Night 2

12:00 AM

Hellboy could not believe that he was coming back here for another shift. Last night he had nearly lost his life. It was only by dumb luck that he had lived to see another day, and already he was back for more. How long could he afford to gamble with his life before he finally lost?

This time, he was awake and alert. This time, he knew what to expect. Looking at the feed from Cam 1A, he could see the animatronics standing all in a row on the show stage. His brow furrowed as he watched the monitor. He was determined to survive the night by his own skill.

In order to do that, he would need to conserve power. To conserve power, he would need to refrain from overusing the monitor. But to refrain from overusing the monitor was inviting a sneak attack from the animatronics. They were disturbingly quiet while moving, making only the faintest of noises. Sometimes he could not hear them at all. Perhaps he could train himself to rely more on sound than on sight, but until then, he would need to use the cameras just often enough to stay appraised of the animatronics' movement, yet seldom enough to keep from blacking out the restaurant. He would need to thread that needle or suffer the consequences. At least they were not constantly on the move. Bonnie took his time moving from one room to the next: that would buy him enough time to close the monitor and conserve power before checking again. But how much time? It irked him that he should be punished for using the few survival tools at his disposal.

Hellboy reached into the desk drawer to search for the tape labeled Night 2.

"Alright, phone guy: let's see what else you've got for me," he said to himself.

Hellboy inserted the tape and clicked the play button. The tape spools spun, yet it began just as quietly as the last tape. The sudden phone ringing was predictable, though no less startling.

Uh, hello? Hello! Uhh…Well, if you're hearing this, and you made it to day two, uhh, congrats! I-I won't talk quite as long this time since Freddy and his friends tend to become more active as the week progresses. Uhh…it might be a good idea to peek at those cameras while I talk; just to make sure everyone's in their proper place, ya know?

"Don't have to tell me twice," grunted Hellboy, flipping up the monitor. He could not believe it. Bonnie was already gone. It had only been a minute or two since he last looked.

Uh, interestingly enough, Freddy himself doesn't come off stage very often. I've heard he becomes a lot more active in the dark, though, so hey, I guess that's one more reason not to run out of power, right? Heh…

Hellboy clenched his jaw. "So that's what that thing was," he said, recalling the memory of those haunting blue eyes. While he listened, he looked through Cam 1B to see Bonnie standing still in the dining area.

I also want to emphasize the importance of using your door lights. Uhh, there are blind spots in your camera view, and those blind spots happen to be right outside your doors. So, i-if you can't find something…or someone…on your cameras, uhh, be sure to check the door lights. Uhh, you might have only a few seconds to react, uh…Not that you would be in any danger, of course, I-I'm not implying that.

"Sure, you're not," Hellboy snarled as he shut the monitor. "Would've been nice to know that last night, jerk."

Uh, also, check on the curtain in Pirate Cove from time to time. The character in there seems unique in that he becomes more active if the cameras remain off for long periods of time. I guess he doesn't like being watched. I don't know.

"Wait, what? There's another character? Where's 'Pirate Cove'? What makes it more active?"

A-Anyway, I'm sure you have everything under control. Uhh…talk to you soon!

The tape recorder fell silent as the tape came to an end.

"Thanks for the clarification," he grunted.

Hellboy leaned back and heaved a deep sigh. For the first time, he was made aware that it was not going to be easy listening for the animatronics. His desk fan was useful for keeping him cool and for circulating air through that stuffy little office, but in the quiet stillness of the vacant restaurant, its spinning blades were deafeningly loud. The sound pollution that it created made it extremely difficult to hear much of anything. Hellboy reached to turn it off, but for some inexplicable reason, it would not comply. He toggled the switch, but the appliance stubbornly refused to turn off. For a split second, he was tempted to bring his right fist smashing down on the fan. But what if they heard it? Would they be attracted to the noise? He could not afford to take that risk. And so, he contented himself to put up with the noise and just listen harder. But it was more than just the fan. Strange ambient sounds pervaded the atmosphere. It was the kind of sound that is better felt than heard. Were they nothing more than the sounds of an old building settling, or an indication of the paranormal? He had no idea.

All of a sudden, a strange sound caught Hellboy's attention. It sounded like…humming? It did not match the voice of any of the animatronics. He opened the monitor to see if he could find the source of the noise. Bonnie was still in the dining area, but it was clearly not coming from him. He checked the show stage. Neither Freddy nor the chicken were humming. But the sound was close. He noticed a Cam 1C on the monitor display. Had he checked that camera before? Just as he switched to the feed, the humming stopped. He recognized the purple curtains with the star pattern and the SORRY!—OUT OF ORDER sign.

