Fear is a Form of Grief

Chapter One

The air in front of his face turned misty. He kept breathing, heavy and even, as he leaned against the front quarter panel of his Corolla. Fumbling in his jacket pocket, he pulled out a wad of folded up legal papers.

One was the handwritten directions to the house in front of him. It was a modest building: one floor, one car garage, postage stamp-sized lawn. The walls were covered in plaster and blue paint, except for the front wall, under the porch—that wall was covered in what looked like bricks. There was a planter next to the porch that sat empty, though if he focused, he could see hard-packed, frozen dirt inside.

If his research was good, this home belonged to one Callum Divelbiss, twin brother of his deceased mentor, Scott Divelbiss.

That was what another page was for: he’d taped a cutout of Scott’s obituary to it, which happened to have a picture of him and his brother together. It was in black and white and in shitty newspaper ink on top of that, but even in its imperfection, it was clear to him that both men, while smiling, looked haunted.

“All right, Mike,” he huffed to himself. “Get your shit together. You’re committed now.”

Technically, he could hop in his Corolla and jet. He could still do that. But he… couldn’t. If he did that, Scott died for nothing. Someone else would die for nothing. He had the power to end this. He just needed some help, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to make his sister complicit.

He crunched up the walkway, noting how small he felt under the eave above the porch. It was louder, too, somehow. He swallowed the knot in his throat and used his good hand to knock against the frame of the screen attached to the front door. When that, understandably, did not make the noise he thought it would, he gingerly pulled it open and knocked on the front door proper.

He checked his watch, before staring into the middle distance, down the line of houses. It was a decent enough neighbourhood. Still a little cramped, but not as bad as the neighbourhood where he rented with Lisa.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he averted his eyes just in time to watch the door silently open. A pair of eyes, silvery-gray and sharp, stared at him from the crack between the partially opened door and the frame.

“Wrong house,” the person inside said, before going to close the door again.

Mike couldn’t have said what possessed him at the time, but he pushed against the door bodily, a breathy “Wait!” coming out of him as he desperately pushed. The man behind the door was strong, stronger than he was expecting, but Mike managed to keep the door ajar, if nothing else. “I’m looking for Cal. Cal Divelbiss?”

Gently, the door pulled open, and Mike pulled back in turn.

Callum Divelbiss was an average-looking man in his twenties, maybe thirties, on first pass. Pale skin, dark hair, decent jawline. His gray eyes were startling, though, and that’s where things started to break down. He was tall, really tall, and lean, to the point of concern. Beneath the collar of his messy work shirt, sunbleached lavender, was a web of scarring that was silvery against his already pale skin. He didn’t look like the happy man in the photograph. He looked like that man’s ghost.

“What’s it to you, kid?” Cal ground out. His voice wasn’t gravelly so much as hoarse, the way voices got when they hadn’t been used in a long time. What likely didn’t help was when he lifted a cigarette to his cracked lips, taking a long drag as Mike struggled to put together words. Smoke drifted up into his narrow eyes, his fingers hovering in a V around his mouth.

He had a whole conversation planned in his head; speaking to other people wasn’t his best skill on a good day, and this was not a good day. Having a script helped ease that. That script had been blown out the window, and now he was left to try and figure out what to do.

Start at the top. Why was he here?

“I wanted to talk to you.” He took a deep breath as Cal continued to smoke, utterly placid. “About Fazbear’s.”

That got a flash of life to spark in Cal’s cold eyes and he exhaled pointedly, the smoke coming out of his nose like a dragon. “You and every goddamn conspiracy nutter in the state. I worked there. They fired me. Whatever. It’s in the past and I don’t know shit about those fucking kids or the robots.”

“No, I—” Cal had started to turn away, and Mike blurted out the only thing he could think of to keep him from closing that door in his face. “It’s about Scott!”

He knew he had him when Cal jerked to a stop, his long fingers going tight on the edge of the door. “What?”

“I… he saved my life. I wanted… I wanted to help you.” Mike fished the obit out of his pocket again, holding it up for emphasis. “They never… they never found him, right? He just disappeared after a shift at work, car still in the lot, and they just… they just gave up, right?”

Something he said was right. Or at least not wrong. Cal stepped over the threshold of his home, looming over him like some sort of spectre. He was too tall; it was too much like his last close call with Freddy, the animatronic hovering over him, that damn music box playing…

But Cal was not a killer animatronic. He was just some guy. A very tall guy who clearly didn’t take the death of his brother well, if the smell of tobacco and alcohol coming off of him indicated anything.

“You were there,” Cal said, his eyes brightening as he grinned, teeth flicking out from behind his lips. “You were at Freddy’s. You saw them.”

“Yeah.” Mike swallowed. “I saw them. Real up close and personal.”

