Almost Feels Like Home
Chapter Eighty-Nine
It had been so sudden that he barely believed he could've seen anything at all.
It almost looked like a moving garbage bag caught under a car. Shiny in the light and shifting fluidly as it slid underneath. That's what he had thought it was, a crumpled garbage bag, and if he wouldn't have looked back at the car, he would've never realized that it wasn't that at all. Instead of a wet garbage bag it was something made of metal. Something akin to a bundle of wires sliding underneath the tight space.
But that wasn't what he saw that caused his heart to nearly stop and his blood to run cold. It was the white face staring out at him from underneath the car.
He could only see empty, black holes for eyes and a shiny red nose that sat above an equally empty looking smile. Cracks ran across the face like it was meant to open but he couldn't imagine what would come out of such a terrifying clown face. He had heard the rumors of clowns prowling Hurricane but never took them seriously. Now he knew why people were so spooked.
Then the face disappeared underneath the car. He hit his brakes and, after short consideration, threw the car in reverse and backed up enough to see underneath the parked car where the thing had been. Except now he could see clear underneath it. To his continuing horror, he realized the underside of the car hadn't been as shadowed as he though, the creature had just been so big that it filled up the entire space.
Whatever that horrifying clown thing had been he wasn't going to stick around and wait for it to come back. He hit the gas and sped off into the night, unknowing that this wasn't the end.
It was a quiet night. A good night to settle in and watch a movie. Marla had everything set up; it was her parents' date night, so they were out of the house, she had picked out a movie, the living room was clean, and all that was left was for the food to get there. She nearly bounded into the living room with a couple of extra pillows to throw on the couch.
That's when she noticed that Jason had perched himself in the armchair with his legs dangling over the arm and his handheld clutched in his hands. He stared at it with intense focus and she knew it would be difficult to drag him from where he was. Which meant he was going to barge himself in as a third wheel. She almost missed the days when she could just toss him out, but she didn't feel comfortable doing that anymore since his kidnapping. Not that it was the only thing that changed considering how odd Jason tended to act now.
She plopped down on the couch with a pillow in her lap and was about to settle into a wait when suddenly a car peeled into the driveway. She perked in confusion; that was too quick to have gotten the food and come back. Marla headed over and looked through the blinds only to see a familiar car parked and a familiar redhead running up to the door.
Carlton flew through the door like he was being chased and slammed it behind him. His eyes were wide, he was panting, and he looked all askew. He looked like he had just run a mile.
She looked over him for one moment and simply asked, "Where's the tacos?"
"Oh my God," Carlton choked and swallowed thickly. "You are not going to believe what I just saw out there." He pointed an unsteady finger to the window as he looked to her with those wide eyes. "I just saw a freakish clown under a car right off Airport Road."
"What?" Marla asked with disbelief and a little exasperation. Carlton wasn't unknown to making a weird joke every now and then. One that came to mind was when he convinced John that he was caught in a sudden flash mob outside of the strip mall and had been so believable that his friend partially bought it. Marla was a little more skeptical about this tale. "What do you mean? There was a guy dressed as a clown under a car?"
"This was not a guy," Carlton persisted with a rapid shake of his head. "Oh no, this- this was a clown. It was huge, jammed up under the car."
Marla wasn't any more convinced but now Jason raised his head to listen. "A clown," she repeated.
"Yes!"
"Did it look like the marionette from Foxy's?" Jason chimed in. Marla fought the urge to roll her eyes. Here they went again, back to that fixation with animatronics. If this was a joke it was going too far.
"Yes!" Carlton blurted out. That didn't help. "But not exactly like it. It was like- It had a white, shiny face with a red nose. I didn't see much of its body, but I think I saw something metal. It was moving weird."
"Maybe it was a guy dressed like a clown trying to get something from under his car," Marla volunteered. "And you just saw him at a weird angle."
"What would a clown be doing running around at night?" Carlton asked. It almost looked like he was asking himself more than her. Then she snapped her fingers in realization.
"You know what? I bet it's that guy that robbed those people! You know those three guys who were robbing people and then got caught because they said a guy dressed like a clown robbed them? I bet it's that guy and he was just- Oh! I bet he was trying to hotwire that car! He's a criminal who wears a clown disguise, like a bank robber. That's all."
"You don't hotwire a car from the bottom," Carlton said in his own exasperation. "…But yeah, that could've been it, I guess…" He was starting to second guess himself, but he had an uneasy feeling that he hadn't imagined the metal. That the clown wasn't just a man running around in a suit. He stared ahead as he thought back to it and only snapped out of the trance when Marla held out her hand.
