions. Not when he was lost in his own town. He sighed and looked ahead.
Another small shadow darted past the front of the car. Again, Jeremy hit the brakes and again he recognized the small figure as a dog. "What in the heck is going on with all these dogs?!" Jeremy blurted out. He huffed and looked at the rearview mirror to see behind him.
There was a something in the back seat.
With a short cry, Jeremy threw open the door, wrestled out of his seatbelt, and jumped out into the middle of the road. He looked at his car as he backed away from it, but there was nothing there. The backseat was dark but empty and he was alone. He couldn't even see the dog anymore he was just standing in the middle of the road alone. Whatever he had seen wasn't there, if it ever had been.
"That-!..." Jeremy swallowed thickly and refused to finish the sentence. It had looked like the shadow from the game.
He was almost reluctant to get back in the car, but the darkness of the road and the distant sound of barking dogs and lonesome wind made him uneasy. He slowly climbed back into the driver's seat and closed the door again. He took a deep breath. "I'm on edge… I'm seeing things that aren't there… Just like when I thought it said my name. It's just me." He plugged in his seatbelt. "Have to get back to Mike's."
Soon he was driving again, but he was still turned around. It took him a while to realize that he was somewhere out by the turn for the highway- or he thought he was- and if that was the case wasn't anywhere near Scott's. His heart was pounding and the urge to completely panic continued trying to resurface, only shoved down by him reminding himself that all of this was his own doing. He turned on the radio and started to click through the channels for something to calm him down, but so many of them were distorted with static.
He settled on what sounded like fuzzy classic rock and tried to focus on it as he turned onto another street. He drove past a burger restaurant and only then realized how hungry he was but didn't dare stop. He would have to get something when he got home. At least the lights of the mostly empty restaurant eased his mind, reminding him that he wasn't alone.
The music began to grow quieter as he drove further out of range. With a sigh he began to turn the dial again, but then paused when one of the channels, only one of them, started to play a dull music. It was garbled and hard to hear and almost sounded like circus music. The static was too loud to tell, and he started turning it back down as he drove past the burger restaurant. He took a left down the next road as he considered that tune. Circus music on the radio in the middle of the night; very strange.
Jeremy almost spaced out enough that he drove into the middle of the road. He shook it off just in time to correct himself and was back in his lane as he passed by the burger restaurant. He really was starving. Mike was, thankfully, a much better cook than he was. A shocker since he hadn't anticipated Mike to be the type to patiently put a meal together. Jeremy himself tended to go with easier meals, usually microwavable, since he usually devoted his evenings to relaxing and taking care of his animatronics.
He started to reach into his glovebox to see if he left anything edible in there when he suddenly snapped out of his food trance to realize something was off. He soon realized what it was when he looked over to see the same burger restaurant passing by. How many times had he driven past it? It had to at least be four or five, but he had been turning. Had he been circling it? And he was going to do it again, he realized as he had already turned into what might've been the same road.
In a kneejerk reaction he took a sharp right onto a road that led behind a small strip of stores. The road was rough and full of potholes, barely paved and probably not maintained like it needed to be. Jeremy's trepidation was through the roof, but he started to drive down it slowly. He just had to go slow; he had too many run-ins with loose dogs tonight.
He was halfway down the backroad when a smell started to waft through the car vents. It was something that came from outside, and with the dumpsters and garbage everywhere he wouldn't be too surprised if the whole area reeked in decay. Turning off the fan only helped a little bit and he tried to bury his nose in his sleeve.
"This can't get any worse. Ugh, Mike and Max are going to have a field day with this story. Foxy's never going to let me out again and forget telling Scott. He'll just… Worry?"
Jeremy's thoughts were interrupted by a thumping and clanking noise. It started out quiet but steadily grew in volume.
"Please don't be my car. Please don't start clunking now!" Jeremy muttered as he tried to carefully drive on. He looked ahead to see he was just about to the other side, about to be back on the road, when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He slowed to a stop as he looked over and saw the source of the clanking noise.
It was not coming from inside the car, but from one of the dumpsters outside, and he only knew which one because of how violently the lid was shuddering. Something was rattling it from the inside so hard that it was starting to creep an inch at a time. The smell grew stronger even with the vents off and he watched in growing dread as more of something began to reveal itself through the crack of darkness. The noise itself pounded in his ears, sounding too familiar to ignore.
Jeremy could see something moving just underneath the rattling lid. It had to be an animal, couldn't be a person. Maybe a bear, maybe a coyote; not a person, not a dumped body. It was getting louder and faster until it was almost shaking the car with the force of its movements. Then all at once it suddenly swung open and slammed against the wall behind it. Jeremy decided not to wait around and see what was inside.