Cal’s head flicked back. “Get in. Cold as a witch’s teat out here.”

The inside of the house was warm, though in a state of want. The couch in the living room was a fuzzy brown affair, and the side table nearby suggested that was where Cal spent most of his time. Newspapers, a paperback book that was irreparably dog-eared, and several cans of cheap beer sat on the table, though Mike noted they were at least pleasantly arranged. It was nice, he supposed, to have an aesthetically pleasing mental breakdown. At least that involved less shame.

“Whaddaya want?” Cal’s voice came from down a hall, and Mike trailed hesitantly after him. “Coke? Seven-Up? Beer? I’m kidding. I don’t give people my beer.”

“Uh. Seven-Up’s fine.”

“Nice.” Cal returned from a room down that hall, carrying two bright green cans. He held one out as he got closer. “Now. What’d they make you do at Freddy’s?”

“Uh. Night shift. Guard duty.” He didn’t know how to process Cal’s sudden mood swing, and he didn’t know if he was supposed to process it. Grief did weird things to people, but he had no idea what Cal was like beforehand. All he knew was it was… weird. He almost sounded like the man on the phone, the man he had sworn he would find and thank personally for helping him survive those nights at Freddy’s… and who had been declared dead at least a year before he had even been hired.

Cal bobbed his head as he led them back into the living room. He didn’t sit down on the couch, though he gestured for Mike to do so. “Nasty shift. Hated it. I always liked the morning shift. You know, when everything was as clean as that shithole was gonna get and most kids were still in school, so census was low. Mostly just people like you and me and bored out of their fuckin’ skulls.”

Really weird hearing that in the phone guy’s almost-voice. When Scott spoke, he was blasé when suggesting anything was wrong with Fazbear’s, so matter-of-fact that he had think to carefully over what the man said. Maybe that was because corporate was watching. He’d never know.

Meanwhile, Cal was practically spitting hate as he began to pace back and forth over the carpet. The particular path he walked was noticeably more clean than the carpet around it, which Mike assumed meant pacing was a regular activity in the Divelbiss household.

“Night shift wasn’t so bad,” Mike said, causing Cal to swivel his head towards him. “Minus the killer robot mascots, anyway.”

“There’s the rub,” Cal sneered. “They didn’t even fucking have the decency to tell you about that part. Did they?”

“Not even a hint.” Mike popped the Seven-Up open. It was flat. He was not going to complain. “Scott tiptoed around the, uh, severity of the issue the first night, sorta. Though I think he tripped into it anyway. I guess he had to, to get the tapes recorded.”

“Tapes…” Cal furrowed his brow, before he sank onto the couch next to him. “Training tapes, right?” When Mike nodded, he went on. “Those tapes. They’re back at Freddy’s?”

“Uh. Yeah, I mean, probably. I guess I should have taken them with me, but…” But he couldn’t hear him die again.

“I can go back for them.”

“Uh. Do you know the manager or something? You said they fired you.”

“Yeah. Manager owes me a favour.” Cal cracked a grin, and he was starting to remind Mike of the Cheshire Cat. “Or… we could sneak in.”

“Wha-at?” Mike cleared his throat, hoping Cal wasn’t going to jump on him for the voice crack. He didn’t. “Like, at night? With the aforementioned killer robots? Are you nuts?”

“No. God, c’mon…” His jaw worked for a moment, before he bit his lip. “Hey, what’s your name again?”

“Uh. Mike. Mike Schmidt.”

“C’mon, Mikey. You don’t survive Freddy’s by being stupid. We’re gonna walk in during day shift. You still got your uniform?”

“Not the badge.”

“That’s fine. I got a spare.”

Mike swallowed a particularly disgusting mouthful of his decarbonated drink. “You have… wait. You not only have your own badge, you have a spare?”

“There’s a reason you don’t look gift horses in the mouth, Mikey.” Standing with a stretch, Cal gestured stiffly with his free hand. Now that Mike thought about it, he didn’t remember seeing Cal put his cigarette anywhere. “You come back here tomorrow morning, in your uniform, and we’ll get set up and head over. It’s Sunday, and no one shows up at Freddy’s Sunday morning.”

“This is a lot of effort for tapes.”

Cal bit his lip again, sawing his teeth back and forth. “I don’t have a lot of my brother.” His voice was heavy. Dangerous, Mike thought vaguely, before brushing that thought aside. “And that place doesn’t deserve any part of him. Got it?”

“Yeah.” He felt like the other man was pointing a dagger at his throat. “Yeah, I got it.”

“Good. Get out.”

“Wait, I—”

He was completely unprepared for being bodily lifted and tossed out the front door like a particularly disappointing sack of potatoes. He sat there on the porch, backside aching, as Cal slammed the door shut behind him.

