Chapter Nine: Panini (1985)

Milford sat with Andrew in the storeroom for some time, just breathing in and out, fascinated and humbled by the movement that had so recently been restricted to him. The suit had left red marks all over his hands, face and ankles, and a stiffness had set in over his whole body, as though he were an awakening Egyptian mummy who was startled to discover the majority of his insides sitting in canopic jars next to him.

To his credit, Andrew was just about the quietest Milford had ever heard him. He wouldn't have minded if Andrew had been yapping incessantly, since he had rescued him from certain death, but the fact that he wasn't was extraordinarily considerate.

Milford supposed the ex-janitor (and now, ex-con, it seemed)'s newfound vow of silence had everything to do with the nightmarish marionette puppet that was accompanying him. He hadn't been able to bring himself to look at it for very long, but when he had snuck a look, he had been scared senseless of its permanent, sneering smile and beady, surveilling eyes.

And so it was that the pair came to sit in near-deathly silence for around ten minutes, each consumed by their own thoughts. When Andrew finally spoke, it was actually a relief to Milford, who was starting to feel like he'd been buried alive.

"Who is he, Mifford?"

Milford saw the golden fur, the lifeless eyes and bloodstained wrists, and shuddered heavily.

"A psychopath," he whispered. "A cold-blooded, violent psychopath."

It wasn't like he hadn't thought about it. Ramses was, and remained the first name to cross his mind, but there were escapees from prison about all the time in places like this. Hell, he was with one right now.

Andrew quieted down again for a few moments, mulling over what he had been told. Then, he spoke again.

"We need to kill him, Mifford."

Milford looked Andrew straight in the eye. If he was thinking rationally, with his head on straight and with no personal bias, Milford would've realised just how irrational and downright sinister Andrew's assertion was.

But he was not thinking rationally. He had been locked inside a metal tomb for over twenty-four hours, fully expecting to die at any given moment. He did not have his head on straight. The one and only thought that occupied his head at that point in time was how he could get Golden Freddy's head in between the hungry jaws of a rusty metal bear trap. He was wondering how long the child murdering sadist would survive with two knives thrust through his eye socket.

Besides, if he went to the police, the killer was certain to abscond, never to be seen again.

"Agreed," Milford whispered.

And so the deal was struck. A pact forged in blood without the spillage of a single drop.

Not a single further word was spoken by either on the matter. The first time that they so much as moved was when the first shafts of sunlight pierced the darkened room, and Milford realised that the day had - finally - come.

"Hi, Jenny."

For a moment there was no sound on the other end of the line. Milford assumed that she had taken in a deep breath whilst gasping, or was simply too shocked to speak.

But then she spoke. And speak did she.

"I'm sorry that I didn't let you know about it," Milford said quietly, after having his eardrum nearly blown out by the force of her simultaneously-relieved and panicked voice. He'd just fed her some cock-and-bull story about a fast food business convention in Los Angeles, and unfortunately, it did not seem she had taken the bait. Nevertheless, she didn't seem to care - only that he was safe. If she thought that he'd been off on a drunken bender of infidelity, he would find out when he got home.

"Just call and let me know," Jenny concluded breathlessly. "I was worried sick."

"I know, babe," Milford conceded. "I know."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

The phone went dead and he slung it back on its hook, before stepping out of the booth.

"Was that Jenny?" Andrew asked, a sly grin on his face.

"Yeah, Andy. Look, no matter how it happened, you're an escapee from custody, and we need to get you out of sight."

Andrew's smile faded as he remembered that he had been in prison just the night before. Suddenly, his eyes welled up, and he took the appearance of a scared little boy. The marionette was still by his side, slumped against his leg, which certainly didn't help to disperse the unflattering image.

"I don wanna go back there, Mifford," he sobbed. "I din't do nothing wrong. It's nasty, and smells funny..."

Milford sighed, thumb and forefinger pinched to his throbbing skull.

"Look, we can figure all that out later, but if we're going to catch this guy, we need to get some semblance of order here."

Andrew nodded glumly. "Yeah, right on... Mifford?"

"What, Andy?"

"How are we gonna catch him?"

