A/N: All right, I'm highly motivated to get the Halloween chapter set done on time, so let's get it done!
Don't forget to reactivate your email notifications from . If your email "rejects their messages" for whatever reason, will deactivate sending emails for your account. I'm pretty sure that's a big reason why not many people were able to read the last 2 chapters, and it's something I noticed happen to me too!
Also, for those of you who were wondering, I do plan on seeing the Five Night's at Freddy's movie at some point. However, since I haven't gotten the opportunity to see it yet, if I DO write a chapter about it for this fic, it probably won't be for at least a week or two (and I might not be able to write about it at all, depending on when I get the chance to see it). There's also the problem that a movie is simply WAY too long to write a chapter about, so a play-by-play commentary by the Schmidt family about the events of the movie probably won't be happening.
Chapter 195 – The Fear Factory Part 2
When the ghoulish butler has promised that there were a few frights and delights left in the Fear Factory, he hadn't been joking.
He had directed them down a metal hallway lit with a brilliant blue light that contrasted sharply with unholy orange glow of the sitting room, but any relief the group could've gotten from the change in the atmosphere was immediately ruined by the fact that the walls were filled with holes and jail cells in which countless gaunt and emaciated prisoners reached out and grabbed at anybody who passed them by. Even worse, the prisoners were all moaning and screaming for help, praying for a deliverance that would never come.
"Holy crap, this is actually horrifying," Liz muttered as they hurried down the hall, not wanting to stay in the company of these prisoners for any longer than they absolutely had to.
"What do you think is gonna happen to these guys?" Fritz asked uncertainly. "Sacrificed to a demonic ritual, being experimented on by a bunch of mad scientists, or dying a slow and painful death in these cells?"
"That's like asking what kind of cancer you want to die from," Melody replied grimly. "No matter what answer you pick, they all suck horribly and you're gonna be in for a really shit time."
"What's cancer?" Cassidy asked curiously.
"Something that you won't ever have to worry about since you're dead already," Mike answered curtly as they made their way to the next room. The room itself looked like a cross between a medieval dungeon and a morgue, in which multiple figures were covered in full body bags that were wrapped in chains and hanging down from the ceiling. Unlike many of the figures they had seen, these bags were completely motionless, a sign that they were well and truly dead.
"Glad we can't see what's in these body bags," Jeremy commented with a grimace. "I REALLY don't want to know what's in these things."
"It can't be worse than anything we've seen already," Susie mumbled.
Gabe groaned. "Don't ever say that, please, you're pretty much asking for things to get worse if you do…" he warned.
The former Freddy inhabitant's words proved prophetic, as the next hallway showcased a third demonic creature, one that they could see most clearly since it was practically standing in front of them. The demon was a horrid monstrosity, a horned devil with leathery grey skin and hands filled with bony razor-sharp claws with only the faintest amount of sinew and skin covering them. An unholy abomination that practically reeked of evil.
"I'm not going to say this demon is scarier than Nightmare," Charlie commented, making sure that Melody couldn't hear her this time, "but it definitely looks a hell of a lot uglier."
"Nightmare only shows up as a black monster bear because he wants to, right? So what does his true form look like?" Susie pondered.
"You probably don't ever want to know," Mike warned. "There's quite a few stories where a powerful demon lord's true form is so horrifying and eldritch that you can be driven mad just from looking at it. I don't know if that's true for Nightmare and the demons in real life, but I wouldn't be surprised."
"I feel like this demon is warning us that something even scarier's up ahead," Liz mumbled.
"Then all we can do is get ready for another scare," Jeremy sighed.
The group advanced down the hallway…only to find themselves in a truly bizarre location. They had entered the room of what looked like a circus tent, with the walls and ceiling covered in fabric colored in red and white stripes, as well as lights hanging down from the ceiling that looked almost festive in appearance. There were also picture frames scattered throughout the room that were shockingly normal, showcasing random different sights but nothing that could be considered scarier. The seemingly benign nature of the circus room was so out-of-nowhere that the Schmidts and Melody could only blink in disbelief. The only elements of the room that could be considered "creepy" were a skeletal fortune teller in the booth with her bones clearly visible for everyone to see.
