A/N: One snowstorm + no power + only thing to do is write = an early chapter lol
And here it is. The darkest part of the fic has come, heralded with the arrival of one of the evilest animatronics that Scott Cawthon ever designed. Yep, Nightmare has arrived. And just in case you didn't "A Legacy Laid to Rest", this incarnation of Nightmare isn't just a terrifying hallucination. This Nightmare is a demon lord straight from the depths of Hell itself. And you can bet that nothing good can come out of his arrival.
This will be the family's greatest trial, but it won't begin with Nightmare simply barging into the house. No, Nightmare is far more insidious than that. He didn't show up in FNAF4 until late into the nights, and he has other ways of making his presence known…and the kids won't enjoy what he's bringing to the table.
Some very minor Christian themes (as in, a sentence or two at most). Just to give you a heads-up.
Chapter 20 – Terror in the Night
The moment Liz opened her eyes, she knew something was terribly wrong. She couldn't see Fritz sleeping comfortably next to her, nor could she see the room where she slept during the night. All that could see was darkness, except for…a stage?
Her eyes shot open. She knew that stage, how could she not? She had stood on it for decades, memorized it in detail with nothing better to pass the time. "No!" she thought frantically. "This can't be happening! I can't be back here! I can't be back at Baby's!"
She raised her arm, and to her growing horror, it was not the arm she had as a human, but a robotic construct holding a familiar microphone. She lumbered over to the closest thing there was to a mirror and, with her fear growing by the instant, she peered into it.
Circus Baby's face stared back at her.
"Impossible!" Liz screamed in her mind. "There's no way this can be real! There's no way my life with dad and my friends was just a dream!"
She desperately looked around, trying to find anything that she could find to dissolve the horrific situation she had been thrown into. The other animatronics – Funtime Foxy, Ballora, Funtime Freddy – none of them were in sight. She was alone again, trapped like she had been all those years ago.
Liz was about to give into despair when a voice suddenly called out to her. "Lizzie…"
She instantly stopped and searched around her, desperate to find another face. "Lizzie…" the voice called again, and this time she could see someone in the room with her. A teenaged boy standing just in front of an open vent passage that lead only into shadows. Liz froze as she got a better look at the boy.
She knew that face. Even after 30 years, she somehow knew who that boy was.
"M…Mikey?" she asked hesitantly, then with more conviction. "Mikey?"
The boy almost imperceptibly nodded, and Liz felt joy erupt in her heart. Maybe, if she got to spend time with her long-lost brother, then maybe this wouldn't be so bad. "It's me, Mikey!" she cried out to him. "It's me! Lizzie! Your sister!"
Instead of rushing forward to embrace her, however, the boy disappeared into the shadows of the doorway. "Where are you going, Mikey?" Liz asked confused, her happiness beginning to fade. As fast as her animatronic body would allow her, she chased after her brother. Every time she entered another room, her brother was standing just in front of another vent or door, and would disappear into it before she could catch up to her. As Liz pursued him, she felt fear and doubt creep into her heart again. Why was Mikey not embracing her like long-lost family would? And why was he moving towards the Scooping Room?
With no other choice, Liz followed her brother into the Scooping Room. The pathway he had been taking had led to the control room, but there was nobody waiting for her inside. Instead, inside the Scooping mechanism itself, she could see the figure of a man standing there. Liz wondered if she had taken a wrong turn by accident, but before she could leave, she heard the man speak with the exact same voice she'd heard before.
"Do you remember what we said to each other, back when we were just normal kids?" the man, who Liz somehow knew was her brother, asked in a calm voice. "Do you remember? We said we would always love and care for each other. We made that promise, remember?"
A vague memory clicked into her mind, of a time when she was still alive, but before she could answer she suddenly realized exactly where her brother was standing in. "You have to get out of there, Mikey!" she pleaded. "That thing is dangerous! It could kill you!"
Her brother either didn't hear her or ignored her. "Do you remember, Lizzie?" he insisted.
"Y…yes!" Liz spluttered, "but there's no time for that! You have to get out of there!"
