Shadows and Scars
Monday 1st June 2015, 09:32 AM
Even as they prepared their equipment and readied themselves for what was to come, there was a certain cloud of worry that had descended on them all. Samantha could see this in the downwards looks on Ella and Jack's faces, their eyes glued to the ground. Avoiding any eye contact which would betray how they were feeling.
Opposite to her, Carl was subdued as he loaded up his lockpicks and the portable crowbar into his backpack. He occasionally shot a glance at the others, but he seemed unable to find an answer on what to do. Just about the only thing he'd said to her had been, "I'm worried about him. I've seen the guy go through so much unfazed."
Taking a deep breath, Sam looked over at the corner of the room, where Mike was silently waiting, facing away from everyone. He had barely said a word that morning. His skin was pale, and when she had seen his eyes, they'd been bloodshot. Whenever he winced, it was like he was in such tremendous pain.
There wasn't any point in denying it; Mike had become a nervous wreck after what happened that morning, jumpy and very nearly broken. How he was even still functioning, Samantha had no idea. She'd checked him out and there wasn't anything physically wrong, other than a low blood sugar and dehydration, both of which she'd already remedied.
When Ella had approached them soon after the incident, she had been gaunt. "I didn't want to bring this up, but I'm worried about him."
Samantha had blinked. "What? Worried about who?"
"Something happened to Mike this morning. Something bad. He went for a walk just before dawn, and when he came back, he was having a panic attack. He's not said anything the last two hours…"
Nodding with some dread, Sam had followed her out the building, "Any idea what happened?"
"All he's said about is that he saw something…no idea what it was. But he saw something out there. Something bad."
That dread in Sam only grew deeper, "Does he think he was followed?"
"Like I said, I don't know." Ella had shaken her head, "The thing is, I had a look myself after I was sure he was okay. There wasn't a sign of anything around where he'd come from, other than him. I don't get it. It was like—"
"He saw a ghost?"
"Well, yeah."
"It could be anything. If he's hallucinating, that's a bad sign. If he's not, that's even worse."
"Why? Who do you think it could be?"
"If it was something that sent Mike Schmidt running," She mused, "then it should be scaring all of us."
When she had checked him over, when he had been sitting silently shaking over by a tree stump in front of the house, he had barely been able to say a word. His eyes had been unfocused and barely conscious, like he was in a trance. Though he had not been very helpful in explaining what had happened to him, it had been easy to deduce that it wasn't anything good.
Now he was at least standing, and had taken some food and drink. Nevertheless, he wasn't acting himself and everyone knew it. She spent a few minutes debating to herself before stepping over to him, keeping her voice low.
"Are you feeling any better?"
Even with how low she had been keeping her voice, it had still made him jump, and he had taken a few moments before responding quietly, "A little bit."
Now came the difficult bit. The last thing she wanted was to be a man down during such a risky operation, but she knew it was the right call.
"A little bit's at least some progress. I think, though…I think it'll be better for you to stay here, while we go to Fredbear's. You look like you're close to fainting."
Straightening up surprisingly quickly, Mike acted like he'd just been shocked. He gave a small shake of the head and avoided looking into her eyes. "No. No! I'll…I'll be fine. I just need to catch my breath."
"Are you sure?"
"I don't…" A desperate look flashed in his eyes before he quickly locked it down, "I don't want to be alone right now."
Staring at him for a moment, Samantha gave an accepting nod, both relieved yet more worried at the same time. As much as she hated making this sort of call, she had given him the option. "Okay. But if you start to feel worse, you need to tell us."
Heading back over to Carl, Samantha affirmed their status. He gave a glance at Mike before putting down the map on the table, rolling it carefully and took a few moments to examine it.
"Alright." He cleared his throat before speaking, "Now, I feel it redundant, but I want to be sure. Time is of the essence. We need to be in and out, before we attract any suspicion. We are doing our business just down the road from where we eat, which is far from ideal, but that's just a case of unfortunate circumstances. Since we do not have a backup option where we can stay if this place is burnt, it means that if we do mess up, the only thing we can do is get back onto the open road."
"Which will be bad." Jack agreed.
"Yep. It'll be very bad. It's an open town and the closest bit of cover is the same forest we escaped through the last time. So if we get caught and they figure out who we are, our options are limited."
Ella had her arms crossed, "So we don't get caught. Easy."
"If we are lucky." Pointing at the map, Carl stared at the lines before continuing, "It looks to me that our best bet would be the back entrance, but we'll need to get up close and personal before we can confirm it. Once we're in position, we can be sure."