Panic took hold and Jeremy's foot slammed on the gas pedal, sending the car into a start and peeling forward. He drug his eyes from the darkness of the dumpster and to the damaged road before him.
He didn't even have time to react to the short form standing in front of his car before he drove over it. He could hear the sickening thump as it hit the front of his car before being dragged underneath the tires. By time he slammed on the break again, Jeremy's car had completely run over the small, humanoid shaped figure. He had seen few details but knew exactly what he had hit.
"Oh… Oh my God," Jeremy choked. "Oh my God!" He had hit a child.
Forgetting the dumpster, the game, and everything else, Jeremy stopped the car and hurriedly threw himself out. He grabbed his cellphone on the way, expecting to be calling 911 as he raced around the back of the car to find who he had hit. No, not hit, had completely ran over. He came around the back of the car and saw the dark lump laying crushed into the asphalt, and his breath caught in his throat. He took a few steps towards it and looked down at what he had hit.
It was just an overstuffed garbage bag.
"What?" Jeremy's eyes widened. "Wait, how did-?" He looked back at the car and back down at the bag "It looked just like a…" His voice trailed off as he noticed something else, something he didn't notice before.
The crushed garbage bag was just barely moving.
Suddenly the fear returned, and he slowly crouched down beside the bag. Something was inside of it, something that had been able to stand and move, and he had to know what. He reached down and took ahold of the end of the bag, which was twisted by not tied. He slowly started to open it and was taken aback by the foul smell that had come from inside. It was the smell that had come through the car. At once he took the plunge and yanked open the bag the rest of the way to see what was inside.
To his relief it wasn't a body. Just a mess of food refuse and a squirming mound of larvae feasting upon it. So many of them that they nearly shook the bag with their movement. Jeremy choked and shut the bag again, then sprung up from the street and wiped his hands on his pants.
"That was disgusting." He coughed and covered his nose with his sleeve. "Ugh. Not hungry anymore. Good grief…" No longer even wanting to question how the bag got in front of his car- maybe it was sitting in the road and he just hadn't seen it- he started to turn back to the car. He was just at the bumper, slipping the phone into his pocket, when he noticed the faint sound of the music from earlier. He hadn't remembered leaving the radio on.
Because he hadn't, as he realized when he stood at the driver's side door. The radio was off and the music was coming from somewhere outside.
Slowly Jeremy raised his head and looked towards the open dumpster. Just from the turn of his head he could tell that was where the music was coming from. It wafted out of it like the rancid smell had. His heart started to pound but he knew better than to walk over and look. Something told him if he did, he wouldn't come back.
"There's a radio in the dumpster," Jeremy blurted out. He then leapt into his car and slammed the door. "They break all the time!" He started up the car and peeled out again, this time taking care not to hit anything.
Soon he was back on the road, now realizing he was in the business-oriented district of Hurricane, and it was only then that Jeremy caught a break. It didn't take him too long to recognize where he was and realize that he wasn't too far from Foxy's. Knowing that, he could easily find his way back to Mike's house… Though that would require him to cross town and hope nothing else stopped him along the way. In another abrupt decision, Jeremy decided that he couldn't risk it, and he took a sharp turn to drive to Foxy's.
His vision was getting worse on the way, though it could've been because he was beginning to hyperventilate again. His glasses had fogged up too, but he wasn't willing to stop driving long enough to clean them with his shirt. Not when he could soon see Pirate Cove's sign out front. Jeremy breathed a sigh of relief and peeled into the parking lot before driving around back.
His hands were shaking as he tore off his seatbelt and staggered out of the car, making a mad dash for the back door, scrambling to unlock it, and flinging himself inside. He slammed and locked the door behind him. His heart was pounding in his chest as he dragged himself off the door and headed down the hall towards the dining room.
"Foxy?" His voice sounded so loud in the quiet pizzeria, even when he tried not to be too loud. "Please be awake… Foxy? It's me, Jeremy." But there was no response. He stepped into the dining room to find it empty and cold, with the light from the hallway stretching across the room and leading right to Foxy's stage. As though it was beckoning him. "Foxy?"
There was still no answer and Jeremy swallowed his fear and crossed the room towards the stage. His footsteps echoed through the room and his breaths sounded so loud that they were almost suffocating. There was no reason that Foxy shouldn't have heard him, unless he was in the kitchen or the office. Jeremy felt drawn to check the stage first.
