The Fourth Closet

by Scott Cawthon

  “Here I thought you’d cheated death,” Jessica said, almost feeling sorry for him.

  “Oh, believe me, I have. You have only seen one fraction of what was done to me, the shrapnel that even dozens of surgeries—and I have had dozens—could not remove.” He slowly rolled up the sleeve of his pajama shirt, revealing two staves of metal embedded in his arm, both dotted with ragged pieces of gray rubber. “Parts of that costume have become part of me.” The animatronic girl took what looked like a pair of scissors out of the drawer and began to swab them clean, dabbing gently along every surface.

  “But the fake blood.” Jessica closed her eyes, shaking her head. Charlie said that Clay found fake blood at Freddy’s. “There was fake blood; you faked your death.”

  Afton coughed, and his eyes widened. “I assure you, I didn’t fake anything. If your police friend found fake blood …” He took a steadying breath. “It wasn’t mine. I bleed, just like everyone else.” He finished, and smiled, giving Jessica a moment to think before continuing.

  “I gave you a monster.” He gestured toward the collapsed doll that had been Springtrap. “But I assure you, I’m very, miserably, human.” He paused again, a surge of anger crossing his face.

  “My scalp was torn from my head when I escaped that costume, all but this piece here.” He touched the small patch where hair still grew. “Scraps of metal are interwoven through every part of my body that has not been replaced with artificial tissue. Every movement causes me unimaginable pain. Not moving is even worse.”

  “I’m not going to feel sorry for you,” Jessica said suddenly, braver than she felt. Afton took a breath and stared at her blankly.

  “Do you believe that your pity will make any difference concerning what I do to you?” he asked with a steady tone. He tilted his head, leaning back as if taking a moment to relish the words, then his face lost the glint of cunning. “I am simply telling you, so that you can help with what comes next,” he said tiredly. Jessica stood.

  “You want me to be impressed by how much you’ve survived, and how much pain you’re in. I don’t care about you.” She approached William’s chair, then crossed her arms, glaring down at him from above. She glanced at the animatronic girl, who seemed poised to intervene, a half-swabbed scalpel in her hand, but Afton gave a subtle shake of his hand toward her, waving her off, seeming to enjoy the exchange. Jessica bent closer.

  “William Afton,” she said. “There is nothing in this world that I care less about than your pain.”

  Another child’s scream came from somewhere nearby, and Jessica straightened.

  “That was a little kid,” Jessica said, a heady rush of adrenaline surging through her. She felt suddenly forceful, like she had some control of the situation. “You’re the one who’s been kidnapping those kids, aren’t you?” she demanded, and Afton smiled weakly.

  “I’m afraid those days are gone for me.” He laughed, and looked fondly at the animatronic girl, who looked up at Jessica and smiled delicately. The girl straightened her posture and continued to stare; Jessica took a step back. All at once, the girl’s stomach split open at the middle and out shot an enormous mass of wires and prongs. It reached its full extension and snapped open and shut with a steely clank. Jessica screamed, jumping back. The thing fell to the ground, then slowly recoiled back into the girl’s stomach, which closed seamlessly. She smiled at Jessica, running her finger up and down the now-invisible line of the opening. Jessica averted her eyes.

  “Baby, that’s enough,” Afton whispered. Jessica came to attention, her panic suddenly washed over with confusion. She looked from the girl to Afton, and back again.

  “Circus Baby,” she said, suddenly recalling the sign outside the restaurant. The animatronic girl smiled wider, her face threatening to split in half. “You’re not as cute as you are on the sign,” Jessica said bitingly, and the girl stopped smiling instantly, turning her body toward Jessica like she was aiming a weapon. A high-pitched ringing rose all around them, and Jessica edged backward. That’s her chip, Jessica thought, bracing as if for impact. The animatronic girl held out her arms as though in a gesture of welcome.