It didn't take them long to traverse the woods. Within minutes, they were coming down onto the estate. It was mostly quiet, early morning commuters having gone to work and the kids in the neighbourhood at school. As they entered, Sam was surprised at the difference between this little estate and the rest of the town.
It was like someone had picked up a neighborhood from Hurricane and plopped it right here, so out of place. However, it didn't escape her that it wasn't so well populated. Most of the houses looked uninhabited and the pathway and roads were filthy.
As they got closer to the abandoned building towards the end of the neighborhood, it only grew more apparent. Carl had been right; had it not been for the confirmation, no one would have suspected it to be the former home of Fazbear Entertainment. There was no markings anywhere on the building that weren't graffiti, burn marks, of signs of ruin. It surprised her; it wasn't usually this easy to strip a building of its identity. Usually, the solution was to building something else on top of it.
Trying their best to remain as incognito as possible, the group made their way to a better position so that they could get moment to make their decision. Standing over by a small incline between two buildings, the rest of the group waited while Sam and Carl made their decision.
"What do you think?" Sam asked Carl, trying her best to guess what he was deciding. It had been a long time since she'd been on the streets like this.
"My hunch was right." Carl murmured, "We'll be spotted if we try and go through the front. Too many houses have an easy line of sight and there's no cover."
"And the front door's boarded up." Ella pointed out.
"Yeah, that too. I have a feeling that if we start snapping off boards, it will blow our cover."
"Then the front's out of the window." Crossing her arms, worry started to seep into Samantha's thoughts. "We better hope that the back is a good enough option, because if not, we're not getting in."
"What about the roof?" Jack suggested, "Could be another entrance through the vents."
"Definitely not. It's a one story building. All it would take is someone walking along."
"It would be quite the audacious effort." Carl agreed.
Crossing the street, the group made their way back towards the trees, keeping an eye out for onlookers. As they did so, they turned a corner and found their way blocked by an old fence. Sam was relieved when they found the opening towards the left. At the very least, they wouldn't have to clambered over.
Within moments, they were at the back door, four massive boards of wood blocking their way in. Testing the durability of the blanks by trying to pull them, Carl stopped after a few moments and turned to look them.
"They clearly didn't want anyone getting in." He said, bemused, "That's a good sign. Might mean there's something in there they'd rather no one see."
Dropping his backpack onto the floor, Carl took the portable crowbar out and began his work getting them off. As quietly as he could, he began snapping off each screw and grabbing the planks with Jack's help before they would tumble to the ground and cause a noise. After several painful minutes of watching, waiting for some random person to hear the noise and coming sniffing around, the last board was taken off.
Groping for the handle, Carl gave it a tug and snorted when he felt the resistance. He turned to look at Samantha. She smiled, and gave a shrug. "It's never easy, is it?"
"That, it's not." He mumbled before getting his lockpicks out and he began his work. It didn't take him long and the satisfying snap of the ancient lock coming undone announced his success. He pulled the door open and they all quickly entered the building.
"What are we going to do if someone finds that mess?" Ella inquired, "It might bring some trouble on our doorstep."
"Yeah, I had that feeling." Carl acknowledged, "Too late, now. We'll have to hope for the best, that it won't come back to bite us."
As they had that initial look, their first impression was down struck. Much like the outside, the inside of the building was almost completely barren. They stood there for a few moments, taking it in.
"Lord help me." Carl grumbled as Samantha stepped in front of him, looking around for herself.
"I had a feeling it would be like this." Jack admitted, "Even if anything was left behind when the place called, it's been, what, thirty years? Combine that with people like Reggie Wood roaming around looking for artefacts and it ruins even the best places. Anything of value would've been looted a long time ago."
"If this has just been another dead end," Carl growled, "after all we've gone through to get here…"
"It's not." Samantha insisted, stepping forward, taking the place's essence in. She could feel that same feeling she had when they entered the house for the first time. Had this been what Tom had felt, every time he'd found another lead? His feeling for this thing had always been more powerful. "I think we need to have a good look around before we call it quits."
Though Carl seemed doubtful, he nodded. "We were sure that the old place was empty. We found more than we had ever expected. If there is even the smallest thing left here…"
"Then we need to find it." Samantha agreed, "I reckon we should split up. Me and Carl will take the far side of the building, the three of you take this side. If there's even the slightest chance that there's something that will answer our questions, we need to find it."
