here we go...

and on much more important matters than this book, what time of year do you get your Halloween on? 🎃🎃🎃


Michael stared at the boy at the other end of the room, and for a brief moment, he didn't understand what he had meant by those words. But then it finally came to him.

His eyes widened, mouth falling open.

" Cassidy... " he whispered. "You're Cassidy Morgan."

The boy's eyes hardened, a frown pulling at his mouth.

"Y-You were killed in 1984... but you weren't found in a pizzeria," Michael murmured, suddenly remembering back to the homicide research he'd done so many months ago, remembering the boy's small black and white school photo that had been in a paper from that year. "They didn't link you to the other murders because yours was so different from them."

Cassidy looked past his shoulder at the door and raised his hand. Michael heard the fire just outside the door lessen, as if extinguished.

"I just want to talk for a few minutes. Then I'll let you get back to... well. The fire will come back." the boy spoke quietly as he dropped his hand. "But you can deal with that when we're done."

Michael stared. "Why do you want to talk to me? " he asked hesitantly.

Cassidy's eyes lifted and wandered Parts & Service curiously like he'd never seen it before. "This is the room he killed me in- your dad, that is," he related as he looked around at the metal shelves and tables. "I think you saw a sliver of it that night when you traded the remnant... my mistake. I didn't mean to let you see. But I was angry."

He stared at one of the corners of Parts & Service before his gaze moved back to Michael's. "But this is also the room you used to lock Evan in. Do you remember that, Michael?"

Michael felt his heart drop into his stomach, feeling as though snakes were curling inside him in sickening knots. He couldn't motivate himself to answer, too ashamed of what he would have to say... but how did he know about his brother?

Cassidy watched him a moment longer before looking away.

"You're probably wondering how I'm here, right? I didn't get stuffed in an animatronic or anything, I wasn't even near one when I died. So what am I haunting?"

Michael listened to the fire crackling outside while the faint screams of the Funtime robots rang out from their metal prison, mouth parting.

The boy laughed humorlessly.

"Well, since you're not very talkative, I guess I'll just tell you. I'm haunting the animatronic you used to kill your brother."

Michael's eyes widened. " What? " he stuttered.

Cassidy's eyes bore into his like he had in his dream, piercing. "And I guess now's a good time to share another little secret with you," he started darkly. "Evan's not dead. Not completely, anyway." he shared. Michael felt his heart drop, mouth parting with disbelieving shock. But the boy before him continued to stare. " That's right, " he spoke in a soft, yet cruel whisper. "He's been trapped here for seven years, trapped in the same machine that killed him."

"Y-You're lying," Michael stuttered. "Evan died in the hospital... he's gone."

He couldn't bear to think of what he must have subjected his little brother to if this was somehow true. He just couldn't.

But Cassidy just rolled his eyes. "Your family's got a real streak of denial," he scoffed. "It's pretty annoying." He crossed his arms, studying Michael for a moment as neither said anything. "But anyway. That doesn't matter now."

"What does?" Michael snarled. "Why did you come to me?"

At that, a cruel smile curled at his mouth.

"So that I could finally share my secrets with someone before I leave," he answered with a tilt of his head. "Because, you see, I've been working on destroying everything your father did, from the inside out. In fact, you're only where you are now because of me... if I hadn't interfered, you'd probably still be cozy in your bed at home, blissfully ignorant to the crimes of your family."

Michael frowned, mouth parting. "What are you talking about..?"

Cassidy began to pace the room, feet still hovering above the floor, but it was as if he was on solid ground as he moved. An excited expression came over him, but on his face, it made him look quite ugly, like it didn't belong. Whatever emotion spurred it in him should have not been there.

"After I was murdered, my soul somehow found the Golden Freddy suit. I cozied right in, but to my surprise, someone was already there- your brother, little Evan Afton who'd died only months before me," he spoke with a giddy demeanor, eyes alive. "But we became friends quickly. I told him how I was killed, and he did the same for me."