"Uhh…" Cassidy was the first to break the silence. "Did we make a wrong turn somewhere?"
"No, we didn't," Jeremy shook his head. "There was only one way leading from that demonic statue."
"What is even happening?" Fritz was still struggling to comprehend what he was seeing. "Why are we suddenly in the freaking CIRCUS of all places?"
Charlie's eyes narrowed as she spotted a ghoul sitting in a booth covered in shadows. The ghoul was popping out of the darkness in the booth only to give passersby 3D glasses. Otherwise, he was, surprisingly enough, doing nothing but drinking out of a hip flask that made him look like he was an alcoholic. It was the first ghoul they had seen in the Fear Factory who was behaving in a purely comical fashion rather than trying to scare anyone.
"I don't trust it," she" warned. "There's gonna be a twist or a surprise coming up later. I'm sure of it."
"You're probably right," Melody agreed as she and Mike took two pairs of 3D glasses. "It's really common in amusement parks to have monster clowns during Halloween. I'm sure that we're gonna see some in a little bit."
They proceeded deeper into the circus tent, and at first it truly did seem like this part of the Fear Factory was a welcome reprieve from all the horrifying sights that they had witnessed before now. The red and white stripes of the tent fabric gradually shifted into a neon orange and green, colors that were a bit more unnerving to look at (partially because they were two colors typically associated with Halloween), but otherwise there wasn't anything openly terrifying. There was one clown that jumpscared them while they were walking in the tent, but the clown itself was fairly normal-looking and wouldn't have been out of place in a regular circus.
"This all looks normal," Fritz remarked. "It feels so off after everything we've just seen."
"I'm telling you guys, we're gonna go back to horror stuff really soon," Charlie insisted. "Trust me on this."
The circus pathway led them to a statue of a ghoul pointing down a hallway that looked like a bizarre mixture of circus and factory, with a wall entirely filled with rollers colored in neon green and orange paint that continuously rotated. Each roller demonstrated different designs, such as stripes, stars, circles, and diamonds. It wasn't particularly scary in and of itself, but it was more unnerving than anything else.
The Schmidts and Melody had made it about halfway down the hallway when the metal fence blocking the rollers suddenly bent forward, with the rollers sliding towards them as though they were about to crush them.
"Eek!" Susie shrieked as she flew away from the falling rollers, completely forgetting the fact that she was a ghost and couldn't be affected by them anyway.
The fence held strong, however, and the rollers were stopped from completely pulverizing Mike and Melody, as deranged laughter echoed around them. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the rollers continued to churn as they always had as though nothing had happened.
"That was scary," Cassidy admitted. "I thought Dad and Melody were gonna get crushed by those rollers!"
"You heard that laughter just now, right?" Gabe remarked with a frown. "Somebody definitely enjoyed watching us freak out."
"The circus atmosphere is about to get creepy, I can feel it," Jeremy scowled. "It was too good to be true."
The former Bonnie and Marionette inhabitants were soon proven correct. The passage forward was still surrounded by circus tent fabric, but now it was almost entirely painted in sickly neon orange, neon green, and dark purple instead of the innocuous red and white. The pictures had also changed, now featuring hideous clowns with monstrous faces and grotesque grins instead of innocent circus activities. More clowns were also waiting to jumpscare them, this time having much more monstrous and horrifying appearances than the one innocent-looking clown before them had. It didn't help that there were other morbid decorations that the first circus section had lacked, including skulls, skeletons, and decorated clown heads painted with the same demented orange and green.
The ghosts all looked noticeably creeped out and frightened by the sudden grotesque transformation the circus had undergone…except for Charlie, who folded her arms and looked smug more than anything else. "Told you this was going to become creepy again," she smirked. "Did I call it, or did I call it?"
Susie pouted. "Yeah, yeah, you were right, sis. Don't have to brag about it."
"Definitely a good lesson to learn here," Melody remarked. "If something is too good to be true, that's probably because if it is."
"These clowns are all creepy as hell," Fritz commented as he watched one of the monstrous clowns try to scare another group of guests. "They all look a hell of a lot like the Joker."
"Yeah, Joker would definitely feel right at home here," Liz agreed.