"Give me the keys. I'll go get the food," she offered. He slowly got them out of his pocket and handed them over.
"I don't know if you should be out there if that guy's still out there, whatever he is," Carlton said warily.
"I'm just going to go through the drive through. I'll be fine! Unless you want to come with me."
"No way! I'm not going back out there!"
Marla sent him a flat. "Then you just sit tight and chill out, okay? I'll be back in a few minutes, we'll put the movie in, we'll eat, life goes on." She leaned in to give him a quick kiss on the cheek before heading out. "And if I don't get back, start checking the local circuses."
"Very funny," Carlton replied. He watched her through the door as she got in his car and drove off. Only then did he wonder if his eyes had deceived him and what he thought he saw wasn't there at all. He closed the door and headed over to sit down uneasily on the couch. Jason was still watching him and slowly set his handheld aside. He turned fully towards him in the chair.
"…You could've seen one of those robots like the marionette," Jason offered. Carlton made a dismissive, doubtful, scoffing noise. "No, I'm serious. Nobody believes me but the ones at Foxy's are alive."
"I don't know about that," Carlton dismissed. Then he paused for a long moment. The clown did have a mask and a metal-looking body. He straightened up and looked to Jason. "So, uh, how do you know?"
Jason almost looked a little paranoid as he scooted to the edge of the chair and lowered his voice. "When I was kidnapped with the other kids, you know how they said Mike saved us? It wasn't just him. It was there and Foxy was there! The marionette was the one who unlocked the door before Mike came and got us. I think they're working together."
"…Are you sure? No offense, I mean you went through a lot, but maybe you got confused or something?" Carlton asked in disbelief. The younger shook his head in determination.
"No, I saw them! I touched them and everything and they were the same ones from Foxy's… Even that other mime one, the one in the box? It came from that theater too. It was there in the arcade before it went to Foxy's. I know, I looked in its box when I was there, before that guy got me." As unbelievable as it all sounded, Jason sounded completely honest with it. It was becoming a little more convincing from that alone.
"So, you think the clown is an animatronic?" Carlton asked. Jason nodded vigorously. It sounded unbelievable but he was starting to become more interested. It wasn't a coincidence with how his father had been researching and investigating that old rundown pizza place that Charlie's father used to own. Thinking of it in that context suddenly connected a lot of things in a weird spiderweb of leads. But the main thing that could confirm or deny this was if Freddy's had a clown animatronic. "…Think your dad would mind if I used his computer?"
Shortly later, Carlton was sitting in Marla's parents' office and browsing the internet on their computer. Jason stayed in the living room and promised to call back to him when Marla got home. The truth was, Carlton didn't want her to know what he was doing. She would think he was being neurotic. Maybe he was, but he needed to double check. He looked up the list of animatronics from Freddy's and started searching.
Information on the business was scattered at best and outright hidden at worst. Obvious things, such as the four lead characters, were easy to find, but other characters were much harder to find information on. Apparently, there were spinoffs like a 'Toy' line of animatronics, one of which showed a picture of a baby blue Bonnie, but it took a while to find what he thought was a complete list. Even then there was no clown.
The only thing he found of interest was a confirmation that the Puppet animatronic from Foxy's was formerly from Freddy's. Though research on that was muddled, as typing up anything about Foxy and the Puppet resulted in information about Foxy's Pirate Cove. A quick search of which confirmed that there wasn't a clown animatronic there either.
"That couldn't have been just some guy…" Carlton mumbled. Though it seemed much more likely. In a last act of desperation, he typed in 'Freddy Fazbear's Pizza clown animatronic'. It was in the results that he found something else waiting for him. Instead of Freddy's, there was another pizzeria listed. "Circus Baby's Pizza World…" he read. He scanned over the article. "Cancelled due to… reported gas leaks?" Now suspicious, he typed in 'Circus Baby's Pizza World'.
There was a little on the establishment, but it was the animatronics he was looking for and finally found a poster for sale that showed them. There was a clown, Circus Baby, and is looked slightly like what he saw but still wasn't it. Though what did catch his attention was that the displayed animatronics had the same odd plates on them that the mask almost looked like it had. He continued searching for any other mascots for their pizzeria but couldn't find a thing. Only one clown and it wasn't it. Back to the drawing board.
Carlton was sitting there silently staring at the screen, waiting for a solution to appear, when Jason called back, "Marla's home!" Quickly turning off the computer, Carlton headed out to greet her and continue with their planned night. This was as far as he could go tonight, but this wasn't the last of it. He wasn't ready to forget the clown.