  Thin, sharp spines like porcupine’s needles began to grow from her metal skin, each capped with a red knob like a pinhead, spaced a few inches apart, and extending from her face, her body, and her arms and legs. They grew slowly outward, lining up perfectly with one another to create a false contour all around her body. The girl looked expectantly at Jessica.

  “Give it a minute,” the girl said. “Let your eyes adjust.”

  The humming sound grew louder, rising higher in pitch until it became painful to hear. Jessica covered her ears, but it did nothing to dampen the sound. Suddenly, a new image snapped into place: where the smooth, slim redheaded animatronic had been was a gigantic, cartoonish child, her green eyes too large for her face, and her nose and cheeks painted a garish pink; she was a perfect image of the girl on the neon sign. Before Jessica could react, the childish image vanished, the needlelike extensions snapping back into the girl’s body with a metallic snap. The humming stopped. The animatronic girl had returned to her former appearance. William Afton watched her with a gleam of pride.

  Jessica turned again to the sleek, shiny girl standing at the man’s side. “How did you create her?” Jessica asked, her eyes filled with curiosity for a moment before snapping herself back to the immediate danger surrounding her.

  “Ah. A woman with a mind for science. You can’t help but to admire what I’ve done.” He braced himself on one arm of the chair, hoisting himself up to sit straighter. “Although …” He looked up at the gleaming girl for a moment, then turned away. “I can’t take complete credit for this, unfortunately.” He reclined his head again and let out a sigh. “Sometimes great things come at a great cost.”

  Jessica waited for him to go on, confused, then looked at the animatronic girl, recalling all that she’d said minutes before.

  “I am a brilliant man, make no mistake. But what you see before you is a combination of all sorts of machinations and magic. My only real accomplishment was making something that could walk.” He reached out and tapped the leg of the animatronic standing at his side; she did not react. “No small accomplishment. Although it’s not happening as fluidly as you think. A lot of what you see is just in your head.” He wheezed a laugh, then stopped himself, ending with a pained cough before going on. “That was Henry’s idea not to try to reinvent the wheel. Why try to create the illusion of life, when your mind can do it for us?”

  “She’s more than an illusion, though,” Jessica said plainly.

  “Quite right,” Afton answered thoughtfully. “Quite right. But that’s why we’re here—to discover the secret of that last ingredient, what you might call the spark of life.”

  “Is that why I’m here, too?” Jessica clenched her jaw.

  “I believe you came here of your own free will, didn’t you?” Afton said mildly.

  “I didn’t tie myself up.”

  “But I certainly didn’t put you in the trunk of that car,” he answered.

  “We would rather have had your friend Charlie,” he continued. “But we can find a use for you.” He closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them, meeting Jessica’s eyes. “I have faced my own mortality, Jessica. I knew I was dying and through every broken fragment of my body, I was profoundly, immeasurably afraid. I fear it more than I fear life like this, even when every waking instant is pain, and sleep is possible only when induced by enough medication to kill most people.”

  “Everyone is afraid to die,” Jessica said. “And you should be more afraid than anyone else, because if there’s a hell, there’s a hole at the bottom of it reserved for you.”

  Afton nodded with a moment of honest resignation. “In time, I’m sure that’s where I will find myself. But the devil has knocked on my door before, and I’ve turned him away.” He smiled.

  “So, what? You want to live forever?”

  William Afton smiled
sadly and held out his hand to the animatronic girl; she went to him and put a protective hand on his shoulder. “Certainly not like this,” he said. Jessica glanced at the robot girl, then back to the man in front of her, his body already riddled with mechanical parts.

  “So, what, you’re making yourself into a robot?” She laughed nervously, then stopped at his grave expression. “I didn’t realize that you fancied yourself a mad scientist.”

  “No, that’s science fiction,” he said, unamused.

  The plastic tarp moved again, and began to slide off the table, but stopped, not revealing what lay underneath.

  “Everyone dies.” Jessica blinked; the adrenaline was wearing off, and she was beginning to feel exhausted. Afton reached up and touched the mechanical girl’s cheek, then turned his attention back to Jessica.

