hey gang last chapter of the arc kinda! I'm doing a QnA so check the end of the chapter for more info on that. Comment your questions and me or the characters will answer em!

Chapter 118

Act 3 Epilogue

If there was one thing Ruby hated, it was packing for a vacation. If there was one thing she hated even more than that, it was packing to leave the vacation.

So instead she got up earlier than all of her friends so she wouldn't have to.

Carefully, she slipped out of her and the sleeping Myah's bed and out the sliding screen door onto grass dotted with dewdrops from the campsite's sprinklers. The sky was pale and the sun was still low as Ruby ran down the gray sand beach, dodging rocks and driftwood and slippery kelp. The sea beckoned to her, green and cool and inviting.

Taking a breath, she skipped through the foamy waves and dove in. She swam a few strokes and opened her stinging eyes, seeing the blurry clouds of dark silt plume like smoke. A silver minnow darted past her ankles and russet eelgrass wrapped around her like a thin windy scarf. Bubbles escaped her mouth, popping at the surface.

She burst up from the deep, her hair dark and heavy plastered down her back. Letting the water hold her up, she lay on her back, limp and bobbing. The sun beat down on her skin, the misty, salty wind whispered through her hair, and the ocean plaited it into tangled waves. She could allow herself to be taken by nature, fragile and weak and in her rawest form.

Ruby's eyes fluttered shut. She wished she could stay this free forever.

"RUUUUUBYYYYY!" Her tranquillity was shattered by the shout of Ducky's voice.

She stood up unsteadily, the waves lapping at her body. "WHAAAAT?!"

Ducky cupped his hands around his mouth. Behind him stood Myah, Tulisa, and Josh, who were all giggling. "YOUR MOM IS HEEEEEEERE!"

"OH. OKAYYYYY!"

Ruby sighed and reluctantly swam back to shore. Seaweed clung to her legs, yearning for her to stay. She yearned right back. However, she didn't want to anger her mother, so she trudged back up the beach, sand sticking to her wet feet, and up onto the grass.

A cabin a couple doors down seemed to be having some little-kid's birthday party. Loud music blasted and children jumped through sprinklers, shrieking with laughter.

She recognized her mother's car right away, could see Jared and her talking while by their feet Rylie sat cross-legged poking at something in the grass. Ruby crept up behind her little sister and then pounced, bear-hugging her.

To her surprise, Rylie didn't scream or even react. "Get off," she whined instead, wriggling around. "You're all wet."

"Sorry, Ry-Ry, that's what happens when you swim in the ocean." Ruby let her sister go and stood up, but mussed up her shoulder-length coal ringlets.

Rylie's black curls were a harsh contrast against her pale, almost white skin and big silvery blue eyes. She wore an orange shirt with cats printed all over it—a hand-me-down from Ruby—and golden yellow shorts with a matching headband.

"Ruby!" Her mother cried, giving her a huge hug. She smelled like vanilla perfume, and the same coconut shampoo Ruby used. Ruby was a good seven inches taller than her mother, so the hug was a little unbalanced.

Her mother had olive skin that seemed to have tanned a lot better than Ruby's over the summer, and the same black curls Rylie had were streaked with gray. She wore a flowy sage-green sundress that covered her arms and rippled in the breeze, and some dainty but expensive-looking gold jewellery.

"Hi, Mom!" Ruby laughed. Happiness overwhelmed her so much it was…er, overwhelming. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed her family over the summer until now. What had they done without her there? They still had a week left before school started, and Ruby vowed to spend the rest of that time hanging out with them.

Ruby looked around then and noticed her friend's parents were arriving too. Tulisa and Josh were hugging and talking to their comically buff father and willowy, cheerful mother. Ducky was enthusiastically raving to his parents and bored-to-near-death older sister Heather. Myah and her parents and Avie were both talking and signing, their hands flying at impossibly high speeds.

"What did you guys do?" Ruby asked her family.

"Well we went swimming a lot," Jared said, "and yesterday Rylie invited over a friend from her daycare."

"Not a friend," Rylie corrected. "He's my husband."

"Yes, well." Her mother raised her eyebrows. "Sure. Your pretend husband."

"My real husband. We're going to get the marriage license documents sorted out once I'm in kindergarten."

"Wow, you've really got this thought out!" Ruby said, biting back a smile. "What's the lucky guy's name?"

"Ben," Rylie answered.

"What's his full name? And are you taking his last name?"

"Yes. His last name is Pumpernickel, so I'll be Mrs. Rylaina Pumpernickel. And Ben's short for Benadryl."

"Oh!" Ruby could barely hold back her laughter. "B-benadryl Pumpernickel, eh,? That's…nice."

"Yes. That's his real government name too, believe it or not. He's got some…interesting parents," Jared mumbled.

Then Myah walked up beside her, perky and smiling. She wore a lilac halter top and high-waisted white jean shorts with some souvenir bracelets on her dainty wrists. A white knitted scrunchie tied up her shiny black hair, curly from the wind.

Standing next to her clean, perfect girlfriend, Ruby felt sloppy and childish with her soaking old Freddy Fazbear's T-shirt and frizzy wet hair.