"I soon made the connection that my killer was his father... and that his killer was, well- you ." He continued, stopping to look at Michael. He felt a painful twinge of guilt as the boy resumed his pacing.

"Well, after that, I put together that Evan's death was what pushed William Afton over the edge. And you see, there's many curious things you can do when you're dead," he explained. "I found a way to travel to the past, where I tried to prevent him from dying in the first place," he recalled, folding his arms over his chest. "Which failed. So, when I returned to the present, I thought I might as well earn myself justice since no one was doing it for me."

Michael frowned more, remembering how strong hatred and vengeance had radiated from the boy in his dreams and visions.

It was just as tangible now.

"I tracked down your father, but I wasn't corporeal enough to do so much as touch him," he spoke bitterly. His wide eyes suddenly turned to Michael. "But you could."

Michael instinctively stiffened under the boy's piercing gaze, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. As Cassidy began to speak again, his eyes darted around the room, looking for anything he could possibly use to escape with.

"I had to start by getting him out of the pizzeria somehow. I tried using Henry first, but I just wasn't getting anywhere with him, but you - you were so desperate for answers, so desperate for closure that you took those visions seriously!" Cassidy laughed. "You went out of your way to come down here after I coaxed Henry into looking over his journal again, a journal you stumbled upon last winter. And it worked ."

Michael's brow furrowed, and he suddenly stopped looking around.

"Wait-" he started, holding up a hand. "How do you know I've been having visions?"

At that, that cruel grin again crossed the boy's face. "Because it was I who inspired them," he answered.

Michael's heart stopped. His mouth fell open, eyes widening as he stared at Cassidy.

" You? " He inquired incredulously. " You're the reason I've been seeing things?!"

Cassidy smiled more. "It's one of my favorite, and rather more useful tricks. Don't you think? I can make you see anything so long as I've seen it, or can imagine it."

Michael couldn't help the scowl pulling at his mouth. He didn't like thinking now that his hallucinations were the result of some dead kid screwing with his head.

Before he could voice as much, Cassidy continued, silencing those thoughts.

"But anyhow- you eventually found your father. I tried to kill him myself by burning that miserable place to the ground, but he eluded me," he muttered bitterly. "I didn't know what to do at first, didn't know how I'd catch him again, but he, in all his so-called prowess, had neglected his family in the underground. And instead of going there to rescue Elizabeth himself, he sent you, " he explained, looking again at Michael.

Michael frowned, recognizing the truth in that statement. His eyes caught sight of a crowbar leaning against a shelf in the corner adjacent him, and casting a careful look at Cassidy, began to inch toward it.

"So, to the Underground you went... I thought you'd be able to figure out she was haunting that machine, given that Afton was still alive, despite his injuries- but you, the ever idiotic skeptic, refused to believe it," Cassidy scoffed with a drawn frown, oblivious to Michael's movements.

"Your few nights there had already been deadly and I didn't know if you'd survive long enough to do what I needed you to," he continued thoughtfully. "So, I inspired you with another vision, this time of one of your father's memories I'd caught a glimpse of while trying to get into his head."

Michael paused edging the room, back still pressed to the wall.

He remembered that night. The vision of Elizabeth... so that's where it came from.

At the very least, he knew now he wasn't making this stuff up.

Cassidy smiled a little at him knowingly. "That was enough for you, wasn't it?" he spoke softly. "You went that very evening with plans to save her, acting with much too much trust in something you knew was dangerous."

Michael bit back a scowl, only feet away from the crowbar. He didn't need to be reminded how stupid he'd been.

"She killed you to get out- or at least, she tried to," Cassidy explained. "See, even I thought you were dead when you came out of that place- and again, I believed my plans ruined. I needed you to lure him back to where I could destroy him once and for all."

Michael glanced up as Cassidy straightened with a smile.

"But against all odds, Michael..." he laughed in sheer disbelief, though the sound was eerie and raw. "Your stubbornness worked against death, even! There you were, alive! That remnant, little of it though there was, still ran in your veins. It was enough, barely enough, to save you from the brink of death. Enough to heal you."