Milford bit his nail hard, a sign that he was doing a lot of thinking. "Well, I'm going to have to do some explaining to James first. Assuming he doesn't fire me on the spot, that is. If I still have my keys at the end of the day, then we'll talk about plans to get at this guy... Plans involving rolling pins and meat grinders..."

"So, let me get this straight, Barnes..."

"Sir."

James pressed a flat palm to his head and a gormless expression took him over.

"So, whilst you were on night shift duty, you were struck down with a sudden case of pneumonia, and rushed home, without leaving so much as a note. You then spent the next day recuperating without getting your wife-"

"Girlfriend."

"Girlfriend... to call up the Pizzeria and explain the situation... Then you remarkably recovered and decided to come into work today...And that's your story?"

Milford shrugged sheepishly. "Yeah."

"You do know you have red marks all over your face, don't you Barnes?"

"I fell over," Milford said quietly.

"Oh, I SEE..." James cried, with a perfect facade of dumbstruck realisation. "It's so obvious now... I'm a fucking idiot!"

Milford was heavily attempted to reply with a "Yes, sir", but then he remembered that he was trying to keep his position, and so stayed silent.

James stared daggers at him, as though reading his mind. "Barnes, I think I should fire you right now... In fact, there's no doubt... I should fire you! But, the thing is, I'm not going to."

Eh?

"The thing is, if I thought any of that was true, which I don't, I'd find it absolutely astounding that you would fight to keep this position here... I mean, clearly its a complete health hazard. Four walls and a plague of disease... I can only think that your a masochist, Barnes, who works here because he hates himself and enjoys being punished day after day with the utter... tedium of the work. And who would I be to deprive you of that?"

Milford was too stunned to reply, as James clasped his shoulder so hard it went white beneath his blue overalls.

"Oh, and Barnes... If you ever tell me a load of bullshit that stinky again, I'll feed you to the animatronics..."

"Yes, sir," Milford muttered feebly, as his psychotic superior strode back to his office.

"He really said all that?"

Milford nodded numbly, and Joe started to laugh like an Irishman in a pub.

"Christ, and I thought Ramses was a loon..."

"Yeah," Milford muttered, scanning around the restaurant floor for any sign of the psychotic janitor.

Lost in his one-dimensional thoughts and anguishes, he nearly jumped out of his skin when Joe rested a hand on one of his shoulders.

"You alright, man? You seem really out of it... Sure you're feeling alright?"

"I already told you, Joe, the pneumonia thing was a bullshit ruse."

"Yeah, I know, but... maybe you really have caught something... Or, are you still hungover...? You don't need to be doing this right now, man. Not for $5 an hour..."

"I'll be fine," Milford snapped, and Joe withdrew his hand with the speed and wide-eyedness of a bounding rabbit caught in the lights of an oncoming truck.

"Alright, I'll leave you to it..." Joe muttered, walking off.

Milford instantly felt a heaviness in his chest, like a vat of cement had been emptied down his throat. Joe had only been trying to help - his best friend in the world. But Milford knew the only thing that could help him now was the crunching sound that the Golden Freddy killer's skull would make when Milford put his head through a compacter.

Ramses was, predictably, late into work, coming into the Pizzeria at nearly-noon with a smug smile that read "I just kicked a squirrel up the arse and feel great." Milford had wanted to restrain himself, but the second he saw the janitor, and performed the simple calculation of whether the Golden Freddy costume would have fit on him, he knew he would be unable to stop himself - and didn't care much anyhow.

He retreated into the corner as Ramses entered the storeroom to pick up his bucket of water and mop, waiting until he was off his guard and then-

"Milf!" Ramses had noticed him behind the cupboard and was giving him a loathsome grin. "Have intercourse with any mares lately?"

Milford started to walk towards Ramses, the expression on his face a pure concentration of hate and rage. The janitor didn't even flinch, going so far as to goad him further with cries of "Horse fucker!" until Milford leapt forward suddenly, hands closing around Ramses' throat.

The janitor gagged, hands moving to intercept Milford, but finding no opportunity to prise them away. He started to kick his feet helplessly at Milford as he was lifted off his feet and slammed into the wall so hard that the animatronic pieces sat around the room rattled.

"Where's the costume?" Milford snarled.