That was… not quite how he expected it to go.

Still, he showed up dutifully the next morning, windbreaker draped over the purple shirt of the Freddy Fazbear security guard uniform. His legs were gooseflesh under the slacks, but there wasn’t much he could do about that except knock harder on Cal’s door. He pressed his face against the chipping paint, squinting as though that would help him hear better. He couldn’t tell if it was working.

He couldn’t wait anymore. The door opened at his touch, creaking lowly. His eyes took a moment to get adjusted to the early winter morning gloom. The living room was the same as it was yesterday, with an extra can or two placed around the base of the side table. He slinked carefully down the hall, trying not to make too much noise. If Cal was still asleep, that would change, but…

One of the first rooms he peeked into was a small bathroom. Slumped against the bathtub was his newfound ally, turned-over can in one hand, burned-out cigarette in the other. Without thinking, Mike ducked by his side, making sure the cigarette was truly out. Once he confirmed the place was not going to catch fire, he gently clapped his palms against Cal’s cheeks. That set him to stir, and his foggy gray eyes stared up at him.

“Wuh?” Cal slurred.

“This could get you killed, you know that?” Mike waved the stub in front of Cal’s face, before gesturing to the small singe mark on the floor, not even an inch from one of the bathmats. “People fall asleep in bed with these things and burn to death in their houses.”

Cal’s head just fell back, clipping the bathtub. “Urgh,” he burbled. “Ffffuck that. Fuck you. Maybe I wanna burn. Ever think of that, you fuckin’... Ninja Turtle.”

“Very scathing. Come on—forget Freddy’s today. You need breakfast.” And, to his surprise, Mike did mean that. The tapes and evidence of Scott’s death, if they were still there, would still be there later.

So he hefted Cal’s arm over a shoulder and guided him into the tiny kitchen, depositing him into some weird booth setup in the corner. The cabinets weren’t filled with much in the way of interest, but he managed to find a brick of instant ramen and set about making it with the cleanest pot he could find. As he waited for the water to boil, he cast a look around the room.

The sink was piled, albeit neatly, with dishes that should have been washed a long time ago. The fridge was a combo unit with a freezer, and its façade was already yellowing. There was a small CRT TV set on the edge of the counter by the sink, angled so it could be watched from the booth, and the blocky cable box sat atop it, proudly displaying the time in dull red. The stove and the microwave were probably from the Seventies, judging by the chrome exterior and the flecks of rust settling by the edges of its tempered glass.

“You don’t live with anyone?” Mike asked.

“Mm.” At first, it seemed like that was all Cal was going to give him, face buried in his hands, before he looked up and stared across the table. “My brother. There was enough money left after my uncle died, that when we grew up, we could have a little place, away from our folks. You know? But then…”

Cal went silent. Mike stirred the noodles into the boiling water. A warm, burning pit was starting to settle in his stomach. Maybe this had been a bad idea. He was butting into someone else’s business, someone else’s grief, and trying to make it about… about what? Himself? He didn’t get anything out of this, though. This was for Scott. That was right. This was for Scott.

There were no clean bowls, so Mike took an oven mitt and set the pot atop that in front of Cal. The man stared into the brown depths of beef ramen before his tired, red-ringed eyes stared up at him. “What.”

“Eat. It’ll hydrate you, too. You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Cal said with an indignant sniff. He couldn’t tell if that was at the thought of needing help or the jab at his appearance. Either way, he picked up the fork and poked at the sodium-rich noodles.

“You drink every night?”

“God, is this a fucking interrogation? Listen, Schmidt, I get it, you got wrapped up in Fredbear’s and you want answers. Some of us gave up on answers a long time ago.”

“It looked like you just gave up everything,” Mike said.

Cal stood, slow and careful. His height was intimidating, but Mike set his jaw tight. “You,” Cal hissed, “don’t know jackshit about me.”

“You’re right.” He was emboldened when Cal stared at him in response. “I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know anything about Scott, or those kids that got murdered, or even the basic history of the goddamn restaurant. But I know what it looks like when someone gives up.”

“Fuck you.”

“You were all gung-ho about going to Freddy’s yesterday, and then I found you passed out by the toilet—”

“Why were you even in here—”

“—which just doesn’t add up! Do you want those tapes before Fazbear’s destroys them, or do you want to keep wallowing in your own misery?”

Cal’s eyes narrowed. His stance shifted, and it took Mike longer than he wanted to admit to realize he had grabbed the handle of the still-very-scalding metal pot. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. No one does. Get it?”

“Fine,” Mike spat. “But I’m going to go back to Freddy’s, with or without you.”

“So you do want to go back…” Cal let go of the pot and dropped back into the booth seat. “For what? I want the tapes. What could you want there?”