They made it to the end of the path, where they were greeted with a ghoulish humanoid with a rabbit's head "helpfully" offering a severed clown's head to look at like a lantern.
"What a great circus," Charlie commented sarcastically. "Really says something about the quality of the clowns when you're literally cutting their heads off."
"Better the clowns get their heads cut off than us," Cassidy pointed out.
"Touché," the former Marionette acknowledged.
Melody snickered. "I like how you guys are talking like you're actually walking through a real-life Fear Factory than just a horror attraction with a bunch of actors and creepy sets," she commented. "It makes everything so much more fascinating and entertaining."
"Not sure what to think about that, so I'll just assume that that's a compliment," Gabe replied with a shrug. They proceeded down a hallway that looked downright demented in appearance, with countless shades of psychedelic colors that their minds struggled to comprehend, until they found themselves in a large room that that appeared to be the very heart of the circus.
All the clowns in the room looked just as monstrous as the ones in the rest of the circus, with painted grins that were far too wide to fit on a human face. One was trying to drive a worn-down, dilapidated buggy, fruitlessly spinning the wheel as he cackled at anybody who passed by. Another was poking his head out and leering from a van painted in neon green with a demonic clown's head painted on the side.
"These clowns are really creeping me out," Susie mumbled.
"The Joker is definitely running this circus from behind the scenes," Jeremy agreed. "Either the Joker or Satan, not sure which one."
"Monster clowns might be a newer type of monster," Mike commented as yet another clown swung upside-down from a trapeze in the ceiling, "but they're pretty much ingrained in Halloween and pop culture by now. If you go to any amusement park in Halloween, they always change the décor to be spooky and Halloween-ish. And you'll always, ALWAYS find monster clowns there all the time."
"Wait, really? Can we go to an amusement park during Halloween and see?" Cassidy asked eagerly.
Mike shook his head. "Probably not this year, we're already visiting the Fear Factory and we can't get too complacent in case the Pizzaplex decides to open up soon," he replied. The former Golden Freddy inhabitant looked a bit disappointed, but didn't complain.
"I wish I could fly up to that clown and appear for just a second," Fritz remarked with a snicker. "I'd be the one giving that clown a scare for a change!"
"DON'T do that," Melody warned sternly. "That's an actual actor on that trapeze. If he falls off because you scared him, he could seriously get hurt or even killed."
"I know, I know, I wasn't going to!" Fritz protested. "But it would be kinda funny to scare him like that, right?"
"Yeah, it would be kinda funny," Liz admitted as they continued on. They circled around to the other side of the van, where one clown had strapped another clown to a metal Frankenstein-esque table and was zapping him continuously with electricity, causing him to shriek with pain and insane laughter.
"Geez, this is messed up," Susie muttered. "They're even torturing each other."
Charlie merely shook her head at the barbaric sight. "Sometimes, villains are just so evil that they don't have any honor or decency amongst themselves. No honor amongst thieves and all that."
The rest of the room didn't look any better. The walls were just as deranged, with various decorations including demonic clown's heads and faces that grinned menacingly, showcasing multicolored eyes that seemed to stare into the souls of the passersby. It was a circus that would make the Joker himself proud.
"I think the exit over there," Gabe pointed at a doorway. "Let's just get out of here."
"No argument from me," Melody agreed. "Monster clowns give me the creeps too."
They entered a hallway that was basically a bridge surrounded by a cylinder painted in a pink and purple spiral with green dots scattered around. The cylinder rotated continuously all around them, contributing further to the "spiral appearance" and disorienting everyone. What caught everyone by surprise was that the cylinder stopped for a moment, and then the bridge and door itself rotated 360 degrees, flipping everyone upside down for a brief moment as everyone hung on for dear life, before righting itself and allowing them to continue.
"What the hell?" Liz spluttered. "The bridge and the door spun around! How does that even work?"
"I've never seen anything like this before," Jeremy remarked, looking just as surprised as his sister. "I have no clue what just happened."
"You think you're confused?" Mike snorted. "You guys just floated in the air while the room spun. We actually had to grab the freaking handrails to make sure we didn't far. And no, don't ask me how this worked, I'm just as confused as you are."
