Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center was a massive collection of reddish and whitish buildings that Arthur couldn’t believe he had never noticed before. Looking like long flat metal-sided blocks haphazardly placed in clusters by a gargantuan child, the buildings must have been here at least twenty years. Low slung and dotted with narrow windows, every one of them needed paint or at least a good cleaning. (Arthur was pretty sure the buildings had been bright white and bright red when they’d first been built.) Along the sides of most of the buildings, slanted drives led to cracked concrete loading docks. Even the big rig trailers tucked into at least a dozen of those docks looked like they’d been in service for a good long while. Some were rusted. Many were dented. All were dirty. Admittedly, it was a dreary day, but Arthur was sure that even in bright sunlight, this distribution center would look like it needed a lot of TLC.
The address of the distribution center, which Peggy had gotten for Arthur along with instructions for getting there, turned out not to be a building but rather a small empty guard house and an open gate. Once through this abandoned entry, Arthur didn’t know exactly what to do. He realized now that the man’s designation of the Fazbear center was almost like picking “Iowa” as the place he wanted to visit. What specific part of this place did the man want to go to?
Arthur glanced in the rearview mirror at the sheet-enshrouded bundle in the wheelchair, locked into place behind the van’s passenger seat. He still wasn’t used to seeing the palpitating dried organs and veins in an upright position. He also wasn’t used to the smell.
Although he’d tried to talk himself out of it for the trip from Heracles Hospital to Fazbear Entertainment, Arthur was sure the man smelled worse with every mile they traveled. The van was filled with a grim stench of sulfur, feces, decomposition, blood, and bile.
Ever since the man in room 1280 had been transferred from his bed to the wheelchair, he’d been leaking blood and viscous black fluids. The treacly mixtures were now soaking the sheet around the man and pooling on the van floor. Arthur knew it was going to take hours to clean up the van after this trip.
In spite of this, the man sat upright in his seat. He was strapped in, but his head wasn’t drooping. Of course he had no eyes, but his eye sockets were directed ahead, as if he could see exactly where they were.
Feeling less and less sure about what he was doing, Arthur told himself to stop judging the poor man based on his appearance. He cleared his throat. “So do you know where you want to go?”
Arthur didn’t really expect a response, but he got one.
The man raised one of his crusty finger bones and pointed it in a direction that seemed to indicate the largest building in the Fazbear collection. It was also the building, Arthur noticed now, that had a large covered courtyard leading to a glass-fronted wall. That was probably the main entrance.
Arthur realized he should have called ahead to get permission to bring the man into the distribution center, but maybe his failure to do so had been unconscious. What was that old saying? It was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission? Something like that. Arthur didn’t want another battle like the one he’d had to fight at the hospital.
To that end, Arthur decided not to head to the main entrance the man had indicated.
“I’m going to find a side entrance, I think,” Arthur said out loud. “Something more private. Are you all right with that?”
The man didn’t move, but Arthur thought he could hear a sloppy percussion emanating from the man’s chest. Was Arthur hearing the man’s heartbeat? Arthur suppressed the shivers that started at the top of his head and did an arpeggio down his neck to his spine.
Arthur put the van in gear and pulled it around to the side of the main building. The van’s tires made fizzing sounds on the wet pavement. Arthur wondered how he’d transport the man into the building without getting him wet. Somehow, dousing a body with barely there skin didn’t seem like a good idea.
As soon as Arthur turned the corner of the big building, he saw the solution to his problem. This side of the building had van-size loading docks under an overhang.
“Ask and ye shall receive,” Arthur said, smiling. He said a prayer of thanks for the help.
At the far end of this row of loading docks, a couple of husky workers wearing back braces and scowls loaded boxes into a dirty white van. They paid no attention when Arthur pulled the church van parallel to the platform at the opposite end of the docks.
“This should work,” he said to the man. Of course he got no response.