"Then why did you do this to me, Lizzie?"
That sent her thought processes into a crashing halt. "Wha…what?" she asked, not understanding what was going on.
"Why did you lie to me?" Michael Afton asked quietly. "Why did you bring me here to kill me?"
A mechanical whirring suddenly popped into existence, and Liz saw to her horror that the Scooper had begun to activate and move towards him. Michael didn't move at all, as if he knew what was coming and was accepting it. "No! MIKEY!" she screamed, as she slammed her robotic fist onto the glass window. When she realized that there was no way she could break into the Scooping Room to rescue him in time, she covered her face with her hands and turned away, unable to see her brother being brutally killed as his scream of pain echoed throughout the room. After several long, agonizing seconds, both the sounds of the room and the sounds of her brother's screams subsided, and Liz finally mustered enough courage to look at what was left.
Only to see that the environment had transformed completely. She was no longer in the Scooping Room, or even at Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rental at all. Now, she was inside what looked like a tiny metal corridor, leading into a larger but still relatively small room. She hesitated before crawling forward, and stopped cold when she realized that her right hand was not a hand at all, but instead a giant, wicked metal claw.
Oh, God. She had become Scrap Baby, hadn't she? And this…this had to be the trap pizzeria where it had all ended, wasn't it?
"This has to be a dream..." she thought, and that gave her the tiniest bit of comfort. After all, it was physically impossible for her to be in Circus Baby's one second and the labyrinth the next. Still, that thought did little to soothe her after what she had just seen. She looked back towards the room that the corridor led to, and she was shocked to see that the room was no longer empty. A man was sitting in a seat there, looking at something on a computer.
"Who's…who's there?" Liz called out to him.
The man looked up from the computer, and Liz screamed in horror. The person sitting at the computer was barely even human: a broken, ruined corpse whose skin had turned purple from years of decay. Somehow, the corpse was still moving, still functioning, as though it hadn't realized that it was dead yet. And even after death and decay had taken its toll, Liz somehow recognized Mikey through it all, even though that shouldn't have been possible.
But what terrified Liz most of all wasn't the fact that her brother had been reduced to a walking corpse. It was the ferocious glare in his eyes, a look filled with pure hatred and rage directed straight at her.
Liz fought the urge to flee and asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "What happened to you, Mikey?" she asked.
Her brother sneered at her. "What happened?" he hissed, and she recoiled at the loathing in his voice. "What happened? You should know, shouldn't you, Lizzie?" he spat the nickname as though it were poison.
Before Liz could say anything, his voice rose into a furious, hate-filled shout. "IT WAS YOU!" he roared, silencing her completely. "YOU DID THIS TO ME! YOU TURNED ME INTO THIS!"
"But I didn't!" Liz finally found her voice. "I'd never do this to you, Mikey! You've got it all wrong!"
Michael sneered. "You don't know a goddamn thing, do you, Elizabeth?" he growled. "Of course you don't. Why else would you have joined our worthless excuse of a father to continue his little murdering spree?"
Liz felt a new wave of shame hit her as she recalled what she had tried to do. "Not anymore, Mikey!" she desperately tried to correct him. "I've changed, I know better now! I'm not anything like him anymore! I promise!"
"Save your breath," he cut her off. A hissing noise suddenly burst into life from all around her, and to her horror she saw a wall of flame erupt into life from behind her. Michael's room also burst into flame, and a mocking smile appeared on his ruined face. "Your little plans have come to an end. There's nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. We're all going to burn here, once and for all."
Instinctively, Liz tried to reach out towards him, but a blast of flame erupted in front of her and stopped her from advancing any farther. The flames had boxed her in, approaching ever closer. A look of vicious satisfaction entered Michael's face, and he snarled five words. Five words that caused Liz more agony than any controlled shock or flame ever could.
"You are not my sister!"
The flames roared all around her, and Liz could only scream in despair as they consumed the pizzeria, reducing her and everything around her to ash…
/
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Liz shot up from the floor, panting and breathing rapidly. She scanned her surroundings frantically, and to her immense relief she could see her bedroom in Mike's house. To her surprise, Fritz was already awake, and was watching her with increasing concern.