That was how Carlton found himself at the last place he considered willingly going after Jason's unnerving talk, Foxy's Pirate Cove. He stepped into the pizzeria and looked around at the children cluttering the area. The place looked like it was getting a lot of business and he wandered nonchalantly towards the other side of the restaurant. Foxy was walking around the tables and the Puppet was on stage. The other puppet's box was closed-up so maybe it wasn't turned on. The ones that were moving did look lifelike though.
"Maybe Jason just thought they were alive cause they were walking around like this?... But wait, what were they doing over at that place anyway?" Carlton furrowed his brow and looked forward just in time to keep from walking straight into none other than Mike Schmidt. That strange guy in the purple uniform and the one who could throw him out if he wanted to. "Hey…" he greeted with an unconvincing grin.
Mike raised a brow at him. "Well, hello, hello. What are you doing here?" He knew something was up already. Carlton knew he stuck out like a sore thumb here and had to lie quick.
"Actually… I'm here to see you," Carlton explained. "This is going to sound a little random, but do you know anything about a clown robot? Like one of them." He pointed a thumb back at the animatronics.
Mike stared silently for a second before his face fell into an unenthused look. "You'd think being a detective your dad could find better ways to get his info then sending you in here," he said.
Carlton rolled his eyes. "No, my dad didn't send me in here. He doesn't even know I'm here, and if he did, he would've stopped me from coming. Really, it's nothing big, I just saw this-… Okay, here's the truth. I saw this poster for sale online for a place called Baby's Circus World or something and I looked it up and found out that it closed under mysterious circumstances, and wanted to know if you knew anything," he explained. Then quickly added in, "And it was the article that said the closing was weird. 'Something else might've been to blame' or something."
"And you didn't just ask your dad? Isn't he making his living off digging up Freddy's?" the security guard flatly asked.
"We're not really talking much anymore." That was the most honest thing he had said with how holed away his father always was now. "Even if I did ask him, he'd probably blow me off. I just want an honest answer."
After a long pause, Mike gave a weary exhale and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Okay, so… None of this gets back to your father, okay? I don't want him trying to incriminate me because I've heard gossip, got it?" he asked. Carlton agreed instantly. The man lowered his voice a bit. "So… The word is that it was gas leaks, but chances are that the animatronics were just defective. I don't know if your dad told you about a guy named Afton, but he was the one who made those bots and he wasn't exactly a competent technician. If you get my drift."
"Wait, didn't he own Freddy's?" Carlton asked. Mike quirked a brow questioningly. "The other owner was Charlie's dad. I got a lot of the info from her… Before… Before, you know…"
"I know," Mike agreed. There was an awkward silence between them. The older man coughed into his fist, "Anyway, that's what happened to that place. Most of those old animatronics probably would've broken down by now, and I didn't see any of them for sale at Animatronicon. One scary looking spider though. You wouldn't believe this thing." He shook his head with slight amusement before looking at Carlton. The young man had become a little distant since they started talking about Charlie. "Anything else on your mind?"
There definitely was. Thinking about Charlie reminded him of her untimely death. The daughter of the former owner of Freddy's who also died untimely, who died at the hands of a former employee of Freddy's, witnessed by another former employee, all surrounding these robots that always seemed to act strange when nobody was looking. Just watching Foxy revealed that he moved a little too easily for a robot.
Something was going on here. This was bigger than just the clown, but he didn't know what it was. To keep face, Carlton looked to Mike and said the first thing that he thought of. "Any job openings?"
Mike got an amused smirk. "You think your dad would let you walk in here and get a job?"
"No. That's why I'm asking you and not him," Carlton retorted.
"Good point. I'd have to run it by my co-workers before I randomly hired on the police chief's son. Especially since you've met our chef, Tabby," Mike remarked. Carlton must've winced visibly at the name. "Tell you what, if you still want a job next week then bring in a resume and we'll consider it," Mike added. Though the way he said it sounded like he wasn't entirely serious. That wouldn't help him in his mini investigation.
"I might, thanks. You guys keep doing good," Carlton vaguely said. He then started to head out. He got one last looked at the animatronics. He swore Foxy was staring at him as he left. Almost like he knew something.
No wonder Jason thought these things were alive.
With most of his leads coming up empty, it almost seemed like time to give up. Except Carlton wasn't ready to end his pursuit for this clown. That afternoon he returned home and immediately was back on the computer searching for answers. He followed whatever trails he could find but none of them led anywhere. So, he started to look up people instead of animatronics and see where that got him.