“I… someone has to get those tapes. And… I don’t know. I need to go back.” Mike glanced out the window. Between the pulled curtains, he could see the glass was dirty. “If they hadn’t fired me, I think I’d still be going back every night.”

“I’d think you’d want to put it behind you.”

“You’d think!” Mike wrapped his arms around himself, stepping closer to the window and peering outside. It was a nice day. It sucked that he was spending it in some wacko’s house, and had planned to spend it inside that decrepit restaurant. “I can’t stop thinking about it. The animatronics. The phone. The kids. The backroom.”

“Ah,” said Cal, and he could tell it was around a mouthful of noodles. “Sounds like you’re starting down the road to psychodom. Better quit while you’re ahead, Mikey.”

“Shut up.” He couldn’t put any heat into it. Cal was right, unfortunately. If he wasn’t careful, he could get lost down this rabbit hole. But he couldn’t stop now.

“Still early. We could get in during the morning lull still.”

“Yeah. You need to finish eating.” Mike scrunched up his face. “And take a shower.”

Cal didn’t take long, though he ended up smelling like cheap shampoo and cheaper cologne. It was better than how his house smelled, so Mike didn’t say anything. He tapped the air freshener in his car for good luck, and set them down the road.

It was sitting in Freddy’s parking lot that he realized he didn’t have a goddamn clue what to do. The car park was empty, mostly, except for a scattering of cars near the back, where employees were ‘encouraged’ to park. He could see one family walking in, but other than that it almost felt too empty. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe they needed to wait until… until what? A birthday party? Fazbear’s was dying. Too many dead and missing kids, not to mention employees. No one was coming.

Cal was curled up in the passenger seat, staring at the building through half-lidded eyes and not providing much in the way of help. He had brought a toothpick since Mike told him he couldn’t smoke in his car, and he was chewing on it idly.

“So uh.” Mike pointed, somewhat uselessly. “That side entrance is where I normally walked in for my shifts.”

“Makes sense. No camera on that entrance. Can’t prove if people enter or leave that way.” As if sensing Mike staring at him, Cal added, “They used that excuse when we sicced the cops on ‘em after Scott disappeared. They said we couldn’t prove he was still… on the premises.”

“Oh.” Mike didn’t know what else to say.

Cal pulled his cap on and adjusted it before exiting the car. Mike sat there, his hands tightening on the steering wheel, before he let go. He needed to relax. This was fine. Cal… knew what he was doing? Probably? He acted like he knew what he was doing, which was more than Mike had.

A quick jog let him catch up to Cal at the door, where he pulled out some little slip of metal. It looked like a strange key, and was inserted into the door’s lock like one. Instead of turning it immediately, Cal jiggled it a few times. His motions had purpose, but Mike couldn’t guess what it was until the door clicked open.

“Uh?”

“Rake,” Cal said, like that explained anything.

“Is that legal?” Mike asked, lowering his voice as he brushed past Cal, who held the door open.

He gave him one of his feline grins. “Not even a little bit,” he said, closing the door behind them. The latch clicked quietly, like the snapping of bone.

As they walked down the hall, Mike struggled not to burst into sweat. There was music coming from the main area, lights and sounds from the arcade, and even though he knew there was almost no one here, he was afraid.

It wasn’t right during the day. Which was to say, it was… normal. The halls weren’t shrouded in malicious shadow. The echoing steps of mechanical monsters didn’t reach his straining ears. Fuck, he was even sure that kid he heard laughing was actually somewhere in the building. This very building, that somehow felt smaller, more defined, and yet bigger, more alive.

At night, this place wanted him dead. During the day, it was just trying to survive.

“All right, Mike,” Cal murmured in his ear, his presence only barely forewarned by the smell of barely-concealed menthol. “The other guards patrol during the day, so there might not be anyone in the security office to spot us right now. So let’s be fast, aye? Walk like them. Like us. Like you belong.”

“Right.” And they did, though Mike remained a step behind. As they passed the office, he watched Cal lean in through the doorway for only a moment before resuming his casual, confident gait. As he said, no one was there, but the monitors were still bright. Hesitantly, he stepped in and located the white phone on the desk. He reached over to click the eject button, and the phone readily complied.

No tape.

Fuck.

As Cal made a bead for the backstage, Mike meandered around the perimeter, keeping his stroll as casual as possible. There were a few more kids than he expected, moving through the main dining area, though two darted off to the arcade as he lingered. The curtain was drawn, and all was calm. Pirate’s Cove was still out of order. He couldn’t see the guards on shift, which made him uneasy, but looking for one would be counterintuitive, so he made his way back to Cal, hiding the tremble in his legs with precise strides.

“So far it’s all clear,” he said.