"Hi, Ms. Roxanne," Myah greeted, beaming. She turned to Jared, and Ruby knew she didn't know his last name. Myah didn't falter, instead addressing them both. "How was your break?"

"It's been great, thank you dear." Ruby's mother said with a smile. "And like I said last time, you can call me Rosalie."

Myah blushed. "Sorry Ms. Roxa—I mean, Rosalie."

Her mother put her hands on her hips. "Why don't you two give us a grand tour of your place! I hope it's cleaner than Ruby's room," she added pointedly.

"Uhhhh." Ruby froze. She couldn't let her family—couldn't let anyone into the cabin where the ghosts were. She wasn't exactly sure if they'd possess her family or something, but she didn't want to take the risk. "No, you guys can't come in right now!"

"What?" Her mother's brow creased. "Why not?"

"Because, uh, it's a huge mess. Just like, clothes everywhere," Ruby lied solemnly. "All my fault, obviously."

"Oh, whatever." She waved her hand dismissively. "I'm sure I've seen you do worse."

"It's really not that bad," Myah assured. "Tulisa and I tidied last night."

Most of the time Ruby liked how Myah always tried to suck up to her mother. Now was not one of those times. "Myah, can I speak to you for a moment? Mom, don't go inside."

Ruby led her a little ways away under the shade of a thick pine tree. Myah folded her arms. "What's going on?"

"Okay so, basically there's about seven ghosts in the cabin right now and if any humans or animals or human-or-animal-like things go near them, they'll possess it and be stuck on Earth but if they stay ghosts until 6am so…ten more minutes, they get to pass on to the afterlife."

"Oh, wow!" Myah looked impressed. "Did you even breathe for all that?"

"Nope," Ruby gasped, gulping in air like it was cotton candy ice cream.

Myah giggled. "That's great that your friends get to go to heaven—or wherever. I hope it all goes okay."

"Yeah, me too. They've tried to move on like a zillion times before and something always goes wrong."

Myah nodded, then scowled. "Yikes, they're really playing that music loud, right?"

Ruby hadn't noticed it before, but yeah, the music from the kid's birthday party was a lot more prominent than before. Almost like it had gotten closer.

Ruby signed. "I'll be right back. I'm going to go check on the ghosts before they pass on."

"Good idea," Myah smiled, and stood on her toes to kiss Ruby on the cheek. "Tell them I say hi."

"I will," Ruby promised and headed off to the cabin. She didn't have it in her to tell Myah they wouldn't remember her own name, let alone Myah's.

"I'M JUST GOING TO CLEAN UP AND THEN YOU GUYS CAN COME INSIDE!" Ruby hollered towards her family as she ran.

She took the bracelet with the house key off her wrist and jiggled it in the lock, opening the door and shutting it quickly behind her. She could hear the ghosts talking in the other room but didn't disturb them. She knew they wouldn't recognize her anyway.

Ruby doomscrolled on her phone for a while until there was suddenly a loud, urgent knock at the door.

Bouncing up, she rushed to the window to check. When she peeled back the curtains she saw a girl with pale skin and sleek black hair in a ponytail with a white scrunchie standing at their doorstep. She couldn't see the girl's face or anything outside of the doorstep but it was pretty obviously Myah.

Ruby jumped off the couch and to the front of the cabin. She gently opened the door.

The first thing she noticed was that the girl she thought was Myah, was not a girl, or Myah. It was a skinny, nervous-looking man with round glasses and long black hair in a ponytail, who was stuttering over a trembling clipboard filled with notesheets.

The second thing she noticed were the gigantic metal animatronics looming behind him. A white-and pink fox with a red bow tie and sharp teeth. A big white bear with purple markings that wore a blue Bonnie hand puppet on his right. A tall, curvy ballerina woman with blue hair in a bun held by a dainty tiara and a fuchsia tutu, little dolls the colour of Ruby's skin with creepy smiling white masks perched all over her. And a large babydoll clown girl with orange pigtails and a red dress, her emerald eyes gleaming.

Ruby was the only one that could see her ghost friends being sucked into the animatronics one by one in a flash of neon blue light so bright it burned her eyes. The twitchy man finished reading off the clipboard and handed it to her to sign. "S-so, do you agree?"

Ruby shook herself out of the daze. Her heart was pounding a million miles a minute. "Sorry, what?!"

"This is your p-party, right? That you rented o-our animatronics for?"

Oh my God. "No, that's two doors down!" Ruby gestured vaguely out the door.

"O-oh, s-so sorry, my mistake." The man shivered. "Boss is going to h-have my head for this one…"

"Yeah, I freaking hope he does!"

"H-huh?"

"Uh, nothing." Ruby rubbed her temples, trying to calm herself down. "It's the kid's birthday party by the beach, you'll hear the music."

"Th-thanks. Hey, t-to make up for the trouble, here's our c-card." He fished out a small laminated card from his shirt pocket. Ruby turned it over in her hand. Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rentals. Located in…huh, Hurricane.