Running a background check on Mike was impossible because there was nothing of note on him before the Magictime Theater incident. All that he could find were articles on those events, and everything else was pieced together from things he already knew; he worked at Freddy's, he owned Foxy's, and somehow he ended up at the theater the night of Charlie's death. Dave was equally as mysterious, though it was easier to find some of his criminal history touted by websites discussing the incident and his death.
Henry and William were also dead-end leads. Henry died in a springlock suit accident and that was it, and William apparently disappeared off the face of the Earth. Though he did confirm that Circus Baby's was backed by Afton Robotics, a company and factory that his father had been doing extensive research on. In fact, Clayton Burke spent more of his time scouring that building than he did at home. Or that's what his mother would say in her disapproving comments.
By evening he was no closer to finding the truth about the clown, and then his efforts were thwarted entirely when his mother got home. Clayton must've been home the entire time and locked up in his basement without Carlton knowing, as his mother went straight to the door, knocked aggressively, and waited for a response. What followed what a heated conversation that Carlton could hear through his bedroom wall.
"I'm getting tired of this, Clay! You spend all day down at the station and all night locked down in that basement!"
"I'm doing my job, Betty. There's lives on the line. If I don't solve this case soon then who knows who will be next?"
"What are you even talking about? Freddy's? Freddy's closed years ago! Yes, it's tragic that nobody found those children, but you're not finding them doing this to yourself!"
"Found those children? Those children are dead. Nobody's going to find them unless someone starts looking." Clayton was growling, or maybe he was wheezing. "We can't all just overlook death because you want this town to look good."
"I-I can't believe you're saying this. I really can't believe this."
"That's it, I'm out of here," Carlton muttered as he powered down his computer. He grabbed his jacket and pulled it on before grabbing his keys and heading out. His parents were fighting louder and didn't hear as he left the house and drove off in his car. He felt leagues better once he was in the car with the music turned up. "Okay, focus on the clown. That's what I'm looking for, answers on the clown… That's it." He perked as though he received an obvious answer. "It was about this time when I saw it. I'll drive around until I see it again."
So, he did. For the next twenty or so minutes Carlton drove down the same few roads and looked for the clown. He passed the same strip of houses to turn around and would then drive right past where the car had been parked. Though it was now moved. There was nothing there interesting and he eventually gave up. He turned around in a warehouse parking lot and started to head home again.
By time he got inside the fight was over, but he heard some weird noises from the bedroom. Like a shuffling and thumping noise, and when he got closer he heard his mother breathing shakily, almost like she was crying. He peered into the bedroom and his heart leapt into his throat when he noticed she had her travelling bag out on the bed.
"Mom?" he tentatively asked as he opened the door. She looked at him for a second before looking away. He still realized that she was crying. "Mom, what's going on?"
"Your father and I had an argument and… We need some space for a few days. I'm going to be at my sister's… You're welcome to come with me," she offered to him. Carlton didn't know how to respond. "I'm going to be leaving tonight so you can come with me or wait until tomorrow. I just think it would be good for both of us to get away from the house."
"I don't understand. Is this still about whatever Dad's working on for that Magictime case or is it something else?" Carlton probed. Betty seemed reluctant to speak. "Mom, you can tell me."
"I just… I can't live in the past anymore. We spent so many years with Freddy's hanging over us. First Henry's passing, then those children went missing, and then Charlie… It needs to stop, but it can't stop if your father is determined to dig it all back up. I've tried to be patient, but I can't live like this anymore," Betty finished. Her son nodded in understanding and slowly turned away. He returned to his bedroom once again.
Carlton collapsed in his office chair and stared at the wall for a few seconds. He knew what was coming; he had seen the signs in his parents for a while now. It was only a matter of time before their already strained marriage crumbled. He wasn't even sure what he felt, maybe he was in shock. He tried to keep his eyes on the prize. The clown. He needed to find out about the clown.
The next morning, he found his mother gone. He wasn't even sure if his father left the basement.
Tactics would have to change if he was going to make any progress, so the next day Carlton found the location where Circus Baby's Pizza World had been and drove out. He didn't want to go alone and he didn't want to tip off Marla, so he invited John to come with him. Soon they were looking through the windows of the building. The doors had been boarded up and he wasn't comfortable trying to sneak in with the situation with his parents going on. The last thing he needed was to be arrested while they were feuding.