“What timing!” Cal turned his head to give him a smug leer as the door popped open. “I oughta bring you around when I check my lotto tickets.”

Somehow, Mike was already getting used to ignoring Cal’s off-kilter remarks. He slipped inside the backstage, swallowing hard as antiseptics and bleach hit the roof of his mouth. He didn’t know what he expected, but this was worse than his nightmares, where he could feel blood slip under his shoes and see the yellowed whites of dismembered eyes nestled in beheaded masks.

But the reality of it was, it was just a bunch of shelves and that table in the middle. There wasn’t even an endoskeleton to be seen, which he thought was odd, but he was too exhausted to be more anxious than he already was.

“Tapes, tapes, tapes,” Cal muttered behind him, beelining to a corner and moving boxes around. “If I were a scumbag company who could make people disappear, where would I put tapes?”

“In the dump,” Mike said. He didn’t register his own words at first, and then heat travelled up his spine, into his neck, settling in his ears. When he looked, Cal was levelling a stare at him. “Sorry, I… They gotta be here. They only fired me a week ago.”

While Cal searched the boxes on one side of the room, Mike roamed the shelves, peering into the sunken heads of the Fazbear Four. He knew from how the room smelled that Scott was long gone, even not taking into consideration the first realization he’d had when he found his obituary, but he had to honour the man by at least looking. For several tense moments, nothing was said. It was only the sound of Cal’s progressively more aggressive searching and Mike’s cheap dress shoes rapping on cheaper linoleum that kept them company.

“They’re not here.” Cal’s voice was quiet. “You didn’t lie to me, did you, Mikey? Because I don’t like liars.”

“I didn’t lie,” Mike said. Still, he avoided looking at him, instead trying to find something interesting in an extra Bonnie head. “I swear it to you. I heard him on those tapes. They have to be somewhere. They wouldn’t have just thrown them away after using them for so long.”

That was something he hadn’t had the time to think about, mostly because doing so was too confusing. Why would the company play a tape to a fresh employee that clearly had recorded a man dying? And why would they keep using those tapes for a year? It didn’t make sense, but nothing at Fazbear’s made sense.

He turned and fear clenched his throat so tight he couldn’t scream. Cal had snuck up on him, hanging over him like Bonnie had that first night, silver eyes glowing in the dim light.

“Maybe we should check the security office, then,” Cal said mildly. He took a step forward. Slow. Deliberate. Precise.

Mike took a step back. He swallowed, and found his voice in the process. “Alre-already did. Well, the-the phone. There’s no tape loaded in it.”

Cal smiled. It wasn’t like his grin, full of teeth, though Mike wished it was. It was thin, his lips pinching. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Good job, Mikey,” he drawled. “But hey, I was just thinking… why are you here anyway?”

“To h-help you—”

“Yeah, yeah. But that doesn’t explain why you’d come find me to start, huh? Why not just go home and forget about Fazbear’s?” Cal stepped forward again. His shoulders drew up. “Why make me remember?”

He hadn’t thought about it like that. Not until this morning. But in the end… “You don’t seem like a guy who could forget this place,” he said. He tried to step back again in response to Cal’s dominating presence, heeling the linoleum, when the sole of his foot did something strange. The heel met something rough and thick, and the ball of his foot was still on slick tile.

He hadn’t realized he was off-balance until it was too late to recover. He reached out, and he thought he felt Cal grab him in response, but something hit the back of his head and burst into his eyes. He was vaguely aware of being lowered to the floor, the stench of bleach getting stronger, before he was able to blink the spots away.

“Ugh,” he said eloquently. He turned his head and…

Cal must have been adjusting the door slightly, because the level of light changed. It caught on a small spot under the table, a black square with a stain where the white tiles around it were streaked with cleaning solution.

“Jesus,” he heard Cal breathe above him. “I don’t think anyone heard, but shit. You hit the table hard. Are you still alive?”

“Yeah,” he said, pushing up on his elbows. “Hey, is that blood?”

“It better not be yours.”

“Thanks. Really felt the concern in your voice.” Mike let out a grunt as he pushed up on his knees, crawling forward to get a better look. “You got a flashlight?”

“Here.” He heard a shuffle, and then Cal was also there, rolling a heavy Maglight to him. “Courtesy of Fazbear Entertainment.”

It took a few shakes, but the Maglight did the job, casting a solid white glare where he pointed. He could see it clearly now, a splotch of coagulated rust that had probably once been blood, dutifully going about its business.