Ramses just trembled, head shaking. Milford increased the pressure.

"Where's the Golden Freddy suit? And where are the children's bodies?!"

The confrontation was starting to cause a racket outside on the restaurant floor, even though all they could hear was the shouts. Milford could hear crying children accompanied by the angry shouts of their concerned parents.

Before Milford could even register the sound of the door opening, Joe was next to him and was striking his arm hard, trying to secure Ramses' release.

"Milford, let him go!" Joe shouted, now pounding with both fists.

The pressure proved too much for Milford, and with seething rage, he tossed the janitor's now-limp body aside, where it flopped like a beached fish.

"What are you doing, man?" Joe cried, his expression a cocktail of fear and horror.

Milford clenched both fists hard, sensing that he had missed the one opportunity he had been given to silence the murderer. With Joe the only one in close proximity, and an incomprehensible surge of pent-up fury still bloating inside him, Milford rounded on his friend, smashing him in the jaw with a fully-formed and bony punch.

Joe went sprawling to the ground, blood spewing from his lip. At this point, James burst through the door, metaphorical scythe in hand.

"What the flaming fu-" James' words died on his lips upon seeing the fallen bodies of Joe and Ramses. Milford followed his gaze as it traced the blood on Joe's mouth to the specks on Milford's knuckle as it moved at an anxiety-building, yet glacial pace.

Finally, James' eyes met with Milford's, and twisted into two erupting volcanoes.

"Barnes, you are FIRED!" he screamed, marching up to Milford and tearing off his identity badge with one, whip-like motion.

Milford didn't say a single word. He'd known it was coming since he had entered the Pizzeria that morning. The fact that James had refrained from firing before was somewhat ridiculous, but as a man whose business had now been affected, it wasn't surprising. Still, he had failed in his one goal, and for that, he was unflinchingly angry.

"Here," he growled, tossing down his set of keys at James' feet. "You old fart."

James' face went a bright tomato red, but he said nothing, for fear of further developing the escalating tensions in the restaurant.

Milford walked hurriedly out of the storeroom and through the restaurant floor, ignoring the angry gazes of the customers around the room. He strode straight to the main doors, flung them open, and walked out into the fresh air, without looking back once.

Milford found Andrew exactly where he had left him.

The once-janitor had loyally stuck to his promise not to move out of the town's local landfill site, despite the putrid stench that emitted from the towering mountains of assorted garbage that sat about the area.

"Mifford!"

"Gee," Milford thought as he approached Andrew's nesting spot. "He's actually pleased to see me."

But, then again, it wasn't exactly a shock to imagine that someone who'd previously been locked in prison for around a year might be in a much more jovial mood having been sprung.

Milford wasn't sure what he would do about Andrew once the whole 'Golden Freddy business' was taken care of, but he knew that he wasn't going to hand Andrew over to the authorities. At this point in time, he was the one person in the world that he could rely on - talk to about the darker happenings surrounding the Pizzeria, and not be treated like a liar or worse, a lunatic.

"It didn't go so well," Milford confessed when he had sat down beside Andrew. "I lost it in there, pinning them psychopath to the wall. I'm still not sure whether he's the one or not, but I'll never be able to touch him now. He'll have his 'daddy's protection' for months to come."

"So, what now?" Andrew asked worriedly. "How we gonna stop the purple guy?"

Milford frowned. "Purple guy?"

Andrew looked a little bemused, like he was surprised Milford couldn't understand what he was talking about. "The killer."

"Why'd you call him 'the purple guy?'" Milford asked, tense now, but without really knowing why. It was like Andrew had somehow, inexplicably, gotten under the skin of the killer - under that horrible, bloodstained costume - and seen into the mind of the beast.

"That's what the puppet call him," Andrew said, rather too casually, as he gestured with his thumb to the limp marionette sat on his lap.

"Are you saying that thing spoke to you?"

Andrew shook his head. "Not spoke... It showed, Mifford. Just like it did when it took me to you."

"Okay... Why purple?"

Andrew shrugged, almost sheepishly. "I'm not sure. But, I think it's the animatronics, Mifford. It's something t'do with 'em."

