(book canon) guidelines to keep in mind

[terriblething]

1. Socially awkward loner
Dave does not talk to people on a regular basis. He is the kind of person who ignores a cashier in the checkout lane who asks him how his day has been and just wordlessly hands them his credit card.

Since Freddy's closed and "William Afton" became "Dave Miller", a lot has changed in his life. Please note, it isn't that Dave can't be social. It's clear Freddy's was a successful business (Charlie mentions that "everyone" went to Freddy's in its heyday), and William was the co-owner (and probably the sole business mind) behind the company. He is described multiple times as "affable" and even friendly. However, in ten years, this need to be outgoing and social is no longer necessary, and Dave dropped it. It's likely he never really enjoyed it in the first place.

He's not the greatest night guard. When seeing teens trying to sneak around into Freddy's at night, it's only on the third occasion that Dave physically stops them - the first two times he attempts instead into scaring them off by letting them know he's there, hoping to proceed without a direct confrontation. He's not at all afraid of a confrontation, but he wants to avoid actually speaking to anyone. Socialization is not something he cares for, and his ability to do it has really deteriorated over time.

He would probably feel a lot more comfortable talking to children or interacting as "Bonnie". Which brings me to a second point:

2. Stress-induced dissociation
This is a fancy way of saying extreme stress causes Dave to shut down, but his shut downs are really, really intense - so much so that Charlie has to check his pulse to make sure he didn't die. This could potentially happen for any number of reasons but in text, the most stressful situation we see Dave in is when he's rendered helpless and immobile, and suddenly confronted with a group of four teenagers. He goes completely limp, unable to even move or focus his eyes on his own, until Charlie retrieves a literal mask for him to wear. (More on this later.) Having power in a situation is a huge deal to Dave, and any perceived loss of it causes large amounts of stress to him that can result in a loss of self or inability to connect with himself.

3. A need to be seen as powerful and skilled, or be admired
When first intruding in the trip to Freddy's with Charlie and her friends, Dave makes an attempt to act like he's not as connected with the restaurant as he is, likely because he wants to keep a low profile - but even the threat of being connected to his previous crimes can't trump the desire to be seen as impressive and skilled by a bunch of teenagers he does not know:

In the booth, Jessica was hunched over, pressing buttons, and Lamar was studying the control board, trying to make sense of it. Dave peered intently over their shoulders, watching. He was nodding slightly to himself, wrapped up in some private calculation, and when Jessica stepped back and stretched, he cleared his throat.

"Um," he said. "Could I try?" He drew himself up a little, extending his arm graciously.

Jessica and Lamar exchanged glances, then shrugged.

"Why not?" Jessica said. They shuffled around so that he could reach the board, and he stared down at it for a long moment without moving, then touched a short series of buttons. A hum rose from the speakers, a long, low tone that did not waver.

"Whoa," Jessica said and pointed to the monitors. Charlie saw movement on the screen and backed out of the control room to look for herself. Onstage, the animals were dancing. Crudely, awkwardly, without the grace or complexity Charlie remembered, but they were moving in sequences, not just one motion at a time.

Charlie went back to the control room but did not go beyond the door.

"How did you do that?" she snapped, not caring if it was rude. Dave raised his hands in the air.

"Beginner's luck," he said. "I just pressed some buttons."

[. . .]

In the control room, Dave had his hands on the buttons, his fingers wandering lightly over them without pressing anything. The movement looked careless, instinctual, like a habit. Charlie leaned close to John.

"He's been here before," she whispered. "Look at the way he touches the controls."

"Maybe he's just good with computers," John offered, not sounding convinced.

"Can you make them dance again?” Jessica asked. Dave barely seemed to acknowledge the question. His mouth hung slightly open, and he seemed to be staring at something none of them could see. In the bright lights, they could all see that his uniform was grubby and torn in places, his face poorly shaven and his eyes a little unfocused. He looked less like a guard than a vagrant, and he looked at them all as if he had wandered in ages ago and they were the newcomers. It took him a moment to register the question.