Liz shook her head. "If YOU of all people can't figure this out, Dad, I'm not gonna even bother trying."
As they left the cylindrical room with the spinning bridge behind them, the passageway shifted back to the "standard" factory appearance with metal walls and cages that was almost welcome…although they didn't have a chance to get comfortable for long, as a ghoul holding a freaking chainsaw was waiting for them, making slashing gestures with his gigantic weapon.
"Gah!" Cassidy exclaimed as she flew away from the ghoul with the chainsaw. "Wasn't expecting that!"
Melody only raised an eyebrow. "Gonna be honest," she commented, "kinda surprised that we haven't seen somebody carrying a chainsaw before now. That's a classic horror weapon in a ton of horror movies."
"I think this Fear Factory is scary enough without a bunch of ghouls carrying chainsaws ready to slice people to bits," Susie pointed out.
"If anything, the chainsaws are kinda tame compared to some of the really messed up crap we saw earlier," Gabe replied.
As they moved away from the ghoul with the chainsaw, they got a sense of just how large the room truly was, with the passage being made entirely of wire fencing that allowed them to catch a glimpse of the other visitors in areas that they had just passed and had yet to step foot in. There were pieces of machinery scattered all around them just out of reach, and the entire area was covered in smoke that made it very difficult for anyone to see what's going on. Ghoulish workers were also wandering through the room, occasionally walking up to the fence to scare and sneer at the visitors. The smoke got stronger as they progressed, to the point that they could barely see past it by the end of the room.
"Ugh," Jeremy mumbled as he fruitlessly waved away the smoke in front of his face. "I can't see a thing in this smoke!"
"It's a good thing they set up the fences so that we clearly know where to go," Charlie remarked. "Otherwise I have no idea how we're supposed to find the exit without stumbling around the entire room for a couple of minutes."
"I feel like there's something really scary waiting for us in the next room that this smoke is trying to hide," Liz warned.
"We're right at the end of the room," Mike pointed out a passageway leading out of the smoky chamber. "So we'll see if you're right in just a few seconds."
They entered another metal passageway that was dark except for an ominous green light, with mist being generated around the floor to such a degree that it gave the appearance of the entire hallway being flooded with water or acid. The fog had gotten so intense that they could barely see anything, although they were occasionally jumpscared by multiple ghouls (one of whom was carrying a human skull) and a crocodile head with glowing red eyes as they traversed the hallway.
"Okay, I might've been wrong," Liz admitted. "I don't think they're trying to really scare us here, more like creep us out."
"The fog and the darkness set up the atmosphere really well," Gabe commented approvingly. "You really get the impression that this is an abandoned sewer where a monster like that crocodile can pop out from the shadows at any time."
"The only real thing I could suggest is that they should've kept the crocodile head til the end, not show it at the beginning," Susie critiqued. "Would've been scarier that way."
The next part of the hallway shifted from green to dark blue, and the visibility from the mist somehow got even worse. Nothing outright jumpscared them, but at two different points the walls flashed red to reveal humanoid creatures with pale white skin and fangs for mouths hiding behind the walls, the closest thing that any of them had seen so far to vampires in the Fear Factory.
"Are we still in a sewer?" Jeremy asked. "Or are we in some kind of tomb now? Vampires don't live in sewers."
"If there is a tomb, it should be close by," Mike replied. "Only one way to find out, right?"
After traversing through another section filled with green mist, they found themselves in what looked like a farmyard or corn maze. Of course, it was just as twisted as everything else in the Fear Factory, as they were first greeted by a ghoul whose jaw had been forcibly ripped downward to reveal a gigantic maw filled with wires connecting the maxilla to the mandible, and then a laughing scarecrow skeleton who was beckoning them deeper into the corn maze.
"Is it just me?" Cassidy asked. "Or does this look a lot like the Corn Maze from Fazbear Entertainment's VR game?"
"Not just the Corn Maze," Susie replied. "It really looks like something straight out of the whole Curse of Dreadbear DLC period, except replace the demon and monster animatronics with standard Halloween monsters."
"Good, cause I did NOT want to stumble into Grim Foxy wandering around this farmyard ready to attack me with a hook," Fritz commented dryly.