"Looks like there's a poster in that back corner. Can you see it?" John asked. Carlton turned his head to look. "I think there's a clown on it."
"Yeah, it's Circus Baby, but she's not the clown I saw the other night. This thing was bigger and had a different looking face," Carlton explained. His friend exhaled through his nose and drew back from the pane.
"I'm going to be honest here; I don't think we're going to find this clown looking around here. Are you sure it wasn't someone wearing a Halloween costume?"
"Trust me, I know what it wasn't and it wasn't just a guy in a clown suit. This was something else," Carlton insisted. He drew back from the window. "In fact, I'm doing a stake out tonight if you want to join in." John looked slightly uneased by the idea.
"No thanks… Hey, this thing about the clown… Do you think you're so focused on this because of what's going on with your dad?" John asked bluntly. He was never one to pry and the fact that he was doing so gave away that he was genuinely concerned. Carlton gave a long sigh.
"I was trying to figure out about this clown for two days. That's long before Mom left… Who told you, Marla?" he asked as he looked to his friend. John had a look of shock. "…Or maybe I just told you."
"Your mom left? For how long?"
"She said she's going to my aunt's for a few days, but I don't think she's coming back. Things just have been so weird at the house… I don't want to talk about it. We need to figure out what's going on with this clown," Carlton dismissed. Finally, John let it drop, but their search of the outside of the old building revealed nothing.
Next, they drove to Freddy's, blocked off with police tape and devoid of anything worth looking at. They found nothing. Then they finally drove out to Magictime Theater. The place had been cleaned out and was locked up tightly, to which Carlton went around and tried all the doors. It was once he was around back that he found their way in, the basement window left unlocked. He crouched down and opened it as best as he could.
"Here's our way in," he announced as he started trying to slide in feet first. He looked back at John only to double-take and notice he was staring down behind the back of the building. He knew why; this was where they had found her. This was where Charlie had died. An ache settled in Carlton's chest as well, almost akin to guilt but he didn't know why. It wasn't his fault she came here, and he doubted he could've stopped her and yet regret still lingered. "…Do you want to come in with me or wait out here?" he asked awkwardly.
"I'll come in," John agreed. With that, Carlton slipped inside and his friend followed.
The entire building was cleared out just like the others had been, but someone did an especially good job on this one. The basement room the kids had been staying in had all the evidence removed from it and even the padlocks had been taken off the door, probably by the investigators. Going upstairs revealed a barren building that contained only the slim remains of a business; wallpaper, colorful carpet, a few partially torn posters, and the empty stage itself.
"I just don't understand it," John suddenly vented out of nowhere. "Something doesn't make sense to me, but I don't know what it is. It's like there's something wrong about all of this."
"That it was Charlie?" Carlton guessed. "That it was a guy who used to work for her father?"
"That too, but something else…" His friend looked torn, brows furrowing, looking across the empty room in confusion. "…You know they never found her jacket."
"What jacket?"
"Charlie's jacket. She started wearing this green jacket all the time. When she wasn't, she would have it on her seat or somewhere in her car. She went everywhere with this jacket. Jess told me they never found it."
That was weird. Carlton remembered seeing Charlie in a green jacket the more recent times he saw her. He never thought anything of it, just assuming it was her favorite. The fact that it was gone without a trace did seem weird. "Maybe she left it in her car." John shook his head.
"We checked her car. Jen and I cleaned it out before she sold it and there wasn't anything in there. We checked the house once too and I never saw it. I wasn't looking for it then, but I know if I had saw it I would've taken it with me. Maybe given it to Jen and… Give it to Charlie." They both knew what he meant. Nobody would've cared how it would've looked if Charlie had been buried in her favorite jacket. It would've been nice.
"Maybe Dad has it," Carlton offered. John gave him a weird look. "Or not him but maybe in an evidence locker. You know what I mean."
"Maybe… Could you ask him?"
"If he ever gets out of the basement then sure."
Not long after that, Carlton and John left Magictime Theater and drove around a little more. To try and counteract the downer mood, they hung out a little longer without doing any pizzeria research. It was John's day off anyway, so it was worth doing something considering that he gave up so much of his time to drive around looking for nothing. Eventually John dropped Carlton off at home and left to visit Jessica. His father wasn't home yet and his mother wasn't coming home, so Carlton was alone.
Again, ignoring what was going on in the house, he thought about the clown, and now he concocted a plan. Last night he had attempted to stake out for the clown again, but maybe he had gone about it the wrong way. Maybe he needed to wait until it got later. Maybe he needed to take a camera with him and plan a long-term stakeout. Carlton left the house shortly afterwards to buy a disposable camera, a couple of energy drinks, and a bag of chips. If he had to stay up all night, then he was going to.