"Sure, let's see what we can do," he said. He smiled at her, his mouth askew. His eyes were a little too intent on her face, holding her gaze just a little too long. Jessica swallowed, seized with an instinctive revulsion, but she smiled back politely.

"All right," Dave said. "I've been here a few times before; I think I can work some magic."

Charlie and John exchange glances.

"You've been here before?" John said in a careful, even tone, but Dave ignored him, or did not hear.

There was a keypad to the far left of the control board that no one had touched yet, as it did not appear to be connected to anything. Now Dave reached for it and began to press the buttons quickly, as if he had done it a hundred times before. He gave Jessica a conspiratorial glance. "For special occasions, you can request a dance." He smiled at her again with that crooked intensity.

"Great," Jessica said, breathing a sigh of relief. Anything to get out of such forced proximity to this man.

He even immediately goes back on his (implied) story and says he's been there before, not seeming to realize the implication or care what kind of questions this could open him up to. The need for admiration in that moment is so powerful that he doesn't even think his actions through.

If Dave has information, he'll make sure to give it, even if this will make those around him question how he knows these things - he delights in knowing what others don't, and has to make sure he explains it to them - first, with the history of what happened to Freddy's after its closure; second, with the workings of the spring lock suits, which he makes sure to take time to explain to Carlton in graphic detail. It's almost a pathological need to do whatever he can to make those around him think he's skilled, intelligent, and powerful.

But it's important to remember: this is a need he has, but it's not reality, and everyone he comes into contact with knows it, almost immediately.

4. Dave is not a badass.
He's a loser. People feel immediately uncomfortable around him, don't want to be around him, and even in his moments where he feels most powerful, the text goes out of its way to assure us he is not intimidating:

Dave appeared in the doorway, his head held high and his face grim. It should have been imposing, but he just looked like a man walking through a door.

On meeting him for the first time, everyone in the group is immediately put-off by him, and no one is surprised when he turns out to be the person responsible for the ensuing awfulness. To write him having actual intimidation (at least in his human form - any Springtrap-esque AU is probably different) is a definite mistake. (Although, to children he probably would be intimidating, this isn't exactly an accomplishment - it's likely that Dave doesn't at all appreciate that he's not seen as terrifying and powerful by adults as he is by children he's about to kill.) This isn't to say Dave isn't and can't be terrifying, but the difference is that he's not intimidating or scary on his own. It's the knife in his hand, or the trap he's got you in, that is scary. On his own he is not, and never will be, the "cool scary badass bad guy" trope.

5. The security blanket
It's interesting that Dave seems to need to be wearing the Spring Bonnie costume in some capacity to be able to push through his stress mentioned in point #2 and interact with the group. This is a newer development, but not exactly unsurprising - it's not a leap of logic to assume that William wore the Spring Bonnie suit with some level of frequency at Fredbear's Family Diner, and he built some level of association between a more sociable, energetic personality and "the Bonnie suit" in his head.

Dave continued to stare, and it was only after a moment that Charlie considered that he might actually be staring at something. She turned, following his line of sight, then suddenly she recoiled. On the table along the wall sat a rabbit's head.

"That's it? You want that?" Charlie stood and approached the mask. "You need this?" she added in a whisper. She picked it up carefully, the light catching the edges of the spring locks that filled the mascot head. She picked it up and carried it almost ceremoniously to Dave, who tipped his head down in a barely noticeable fashion.

As soon as Charlie puts the Bonnie head on Dave, his entire demeanor changes from anything he's shown previously:

The voice came from inside the mask, but it was not Dave's, not the pitiful, sour tone they would have recognized. The voice of the rabbit was smooth and rich, almost musical. It was confident, somehow reassuring—a voice that might convince you of almost anything. Dave cocked his head to the side, and the mask shifted so that only one of his bulbous eyes could peer through the sockets.