Milford furrowed his brow at the mention of Freddy and friends. "What do the animatronics have to do with this?"

Andrew smirked. "Everything, Mifford. They ARE Fredbear's. I think that the 'purple man' is how they see him."

At this, Milford couldn't help but laugh. "Andrew, the animatronics don't SEE anything. They're robots."

"They may be robots, but Fredbear's is their home, Mifford." Andrew sounded actually angry at this point, and he was frowning deeply. "This guy, the purple man, he threatens that for them. And they dun't like it, Mifford."

Milford sighed, knowing better than to argue. He looked down at his fist, remembering how he had slugged Joe - an act that, whilst he didn't exactly regret just yet, he felt guilty about. He'd rather it had been James than him; Joe was just unfortunate enough to have gotten in his way.

"The killer has eyes and ears in the restaurant," Milford acknowledged, still picturing Ramses in his head. "They'll know not to go back to the safe room. So, now we're kinda stuck."

Andrew looked down mournfully, before apparently being struck by a burst of inspiration, head rising again, complete with devilish smile.

"I think I have an idea," he said.

Milford did not have high hopes, but nevertheless, he listened attentively.

"Just one problem," Andrew said.

"What?"

"We're gonna need to get inside Fredbear's."

Without his keys, it proved difficult for Milford to get Andrew and him inside the pizzeria. Luckily, like many low-security fast food joints, Fazbear's had many chinks in its armour that were easy to exploit, and within ten minutes, the pair were inside the storeroom, the lifeless animatronic suits standing around rigidly like toy soldiers in a troubled child's bedroom.

"What am I looking for, exactly?" Milford asked Andrew, as he prised open Freddy's cranium, intending to open his CPU.

"I thought you was the tech man," Andrew replied unhelpfully.

"Yes, but the tech you're suggesting these animatronics have does not exist anyway. We're going on the word of a wooden puppet."

Andrew shrugged. "Check it all."

Milford sighed, still not quite believing that he had been persuaded to come. With a grunt, he pulled out Freddy's central processor, laying it down on the table in front of him.

"Pass me the screwdriver, will you, Andrew?" he asked, accepting the tool from the janitor and getting to work on the microchip.

"I'm gonna plug his processor into the camera feed," Milford explained, tinkering away speedily. "If what you said is true, then these guys might have seen something."

Andrew nodded thoughtfully, watching as the two ends were met, and the monitor flickered into life.

Astonishingly, there was truth to Andrew's claims. The animatronics did have primitive CCTV outlets - although he doubted that this meant the robots actually SAW. More likely, it was a failsafe intended to catch out employees who may have been tempted to steal from the premises.

Milford looked at the screen. It was dark, slowly brightening into silvery grey static.

But then it stopped. And a noise like a warbling turkey being put through an arcade machine bounced off the ceilings and walls.

Green, capitalised font lit up the screen, followed by another horrible pitch of sound. As Milford read the words on-screen, he realised that the noise they had heard was a terrible, computer-generated laugh.

"Mifford?" Andrew's voice sounded distant - timid, even. He was staring at the screen, shuddering in spite of himself, trying to make sense of what he saw. "Whaa... What is it?"

Milford scanned the green text again.

4d-12go.

Milford read the line from every possible angle. What did it mean?

And then, it struck him. The terrible realisation.

"Four down, one to go," he whispered.

The children.

And then, the phone rang.

Andrew jumped at the sound, head darting about in confusion, but Milford stood deathly still. After what he had been through, nothing could shock him now.

"He's watching us," Milford said. "He always has."

As he looked around the room frantically, he saw the tiny black box in the corner of the room. There must be one in every part of the Pizzeria. The unobtrusive, covert secondary system of cameras that nobody could ever have known were there.

The phone continued to ring. Milford, fearful because he already knew who would answer, reached out to the receiver, finally tugging it free from the wall and holding it close to his ear.

"Hello," he whispered.

"Milford! Milford, is that you?"

Jenny. For a moment, relief flushed through Milford's body, like an internal spring-cleaning.

"It's me, Jenny! It's me!" he cried, actual glee in his voice now. "How did you know whe-"

But then he heard the second voice. The one in the background.

"Hello, Milf," Golden Freddy purred.