Mike gagged. He shook his head, trying to not think about it, about getting shoved in a suit, about crossbeams and animatronic components, about a man who looked like the one kneeling next to him screaming and no one would hear or know—

And that rabbit hole branched into a warren. Hadn’t the rumours said the kids got shoved in those suits? That the animatronics reeked of rotting meat and warm blood and seeping mucus? How old was this blood, right here? How old was this place? How long had this been going—

Another gag crawled up his throat, pried open his jaw, and he clicked the light off. “All right. Yeah. Yep. Okay. We did it. Someone died here. Good job, gang. I think I’m going to throw up.”

The Maglight was pried out of his hand, and he almost panicked before remembering Cal was an individual with agency. “All right, baby. Go to the restrooms or something.” There was a pause. A soft note entered his voice, one that he hadn’t heard before. “You look pale, Mike.”

“Y-yeah. Uh. I’m gonna. Go. Do that.”

“I’ll hold down the fort.”

He peeked his head out from backstage, noting that the main area looked about the same as he left it. With quick steps, he made the walk of shame to the men’s restroom unscathed, if a little embarrassed.

His nausea had calmed, but his hands were still shaking. He splashed some water on his face, tried to repeat some kind of mantra in his head, but nothing suitable was coming up. Briefly, he tried to recite the ‘fear is the mind killer’ thing from Dune, but he couldn’t remember the whole thing. He settled with more water.

As he wiped his face off with the world’s shittiest paper towel, he caught sight of something and bit down a shout. It was just the mirror. Just him.

The Mike Schmidt staring at him from within the mirror was pale, just as Cal had said. His eyes were red and there was a gauntness in his cheeks that might have been from forgetting to eat enough for the past few months. If he was an animatronic that maybe possibly was possessed by a dead kid, he’d probably assume he was some crazy murderer, too.

He walked out of the restroom feeling… cold. He felt cold. A little empty. Numb, maybe. Maybe he did need to go home and forget this place. He had too much on his plate, trying to find yet another job, help his sister get back on her feet, pay the rent, pay for the car… there was no room to add ‘figure out what the fuck is wrong with Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza’ to that list. It was already a very stressful list.

He had just made it about three quarters across the restaurant. Luck had meant no one had noticed he wasn’t technically on the payroll anymore, even though he was so wrapped up in his own misery he’d forgotten to check for the guards. But he recognized the feeling that flashed up his spine, made his hair stand up on end.

The music was wrong. Different. It wasn’t just music. It was singing.

He turned, facing the stage.

The band was playing. Freddy in front, Bonnie to his right, Chica to his left. They were going through the motions, choppy and rigid, jaws flapping open and closed almost to the lyrics. He could see the endoskeleton teeth just past their jaws, and if he looked up.

Silver eyes, nestled in darkness.

Bonnie had stopped playing. He’d seen him. He knew him. He recognized him. He jerked, gears whirring, servos shrieking. Yet Bonnie’s feet made almost no sound as he dropped to the floor of the main area, guitar discarded, mouth still working to words Mike couldn’t even hear anymore.

He turned and bolted. This wasn’t the game they played. The office, the doors, that was fair. He could fight back. Here he was too open. Defenseless. Maybe he couldn’t outrun him forever, but surely the backstage door could hold him off until someone—anyone—could stop the crazy killer robot.

He closed the door to the backstage behind him with force, his ribs spasming in aching gasps. The blackness crept in on his vision. He was aware, vaguely, of someone saying something, but none of it clicked until nails dug painfully into the skin on his arms.

“What the fuck,” Mike hissed, shoving the man in front of him.

The black started to clear. Cal stared out at him through it. “What do you mean, what the fuck? I should be asking you what the fuck! So what the fuck?”

“Bonnie,” he stammered. “Bonnie recognized me.”

That got him a head tilt, which he didn’t know people actually did outside of books. “So?”

“So? He fuckin’—f-f-fu-fuckin’ walked off stage midshow to get to me!”

“Did he?” Cal blinked languidly. “They ripped daywalking out of them, Mike. They can’t do that anymore. Not since Eighty-Seven.”

“Well, he fucking did.” Mike didn’t care that he saw spit fly and land on Cal’s jaw, nor did he feel that hot flash of embarrassment as the other man rubbed it off without breaking eye contact. “I-I can’t… there’s nothing to defend ourselves with over here. We’re fucked.”

Cal reached out and grabbed him by the waist, which was weird enough as it was, but then he pushed Mike aside like a particularly unruly basket of laundry.

“What are you doing?”

“Lookin’,” Cal said, easy as he pleased. He had already gotten the door open by the time Mike collided back into him, trying to pull him back. Cal just grunted.

They scuffled. He didn’t know who pushed who harder, just that an elbow landed in his gut and that was it. His high school wrestling days were behind him, and he doubled over, winded.

“Look!” Cal hissed, quiet and harsh. Bony fingers scratched into his scalp, and he was shoved into the small gap the door made, just large enough for a sightline into the restaurant proper.