Looking back at the others, Carl took a deep breath. "Alright. We meet back up here in half an hour. Keep an eye out, in case someone did see us."
"Got it, boss." Ella answered for them, seeing that Jack was too deep in thought and Mike seemed to be getting less steady by the minute. Before they left, to go to their side of the building, Sam shot him a concerned glass, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared when she knew she needed to focus on the job.
Heading deeper into the building, Sam and Carl were wordless as they ducked into one of the rooms that was surrounded by darkness. Carl flicked on his flashlight and looked around. Workshop tables and other industrial furniture that seemed to have been built into the very building's skeleton lined the room. Empty shelves, covered in dust, were empty.
"Definitely the backstage room." Carl murmured, "Looks just like the one at the old Freddy's."
They had a brief look, with Carl even checking along the walls of the room. Sam blinked in confusion, but she remembered the part of Caine's report about the discovery of a fake wall. It filled her with an uncanny dread to imagine something like that small room being here as well, but she didn't question it.
When Carl had finished examining the room, he seemed equally relieved as he did annoyed. They left the room and continued down the hall, reaching which seemed to have once been the staff room. Before they entered, Carl cleared his throat.
"How are you doing?"
Taking a moment to answer, Sam kept her words short. "Fine."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm fine. I'll be fine. I just want to get this job done."
"Okay, then." She could tell that he wasn't convinced, "I'm willing to lend an ear when you're ready."
Though she was somewhat annoyed that he was pressing her, she kept it from showing and reminded herself that he meant well. "I appreciate, Carl. I do. Let's just…focus on work."
He nodded before they entered the room, taking the emptiness in. There were old plug sockets along the border and a few excess pieces of furniture that seemed to have been bolted down at some point during the building's history. Parts of the tiled floor had been ripped up, exposing the innards and the ceiling was completely bare.
Stepping further into the room, the two of them had a look around. Heading back towards the walls, Carl continued to check for anything hidden by the tattered wallpaper. Looking towards the furniture, Sam could see a file cabinet that was hidden in the corner. She stepped towards it and gave it a slight push.
It didn't move an inch. "It's been bolted down." She mumbled to herself, "Like the rest of them." Hesitant and knowing they would not be so lucky as to find something considered to be important inside, she pulled the first drawer open. When she found nothing except cobwebs, she turned her nose at it and closed the drawer, continuing downwards.
When she came to the second to last drawer, she saw the stained paper inside. Newspapers, judging by the scrawl of text inside. Though she considered just shutting the drawer and not even bothering, she remembered something she'd been told a long time ago.
"I've found working this job that the whole 'one man's trash is another man's treasure' can be the difference between a rut and a breakthrough."
Though she knew she'd heard it most recently by reading through Tom's files and seeing that mode of thinking used by the love of her life in his own work, she knew who he'd learnt it from. Her dad had been working cases before she and Tom had even been born.
So she took the newspapers out and placed them on the old wooden table next to the cabinet before searching the next drawer down. More newspapers. She dug them out too and she could see Carl finishing with what he was doing and walking towards her.
"Newspapers?" He inquired, which she nodded at. "Pieces of the past. Maybe we'll get lucky. A far better find than it would seem at first glance. We found out about this place because of one random issue."
There were a lot of them. About fifty issues at the very least, none of them sorted and all with varied age. Nodding, Carl folded his arms. "Whatever might be inside these could tell us something we don't know yet. If it was written thirty years ago…and it wasn't a major label which printed them. I don't see them being known by anyone other than the residents from back then."
Sam knew he was right as he grabbed one half. "I'll go through one half, you the other?"
"Seems like the best way."
There were no chairs in the room, to their misfortune. Choosing one of the corners that weren't covered in debris or anything crawling around, Sam plopped the pile she had chosen on the ground next to her. Carl had stayed by the table and began to read through them silently as Samantha did so with her pile.
The first issue she chose had only one story relating to the town they were in, something about a leak in the gas pipes and for residents to be careful around the northern part of town. She couldn't see anything important about those four paragraphs, so she placed it aside and moved on to the next issue.
Her fortunes lifted with the next issue. On the third story was a massive title announcing Fredbear's Hurricane. As she read through, she could see that it was about the merging of the Fredbear's property into Fazbear Entertainment. The merge would lead to the opening of the first Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, slated for later that year.
How on Earth they got so many chances, I'll ever know, Samantha thought bitterly to herself. She would've thought that after the third or fourth major incident, someone would've stepped in to stop them from trying again. As she checked through the papers one by one and finding the occasional mention of Fredbear's, she noticed something about the date.