Jumping out of the van, Arthur took in a cleansing lungful of fresh air. Well, not fresh exactly. The air smelled like grease and solvents, but at least it smelled better than the air in the van.
Arthur opened the side door, removed the wheelchair, and jockeyed it into position on the ramp. Trying not to be too prissy about it, Arthur touched the blood-stained sheet and adjusted it to better cover the man. He had nothing to wipe his fingers on, but he ignored the issue and wheeled the man into the building.
Inside the roll-up door openings of the loading docks, the building revealed itself to be the heart of the Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. Stretching so far into the distance that Arthur couldn’t see the end of them, floor-to-ceiling shelves held stacks and stacks of boxes and plastic-enclosed packages. Peggy had told Arthur that Fazbear Entertainment created parts and costumes for animatronics used in restaurants and other venues. It also created costumes for humans to wear and various toys and other merchandise related to their most famous characters. Arthur assumed that’s what was in all the boxes and packages. It also explained the faded murals on the pale yellow walls—the murals depicted a variety of outlandish animal characters of questionable purpose. Despite their cheery appearance, Arthur couldn’t be sure they were intended to be friendly.
In front of the shelving area, a series of conveyors took boxes and packages on journeys through the building—journeys that would probably end up near loading docks. A few workers monitored the conveyors while others drove forklifts down the rows of the shelving area. A tall man with red hair wandered about, carrying a clipboard, but he wasn’t looking this way.
The building was surprisingly quiet. Only the muted clatter of the conveyor, the hum of the forklift motors, and a few shouts and thumps broke up the cavernous hush of the place.
“Well, here we are.” Arthur turned to look at the man.
And then the man started to convulse.
Several thoughts tangled in Arthur’s head as he watched the bones and organs and tissue in the wheelchair shake so uncontrollably that some of the man’s rib bones cracked. When blood flew and tissue cinders began spewing, Arthur thought, They should have let me bring a nurse and What should I do? and Why did I sign all those papers? and Please guide me.
Arthur leaned over the wheelchair just as the man collapsed into a mound of bone and an indescribable mass of fried human parts. At a loss, Arthur began to pray silently.
But before Arthur could get through two words of his prayer, the man’s remains heaved. Then they burst like a nightmarish egg blowing open to disgorge new life.
Expelling rank-smelling sticky black blood and a tar-like substance in a frightful spray all over Arthur and the building’s smooth concrete floor, the explosion of bone and veins and organs happened in an instant. In that instant, Arthur saw a void in the remains gape like a portal to hell itself. Then he was frantically wiping nauseating fluids and slimy body bits from his face. As he did this, he saw the man’s body tumble from the wheelchair, and Arthur knew the man was dead.
Instinctively, Arthur began praying again. But as he prayed, he heard something that wiped even the thought of prayer from his mind.
He heard a rush of pattering footsteps, little sprightly footsteps capering away toward the shelving area of the building.
What was that?
Arthur wiped his eyes again and looked around. At first, all he saw was the man’s remains. For the first time since
Arthur had gathered the courage to look at the man, all the exposed insides were still.
Then Arthur’s gaze landed on a trail of tiny footprints that were stamped in the man’s charred blood and fluids. He followed the trail and saw the footprints continue away from the man, etching the floor in the man’s blood like fearful hieroglyphs marking the way.
The way to where?
The man had moved on. But something hadn’t.
“Father? Is everything okay?” A man’s voice, pitched high in shock, asked Arthur.
Arthur turned.
The speaker was the redheaded man with the clipboard. He stared at the floor, his face blanched, his eyes wide.
“Actually, no, I don’t think everything is okay,” Arthur said. For the first time in his life, he was sure of it.
Scott Cawthon is the author of the bestselling video game series Five Nights at Freddy’s, and while he is a game designer by trade, he is first and foremost a storyteller at heart. He is a graduate of The Art Institute of Houston and lives in Texas with his wife and four sons.