"It was a bad dream," Liz murmured, almost crying with relief. "A nightmare. It wasn't real."
"You had one, too?" Fritz asked quietly, his face unnaturally serious. It was only then that Liz fully noticed him. "A nightmare?"
"Yeah…" Liz replied quietly, then what Fritz said clicked fully. "Wait…you had one too?"
Fritz nodded grimly. "I don't think we're the only ones, either. I heard at least one of the girls scream from down the hall a few seconds before you woke up." He sighed. "I've had bad dreams before, but this one really took the cake. I'm going to go talk to dad about it. Do you want to come with me?"
Liz nodded gratefully. "Yeah…yeah, I think that's a good idea," she agreed as she got up onto her feet. "Let's go."
A Few Seconds Later…
"You're kidding me!" Fritz spluttered. "You're telling me that EVERYONE here had a nightmare?"
"It looks that way," Jeremy confirmed grimly. Fritz and Liz had arrived at Mike's bedroom to discover that everyone else was already there. If Mike had been exhausted when he'd been woken up by the first of them to arrive, then his fatigue was either completely gone by now or he was hiding it excellently.
"Does anybody want to share what they saw?" Mike asked quietly. Hopefully, at least one of the ghosts would be willing to share, and that would encourage the other ghosts to open up and they could ease their fears and tensions together.
The ghost children looked at each other uncomfortably for several seconds. Finally, Gabe sighed. "I guess I'll start," he volunteered, earning a grateful nod from Mike. "It was back at Freddy's. The 1993 location. Where you worked, dad…"
/
Gabe recognize the place where he was in the moment he saw it. He was back at the pizzeria that had haunted his memories, wearing the accursed body of Freddy Fazbear once more. Bonnie and Chica were both gone, but he could hear them lurking in the shadows, planning their next attack on the office. Foxy had already stepped out of Pirate's Cove, head tilted, considering when to rush for the Office.
"Stop, guys!" he wanted to shout at them. "The Night Guard in the Office is just an innocent person! He's not the one who murdered us! You've got it all wrong!" But even if they could hear him, why would they listen? Mary had tried to stop them once, when they had first come here, but they had all been too consumed by revenge to listen. And Gabe knew all too well what that had led to.
The power suddenly ran out, and the entire pizzeria plunged into darkness. Gabe got off the stage and rushed towards the Office as quickly as possible. Maybe he could warn whoever was inside the Office to flee before the others caught him, or even protect him for a short time. Gabe stopped just in front of the Office and peered in, wanting to see who it was.
He felt his entire essence go cold as he saw the man sitting in the Office. A teenager, around 18. Someone who was far too young to die a brutal death in a metal suit. But what really scared Gabe was the fact that the teenager seemed familiar somehow. Almost as though he was…he was…
The young man looked up and spoke, and Gabe's worst fears were confirmed. It was Mike sitting in the Office, back when he had made his resolution to die. He remembered how from his dad's tale how he had survived all 20 nights he had endured at Freddy's, but this Mike…apparently he wasn't so lucky.
"Hello, Gabe…" the young Mike said quietly, and the Freddy inhabitant would have jumped in shock if he had been able to. Mike sounded far more mature and weary of life than any teenager had any right to be, and more than that...he had recognized Gabe for who he was, even though that shouldn't have been possible.
Mike looked around the darkened Office and sighed. "I guess we all saw this coming, didn't we?" he asked rhetorically. "I tried to last as long as I could, but nobody's luck lasts forever." He chuckled sadly. "You guys must have really wanted me dead."
"Not you, dad!" Gabe wanted to protest, but once again, he was unable to say anything. "It's not too late! You can still run! Hurry, get out while you still can! Don't just sit there!"
Mike's voice cracked a bit. "I thought I could help you," he continued, his stoic expression wavering for just a second before he regained his composure. "I thought if I took you in, if I showed you love and compassion, that I could make things better for you and the others, I could help you move on." Mike bowed his head in defeat. "But now I see that I was wrong. You'll never see me as anyone other than the person who killed you."