Clayton brought home dinner but it didn't look like he ate much of anything before he returned to the office, and then into the basement about an hour or so later. He completely threw himself into whatever work he was doing. Carlton gladly did the same. Around eight o'clock at night, his mother called for a short and mostly uncomfortable talk. She asked how he was doing, she asked if he was coming to stay with them, and he said he was fine and that he didn't know yet. He still didn't think about it.
It was thirty after midnight when Carlton finally decided to leave the house. He had been waiting for his father to go to bed before he did, but Clayton was pulling later and later nights, so eventually he gave up and snuck out. That was when the long night began. It started on the road he first saw the clown with him parking right where the car had been and waiting. He cracked open an energy drink and began to watch.
About thirty minutes passed without sign of anything, so he moved to the next road over and repeated the process again. He finished the energy drink and ate the chips and continued waiting. He forced himself to stay there for a full thirty minutes before moving back to the first road and waiting. He continued moving back and forth between them, soon moving every fifteen or twenty minutes instead of thirty to keep moving.
It was pressing on three o'clock when Carlton started to feel the effects of the lack of sleep. He began on his second energy drink which wasn't nearly as cool or refreshing as it would've been an hour ago. The houses around him mostly had their lights off and the streets were largely barren, so it wasn't like there was much to distract himself. He started to nod off against the window and woke startled by nothing and with no idea how long he had slept.
It was about time that he would switch to the other road again, but Carlton was instead considering calling it a night and giving up entirely. He gave a disappointed sigh and started up the car before glancing into the rearview mirror to make sure nobody was coming down the road.
His breath caught in his throat as he noticed something white amongst the grey of the road. It stood out like a beacon, bright white against the asphalt, and staring out from the storm drain. It was like a horror movie.
It was the clown. It had been watching him.
Carlton reached slowly into the passenger's seat and felt around until he grabbed one of the disposable cameras and the flashlight. He got the camera poised in his right hand, prepared to take a snapshot, and carefully leaned over to inch open the car door. He kept his eyes on the mirror the whole time and watched the clown's face stare out at him. The moment he stuck a leg out it disappeared into the sewer.
He had come too far to let the clown slip away this easily. Leaping out of his car, Carlton dashed down the street to the storm drain and knelt beside it. He shined his light inside.
"Hello?! Anybody there?!" he called inside. "I know somebody's in there! Hey!" All he could hear was his voice echoing out. With a huff he reached the camera in and started trying to take snapshots. He knew once he pulled the camera back out that there was little chance that he actually got a picture of whatever it was. "Stupid! I should've gotten a picture from the car!"
Carlton stayed kneeling there for a moment as he considered his next actions. Except that was when he noticed something. His voice was still echoing through the drain. He could hear it as plain as day: "Anybody there?" ringing through the concrete. It shouldn't have still been echoing like that unless the sewers were utterly massive, but even then it wouldn't explain why only part of what he said was echoing for so long.
Except then it got closer. The distant echo of his own voice was louder and clearer. Still echo-y but now like it was being called back from another source. His heart started to pound as he leaned in closer. "Anybody there?" He got low to the ground and turned his head enough to almost fit it inside, trying to see through the darkness. Shining his flashlight inside did little because of the angle unless he was willing to shove his arm down inside. "Anybody there?" He tried to scoot closer and listen. When he did he almost thought he heard squeaking. "Anybody there?"
It sounded too close to be his own voice. Swallowing thickly, Carlton steeled his nerve and asked again, "Is anybody there…?"
His own voice answered him, "Nobody's here."
That was when his courage ran out. Carlton leapt back and jumped to his feet. He barely resisted the urge to make a mad dash for the car and instead just stumbled back, staring at the storm drain, nearly shaking in disbelief. Suddenly he regretted coming down here; there was something ungodly in these sewers and he didn't really want to know what it was. Forget the clown, he had to get home.
The moment Carlton turned to run for the car, only running a few steps before hearing it, something else echoed out of the sewer; laughter. Laughter that grew from a low chuckle and raised until it sounded hysterical pouring out of the drain like water poured in. Inhuman, pitched and mechanical all at once, made of a voice that sounded horrifyingly comedic. Almost like a clown's laugh.