  “The most terrible accidents sometimes bear the most beautiful fruits,” he said, as if to himself. “Re-creating the accident—that is the duty and the honor of science. To replicate the experiment, and obtain the same result. I give my life to this experiment, piece by piece.” He nodded at the girl, and she approached Jessica with deliberate steps. Jessica backed away, fear surging again.

  “What are you going to do to me?” She could hear the urgency in her own voice.

  “Please, enough. As a woman of science, at least try to appreciate what I’ve done,” Afton said.

  “I study archaeology,” she said in a flat tone. He didn’t respond; the girl stepped closer, giving her an unreadable stare.

  The plastic tarp slid from the table, and Jessica startled and stared at what was underneath, but her terror turned to confusion in an instant. There wasn’t a body, not human or machine. Instead there was a melted scrapheap, whose extensions could be interpreted as arms and legs, but with no defined mechanism of movement. There were no joints, no muscles, no skin or coverings, just masses of undefined tangles and cords, melted into one another and fused together. Most of it seemed fused to the table, burned and blackened at the edges where it touched the table itself, melting into it and seemingly inseparable from it.

  “I don’t understand.” Jessica’s mouth hung open, and she sat down again without thinking.

  “Good girl.” Afton smiled thinly. Jessica clenched her jaw. The animatronic girl went back to the table and took up the cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. She started with her fingers again, methodically wiping down each one. “Get on with it,” Afton said impatiently. The girl did not break her deliberate pace.

  “I touched you; I have to start over,” she said.

  “Nonsense, just do it. I’ve survived worse than this.”

  “The risk of infection …” she said calmly.

  “Elizabeth!” he snapped. “Do as I say.” The animatronic girl stopped moving at once, looking startled, and for a moment almost seemed to tremble. Jessica held her breath, wondering if anyone knew, or cared, that she had just heard the exchange. The girl immediately regained her composure, her eyes relaxing, then opened the drawer and took out a pair of rubber gloves, which she fitted easily over her metal hands. He settled back, and the girl came to him and bent over to press a button on the side of his chair. The chair made a pneumatic hiss and reclined, flattening out like a bed, and the girl placed her foot on a lever at the chair’s base. She stepped on it, and the chair jerked upward. Afton made a pained grunt, and Jessica winced reflexively. The girl hit the lever again, yanking the chair up another inch, then stopped and flipped the monitor back on. It began to beep again at slightly irregular intervals, and she levered the chair up rapidly, jolting Afton’s frail body as it rose. The girl darted her eyes from the monitor to Afton and back again, attentive to his vital signs. When the chair reached waist-height, she stepped back, apparently satisfied. Afton let out a rattling breath, then lifted his hand an inch to point at Jessica.

  “Come closer,” he said. She took a small step, and he curled his lips in a smile or a sneer. “I want you to watch what happens next,” he said.

  “What’s going to happen next?” Jessica asked, hearing her own voice shake.

  “How did the creatures at Freddy’s move, of their own will, with no outside force controlling them?” he asked mildly. He tilted his head, waiting.

  “The children were still inside. Their souls were inside those creatures,” she said, the words brittle. She felt brittle, like if anything touched her now, she might easily break apart.

  Afton sneered again.

  “Oh, Jessica, come now. What else?” She closed her eyes. What is he talking about? “What else was inside them, to bind their spirits so inseparably to the bear, to the rabbit, to the fox? How did they die, Jessica?”

  Jessica gasped, covering her mouth with both hands, as if she could stop herself from knowing, as long as she did not speak. “How, Jessica?” Afton demanded, and she lowered her hands, trying to steady her breath.

  “You killed them,” she said, and he made an impatient sound. She met his eyes again, not flinching from the empty socket. “They died in the suits,” she said hoarsely. “Their bodies were bound inside, along with their souls.”