"That's not true, dad!" Gabe mentally screamed. "You're NOTHING like the Purple Man! You're the best person we've ever met! We were wrong, we were all wrong!"
Mike sighed again and shook his head. "I get it. I really do. Trust doesn't come easily to people like us, not after everything that we've suffered. I guess in the end, I'm not the one who can save you from your pain, no matter how much I want to."
"You ARE the one who can save us!" Gabe tried to argue. "You already have! We don't want anyone else to be our dad!"
His panicked thoughts were interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps. The other animatronics stepped into the dim light of the Office, Foxy and Chica from the right, and Bonnie behind from the left. And all of them were glaring at Mike with undisguised hatred in their eyes.
"Get away from him!" Gabe futilely shouted at them with his mind. "What the hell are you doing? This is our Dad you're trying to kill! Stop! STOOOOOOOOP!"
"It's time, isn't it?" Mike asked with all the calm of the grave. "I made one mistake too many, the power's out, the game's over. I tried to save as many people as I could, and I hope what I did accomplish made a difference in the end. And I hope one day you'll find someone who can free you from your suffering," he lowered his head, no longer looking at any of them. "Mom…Oskar…I'll see you soon."
As one, the animatronics began to shriek and swarm the teenager, drowning out Gabe's screams and pleas. To his growing horror, Gabe found that he had produced another Freddy Fazbear head in his hands, one that would almost certainly kill Mike if it was forced upon his head. He could only watch and struggle uselessly as Freddy lifted the spare head high above his head, and slammed it down upon Mike's…
/
"…and that was when I woke up," Gabe finished with a heavy sigh. "I'm just glad I didn't see the head actually kill you first, dad…"
Mike leaned forward and gently ruffled Gabe's ethereal hair as best he could. "None of it was real, Gabe," he reassured the ghost kid comfortingly. "You're not the murderous lunatics you once were, none of you are. You showed that when you held yourselves back from hurting Colm, when you would've done so much worse to him in the past. And we both know that I'm a survivor. I wouldn't give up that easily. Not on myself, and not on you."
The ghosts began to smile at that, but their happiness wouldn't last long. "Dad…I…I had the same dream Gabe did," Susie confessed. "It was almost exactly like Gabe described, too."
Mike's eyes widened. "What?"
"The only difference was that I was Chica instead of Freddy," she clarified, "But apart from that, it was almost identical to what Gabe went through."
"Now that you mention it, Susie, that sounds like what I saw too!" Jeremy exclaimed. "I mean, I was Bonnie, but yeah! I was in that pizzeria, and I saw…I saw dad…give up…" he finished quietly.
"Hold up!" Mike suddenly interrupted. "Did EVERYONE here have the exact same dream?"
Fritz and Cassidy added their voices to Gabe's, Susie's, and Jeremy's confirmation. The only one who didn't say anything was Liz, who was brooding over the nightmare that she had suffered.
"Liz?" Mike prompted, concern in his voice.
The girl shook her head. "Mine wasn't the same, dad, but…I really, REALLY don't want to talk about mine," she quietly responded. "Please…"
Her dad nodded. "All right, Liz. If it'll make you feel better keeping it a secret, then that's all right."
"We all had the same dream," Gabe muttered, "and the only one who didn't was the only one who wasn't stuck in Freddy's with the rest of us…"
Mike's eyes narrowed. "Something's not right here."
All eyes turned to their father. "What do you mean, dad?" Jeremy asked.
"I can understand you guys having nightmares once in a while, after everything you've been through," Mike explained, suspicion clear in his voice. "But all of you having nightmares in the exact same night, with five of you having the exact same dream? There's no way this could simply be a stroke of spectacularly bad luck. Not with this many people."
Cassidy looked at her dad nervously. "What…what are you saying?"
Mike let out a low hiss. "There's too many things matching up to be a coincidence. Our enemy…whoever cursed you a few days ago…he's returned." He suddenly raised his voice to a shout. "HAVEN'T YOU?"