"B-bye," the man said, and pressed a few buttons on his remote. The big trolley the animatronics were on began to move, following him down the lawn.

Ruby sighed. "And Myah says hi," she whispered to the seven-foot-tall robots that her friends were now possessing.

~lll~

Michael pinched the flame of his cigarette out and tossed it in the ashtray. He knew he should really be kicking that habit, it was starting to yellow his teeth and he didn't want to look older than he already did. It was just nice to have something to chew on and numb his torrent of thoughts. That was why he liked gum so much. Sweetly sour, sugar-free, and it felt good to bite it. Kind of like all of his ex-girlfriends.

Speaking of which, he had a date arriving in a few hours, a goth woman with sandy-blonde curly hair who he'd met in a club when she'd accidentally gone into the men's washroom. She seemed chill, they smoked together (okay but what if smoking got him hot girls? Should he still try to quit then?) and talked about their shitty dads (trauma bonding was a good sign, right?) Michael left out a few key details, obviously.

Suddenly, a knock at the door jolted him out of his thoughts. Crap! Was that the girl? If so, she was crazy early.

Panicked, Michael looked around the living room of his cabin. It wasn't too bad since he was packing up to leave the next day, but there were Chinese takeout boxes littering the couch, moldy mugs of tea sitting on tables, and the smell of smoke was soaked into everything. A real bachelor pad if he'd ever seen one.

Plus, he was still in his pajamas—white ribbed tank top stained with spilled soy sauce near the scooped neckline and gray flannel pants dusted in orange dog hair. Not exactly sexy.

Michael thought fast. He threw a blanket over the takeout cartons, hid all the mugs on the floor shielded behind the curtain, and figured if she was a smoker anyways she wouldn't mind the smell.

Then he licked his finger and scrubbed at the soy sauce, only it wasn't working and so he kind of tied the tank top strap in a knot that wrapped up and concealed the stain. Finally, he took a stray roll of duct tape and haphazardly fashioned it into a lint roller, sticking it to his pants and ripping it off to remove the fur.

Running a hand through his brunet hair and trying to make it stylishly messy, he finally answered the door.

"Aaand nobody's even here," Michael sighed, staring out at the empty sun-dappled lawn. "Peachy."

But then, something caught his attention. Lying on the doormat (that read Live Laugh Ocean, whatever that meant) was an envelope with no return address. When Michael picked it up and flipped it over, the seal stopped him cold.

It was a purple sticker shaped like a rabbit.

Okay. Letter from my father. No big deal, you get these all the time.

Except you haven't gotten one in five months, and according to Ruby and the ghosts and everyone you've talked to about him—he's dead! Double dead! But surprise, apparently not!

Michael shook himself. He was being irrational. Maybe this letter was sent before William was burned to death in that fire, and it just got mixed up at the post office. It could happen.

He peeled off the sticker and took out the letter. It was made of expensive paper, that was for sure. Thick and cream and felt almost hand-made. Written in violet ink, the letter read as followed:

Dear Mr. Schmidt (I think Afton had a nicer ring to it, but that's only my opinion),

Michael, my boy! How have you been? Terribly sorry for not writing in a while. I've been a bit preoccupied, trying to rebuild myself after getting quite the nasty burn and all. Luckily, it's not my good arm that's gone missing!

But I'm sure you don't much care about what your old man's been up to. I'll get right to business: you need to go fetch your sister.

Michael froze. "Holy shit," he breathed.

You're probably saying some kind of shocked curse word right now. Yes, she's here, though I'm sorry to tell you she isn't alive. Her spirit is still on Earth, possessing something…special of mine. Of course, I won't tell you what. That's part of the fun!

I'd like you to get a job as a technician for Circus Baby's Entertainment and Rentals. I believe that business is still up and running—probably the only thing Fazbear Entertainment has going for them at the moment. No public tragedies for that one…yet. That's one thing you and I are good at…causing scandals!

Oh, the drama. The drama and the gossip. I do miss the days when my victims were all over the news, when my work was famous for the world to see. Sorry, was that too supervillain of me? Cheesy, I know. But sometimes it's fun to play pretend. I know Elizabeth likes to pretend.

When you get the job—and I know you will, being my son does have its perks contrary to your belief—try and lay low, act like you're just in it for the money. Get your sister out, and once you do, call this phone number below.

I'll pick up. I don't have much else going on, I'm afraid. Not as popular as I used to be back in the day.

Say hi to that Ruby for me. I know she sure misses the drama.

Lots of love,

William

A/N

William is alive omg who could have seen thsis comngn and now the gjosts areo possseing anminatbtronics now oh noezzzz

This act was epic guys I lowkey liked it more than I thought I would bc I recently had reread and edit everything haha.

But first! QNA TIME. So the only problem with this is nobody has rly been commenting a whole bunch? So if I don't get enough comments then I probably can't make the chapter.

But same rules as last time! No limit on questions but don't go TOO crazy. You can ask me or the characters anything you want! I'm not going to have a deadline so it'll just be whenever I feel like we have enough comments.

Have fun :)

~ghosty wosty