It's very possible that Dave would not be capable of killing without the Spring Bonnie suit.

6. Not above lying
Something interesting is that Dave at one point states there's no way out of Freddy's, but this is almost certainly impossible.

"How do we get out?" Charlie placed one hand on the mascot head and pushed it back into position on Dave's shoulders. The fur felt wet and sticky, as though the costume itself were sweating.

"There isn't a way out anymore. All that's left is family."

He definitely has some other way to get into the pizzeria. Dave knows where Freddy's is, has the keys to each door inside the place, and admits to Charlie that he wanted to go inside, so considering he's working night guard at the place Freddy's is, it's certain he's been inside at some point in the last ten years (particularly because he's not at all surprised when the animatronics are clearly haunted). He can't have taken the door Charlie and her friends take:

The door extended all the way to the floor, its bottom ragged and unfinished. The hinges were on the other side, and the edges were caked in rust. It looked as though it had not been opened in years.

Especially considering we're told it takes four teenagers to open:

"Wait..." Charlie ran her fingers along the edge of a shelf, peering through the odds and ends crammed onto it. The wall behind it looked different; it was metal, not brick. "Right here." She stepped back and looked at the others. "Help me move it." John and Jessica pressed against one side in a unified effort, and she and Carlton pulled on the other. It was immensely heavy, laden with cleaning supplies and large buckets of nails and tools, but it slid farther down the hall almost easily, without incident.

(And the book seems to really like bringing up how weak and thin Dave is, so I don't think he's moving that on his own.) Later on, the door gets sealed: first with chains:

"What?!" Jason wailed, and they all looked up from the spill. He was pointing at the door.

"What is this?" Marla gasped. The door had chains strung across it from top to bottom, three enormous padlocks holding them all together. The links were bolted into the metal frame of the door, and they were heavy, too heavy to cut without special tools. It was all rusty; the whole thing looked as though it had been there for years. Charlie walked up to the door and touched a chain, as if to be sure it was real.

"This wasn’t here," she said, the words sounding inane even as she spoke.

and then soldered:

"He's here, he has to be here!" Marla cried, staring despairingly at the door to Freddy's. She was clasping and unclasping her hands, the knuckles going white. Charlie watched her helplessly. There was nothing to say. The door was no longer covered in chains; instead it was simply no longer a door. It had been welded over; the metal was melted seamlessly into the frame, and the hinges were gone, covered in crude, patchy solder. They all stared, not fully able to comprehend what they were looking at. Charlie shifted her feet. She had stepped in a puddle as they hurried from the car, and now her shoes and socks were soaked and freezing. It seemed unforgivable to be focused on her own discomfort in such a moment, but she could not stop her attention from drifting to it.

"This is insane," Marla said, her mouth agape. "Who does this?" She threw up her hands in frustration. "Who does something like that?" She was almost shouting. "Someone did that! Someone welded this shut. What if Jason is in there?"

Yet Dave is able to continue being inside the pizzeria, meaning he must have some other way in. I'm not sure what this is, but almost immediately after telling Charlie there's no way out of Freddy's, he turns around and says this:

"Well, then you're trapped too, and you're not going to be hurting anyone else," John said in response to the veiled threat.

"I don't have to," Dave answered. "When it gets dark, they will awaken; the children's spirits will rise. They will kill you. I'll just walk out in the morning, stepping over your corpses, one by one." He looked at each of them in turn, as if relishing the bloody scene.

Weirdly, no one calls him out on this whole "There's no way out", then immediate "I'm going to walk out in the morning" thing. I think it's safe to say Dave is not, in any way, a trustworthy source of information.