  He nodded. “The spirit follows the flesh, it would seem, and also the pain. If I wish to become my own immortal creation, my body must lead my spirit to its eternal home. Since I am still … experimenting … I move my flesh piece by piece.” He looked thoughtfully over at the creature on the table. “More and more,” he murmured, almost to himself, “it is a test of the strength of my own will. How much of myself can I carve away, and still remain in control?”

  “Carve away?” Jessica repeated faintly, and he snapped his attention back to her.

  “Yes. I will even allow you to watch,” he said with a smirk.

  “No, thanks,” she said, shrinking back, and he wheezed a laugh.

  “You will watch,” he said, then gestured to the animatronic girl. “Keep an eye on her,” Afton said.

  “I have many eyes on her.” The girl went to a cabinet and took out another IV bag: before she closed the door, Jessica caught a glimpse of more like it, and a shelf of what looked like vacuum-sealed cuts of meat. Her stomach flipped, and she swallowed hard.

  Jessica started to squirm in her seat; there was a hissing sound coming from somewhere, and a smell of burning oil began to fill the room. The table where the mass of metal rested was beginning to glow orange at its center, and the mass on the table seemed to move slightly, although only out of the corner of Jessica’s eye. Jessica snapped back to attention and turned toward Afton.

  He appeared to be asleep: his chest rose and fell with slow breaths, and his eyes were closed; his eyelid draped loosely over the steel rod in the center of his missing eye, the thin skin hanging into the empty socket. The girl nodded, and moved to the table. Jessica swallowed, the rotten smell swelling around her. She had ceased to notice it, her nose tuning it out, but now it was everywhere, thickening the air with its miasma. An operating theater … he’s harvesting the kids for organs, transplanting them into himself?

  Jessica looked around the room, calculating—the scalpels were too far away to grab, and they wouldn’t even scratch the animatronic girl’s paint. If she ran, she would be dead before she was halfway to the door. Jessica forced herself to watch.

  The animatronic girl went to William Afton’s side, then checked the monitor again with care. She unbuttoned his pajama top and splayed it open, revealing his chest, and the mass of scars that had covered it since before he went by the name “Dave.” The girl tugged the waist of his pants an inch lower, so that his torso was fully exposed, then nodded, took off her gloves, and replaced them with new ones. Then she took up one of the scalpels. Jessica looked away.

  “You have to watch,” the girl said, her voice chilling, a human voice stripped of human intonation. Jessica jerked her head up; the animatronic’s eyes were on her. “He wants to see you watch,” she repeated, the pleasant veneer cloaking her voice once more. Jessica gulped, and nodded, fixing her eyes on the scene before her. “I don�
�t think you understand,” the girl said. “Go wash your hands.”

  Shakily, Jessica got to her feet and went to the sink, feeling as if she might pass out at any moment. She turned the sink on and watched the water spiral down the drain, the shiny stainless steel gleaming through in the bright light.

  “Wash your hands.” Jessica obeyed, pushing up her sleeves above her elbows and washing her hands all the way up the forearms, foaming up the soap over and over as she had seen doctors do on TV. She rinsed them finally and turned to the animatronic girl.

  “What am I doing?” she asked. The girl ripped open a plastic package and took out a towel. She held it out to Jessica.

  “You’re going to help.”

  Jessica took the towel and dried her hands, then put on gloves from the box the animatronic girl directed her to. “You know this thing isn’t sterile, right?” she muttered, glancing at the mass on the table.

  “Wait.” Jessica gasped and took a step toward the table. From this angle, she could see more of its form. It was a melted mess, but she could recognize certain elements in the mass of fused scrap on the table. A leg. A finger. An … eye socket.

  “I—I recognize these parts,” Jessica said, but there was no answer. “These look like … endoskeletons, from Freddy’s, the original Freddy’s.” Jessica began calculating in her head, measuring to herself how much this mass must weigh, and its size relative to the size of the endoskeletons she remembered. Before she could think further, the creature on the table attempted to lift its leg, the makeshift knee bending partially. There was no mechanical device that she could make out—it seemed to be moving of its own will. After a second, it dropped back to the table.