His hand was so close to the crowbar, but he didn't like the tone Cassidy had suddenly taken on. The boy turned to look at him.

"But I doubt it can do that a second time." He murmured sinisterly.

With that, he raised one hand and snapped his fingers. Suddenly, the cool air that had filled the room suddenly vanished, and the fire outside lost its restraint.

Michael's eyes widened, staring at the door, then back at the boy.

"You see, Michael, your brother might believe you're redeemable, but I don't," Cassidy asserted firmly. "You got him killed. And by so doing, you got me, and so many other people killed. You're almost as guilty as your father... so, you understand that I can't let you live."

Michael's heart began to pound, hearing the fire growing ever closer as he suddenly picked up the crowbar and held it close.

"And don't worry, retribution is still coming for William. In fact, I've got my own personal Hell prepared for him whenever he gets there. So, you'll still have accomplished what you came here to do, right?" Cassidy snickered. " It's a win-win for everybody. "

Michael felt frozen, unable to even process what was happening.

But through the mangled cries of the dying animatronics outside, other screams overtook them.

Henry... Dana... Laura . All calling his name.

His brow furrowed, teeth gritting into a scowl. He would not give up. He would not serve them the same fate his family had given him- not without a fight.

He twisted the crowbar more firmly in his grip and dashed to the door, swinging it down into the handle. The metal buckled under the strike, bending slightly open. He held it up and swung it down again, and again, but when he raised it a fourth time, something caught around his neck and pulled him away from the door and to the tile.

Michael choked, grasping at whatever was around his neck to find nothing.

But from the corner of his eye, he saw that Cassidy was hovering behind him with a scowl, an arm hooked around his throat.

" You're not leaving, Michael, " he snarled as fire began to eat away at one of the walls. The room was filling with smoke, and already, he found it harder to breathe. " We're all going down together. "

He raised his hands, trying to claw at the boy, but he only passed through him. Instead, he wrenched himself forward out of Cassidy's grip, coughing as he tried not to breathe in the toxic air. He reached for the discarded crowbar again when it suddenly spun away on the floor.

"It's over!" Cassidy cried behind him as flames began to crowd the walls, its heat pressed to Michael's skin uncomfortably as his sweat dripped to the ground. "It's over!"

Indeed, the child appeared to be correct. Michael wheezed, vision darkening from lack of oxygen as his strength left him. He collapsed on the tile, eyes watering and burning from the smoke clouding the room. His lungs were burning as the fire closed in around him.

Cassidy began to laugh, and he was sure that his laughter would be the last thing he heard as he gave into darkness…


Laura pounded at the window, tears watering her eyes as she heard Dana and Henry hastily trying to open the door adjacent her.

" It's not- we can't- " she heard Henry gasping in panic as he pulled at the door.

Just then, a small explosion erupted near the kitchen, sending flame, smoke, and debris into the air. Dana gave a small scream, and covered her mouth. She was thinking the same thing they all were surely thinking.

Michael must be dead if not dying.

"No, no, no..." Dana began to cry.

Laura's hands shook and she backed from the window, looking down the walls of the burning pizzeria.

If every door was locked, that just meant she had to find a new way in.

She turned, examining what was around her before spotting a long metal pipe in the alleyway. She hurried to it and retrieved it from the ground, running back to the window. As she'd trained in softball as a teenager, she raised it over her shoulder and leaned back with careful aim.

With one direct swoop, Laura swung the pipe into the window and shattered the glass.

Shards cut her cheek and hands as the panes fell apart.

Henry and Dana whipped around to face her as she pressed a sneaker on the windowsill and lifted herself up.

" Laura, no! " Henry shouted, running toward her with a hand outstretched. But she'd already thrown herself into the party room on the other side, fire catching her sleeve as she jumped. She landed in a roll, extinguishing it into ash before she hopped to her feet, drawing her shirt over her mouth.

"Laura!" she heard her companions shouting from outside. Debris collapsed over much of the window behind her as she pushed through the door into the rest of the building.


The last thing Michael would hear would be the boy's laughter as he fell into darkness...