"Earliest one I've got seems to be from 1982." She mentioned to Carl, "Latest is 1984. What about yours?"
"Spot on." He agreed, "There seemed to have been a boom period that time. I'm thinking that Fredbear's was about the only restaurant except for a few bars here and there. It was an anomaly, the type of stuff only the bigger towns got, which is why it had so much attention."
Sam pondered on the next newspaper she read through. "So, assuming that they had to pack up and leave rather than it simply being a case of moving on upwards, there wouldn't have been much controversy circling them."
"That's assuming that something did happen here to get it closed down."
She laughed at that. "Come on. That's hopeful at best." Looking back down at the newspapers, Samantha selected the next one and scanned the old print for anything related. Even if she had to do so with every single article.
When her eyes fell onto the story, she narrowed them before reading through. As she came to the end, she felt grim rather than relieved. "I think I found something. Listen to this. Fredbear's slated to close after major incident. Issue is dated…to the September of 1983. Looks like something happened that Summer."
Interested, Carl stopped reading and looked over his shoulder. "What else does it say?"
"Not much. Doesn't say what the incident was. Only that the place closed."
"It's a start. You said it was the September issue, right? Look around for the issue before that."
Knowing he was right, she put it down away from the scrap pile and started checking for dates. When she found the two she was looking for, she cleared her throat. "So, there's something in here. I've got both the July and August issues, here. How does Incident at Fredbear's No Fault sound to you?"
"It sounds like damage control."
She agreed. "What are you thinking? A cover up? An attempt to place the blame elsewhere?"
"If someone had the lawyers and the will, they could make something disappear, as long as they weren't pinned to the wall with it. Fazbear Entertainment excelled at it. They had to start somewhere."
"Especially with what the July article spoke about." Checking the issue again, she pursed her lips at it, "The incident came soon after an introduction of new animatronics. More than that, soon after another incident regarding something to do with springlocks. Sound familiar?"
Standing straight, Carl fully turned to her. "Hey, do you still have Tom's files with you?"
"Yep. Kept them on me ever since I lost the file on the house. I don't want to lose anything else."
"Mind letting me borrow them?"
She almost snorted, "You're just about the only person I would. Here." She took the folder out from her coat and threw it to him. After he caught the folder, he began plucking a couple of files out, like he knew exactly where he was looking.
"Just put them back afterward." She found herself telling him, but she knew it was not needed.
"They'll be right where I found them." He assured her before taking one of the files and tapping it. "I had a feeling. So, you remember how before everything that happened, Lamarck had laid the foundation for most of the leads Tom would go on to look for? One of the things he found were various incidents that happened during that time. We had no idea what springlocks were, so we had nothing to connect the dots to."
"He found two incidents that happened; two injuries, possible casualties caused by two experimental springlock suits. Employees by the looks of it. Those tapes that Mike's dad recorded, the ones that talked about the backrooms? Well, it might be that the specific mention of an injured employee going there was because of that."
"Right." Samantha knew what he was saying, "Because Freddy's must've been opened before Fredbear's closed? That tape called it a Sister Location. So unless there's some other major incident regarding an animatronic malfunction in some other place we've never heard of…"
"It means that this might be the one we've been looking for." Carl finished off for her. "But it's that second one that caught my intention. Whatever happened led to the injury of a child. A bad one. You know how Fazbear Entertainment weren't able to cover up both of the Missing Children's Incidents? They instead manipulated the information and made it seem like there was only ever one."
"Yeah. So?"
"So when Tom was looking into the Bite of '87, he was so sure that the victim was a child." Seeming to grow more gaunt as he spoke, Carl steadied himself on the table. "He never understood how the information he had seemed too accurate when it turned out that it was Jeremy Fitzgerald who was bitten instead."
Samantha was confused and she could only stare at him. What was he talking about? "Are you…are you suggesting that there were two bites?"
"It's just a theory. We couldn't understand how everything we'd discovered was disproven in one moment. I never thought to bring it up with him because I had no reason to believe it to be anything more than a hypothesis."
As she listened, the idea he was suggesting slowly began to dawn on her. "So…they cover it up and it just becomes urban legend?"
"Exactly." Grabbing the newspaper he had been reading, Carl showed it to her. "It's strange. Looking at these two, you would never had thought them to be the architects behind so much misery."
"Who?"
"The co-owners. We spent so much time trying to figure out this, but it was sealed tight. You think they planned for it? Or that they never intended it?"