For a few seconds, there was silence. And then…
"HEH HEH HEH HEH HEH, HEH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" an unearthly voice, deep and demonic, echoed from around them. "YOU DEDUCED THE TRUTH FASTER THAN I EXPECTED, MORTAL. QUITE THE ASTUTE ONE, AREN'T YOU?"
Fritz looked around frantically. "What the hell is going on?" he asked.
"HAVEN'T CAUGHT ON YET, HAVE YOU, LITTLE BRAT?" the voice hissed, dripping with malice and contempt. "YOUR TIME OF PEACE HAS COME TO AN END."
"Where is he?" Susie asked frantically. Mike, however, was already moving. The day after Colm had left, he had installed a security system in his house very similar to the one that had existed in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, both to keep an eye on future intruders without the need to rely on the ghosts and to make sure that the ghosts didn't go too far in dealing with them. He grabbed the tablet on his desk and began to rapidly scan through the different rooms and hallways, the ghosts crowding nervously around him to look. There was nothing located on the second floor, but the moment he checked the camera in the living room…
Cassidy and Susie screamed, and none of the other ghosts could hide their fear. Standing in the living room, staring directly into the camera, was a terrifying monstrosity beyond anything they had ever seen before. He was larger than even the Freddy Fazbear animatronics, with a black body that seemed to be made entirely of shadows except for a yellow hat and bow that seemed almost out-of-place on its body. Razor-sharp claws extended from he hands and feet, and the creature's mouth was filled with lethal fangs that looked as though they could effortlessly tear a man to pieces. The ghosts shuddered as they saw another row of fangs extend across its stomach, almost as though there were a second mouth crossing the beast's abdomen. But that was nothing compared to the monster's eyes. Scarlet, blazing eyes that burned with the cruelty, hatred, and malice of over a thousand years. Instinctively, every ghost felt a primal fear churn within them, a fear even greater than what the Purple Guy had forced them to experience the day they had been slain. They understood that this was the monster who would have tortured them for eternity, if God had chosen to punish them for their crimes instead of offering them the chance for redemption through a life with their new father.
The only one who didn't outwardly show any fear was Mike. "Who are you?" he demanded. "And what the hell do you want?"
The creature grinned, fully showing his cruel maw. "I AM KNOWN BY MANY NAMES, MORTAL, ALL OF THEM DREADED THROUGHOUT THE DEPTHS OF THE ABYSS. NIGHTMARE HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY PERSONAL FAVORITES. YES…NIGHTMARE WILL DO," he sneered. "AND AS FOR WHAT I WANT, YOU WILL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH, MICHAEL SCHMIDT. OR PERHAPS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SATIATE YOUR CURIOSITY JUST A LITTLE SOONER? ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS COME DOWN."
Mike snorted. "And just why the hell would we do that?" he retorted. "We're fine where we are, thank you very much."
"IT AMUSES ME THAT YOU SPEAK AS THOUGH I CANNOT HUNT YOU DOWN YOU IN YOUR OWN HOME," Nightmare laughed, "BUT I DO NOT NEED TO GO ANYWHERE, DO I? NOT WHEN I HAVE SOMEONE QUITE PRECIOUS TO YOU, TO ALL OF YOU, WITHIN MY GRASP."
Mike's blood ran cold as he quickly looked over at the ghosts. He had been so busy counseling them with their dreams that he had completely forgotten to notice that one of them was missing. "Where's Mary?" he yelled frantically.
Nightmare's grin grew, and everyone let out exclamations and gasps of horror as he lifted something…no, someone trapped within his tightly clenched fist.
"MARY!" Mike shouted, feeling true fear for the first time. The demon had grabbed the Marionette by the neck, and she could only hang limply from his unrelenting grasp. Mike quickly scanned her as best as he could through the camera. To his relief, she didn't seem to be grievously injured or even noticeably damaged, but even with the limited emotion she could display through her animatronic face, everyone could see that she was exhausted. Exhausted…and beaten.
