For a while, Mike sat in his car reading the email address on the note; he'd completed his personal journey to find out what happened to Jeremy, but, Mike realized he was only scratching the surface of something much, much worse hiding behind the seemingly permanent smiles of the pizzeria mascots. The words of the assistant manager rang in his mind: "So, you want to tell the whole country about all those incidents?!" Still, the assistant manager willingly opened up a new door for Mike to enter.
Mike restarted the engine of his car and took off when he looked at his watch, realizing it was almost midnight. He put the note on the dashboard in front of him, beginning to think about his present situation so deeply he was practically driving by muscle memory. After a while, Mike picked up the note again and moved his arm closer to the little trash basket next to him, If I abandon everything I just learned tonight and go home, everything will go back to normal... he tried to convince himself; yet, Mike knew that he would live carrying a feeling of guilt and shame on his shoulders for who knows how long...
He also recalled what Mrs. Fitzgerald told him: "I do know that his work isn't finished, and you might be the one who has to find the answers Jeremy was looking for." Mike shoved the note into his pocket and tried to push away his unease. Mike pulled into the apartment complex, and, as he was walking to the entrance, he noted that things were quieter in this part of town than usual.
When he trudged into his room, Mike took out the note and threw it onto his desk, getting out of his clothes and into the smelly t-shirt and sweatpants he called pajamas. He picked up Jeremy's notebook, which had been laying on top of his pillow. Mike fell down onto his bed, rubbing his heavy eyes. He flipped the pages until he reached the spot where he'd left off, the end of the 'Strategies' section. Mike's heart began to pound when he started reading the next page.
The rest of the notebook served as Jeremy's diary, with the first entry reading 'After Night 1' without any other date mentioned. Mike took a deep breath and read on,
After Night 1: Well, last night was my first night working at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, it's 10:00 AM and, I gotta say, I'm not any less terrified than I was while on the job. This man left me a message with some really odd instructions on what to do to prevent the animatronics from getting into the office; that was the first sign that this job was going to be harder than it looked. I'm still having trouble believing it myself, but, the animatronics were running around trying to get into my office! I had to wind a music box and wear a Freddy mask, if I remember correctly, the phone guy said that they'd try to stuff me into a suit; yeah, I believe that!
He also mentioned the old location being left to rot, honestly, I'm not sure if I want to know the reason why. The older versions of the characters were just sitting in a closed off room, if I keep coming back to that place, I bet I'd have to keep them away, too. But, I don't know what to do. I lied to my parents when I came home, I told them that the job was kind of boring; I don't think I'll be able to sleep for a while. The one time I tried to go to sleep a couple of hours ago, all I could hear was that damn music box tune, and I kept worrying that the Puppet thing was going to jump onto my bed if it stopped.
The Puppet, -Marionette, whatever-thing scares me the most out of all of them. Something very wrong is going on there, the management claims the animatronics are connected to some type of criminal database so they can look for predators; but, why are they attacking me? Either their systems are glitching up or the management is hiding something else. A part of me wants to know more, if I keep coming back to that place I might die, but, if I just quit and never go back, I'll never know the truth. So, I think I know what I'm going to do to make up my mind.
I'll go back to Freddy Fazbear's today after lunch or something, maybe I can speak to some of the employees privately. I wonder if they get paid not to tell anyone any dirty secrets about the establishment... This evening I'll try to get some sleep again, maybe I'll have forgotten about what happened last night enough. I hope.
Mike could almost feel his heartbeat throbbing in his ears, and he slammed the notebook shut. When Mrs. Fitzgerald informed him that the animatronics were actually attacking Jeremy, Mike almost immediately forgot, desperately wanting to know how his friend was at that moment. Now, Mike placed the notebook on his bed stand and stood up from the bed. He turned off all the lights in his apartment except the lamp on his bed stand, and Mike hurriedly hopped into his bed so he could be closer to the light. Mike pulled the bedsheets to his ears and brought up his legs as close to his chest as possible.
On this night, the downtown outside of his apartment was dead silent; usually, one could hear cars driving by and rowdy young adults laughing and messing around. Mike grabbed one of his pillows, his hands trembling, and squeezed it like a stuffed animal. Mike repeatedly forced his eyes to remain shut; but, periodically some random noise coming from the pipes or one of his neighbors would jolt him awake, and soon Mike was surrounded by small pools of his own sweat. Finally, after some time, fatigue overwhelmed Mike enough for him to go to sleep; even so, he knew it wasn't going to be an easy night to get through.