That was all Carlton needed before he ran to the car, leapt inside, and peeled out. He broke the speed limit to race home and thought of nothing but escape as he did so. It wasn't until he got into the house, door shut and locked, that he stopped and thought about what happened, and he gave a full-body shudder.
"What am I going to tell everyone? Should I even tell them, or dad?... What am I talking about? Nobody's going to believe me. Nobody's going to believe that there's a clown living in the sewer harassing people! Crawling around under cars, and- Oh my God, that's why it was under that car. There was a storm drain right there too. It actually lives in the sewers, under the town, what the hell."
His heart was pounding, his head was aching, he was both exhausted and too wired to sleep, and he started to head to his bedroom. Carlton literally threw his hands up and prepared to go to sleep and try to pretend nothing happened. If it wasn't for him noticing his parents' bedroom door cracked open he would've kept going too. The room was dark past the crack, but his father usually shut his bedroom door. He quietly looked in.
Clayton was in bed fast asleep. He could hear his slow, raspy breathing and assumed that his father finally collapsed and had to sleep. Though considering what time it was he wasn't too shocked. He inched the bedroom door shut again and watched as the bed disappeared into the dark, then the nightstand, but then stopped when his eyes fell on the dresser and onto his father's keys. Just his key ring, sitting on the dresser like it always was, holding the keys to the car, the house-.
The basement.
He should've learned his lesson from the clown, but now there were new questions being raised in his mind. Mike raised them, John raised them, and now with his mother gone and his father asleep there was nobody left to stop him. He cautiously stepped in far enough to grab the keys.
"This is crazy. Dad's not hiding anything, he's just going nuts over this case," Carlton thought, trying to talk himself out of trusted his father that much. "Yeah, but he doesn't trust me. All this stuff is adding up and he hasn't said a thing about it… There's got to be something else going on. Something made him change." He shut the door quietly and headed to the basement. It took him a few tries to find the right key.
The basement smelled strange. Carlton immediately noticed that the stuffiness had an extra odor with it, almost like wet carpet. It wasn't a furnished basement but there was a desk down here along with some storage things. He flicked on the light and a bulb illuminated at the bottom of the stairs. He carefully stepped down them and into the makeshift office.
The desk with covered with files and notebooks. A corkboard above it was littered with pinned notes that seemed to be purposefully written in shorthand. A couple of file cabinets were so overfilled that paper jutted out and kept them from closing all the way. None of this looked too weird but one odd thing on the right side of the desk was new. It was a shelf stacked with what looked to be a dozen cassette tapes, with a tape player sitting on the desk in front of them. He curiously pressed play to hear what his father had been listening to last.
"Sometimes I just think about ending it… Just having to get up day after day and return to the restaurant is a waking nightmare. As though I must experience the same pain over and over again after what I let happen. I look into those children's eyes and see my son, and I wonder… I wonder if he's still out there somewhere. If one of them is him… But I'm not that delusional yet, nor am I that desperate. I'll keep on going as I have… And maybe if this all works out as planned, I'll have the evidence I need to protect others before they too get forced to suffer such a terrible loss…"
"Who is that?" Carlton mumbled. Pressing the eject button gave his answer as someone- it looked like his father's handwriting- labelled the tape as 'Henry Tape #3'. Curious, he looked through the other tapes and eventually stumbled on one that was recent. It was labelled 'Mike & Scott' along with the date. He stuck it in and pressed play, and what he heard shocked him to the core.
"Hello?"
"Hey, it's me. I just wanted to tell you that Jeremy just left and should be getting home soon. We, uh… Tried the game, but it didn't work out like we expected. Something went wrong with it, it didn't work."
"Got it… Anything else? Kind of strange that you'd just call to tell me that."
"…Well, uh, actually… Don't tell Jeremy I told you this, okay? But he was scared by a glitch or something in the game and he took it way harder than I thought he would. I think he's really stressed out, Mike, and it scares me because I don't want him to have to go through having a whole mental collapse. Is everything been going okay?"
"I thought so. I mean, as good as they can go, you know? I know this whole thing about moving in here's upset him a lot more than he's willing to admit, but I'm not going to force it out of him. If he wants to pretend he's alright then maybe that's the best thing for him."
"Maybe but pushing all that down isn't good either. That could easily lead to a total mental breakdown… But I don't think Jeremy's anywhere near that yet! I just meant, you know, if you could keep an eye on him…"
"I'll do more than that. Maybe I can get him to decompress a little. Loosen him up, get him out of the house for something other than work. Think that might help?"
"I think that would be great… Just keep it low-key for a while. He's a little on edge."