The curtain on the stage was pulling itself forward, but he saw it. All three animatronics, up there, where they belonged.

He also saw what looked like a parent, talking to the first security guard he’d seen all day. She was pointing vaguely in the direction of backstage. At him. Them.

He craned his neck back. “Shit.”

“Shit what now?” Cal said. “You are getting on my goddamn nerves, you miserable little—”

“Sorry, I—” His throat caught on the words. “I, uhm. I think I…”

“What?”

“I think, uh, a guard’s coming this way.”

They were quiet for a second, when Cal brought his hands up to his face and ran them down, until it pulled the skin and made him look like a cartoon character. “Okay. Fine. Over here.” He grabbed Mike’s wrist and dragged him across the room. “This?” He nudged a spot on the floor with his foot. He had the vague sense it was the spot that tripped him up earlier. “There’s something under here. This tile’s different from the others. Here.” Finally, he placed something small and thin in his hand. “Put it in your pocket or something, in case it takes me a while to come back.”

“Huh?” Mike asked. He didn’t look at the thing in his hands, just focused on the way it bit into his skin without breaking it. Not wanting to piss Cal off further, he slid it into his pocket as directed.

Without a word, Cal pushed past him, opened the door, and waltzed out like he owned the place. A spike of fear wormed its way into his lungs, and Mike darted to the door, pressed against it to better hear. Sounds beyond were murky: he could hear the music that droned on and on, regardless of whether the show was on or not, and he could hear voices, angry and deep, but individual words were hard to decipher.

And then those voices got close. Mike panicked, and pressed himself against the wall.

The door burst open. If there was a God, then He favoured Mike this day, since the hinges squealed and stopped the door short just before it squashed him like a bug against the plaster. Thinking fast, he grabbed the door handle and, slowly, like it was meant to, eased it back towards himself as far as it would go and kept it there. It blocked his line of sight, but he could hear someone stomping around the room, breathing hard.

“If I find a single thing out of place in here, Callum,” said a voice he vaguely recognized, “I’m callin’ the police.”

“Listen, Hec, you and I both know if that worked, you’d have already done it by now.”

Hector was head of security, as prestigious a title like that could be at a dump like Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. He had struck Mike as a relatively nice, if stressed, individual. He was also just a little bit forgettable.

“You came here to gloat? Christ. Get a hobby that doesn’t involve stalking around pizzerias.”

“Then give me the tapes.”

“Tapes? What tapes?”

Something metal screamed against the floor. “You know what tapes.”

“You threat’nin’ me, Cal?” The silence was tense. “I’m not lying. I don’t know what tapes you’re talking about. We got tapes going back at least a decade.”

“You’re using tapes Scott recorded to train the night watch. I want them.”

“What?” For a moment, Hector’s voice wavered. It took on something different, something soft, when he continued. “Cal, I get it. Your brother goes missing and you want someone to blame—”

“Don’t give me excuses!” Mike flinched, but he didn’t know if that was that Cal didn’t sound right, or that the metal shrieking came back. “Just give me the tapes!”

“We got rid of them. Threw ‘em out.”

Sweat dripped down Mike’s neck.

“Liar.”

“Look, I don’t like you. But if giving you those tapes would make you get out and stay out, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Fuck management. But I don’t have ‘em. I’m sorry. You’re a year too late.”

“I—” A breath. Heavy. Wet. “I have it on good authority that—that you have those tapes,” Cal said, and that was it. Now he sounded like his brother, nervous and somehow even. “Just—just give them to me. That’s all I want.”

“And who told you that?” There was a smile in Hector’s voice. The shadows on the wall, the only thing Mike could see, moved closer together. “Ah. Let me guess. Schmidt? That man’s crazier than a Texas whorehouse. He’s just pissed we caught him messing with the machines. Just like you, now that I’m thinking about it. Sounds a bit suspicious to me.”

“Hector?” A new voice, a woman’s, cut into conversation, and cut into Mike’s unexpected rage. “The police are here.”

“Ah, good.” Keys jingling. “You gonna go quietly? I wouldn’t mind seeing you walking out of here in cuffs again.”

“Huh.” Cal sounded… unfazed. “You distracted me. Bastard.”

“Just start walking.”

Footsteps rang against the floor, and Mike almost forgot to let go when someone grabbed the door and closed it at last. Adrenaline starting to wane, he slid to the floor, trying to keep his breathing quiet. That was close. Too close.

The police were here. Why were the police here? This was technically illegal, very illegal, and he understood the murders would have people on edge, but Cal had seemed so unconcerned about that.

He ran his tongue over his dry lips, focused on his breathing. He needed to calm down, and he took the time to ease the mental bruising he’d taken from Hector’s jab. He wasn’t crazy. It was this place. This place was crazy.