But then, Cassidy screamed.

Confused and dazed, Michael pried his eyes open one more time, and he almost didn't believe what he saw.

Another child was suddenly wrestling with Cassidy in the air, pushing and pulling at him as if to subvert him as a new energy filled the air. But this isn't what surprised him.

Because, if his eyes did not deceive him, the child fighting was his brother .

" E-Evan? " he coughed, blinking away the water in his eyes. And it surely was him.

He tossed with Cassidy, pushing and shoving him away from Michael. " Don't touch him! " he bellowed. "You won't hurt him!"

" Let go of me! " he yelled, trying to push the smaller boy off of him. But despite their difference in size, Evan was unrelentingly persistent. Michael could only stare, in shock that he was really, truly seeing his brother again, but also that he was fighting for his survival like this- fighting for his life in ways Michael had never done for him.

"Mike, get out of here!" Evan cried, craning his head back to look at him.

Coming back to his senses, he pushed himself off the tile and grabbed the crowbar. He coughed and choked at the poisonous air, fighting through it to raise the tool before striking the door.

He did this once, twice, and on the third time, it finally broke and swung open on dislocated hinges.

Michael stumbled outside, wheezing, and he clutched his burning chest. The fire was roaring to his left, blazing like a hot furnace and he pushed himself away from it.

His legs were losing strength as he moved toward the alleyway door... it was only a few yards away, now. But every step felt like he was pushing through water, heavy, dragging, and agonizing. His knees eventually buckled and he fell to the floor. His palms pressed into the tile as he tried to raise himself up, but it was no use. He was out of energy, now.

He put one hand ahead of him and attempted to pull himself forward as walls crumbled into their bare skeletons behind him.

Inch by inch, he crawled to the door.

With the last of his strength, he lifted up to his knees, and covering his hand with his sleeve, grasped the hot metallic handle and pulled.

But it would not budge.

He yanked and tugged, turning it every which way he could, but it would not open.

Despair overwhelmed him as he slumped against the wall to the floor... no... he couldn't be this close and die now...

But fate seemed to make the decision for him.

With lungs full of smoke and skin beginning to burn from the heat of the closing fire, his vision dipped into darkness where he remembered nothing.


Evan looked over his shoulder as he wrestled Cassidy to the wall, watching Michael escape into the corridor.

" Stop, you're ruining everything! " the boy screamed, thrashing in his grip.

He turned and only looked at his friend with sympathy. In Cassidy's eyes, he saw something that was not himself, nothing like the boy he had first met all those years ago. Vengeance, hatred, and most of all, pain, had transformed him into something he was not. Evan hadn't had the courage to see what he was turning into, but he had the courage now to do what this child could not.

And that was to let go.

"I'm sorry, Cassie," Evan said. "We need to move on, now."

And with that, he called on Golden Freddy to finally materialize once more. The suit appeared in a slumped heap against the far wall, and fire quickly leapt upon it, eating up its fur and metal. Cassidy screamed.

" No! " he howled. "No, stop- STOP!"

"It's time for us to rest," Evan urged, keeping his friend away from the suit. He could feel his hold on this world slowly slipping as the fire consumed it.

Cassidy turned and thrashed in the boy's arms. "No, no- no ..."

His strength was failing him as he fell limp in Evan's arms. But he too was losing energy. "I'm sorry I wasn't a better friend..." he murmured as his eyes began to droop closed. "But I still care about you anyway... I promise..."

" Evan ..." Cassidy managed. But he was alive in Evan's arms no longer.

As the Golden Freddy suit dissolved into ashes, Evan smiled as he gave into darkness.

He was finally going home .


Laura coughed, squinting through smoke as her eyes watered from the burning air. Flakes of fire fell through the air like fireflies, burning her skin where it touched.

She passed room after room, and so far, she didn't think she'd found him... she could only hope he hadn't collapsed behind some furniture, or pinned beneath debris. She shut her eyes, trying to dispel such an image from her mind as she pushed through.

A piece of wood suddenly came falling through the air in front of her and she screamed, jumping out of the way.