"Foxy, are you in there?" Jeremy asked as he leaned over the stage to reach for the curtain. His other hand rested on the stage and laid upon something wet and sticky. He instantly wrenched his hand back and looked down at the stage, and only now did he notice a dark fluid that had puddled on it. "Ugh… What's this?"
It was a thick, viscous fluid, and it smelled foul. He recognized that smell from a distant memory; it was the odor that came from the old, withered animatronics back at Freddy's. But it wasn't blood. He couldn't see it well in the light, but the fluid was either black or a dark indigo, not red. Jeremy guessed that it was paint even though the consistency seemed too thick. To have it on the stage was odd since Foxy was such a stickler on keeping his show stage in pristine condition. That, along with Foxy's lack of an answer, made Jeremy very worried.
Throwing caution to the wind, Jeremy stepped up on the stage and threw open the curtain. "Foxy!"
The light was even thinner behind the curtain and Jeremy could barely see the figure laying on the mat and covered with a tablecloth. It wasn't moving at all and Jeremy was becoming increasingly worried. Suddenly he wondered if this fluid smelling like the animatronics wasn't just a coincidence. If they had a fluid inside of them like this, like a coolant or oil he didn't know about, and Foxy had sprung a leak… That would explain why the pirate neither heard him nor responded.
With a renewed vigor, Jeremy grabbed the tablecloth and tore it back. He wasn't prepared for what he what he saw underneath.
Because it wasn't Foxy, it was a body.
A man was lying face down in a puddle of the fluid with something jutting out of his back. Jeremy jumped back and when he did the light caught the object, revealing it to be a kitchen knife.
Jeremy foot slipped on the fluid and he tried to stop himself by grabbing onto the curtain, but only succeeded in yanking it with him as he fell onto the stage, barely keeping from falling back off it. Now he could see the body fully in the dim light, and it was a dead body. There wasn't even the faintest movement of breath. He had walked in on a crime scene.
The blond barely suppressed his own cry of horror by slapping his hand over his mouth. Thankfully he used the clean one, not that he could even think about that. All he could do was stare at the body. Its face was turned away, but he could tell it wasn't Mike or Fritz. Maybe a looter? Would Foxy have murdered a looter and fled? It looked like that except he doubted Foxy wouldn't have attacked someone with a knife. Jeremy crawled backwards to the edge of the stage and climbed off, backing away from it as he stared wide eyed at the corpse left on the stage.
He called out desperately, "Foxy?! Foxy!" Silence."Anyone?! Please!" Still nothing. He was alone in the pizzeria with this body and evidence all over him. He choked for air as he turned away from the stage and scrambled to get his phone out. "I-I need help. Need to call someone." He was just about to dial 911 when he hesitated. "What am I supposed to do? I should call the police, right? But if it was Foxy- the police are watching us- they'll see I was in jail and they'll think- I can't just leave him-!"
Crack.
All those thoughts vanished at that sickening noise that came from directly behind him, from the stage. It was joined by another crack as his phone slipped from his hand and hit the floor. It went forgotten as he slowly turned around to face the stage again.
The body's head had turned all the way around to face him, explaining the noise from its neck snapping. More disturbing was that now he could see its face. It wore a rusty colored mask that looked like it had become so worn and faded that he couldn't even tell what it was supposed to be. The hollow holes stared at him for a long moment before the body began to twist and turn over. Slowly it laid its hands on the stage and pushed itself up, staggering almost drunkenly as it stood to full height.
It was almost ironic; he should've been thrilled to see the man standing up, but instead it was the most frightening moment of all. Because somehow, he knew that even though it was standing it wasn't alive.
When it dropped down off the stage- this tall corpse with a knife jutting out of its back and the vile liquid staining its hands and clothes- Jeremy reacted instantly. He turned and ran as fast as he could across the dining room. By time he reached the hallway he could hear the rapid footsteps behind as it ran behind him, dogging his heels, and he knew it would catch up before he got out the back door.
In a last-ditch moment to avoid being grabbed Jeremy ran into the office and slammed the door. He locked it just before the heavy form slammed against it behind him. Jeremy's heart was beating so hard that it felt like it would burst out of his chest and he was breathing so quickly that he started to become lightheaded. He moved away from the door and watched it tremble as the man- the body- that thing tried to break in.
Jeremy quickly scrambled for the office phone and dialed Mike's number in a panic, but there was no response from the phone. Not even a dial tone even though he knew the phone had been working earlier. It didn't matter how many times he tried to dial the results didn't change. In that moment his only sanctuary became a prison he couldn't escape from. Now he was stuck there in the small office with something outside, Foxy nowhere to be seen, and no way to get in contact with anyone.
He could only hope the door would hold until six.