7. A note about Henry...
Dave is weird when we get on the subject of Henry, the animatronic engineer who created Freddy and the gang and his co-owner of the pizzeria. The literal evidence found in his apartment probably sums it up best:

And he had killed the children. Clay knew it; the whole department knew it. He had been present for each abduction, and he had mysteriously and briefly vanished at the same time as each child went missing. A search of his house had found a room crammed with boxes of mechanical parts and a musty yellow rabbit suit, as well as stacks of journals full of raving paranoia, passages about Henry that ranged from wild jealousy to near-worship.

As established, Dave has a desperate need for recognition, but interestingly enough, when it comes to talking about the restaurant he co-owned, he doesn't take all the credit, instead bringing up Henry and attributing things to him:

"That's a very old costume, one of the first ones Henry made. You can trip these spring locks very, very easily, if you don't know what you're doing," Dave went on. "It takes almost no movement at all."

"Henry?" Carlton said, trying to focus on what he was being told. He could still hear the snap, as if it had lodged in his head like a song that kept repeating. I'm going to die, he thought for the first time since waking. This man will kill me, I will die, and then what? Will anyone even know? He set his jaw and met Dave's eyes. "Who's Henry?"

"Henry," Dave repeated. "Your friend Charlie's father." He looked surprised. "Did you not know that he made this place?"

Dave says "he made this place," instead of "we made this place," even though that's actually more accurate. Freddy's is incredibly special and important to Dave - it's not that he's distancing himself from Freddy's, but rather that he's elevating Henry above himself.

Given how other people saw Henry, this is interesting:

Afton seemed like the normal one in the venture, the businessman. Henry was the artist; he always seemed to be off in another world, some part of his mind thinking about his mechanical creatures even when he was holding a conversation about the weather or the kids' soccer games. There was something off about Henry, something almost shell-shocked; it seemed like a miracle that he could have produced a child as apparently normal as Charlie. [...] William Afton was the one who made Freddy's a business, as he had the previous restaurant. Afton was as robust and lively as Henry was withdrawn and shadowy. [...] Clay picked up a picture from the pile; it had been taken, framed, from the wall of Henry’s office at the restaurant. It was a picture of the two of them together, Henry and William, grinning into the camera in front of the newly opened Freddy Fazbear's. He stared at it; he had stared at it before. Henry's eyes did not quite match his smile. The expression looked forced, but then, it always did.

Henry is not a normal person to be jealous of or to idolize - he's awkward, unusual, withdrawn. To Dave, though, Henry is everything he admires - skilled, even somehow powerful to him. Henry can give life, but Dave only takes it away. I'm not entirely sure if he actually sees it that way, but it's certainly an interesting parallel.

Killing Sammy, for Dave, was a way to try to take something away from Henry, but it seems like the way he viewed Henry did not change.

Even so, Dave seems to think he helped Henry too:

"My dad trusted you," Charlie said. She was on her knees now, looking intently at the rabbit's face. "What did you do to him?" Her voice broke.

"I helped him create." The voice came from inside the mask, but it was not Dave's, not the pitiful, sour tone they would have recognized. The voice of the rabbit was smooth and rich, almost musical. It was confident, somehow reassuring—a voice that might convince you of almost anything. Dave cocked his head to the side, and the mask shifted so that only one of his bulbous eyes could peer through the sockets.

"We both wanted to love," he said in those melodious tones. "Your father loved. And now I have loved."

It's possible that Dave believes killing Sammy helped Henry, to love his remaining child more intensely, to create more animatronics, to work harder.

This is, of course, an incredibly fucked up line of thought.



The comments to this entry are pretty much all the parts Dave is in (a few small stuff is left out that I didn't think was worth much), mainly for my records.

Comments

[terriblething]

The bobbing light came closer. Charlie was acutely aware of her body, holding every muscle motionless. Suddenly she could make out a thin figure leaning in from the great room outside. He shone his light in a long beam down the hallway, sweeping it up and down the walls. He’s got us, Charlie thought, but inexplicably he turned and went, apparently satisfied.

[terriblething]

The door extended all the way to the floor, its bottom ragged and unfinished. The hinges were on the other side, and the edges were caked in rust. It looked as though it had not been opened in years.