Andrea Rains Waggener is an author, novelist, ghostwriter, essayist, short story writer, screenwriter, copywriter, editor, poet, and a proud member of Kevin Anderson & Associates’ team of writers. In a past she prefers not to remember much, she was a claims adjuster, JCPenney’s catalogue order-taker (before computers!), appellate court clerk, legal writing instructor, and lawyer. Writing in genres that vary from her chick-lit novel, Alternate Beauty, to her dog how-to book, Dog Parenting, to her self-help book, Healthy, Wealthy, & Wise, to ghostwritten memoirs to ghostwritten YA, horror, mystery, and mainstream fiction projects, Andrea still manages to find time to watch the rain and obsess over her dog and her knitting, art, and music projects. She lives with her husband and said dog on the Washington coast, and if she isn’t at home creating something, she can be found walking on the beach.
Elley Cooper writes fiction for young adults and adults. She has always loved horror and is grateful to Scott Cawthon for letting her spend time in his dark and twisted universe. Elley lives in Tennessee with her family and many spoiled pets and can often be found writing books with Kevin Anderson & Associates.
Larson sat at his desk ignoring everything else in the office. On any normal day, he’d have had trouble concentrating while Roberts sprayed air freshener toward Powell’s desk, while Powell bellowed at Roberts for spraying Powell’s garlic-heavy meatball sandwich, while two drunk bikers hauled in for fighting continued trying to assault each other, and while the rest of the people in the office either talked on the phone or to one another. But today wasn’t a normal day. Today, a marching band could have been doing formations between the desks and Larson wouldn’t have cared. Today, he was on to something. Or at least he thought he was.
Bending over the papers and photos in front of him, guarding them with his elbows so he didn’t have to explain his ideas to anyone else, Larson first pored over the photos of the Phineas Taggart crime scene.
They showed exactly what he remembered seeing when he’d arrived at the factory-to-crazy-scientist-laboratory-conversion weeks before. Viewing the scene had been like looking at a modern-day Frankenstein’s lab. The room where the scientist’s remains had been found had been packed full of scanning equipment, modified in incomprehensible ways, and hooked up to the strangest collection of junk he’d ever seen. Much of the junk had been just as mystifying as the equipment modifications—gears and hinges and mannequin parts and antique contraptions that looked like medieval torture devices. But one collection of junk had been combined in an especially disturbing way. Looking at it had twisted Larson’s insides and put his blood in a deep freeze.
Because he’d been so rattled by what he was looking at, he hadn’t looked at it closely. Now, he realized, he’d been an idiot. He should have looked harder. If he had, he’d have figured out what the Stitchwraith was a lot faster.
Or would he have?
Even if he’d put it together, mightn’t it have taken him some time to come to terms with it?
Although he was sure now, he wasn’t totally sure because what he was sure of was totally insane. If he was truly certain, he’d be telling his colleagues. Instead, he was peering at the evidence as if it was a treasure he wasn’t willing to share.
Larson looked at the junk conglomeration that had so horrified him. And he knew; he was looking at the beginnings of the strange figure he was looking for.
In the photo he held, the doll’s head could be seen only from the side. That’s how Larson had seen it in Phineas’s laboratory as well. This was why Larson hadn’t immediately recognized the sketched face when he’d seen the picture in the chief’s envelope. But that head—he was sure it was the head—was attached to a metal endoskeleton.
Okay, so the mysterious figure was always described as wearing a hooded cloak, but Larson remembered seeing a long and voluminous hooded trench coat in Phineas’s clothing. That could easily have been misidentified as a cloak.
Larson set down the photo, and he began reading through the inventory list from Phineas’s property. Running his finger down the list, he read the items aloud under his breath. He stopped at the tenth item down. There it was: one robotic dog, disassembled, manufactured by Fazbear Entertainment.
Larson looked at the endoskeleton again. It seemed to have an addition. So part of that dog could have been used on the endoskeleton.