Gingerly, he picked himself up and made his way across the room. This side of the room wasn’t in the camera’s sightline, so it eased his anxiety somewhat. As he examined the strange tile, he understood what that sound earlier had been. The shelving had been pushed, making it significantly easier to access.

Thanks, Cal, he thought, as he searched for something he could slide under the tile’s edge.

Right. Whatever Cal gave him earlier. What was that?

The answer was the rake, and while he didn’t think it was strong enough to pull the entire tile up, it could help him peel the edges a little. He used the contiguous side of it, since he didn’t want to break the teeth, and pressed down between the tiles.

It was a tight fit, but eventually the linoleum gave way. The tile was bigger than he thought it was; each tile actually had four squares on it, two white, two black. Still, he worked and worked and eventually it peeled up. He grabbed some metal doohicky off the nearby shelf to work at it some more. He had no idea how long he was there, fighting that tile, but eventually he had it, bent and torn for good measure. His breath was coming in gasps, which was why it took him a little too long to parse what he was looking at.

It was a metal hatch. There was a lock set into it.

Mike eyeballed the rake. He had no idea how to use it, but it was all he had. He pushed it in, teeth down, like he figured the key was supposed to sit.

He couldn’t really describe it. He could feel the tension in the tumbler, and he could tell when he was making progress, or so it felt. The clicks of the pins travelled up the rake and into his fingertips like subtle cracks of electricity. The longer he worked, however, the more he started to despair. All of this effort for nothing. He needed to know what was under this hatch. He needed to know what else this place was hiding. He was right here and he couldn’t reach it.

Click. Click click.

The last click was different. He turned the rake, and the lock turned with it. He almost let out a cry for joy, but the memory of Hector standing in this room not too long ago stopped him. Fumbling with the flat piece of metal that was supposed to help pull the hatch up, he finally opened it.

It smelled like something had crawled inside it and died. A cough worked out of his throat, and it turned into a gag. Tears welled up in his vision, and he rubbed at them with the back of his hand, pulling back with a hiss. It was his bad hand. The wound was still fresh, and the stitches might as well have been needles in his skin.

Fuck this place.

When his vision cleared and he could see again, he was struck by how… little was in this cubby hole. There was a book that seemed to be an old employee manual for something called a ‘springlock costume.’ It was large—size A3 pages, if he had to guess, and picking it up revealed they were a thick, heavy paper, yellowed with age.

He set that to the side. When he looked back, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

A porcelain mask.

IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S ME IT’S

CLACK.

Easy, Mike.

In. One. Two. Three. Out. In. One. Two. Three.

Hands shaking, he slowly opened the hatch again.

It was porcelain, all right. Purple tears ran down its wide eyes, disappearing into a wider, smiling mouth. It had rosy cheeks and cherry lips.

He didn’t know what this was. This didn’t look like it belonged at Freddy’s. A haunted house, maybe. Carefully, he reached down and touched it.

Nothing terrible happened. He was still as sweaty as he was before. He was starting to understand, maybe, what management meant about his body odour. As he pulled it out of the hole, he noticed black fabric came with it. Some kind of hood… thing? Maybe the word he was looking for was cowl.

Then he kept pulling and more black fabric came with it. It was a whole suit, it looked like, with white horizontal stripes along the arms and legs. It looked like a lot of fabric, but he wasn’t experienced with full body costumes, so he folded it up as best he could and set it aside, gently.

A wooden box, with an off-model stylization of Freddy and Bonnie on the front, both golden (cold again—had to be a draft). He picked it up, weighing it in his hands. The bottom had a key to turn, like for a music box. It had a little lock on it, but it was too small for the rake. Lisa probably had a key at home that would fit.

They were the only things in the cubby, so he put the hatch back down, organized his ill-gotten gains, and picked himself up off the floor. He held them close to his chest, mask, box, with the book facing out, so that it looked like he was just carrying a book around for… some reason.

He just needed to walk like he owned it.

Carefully, Mike opened the door an inch. The show was playing again, but this time none of the animatronics were looking at him. Good. Good. He stepped into the main area and made a beeline for the employee only entrance.

The red lights on the cameras. The children laughing. Out of order. Hey, Chica, you should become a drummer! You could use your drumsticks! The supply closet door. His shoes squeaking on the floor. Metal on linoleum.

He walked faster, but the heavy pounding of footfalls behind him was faster. By the time he reached the door he was running, and he slammed into it with his shoulder before hitting the bar to release the latch.

Open air. He didn’t stop running until he got to his car. His hand shook as he fumbled the key. He nearly threw his loot into the passenger seat as he climbed in. He locked the doors, made sure the windows were cranked tight, and then sat there, his face in his hands.

This place was going to kill him.