"I…I'm sorry…" she managed to choke out. "I…I tried to stop him…tried to drive him away…"
"YOU TRIED…" Nightmare agreed as he looked down at her with malicious glee. "…AND YOU FAILED. YOUR MAGIC WAS STRONGER THAN I EXPECTED, BUT YOU WERE DOOMED FROM THE VERY BEGINNING." He looked up at the camera again. "COME, MORTALS. COME AND SAVE HER. SAVE YOUR PRECIOUS DAUGHTER AND SISTER, IF YOU HAVE THE COURAGE." The grin vanished. "DO NOT KEEP ME WAITING."
Before anyone could say anything, Nightmare raised his free claw high into the air. With a snarl, he slashed at the camera, and the tablet screen dissolved into static. Mike threw the tablet down and ran out of the room. "I'm coming, Mary!" he shouted as he rushed towards the stairs.
The ghosts looked around at each other. "What are we waiting for?" Fritz exclaimed. "We can't just leave Dad and Mary to that…that thing!" He got to his feet. "Let's go!" The ghosts all followed their father down the stairs and into the living room, their love for their family overshadowing whatever fear they had of the monstrosity that had entered in their midst.
With speed that only the threat of a loved one in danger could produce, Mike and the ghosts rushed into the living room. Nightmare was waiting for them, and his already terrifying appearance was even more horrific up close and personal.
"Let her go!" Mike shouted.
"AH, MY LITTLE CAPTIVE…" Nightmare stared down at the Marionette trapped in his hands, then, unexpectedly, suddenly seemed to lose interest in her. "YOU CAN HAVE HER BACK." He shoved the Puppet in front of him, and Mike reached out to catch her before she stumbled onto the floor.
"Are you all right?" he asked worriedly.
"I'm… I'm fine…" she responded with a sigh. "As good as I can be, all things considered…"
"I NEVER CARED FOR YOUR LITTLE PUPPET GIRL," Nightmare continued with a sneer. "WHAT I REALLY WANTED…WAS THIS! His eyes started glowing intensely. "IN NOMINE INFERNIS, ET ORIRI FLAMMAE!" he roared.
Instantly, unholy flames erupted in the passageways leading to and from the living room. Susie, the closest one to the doorway, shrieked in fear as she flew away from the fiery barriers. Though the flames didn't seem to be moving beyond the doorways, they completely blocked any way in and out of the living room. The ghosts had a feeling that they would have no better luck escaping through the walls, and even if they could, none of them would even consider leaving Mary or Mike behind at the mercy of this monster.
"NO WAY IN…" Nightmare hissed, "…AND NO WAY OUT. ONE OLD MAN AND ALL THESE LITTLE SOULS IN ONE PLACE." For some reason, Liz felt a chill run down her spine at these words, even though she had no clue why. "EXACTLY AS I PLANNED."
"I'm sorry…" Mary whispered. "I shouldn't have tried to fight Nightmare. I just wanted to keep him away from the rest of you."
"Nobody's blaming you for anything." Gabe assured her. "Whether you were here or not, Nightmare would have come after us one way or another. It's not like any of us could stop him, if you couldn't."
"HOW RIGHT YOU ARE," Nightmare sneered. "ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, I WOULD HAVE YOU RIGHT WHERE I WANT YOU. AND NOW…" he started to laugh menacingly, "…NOW, THE FUN CAN TRULY BEGIN."
/
A/N: You guys wanted dark chapters, and you're about to get them in spades. Nightmare defeated the strongest of the ghost children offscreen and without even trying. That should already tell you how good things aren't.
When I think of Nightmare's voice, there are two possible options that I can come up with. The first one is David Near's voice for Nightmare Fredbear (ironically enough), a voice that fits perfectly for a monster such as Nightmare. The other voice I hear in my head is the voice that Steve Blum provides for Lucifer in Dante's Inferno, the Animated Epic. Unfortunately it's really hard to find that video on Youtube nowadays without it being filtered/screwed up in some way, but I think it fits perfectly if you're looking for something less growly but more subtly menacing.