Okay, so we have an animatronic endoskeleton linked to a part that came from a Fazbear Entertainment robotic dog. Was he making too much of a leap connecting the dots?
The dog connected to Fazbear Entertainment, which was connected to the Freddy’s murders. And the dog connected to the thing with the sketched face. So that meant Larson’s current investigation could be connected to the Freddy’s murders.
A paper airplane hit the top of Larson’s bent head. He slapped at it and frowned, looking up.
“Earth to Larson,” Roberts said. The detective’s close-set gray eyes were aimed at the photos Larson was shielding. “I asked what you were doing.”
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
“Stupid stuff, probably.” No way was Larson going to tell his straight-arrow partner, wearer of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches and too-proud owner of a perfectly groomed goatee, about his fledgling theory.
“Want to grab some lunch?”
“No thanks.”
Roberts stared at Larson for a moment. Larson stared back, his face as blank as he could make it.
“Okay,” Roberts said.
Larson shot the paper plane back across his desk to Roberts. “Nice one,” he said, hoping to distract Roberts from any suspicion that Larson was onto something. Roberts was almost as proud of his aerodynamic paper airplanes as he was of his facial hair.
Roberts grinned. “Thanks.” He got up and strolled away from his desk.
Larson waited until Roberts was gone, and then he stood. He needed to get over to the evidence locker. He’d chew on his theory on the way.
The old stone building had originally housed the city police department, but this was now the department’s annex, where the more obscure functions of the police department were carried out and where all records and evidence were kept. In the evidence locker’s musty basement aisles, Larson stood on a stepladder and pulled a stack of three battered boxes from a shelf above his head. Setting them on the floor, all three boxes side by side, Larson squatted in front of them and took off their lids.
He coughed when the persistent odor of smoke wafted up from the boxes. Then he peered into each box. Larson’s heart rate was in onto-something mode, thumping loud and fast in his chest.
The fire, so far in the past it was almost ancient history in the department, had never been solved. Larson didn’t know a lot about it, but he did know the fire was connected to one of the founders of Fazbear Entertainment. His idea was that if the Stitchwraith was connected to Fazbear Entertainment and was seen at the site of the fire, the Stitchwr
aith might have been looking for something that had been put into evidence years ago. He didn’t think it was that much of a stretch to reach this conclusion.
But the first three boxes didn’t do much to bolster his theory. He replaced their lids and climbed up the stepladder. He climbed back down, shifted the ladder, climbed back up again, and pulled another stack of boxes from the shelves. This time he took the lids off one at a time.
When he took the lid off the third box, he raised his eyebrows and nodded.
Grim hadn’t been back to the railroad yard since he’d seen the mysterious figure prying loose parts from the tracks. Something about that figure had done more than just make his teeth hurt. It had made him want to dig a very deep hole and crawl into it.
Since he didn’t have a shovel or the strength to dig such a hole, Grim had decided instead to move his usual hangout place to the far end of town, where abandoned factories rubbed shoulders with several stalwart old neighborhoods and the west dock of the lake. He found a rusted but sturdy shed just outside of one of the abandoned factories, a factory that had been so recently vacated that a shabby forklift still squatted nearby.
The shed, although watertight and clean, hadn’t been discovered by anyone else like Grim, so he set up house under a long, wide shelf below a dirty window. Because he knew others could be attracted to such deserted locales, he was happy that he found the shelf in his shed made a suitable lounging platform for keeping an eye on his surroundings.
And it was a good thing he kept an eye out, because on his third night in the shed, he spotted the mysterious figure. Happy that he was at least in his usual crazy thoughts tonight, he still had trouble continuing to breathe as he watched the figure drag a bag through a double-garage-door-size opening in the boxy metal factory shell.
What compelled him to follow the figure to see where it went? Was it that curiosity he’d felt the last time he’d seen the figure or was it perhaps some self-destructive urge?
Bunny Call Page 16