Unlike the rest of the Fear Factory, the area around them was surrounded by dense foliage and leaves, creating a more rural environment that contrasted sharply with the cold industrial nature of the Fear Factory. The passageways were made of wooden fences rather than metal, and the sheds and small buildings scattered throughout the area were made of lumber rather than steel. Jack O Lanterns had also been positioned on top of the various fenceposts scattered throughout the area, eyes and fanged grins filled with a fiery glow.
As they made their way deeper into the farmyard, another scarecrow glowing with pale blue light was waiting for them, this one struggling to free itself from the wooden post that it had forcibly pinned to. It reminded the ghost kids of many of the tortured prisoners in the depths of the Fear Factory, although thankfully the scarecrow was far less graphic.
There were also more animals held in wooden boxes scattered throughout the twisted farm, including two monstrous hunting dogs with snarling mouths that were far larger than any simple farm dog had any right to be.
"Saying it right now, I do NOT want those kinds of dogs as pets," Susie immediately exclaimed. "Not at all!"
"If even Susie of all people doesn't want a dog for a pet, then I'm definitely staying the hell away from it," Gabe commented.
"I wouldn't let a dog that ferocious near my house," Mike deadpanned. "No way in Hell, that's just asking for a disaster to happen."
They approached the end of the farm and found themselves outside of a cemetery, with the gravestones blocked off by an ornate metal gate. A skeletal figure dressed in a black robe was waiting to greet them, either a spooky undertaker or the Grim Reaper itself guarding over the bodies of the dead. The Grim Reaper glared menacingly at the visitors but otherwise made no move to attack or scare them.
"Who's the genius who thought that building a public cemetery next to a satanic horror factory was a good idea?" Cassidy exclaimed in disbelief. "That's ASKING for a disaster to happen?"
"Maybe it's not a public cemetery," Melody suggested. "Maybe it's a private cemetery for whatever family or group owns this factory. They might even have their own family tomb here or something."
"That makes sense," Jeremy acknowledged. "Plus, I don't think many people would bury their dead next to this factory if they even had the faintest idea of what the hell is going on inside it."
"Is that guy actually supposed to be the Grim Reaper?" Susie wondered. "Or just somebody working for the Factory dressed like him?"
Charlie threw her hands up. "Who even knows at this point?" she asked, exasperated. "These people have a really messed up sense of fashion."
Since they couldn't actually get into the cemetery, they proceeded down the road and passed through a much larger metal gate into a crypt, this one with walls made of gray stone blocks that were arranged in a neat and organized fashion compared to the haphazard, derelict appearance of most of the factory.
"Yeah, this is definitely a private crypt or tomb or something," Mike declared. "No doubt about it."
"So are we gonna see some coffins and tombstones?" Liz asked.
"Either that or a bunch of undead ready to scare us," Fritz replied.
They walked deeper into the crypt, beholding the stone sarcophagi of individuals with random names who had long passed into the afterlife, leaving only their remains behind in the catacombs. There were occasionally sections lit up with a hellish orange glow, as well as the occasional Grim Reaper figure with a skull for a head similar to the one in the outside cemetery. The reaper figures would either guide the visitors deeper into the catacombs or try to scare them, and there was no way for anybody to know which one they would encounter until it was too late.
"Say, Dad…" Cassidy suddenly interrupted the silence, "if you could make a giant stone crypt like this one for yourself and for us, would you make one?"
"Yeah, it would look really cool!" Fritz eagerly supported his sister's question.
"Nah," Mike shut down the suggestion almost immediately. "I know having your own personal family crypt would be really cool in theory, but to be honest it's more trouble than it's worth. You have this giant creepy structure in the middle of your property that sticks out like a sore thumb every day besides late October, and you actually have to take the time to make sure it stays well-maintained so that it doesn't become a filthy, ruined mess. Not to mention the fact that if you're trying to keep that crypt a secret for whatever reason, good luck with that. Besides, you guys are already buried in a public cemetery, and if I tried to move your bodies now there are a lot of people who'd be asking a lot of questions I wouldn't be able to answer." He shrugged. "There's a lot of ideas out there that sound really cool at first until you think about the practicalities and then everything falls apart."