"Guess this is Pirate Cove," Hellboy said, remembering the manager making brief mention of it during his orientation. "Would help to have even a single sign saying so."

Nearly a half hour passed in tense silence. Hellboy was growing antsy. In all that time, he had heard nothing out of the ordinary, except for one instance of that stupid organ music from the previous night. According to the phone guy, the animatronics were even more active and aggressive now. Either they made even less noise than he thought, or the ambient sounds had distracted him from their movement. He feared that he had made a fatal mistake: had he been too conservative in his camera usage?

Unable to wait any longer, Hellboy opened the monitor to check the show stage. The chicken was gone, leaving Freddy alone onstage. He switched to the backstage camera, looking for Bonnie, but he was not there. It was a long shot, anyway. Maybe he was still in the dining area: another longshot, but at least possible. When he toggled to said camera, he found not the rabbit, but the chicken. It stood between the tables, staring into the camera with large, unblinking eyes. Its beak hung open to reveal a set of knobby metal teeth. Uncanny did not begin to describe the thing.

Hellboy tore his gaze away from the chicken to continue his search for Bonnie. If he was not in the dining area or backstage, perhaps he had already reached the west hall? But the hall was empty. The supply closet? Nothing.

Now Hellboy was getting nervous. Clearly, he had been idle for far too long. Reluctantly, he turned to Cam 2B. There, in the west hall corner, he found Bonnie, at last. It was hardly cause for celebration. The animatronic just stood there, half of his face obscured in shadow. His one visible eye stared into the camera. It was as if he knew he was being watched.

Hellboy flipped down the monitor and leaned against the desk. He shook his head, wondering why he had to be the sucker who got all the worst jobs.

That was when he heard it. Were those footsteps? It was so very faint, barely audible over the noise of the fan.

And then it stopped.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. His heart was beating rapidly. He turned on the hall light. A pair of large, pink eyes stared back at him. The rabbit stood in the dark hallway, his bulk filling the doorframe. With a start, Hellboy pounded the door button, shutting out Bonnie.

"Dammit," he grunted, his heart still pounding.

With Bonnie successfully dealt with—for the time being—it was time to check in on the chicken. He flipped through each of the camera feeds as quickly as possible, hoping to avoid spending too much power. The chicken was still in the dining area, and Bonnie had already returned to the backstage.

"You sure move fast for a big hunk of junk," Hellboy remarked.

But while he cycled through all of the cameras, worried that he might miss any of the animatronics, he caught sight of a visual that caused him to stop and stare. The camera was turned to Pirate Cove. The curtain was now open a crack. And peering out from the darkness, barely illuminated by the dim light of the dining area, was an animatronic fox. It stared at the camera with bright electronic eyes. Its jaw hung open, revealing a full set of needle-like teeth. Hellboy groaned. He knew that he would have to deal with that one eventually.

"Are you the one who doesn't like being watched?" he asked aloud. "Too bad: I'm not letting you out of my sight."

Minutes passed before Hellboy decided it was time to check the cameras again. He stopped on the camera feed just outside the restrooms. Was that the chicken's bib barely visible in the shadows?

"Gotcha," he murmured.

With the chicken's whereabouts known, he decided to track down Bonnie. It was simple enough to find him, lurking in the dining area. With three animatronics accounted for, all that was left was Freddy. He was still on the show stage, more than an hour into the shift.

Had an hour really passed already? It felt like the last hour had flown by, yet at the same time, waiting for the animatronics to move from one location to the next was agonizingly long and tense. While he waited for the next time to check on the cameras, Hellboy found his mind wandering. Though he knew that he needed his mind clear of distractions, he could not help but wonder about these restless spirits. Who were they? Were they employees? Guests? How did they die? Why were they possessing the animatronics?

It was some time before Hellboy heard the familiar sound of clattering pots and pans, almost drowned out by the noise of the fan. No need to check the camera to confirm the chicken's location, but he did need it to find Bonnie. A quick search revealed him to be standing in the west hall. With the light from the single lightbulb at his back, the rabbit was shrouded in darkness, casting a long shadow across the checkered laminate flooring. When the camera feed devolved into static, he was gone.