It collapsed and broke apart on the tiled floor, still covered in embers and ashes.

The building was falling apart. She needed to find Michael, and quickly.

Laura hurried out of the West Wing and continued to the East, ducking under the collapsing roof that crushed party tables and arcade cabinets beneath it. Dashing through the dining room, she proceeded to the other corridor.

The children's drawings once pasted to the wall were curling in fire, bits of the rope they'd lain still evident here. It was as though the fire hadn't quite breached this place yet.

Her eyes scanned the corridors and she gasped to see something hanging from the ceiling vent.

Funtime Freddy was dangling from the shaft, the shell melted and dripping while the metal molded together into an incomprehensible heap of steel and iron. The eye lights flickered as a faint, guttural moaning left its mouth. Feeling sick to her stomach, she pressed on and looked inside every room that came her way.

As she started into the last hallway, she squinted, a terrible smell burning her nose. Heart clenching with fear, she looked ahead to see a blackened figure curled up in ashes, flames still licking its body.

As she came closer, she recognized two long ears on its head.

It wasn't Michael. It was William. Most certainly dead, or would be soon.

Wrinkling her nose with disgust, she proceeded down the corridor without sparing him a second thought.

"Michael!" She tried to call out, still covering her nose and mouth. "Michael! Can you hear me?!"

Her hands shook more intensely as no call returned hers. With an increasing panic, she looked in room after room, and just when she was about to give up, she gasped and stopped. There, at the end of the hallway, was a figure slouched against the back-alley door.

Her eyes widened and she hurried forward, ducking under a beam of wood slanted against its adjacent wall. It fell just after she passed it, bringing half of the ceiling down with it.

"Mike! Michael!" she pleaded as she reached him, shaking his shoulders.

But his eyes were closed, ash covering his face as he remained silent.

"No, no-" Laura stuttered, touching his face. He didn't move.

She sat up, looking around for some way out- but the path behind her was blocked. There was only one way forward, now.

She leaned down and stretched one arm behind him, lifting him to his feet. Drawing his right arm over her shoulders, she pulled his weight onto him and held him up. Already knowing what would happen, she tried the doorknob to find it locked and leaned backward. Bracing herself, she set her foot back and slung it forward, kicking the handle.

The door budged half an inch. She kicked it again.

Another inch. She kicked again. And again. And again.

The fire grew hotter behind them, and Michael felt weak in her grasp, but she would not give in. Again, she kicked the handle.

A gap appeared beneath it as the melting door bent. She kicked it again.

It was braced an inch open.

Holding him tightly, Laura took a step back before barreling forward into the door where it broke open half a foot. Dizziness from the smoke began to take her, and she felt disoriented as she tried to aim again- but voices on the other side startled her out of her fatigue.

"C'mon, pull!" she heard Henry shouting. The door was inching more from the other side.

Laura's eyes widened, then set into a determined glare. With one more step back, she ran forward and with their combined force, it crashed open.

She and Michael fell to the concrete stairs outside where Dana and Henry promptly lifted them up and dragged them away from the building. Not a second later, another explosion blew a wave of scalding heat toward them, spraying sheets of wood and metal into the night sky. She could faintly hear sirens in the distance.

They rested Michael against the wall of the nearby building and she hurriedly put her fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. But there was none.

"No, no, no, no, no-" she stammered. "The ground, put him on the ground-"

Henry and Dana gently set him down and Laura leaned over him, pressing both her hands to his chest as she began to push up and down. She pressed into his lungs over and over, but still, he did not move.

Henry put a hand to his neck as she tried to resuscitate him, a grim expression on his face. She continued to push, trying not to cry as she looked desperately for any sign that he was alive.

"C'mon- c'mon you big idiot, wake up -" she cried. But even she understood the truth, arms giving out as Dana put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her away from his paling body. She only shook her head, covering her mouth with her hands as she began to sob.

Henry slid off his coat and resumed compressions for her, a flat expression on his face as he did.

"It's no use, Laura," Dana said in a quiet whisper. "He's gone."