"Yeah, I didn't think making a family crypt like this for us would actually be possible," Jeremy acknowledged. "Still fun to think about the idea, though."
"You could always just buy the cemetery we're buried in," Charlie jokingly suggested.
"I think the priest at the nearby church would have a heart attack if I did that," Mike replied with a snicker.
As they reached the end of the crypt, they eventually found themselves back in the familiar metal confines of the factory, where they were immediately greeted with a worker who laughed maniacally at them while guiding them to a room where there was a ruined wreck of a car with smoke pouring out of the front. Flashes of electric light could be seen within the remains of the car as though someone were working on it, but nobody could be seen.
"Yeeesh," Susie winced. "Looks like someone had a really bad car accident."
"And with all the monster workers in this factory, whoever was in this car was probably better off dying instead of getting quote-unquote rescued by these nutjobs," Gabe commented with a frown.
"Either that or one of the workers was testing something and the experiment blew up in their face," Liz replied.
"Everything you suggested is possible," Melody acknowledged. "Unfortunately, we just don't have enough information to actually figure out the truth here."
They passed by the wreckage of the car, and one look around them quickly informed the group that they were in some kind of demented automobile repair shop or assembly room. There were piles of tires and machinery haphazardly thrown together with no rhyme or reason, as well as a few relatively human-appearing workers who were either "working" on the cars or leering at the visitors who passed them by.
As they reached the end of the automobile workshop, one final ghoul worker smiled sinisterly at them, before waving at them in a "bye-bye" motion. "And thus, your journey through our humble factory comes to a close," the ghoul informed them in a deep baritone voice worthy of a Halloween monster. "You are welcome to return at any time. There are more frights and delights that we will gladly show you once again, should you choose to return…"
And with that, he pointed behind them towards a pair of large double-doors with an EXIT sign above them, signaling the end of the journey. The ghosts tensed at first, wondering if the EXIT was some sort of trick, but upon opening the doors they found that they indeed led outside of the building. Their adventure through the Fear Factory, with all the mad science experiments and supernatural horrors it contained, had truly reached its conclusion.
"Huh…this is pretty tame for an ending, actually," Charlie remarked, sounding a little surprised. "I was kinda expecting a terrifying monster to jump out of nowhere to REALLY finish things off with a huge scare."
"With all the terrifying things we've seen in this Fear Factory, I think we've already seen plenty," Susie replied with a shudder.
"That was really fun, though!" Fritz exclaimed cheerfully. "There were so many scary things in the Fear Factory, WAY beyond anything you'd expect in a smaller haunted house."
"Yeah, it was a great time!" Gabe agreed. "The way they mixed mad science and supernatural horror was just done so well!"
"We should do something like this again next year!" Liz declared. "Either that, or visit an amusement park during Halloween like Dad mentioned earlier and see how much things change!"
"Glad you guys enjoyed it," Mike chuckled. "This was a lot of fun, and even though I really wasn't scared through most of it, there were still quite a few things in here that took me by surprise."
"Yeah, you really weren't fazed at all," Melody remarked. "Your kids were freaked out a couple of times, and so was I. But you? You barely reacted at all to anything in here, even some of the really scary stuff. How'd you get such nerves of steel?" she wondered.
Mike chuckled again, but this time it was a significantly drier expression with much less humor. "When you've been through some of the crazy shit that I've been through in my life, let's just say that a haunted house ain't got shit on me."
/
A/N: Well, I managed to get this chapter done in time for Halloween…sorta. I'd say 2-3 days after Halloween isn't too bad of a delay, especially since this is a weekly chapter upload instead of a 2 week upload like usual.
Anyways, this was fun to write. The Schmidts and Melody definitely had quite the experience going through the Fear Factory, that's for sure. It really is a neat blend of mad science and supernatural horror that typically isn't seen in Haunted Houses. I wish I could've seen it for myself despite my innate fear of haunted houses, but sadly I have no way of getting to Utah in a timely or even realistic manner given that I live in Ohio.
There will probably be at least one more filler chapter before we go back to Security Breach. And like I mentioned before, this will probably NOT be about the FNaF Movie since I haven't seen it yet and it's unlikely I'll have the time to anytime soon.
That's all I have for now. Hope you guys enjoyed!