But that would have to wait for a few minutes. The chicken was in the east hall, half-visible through the white noise and the black shadows. An involuntary chill ran up Hellboy's spine as he beheld its lifeless, slack-jawed expression, its head hanging limp to one side. All along the wall were posters of Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica. But rather than depicting the cartoon characters as seen on the sign outside, they depicted the dead-eyed animatronics. Hellboy could not imagine what the marketing team had been thinking. Some minutes later, he looked at Cam 4B, but the east hall corner was still empty. He had not previously noticed that list of rules that hung on the wall. Most of them were what one would expect, some seemed bizarrely obvious—Don't poop on floor?—but others were disturbingly relevant. Don't touch Freddy took on a sinister double meaning.

His reading was interrupted by the onset of white noise. When the picture returned, he found the chicken glaring up at him with murderous intent. He wasted no time in closing the monitor and turning on the east hall light. The animatronic was framed in the doorway, staring fish-eyed at nothing, its beak hanging slack. The sudden sight of the ghoulish figure sent a thrill through Hellboy's body. He slammed the door on it and waited. Not too long afterward, he found it back in the dining area, staring into the camera once more.

"I'm never gonna get used to that," said Hellboy.

…

2:45 AM

Hellboy was feeling reasonably confident in his control of the situation. Bonnie had already paid him one more visit, and Chica was slowly making her way back to the east hall. Though he had been kept busy, his power consumption was still better than the previous night. As he monitored the animatronics, he considered just how uncanny it was that they should seem to know when they were being watched, only to move as soon as the feed was temporarily lost. Whatever spirits were possessing them were not stupid.

All of a sudden, Hellboy was struck with a disturbing thought. He remembered something that he had left forgotten for hours.

Cam 1C.

He threw open the monitor and turned to look at Pirate Cove. The curtains were wide open. The stage was empty.

At that moment, Hellboy heard a sound that caused him to freeze in place. It sounded like footsteps. Heavy metal footsteps. And they were rapidly approaching.

In a panic, he switched to Cam 2A, just in time to see the fox running down the west hall and past the camera. It was the first time that he had ever seen any of the animatronics actually moving in the night. It was startling, it was disturbing, and it was coming.

"Geez!"

Hellboy threw himself across the office and brought his left fist down on the door button. The door crashed into place, and not one moment too soon. The sound of metallic banging was barely audible from the other side of the door. It was several seconds before Hellboy was able to pick himself up and open the door. He shook his head. This was the second time that he had received such a violent scare in this stupid restaurant. How many more close calls could he expect, and how long could he count on his luck to hold out?

…

6:00 AM

Hellboy collapsed back into his chair with a sigh of relief. He could feel his hands shaking. This could not go on indefinitely. Sooner or later, his luck was bound to run out. Even if he did get good enough to survive, that was a job that no one should ever have to learn. He needed direction. He needed to make a call to the home office.

After punching his timecard, he went looking for a phone. Why his own office had none, he could not say. Even in the early morning light, the pizzeria was still eerily dark. He found himself wincing involuntarily as he walked past the show stage. Eventually he found a phone hanging on the wall of the kitchen. All of the pots, pans, and utensils were upset all over the floor, thanks to Chica's late-night prowling, and he had to step around every one of them. As he dialed the head office in Fairfield, Connecticut, he wondered what he was going to say. He wished he could speak to Professor Bruttenholm. He would have known what to do about all of this. But he would have to settle for the next best person.

"Hello, this is Dr. Kate Corrigan from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense—"

"Hey, Kate, it's me."

"Hellboy? You're calling early. What is it, 6 o'clock over there?"

"My shift just ended. You must be just starting your day, huh?"

"More or less. What's up? How's your new part-time job? Any evidence of those hauntings?"

"Oh, yeah," Hellboy said with an ironic chuckle. "You ever go to one of those pizza places with the singing figures?"

"Not in a long time. Scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. They always looked like they were possessed."

"These ones are."

"…What?"

Hellboy proceeded to explain to Kate the events of the last two nights: the anxious manager desperate for a new security guard, the hasty job orientation, the sketchy training tapes, and especially the possessed animatronics.

"My God. That place sounds like an HR nightmare," Kate remarked.

"I've got half a mind to report the whole damn place and get them shut down for good."

"I doubt the spirits would appreciate being relocated to God-knows-where—probably some other restaurant location."

"I thought about that. But what am I supposed to do? Let them make me their fifth mascot? I'm not ready to die over this stupid job."

"About that: this phone guy says they want to stuff you into an empty suit, but are we sure that's true?"