Staring at the picture in the article, Samantha felt something tug at her gut. "Hang on. There's something familiar about…"
Standing up, Samantha went over to the table and searched for what she was thinking of. For a few moments, Carl stood there watching her. When she finally found the section she was thinking of, she felt a chill fill her body.
"What is it?" Carl inquired, "What did you find?"
"I had a hunch." She explained, turning to him with her eyes glued to the document, "So many names in those archives, but he never had any way to pinpoint who was important. Nevertheless, Tom always tried to dig up anything he could about them."
"One of those men in the picture…his name is Henry, correct?"
Carl looked back at the newspaper and scanned through the paragraphs. "Yeah. The one on the right, with the long blonde hair and beard. How did you know?"
"It was in the files. Tom talked about a man named Henry. He believed him to be the one who built the animatronics, that he would've known exactly how they all ticked. More than that, he was one of the original employees at Fredbear's, and was heavily involved in the merger between Fredbear's and Fazbear Entertainment."
Walking over to her, Carl had a raised eyebrow, "Yeah…yeah, I remember. He was one of the guys who Tom sought under suspicion. You know, when he was trying to figure out the Purple Man's identity. I don't think it worked out. He's dead, isn't he?"
Sam nodded. "Tom looked into him and figured out is was the complete opposite. His part came to an end during the Missing Children's Incident. Henry lost a child and soon afterwards, took his own life. He left behind an ex-wife and a daughter, but Tom was never able to track them down."
"We ran into a lot of dead ends like that." Carl mused, bitterly remembering how they had to start at the drawing board more times than they could count, "The most Tom could decide on was that Henry's kid was one of the victims. We couldn't figure out which victim, because he only ever managed to track down two of the families."
Absently, Samantha looked back at the picture, at the man named Henry. She couldn't even imagine the pain he had gone through. Losing a child, in such a way…if anything had ever happened to her own, it would have destroyed her utterly. That rage began to fill her again, the one that came whenever she had read anything about the monster who had caused all of this.
The one who had taken her husband away from her, in the end.
Taking deep breaths, she then showed the newspaper to Carl again. "But that's not what got me thinking. What do you see in this picture?"
"Um…well, looks like some sort of grand opening. Maybe an interview piece?"
"Exactly. And there's two men in the picture. Henry, the one who built the animatronics. His partner, William, who was the businessman. Creativity and business, two sides of the same coin. Fredbear's, their creation. That name…I knew it the moment I saw it."
"What name?"
She withdrew the file, the one she had examined so many times. On it was two pictures; a shot of a grainy CCTV footage, showing a man standing in a room with a tiled flooring. Dressed in a massive suit of plastic and wires, holding a rabbit mask bigger than his head. In the other, a slightly beefy man with dead grey eyes. Brown hair that was unkempt. He had been holding a board which Samantha guessed would've had his name on it, but the image had been doctored, the original lost to time.
"Do you remember those news articles about the Missing Children's Incident?" Samantha asked Carl, without moving her eyes to him, "The prime suspect was arrested. Yet, no matter how much the two of you looked, you could never find any trace of the man. It was like someone came along and stripped everything away, any mention of who really did it. After Jeremy was falsely accused, his name was the only one ever associated with what happened."
"All Tom ever managed to find was some grainy CCTV footage and this lineup photo. Anything else was gone. After all, we didn't have much reason to believe that the identity of the man could be found on something as insignificant as a newspaper…"
Turning the newspaper and the file to Carl, she looked at him with a surge of anger, yet something more. Victory, perhaps.
"The man in Tom's files looks awfully similar to William Afton, doesn't he?"
Some time after, the two of them had regrouped with the others and made their way out of the building, trying to leave it as they had found it. The midday sun shined downed upon them by the time they had made it back to the house. Without many words, Samantha had gone upstairs to find some solitude as she perused the files once again.
For hours, she tried to find anything that contradicted her findings. Though she was never a detective by trade, she was a scientist. One with a tendency to go over her hypothesis over and over until she was satisfied. So that's what she did.
Every time she came to her conclusion, it always led to the same pathway. Without a confession from the man himself, it would never be undeniable. But it didn't matter, because she knew the truth. A truth that Fazbear Entertainment had done everything they could to bury. A truth that her husband had spent countless hours trying to uncover.
A truth that she now exposed.
It doesn't matter if you're dead, she thought venomously, rotting in that suit, buried under your sins. I know who you are now, you son of a bitch. I'm going to burn what's left of your bloody world to the ground.