I guess that means going for another round of spelunking is out too. Good to know. Alright, I'm going to let you go. Thanks for the head's up."
"No problem, that's what I'm here for! Have a good night."
"You too."
Carlton couldn't believe what he just listened too. Not the actual dialogue on the tape, but the context of what it was and what it meant. It was a phone call between Mike Schmidt and someone named Scott. His father had been tapping either Mike's or the other guy's phone line, maybe both. He didn't even know if that was legal to do outside of the police station. This did confirm that he was still a prime suspect, but in what?
Looking around, Carlton found his way back to the corkboard where he now noticed a group of newspaper clippings pinned in the corner. There were a few about the various incidents at Freddy's, but to his disturbance there were unrelated ones as well. A few snippets about missing children unconnected to Freddy's, a few accidents from animatronics, and most recent being one pinned about Magictime Theater.
"What are you doing down here?" Carlton asked himself. He looked down at the desk and at a notebook towards the front. It had been closed, but it wasn't hard to find where he shut it on, as he had left a pen inside of it. Maybe even to mark the page. Opening it up revealed what was almost another language, an entry written in shorthand that was difficult to decipher. "Is this even English?! Come on, Dad…"
He trailed off as he noticed something that looked like it was written more recently, due to it being on the bottom of the page and in darker ink: "I have enough to go ahead with the call. Aiming for Sunday."
"Sunday?" Carlton had seen a calendar on the wall and looked over to it.
At first it looked like a normal calendar, though a little emptier than what his father's calendars used to contain. Days were struck out with a pen slash as though he was counting down to something, and most likely that was the only marked date in the entire month. The next coming Sunday had a check on it but no further details. Clayton usually at least listed where his appointments would be or at what times. All that he could make of it now was that he was making some sort of phone call on Sunday.
"This… Is going nowhere," Carlton admitted in defeat. Taking a step back and looking around gave a very unsettling picture of a man obsessed with his own case, but it didn't say much else. Nothing about the clown, not even much about Freddy's or anything concrete about this case. Maybe his mother had a point in how obsessed his father was becoming. Becoming paranoid that he was going to get caught- and suspecting Clayton would revert to normal long enough to chew his head off- he turned towards the stairs to leave.
It was only then that he noticed the back corner of the basement. Normally he would've overlooked it, as it really was just a place where they stored seasonal decorations and other unneeded things, but he noticed that there had been more added to the mass. Most of the boxes had been pushed to the side wall so that a large tarp could be laid out, hiding what was shaped like a mound of things underneath. Under normal circumstances he wouldn't have taken much notice in it but this time it stood out to him.
Or maybe he was just paranoid because of the clown. Either way, he had to look. He walked over to the edge and leaned over, pulled out the edge of the tarp, and threw it back.
Freddy Fazbear stared back at him. He was in disrepair, plundered for parts, and slumped on the floor staring blankly at the young man.
A chill ran up Carlton's spine and he grabbed the tarp and yanked it back down without looking under the rest of it. But from the lumps he could see, it didn't look like Freddy was alone. Carlton backed up to the stairs, shut off the light, and then went back up to the first floor. He couldn't even comprehend what he had just saw. That wasn't supposed to be in his house.
Carlton replaced the keys and headed to his bedroom where he collapsed in his chair. Everything he learned in the last few days began to reel in his head.
Missing children and accidents were plentiful at Freddy's, a business that Charlie's father and a man named Afton owned. Dave had worked there and murdered Charlie at Magictime Theater where he also worked. Mike had also been at that theater and owned Foxy's, which had animatronics in it that were also from Freddy's, and Clayton was still suspicious of him. There was also Afton who owned a company that made Circus Baby's Pizza World, a pizzeria with a clown animatronic. There was an inhuman clown prowling the sewers.
When all laid out like this it didn't make much sense. So many deaths and so many accidents, so many employees who went rogue, so many businesses that failed; it didn't add up.
…Unless Jason was right. Unless the animatronics were alive, were the reason behind all this tragedy, and there was some sort of elaborate cover-up to hide it. Maybe his father was about to break open a massive conspiracy. Maybe his father wasn't locking the door to keep him out but to make sure something stayed in. Though if that was the case then why did it take this long? He had investigated every case and not solved and of them even with this surplus of information. It didn't make sense.
Worse still, Carlton knew nobody would believe him about any of this. It was unbelievable and he felt entirely alone.
He couldn't sleep like this, so after a moment of consideration he turned his computer back on and started typing up his resume.
Mable: It's only a matter of time until someone sees too much.