"I'm not exactly eager to find out for myself, Kate."

"What I mean is: he doesn't know that they're possessed, right? It sounds like he's trying to attribute unnatural behavior to natural explanations. As far as he knows, they're acting on programming."

"That's what I figure. He hasn't said anything to make me believe he believes in paranormal activity. But he mentioned that the animatronics are programmed to wander at night, so I can't be sure how much of what they do is programming and how much is haunting. Maybe the spirits are like animals, and the animatronics' programming is like instinct.—What are the chances that beating them into scrap would help them pass on?"

"Not good," Kate said dryly. "Besides, without backup, you really can't risk angering them. We don't know what these spirits are capable of, in or out of their suits."

"That's the weird thing: why attack me using the animatronics? If they were just your average restless spirits out to kill, you'd think they'd just say 'screw it' to the whole stuffing business, leave the suits behind and come straight for the office."

"If they were capable of leaving the suits," Kate deduced.

"Exactly. I think they might be bound to these animatronics. Now, remind me again: how does a spirit become bound to an object?"

"Well, in most recorded cases of spiritual possession, the spirit of the deceased will go on to possess an inanimate object that they shared a strong emotional connection with during life. That could take the form of a positive connection, like a sick child who goes on to possess their favorite teddy bear, or a negative connection, like a murder victim coming to possess the house where they were killed. More often than not, trauma plays a large factor."

"Trust me, Kate: if you could see these things, you could believe that they would leave people traumatized."

"I can believe it.—So judging from everything you've told me, a normal exorcism is out of the question."

"Right. I can't imagine how we would restrain them long enough to exorcise them."

"Even if we could, there's the chance that a standard exorcism wouldn't be enough to make them pass on, especially if there's some unresolved trauma that caused them to be bound to the suits. Maybe they could be persuaded to pass on if they make peace with their death. Do you know anything about the circumstances of their death?"

"Nothing. Reading through the case file, the locals don't seem to like the restaurant much, but no one seems to want to say why." Just then, Hellboy remembered something he had failed to mention. "That phone guy mentioned something about a 'Bite of '87': made it sound like one of the bots took a chomp out of someone's head."

"My God. Well, it sounds like that accounts for one spirit—"

"No, wait, scratch that; the victim lived after that. So that's a dead end."

"That still means that the animatronics have been dangerous for a long time. It's not improbable to believe that they could have attacked before. But if people died, you'd think that it would be in the newspapers.—How many spirits did you say there were?"

"At least four: one for each animatronic."

"'At least'? You're not sure?"

"I don't have a lot of time between the end of my shift and the beginning of the opening shift to check and make sure. I don't want to spook anyone if I can help it."

"That's probably for the best.—Well, I'd better get back to work, and you'd better get some rest. We'll try to see if we can dig up anything on Fazbear Entertainment."

"Thanks a lot. I'm beat. I'd better not start getting nightmares from these stupid things."

"Let's hope not. Talk to you later."

"Bye."

Hellboy hung up the phone just as he heard the front door open. The opening shift had just arrived. As he exited the kitchen, he passed the manager.

"Morning," Hellboy said.

The manager mumbled indistinctly.

"Uh, hey," said Hellboy, scratching the back of his head. "Y'know, the last two nights, the animatronics have been acting a little—what's the word?—quirky."

The manager stopped in his tracks. He turned around to look at his big, red employee.

"I understand that your training tapes go over those 'quirks' and how to manage them," he answered. There was a strange note in his voice.

"Uh, yeah, they do," answered Hellboy. "Still, I was taken by surprise by the one over there—"

Hellboy gestured towards Pirate Cove.

"Foxy," the manager interjected.

"That's the one. I was just thinking, I know we're not supposed to tamper with the animatronics, but maybe the folks upstairs could send someone out here to give them a looking over."

The manager appeared very opposed to such a suggestion, judging from his tense body language.

"Maybe we can—I don't know—give them a call and set something up for Saturday. If no one's working that day, it would be the best time to—"

"While I appreciate your input, Mr. Hellboy," the manager interrupted, "I don't think you've been a part of the Fazbear Entertainment family long enough to understand how our business model operates."

Hellboy got the message loud and clear: mind your own business and do your own job.

"Sure. Just an idea."

He left the restaurant feeling frustrated. How was he supposed to lay these spirits to rest when it was all he could do just to survive the night? At any rate, it was time for him to get going and have a long sleep. He had a very long, tense night shift ahead of him.