[terriblething]

"Wait..." Charlie ran her fingers along the edge of a shelf, peering through the odds and ends crammed onto it. The wall behind it looked different; it was metal, not brick. "Right here." She stepped back and looked at the others. "Help me move it." John and Jessica pressed against one side in a unified effort, and she and Carlton pulled on the other. It was immensely heavy, laden with cleaning supplies and large buckets of nails and tools, but it slid farther down the hall almost easily, without incident.

[terriblething]

Whatever she had been expecting, this wasn't it. It was a closet, the inside extending off to her left about eight or nine feet into darkness. There were horizontal poles mounted along the walls where hangers had once been. Square shapes imprinted in the dust filled her mind with images of boxes, maybe speakers.

As she stepped inside, she pushed the door open all the way, trying to let in as much light as possible. As she walked further in, she let her hand drag along the wall. Although nothing was there now, she could feel heavy cloth, coats, and sweaters hanging.

No. These were costumes.

Costumes had hung here in the dark, hiding their colors but allowing themselves to be felt by every cheek and small hand that passed through. Rubber padded palms and fingers swayed this way and that. Reflections on false eyes passed overhead.

Charlie reached the end and turned to look back. She crouched down, looking up at the empty space. It didn't feel empty. She could still feel the costumes; they were hanging all around her. There was someone else in the closet with her, kneeling down at her own height. It was her friend, the little boy.

My little brother.

They were both playing and hiding together as they always did. This time was different. The little boy looked up toward the door suddenly as though they had been caught doing something they shouldn't have been doing. Charlie looked up as well. There was a figure in the door. It looked like one of the costumes was standing on its own, but it was motionless, so still that Charlie wasn't sure what she was seeing.

It was the rabbit, the yellowish brown rabbit they loved, but it did not dance or sing, just stood there and stared at them, unblinking. They began to squirm under its gaze, and the little boy screwed up his face to wail. Charlie pinched his arm, seized with an instinctual sense that they must not cry. The rabbit looked back and forth from one to the other with those all-too-human eyes, ponderous, as though weighing and measuring them in some way that Charlie could not understand, like it was making a momentous decision. Charlie could see its eyes, its human eyes, and she was cold with terror. She felt the fear in her brother as well, felt it echoing between them, reverberating and growing because it was shared. They could not move, they could not scream, and finally the creature inside that patchwork, ragged yellow rabbit suit reached forward for the boy. There was a moment, one single moment, when the children still clung together, gripping hands, but the rabbit snatched the boy to his breast, yanking them apart, and fled.

From that moment the entire memory shattered with piercing and unrelenting screams, not her brother's, but her own. People rushed to help, her father picked her up and held her, but nothing could console her; she screamed and screamed, louder and louder. Charlie snapped back from her dream, the sound still high and painful in her ears. She was crouched down in silence; John stood at the door, not daring to interrupt.

She did not remember much of what had happened next; everything was dark, it was all a blur of images and facts she had pieced together later, things she might remember and others she might have imagined. She was never in the restaurant again. She knew her parents shuttered the doors immediately.

[terriblething]

She was sitting with Sammy in the restaurant, before it opened for the day; they were under a window, in a dusty beam of light, playing some invented game she could no longer remember, and their father came over, grinning. He had something to show them.

He held up the piece of twisted metal and showed them how it opened, then let it snap back in his hand. They both cried out in surprise, then started giggling and clapping their hands.

Their father did it again. "I could snap off your nose!" he said, and again they laughed, but quickly his face turned serious. "I mean it," he said. "This is a spring lock, and I want you to know how it works because it's very dangerous, and I don't ever want you touching these. This is why we never put our hands in the animal costumes; it's very easy to trigger these if you don’t know what you're doing, and you could get hurt. It's like touching the stove—do we ever touch the stove?"

They shook their heads with a solemnity beyond their years.

"Good. Because I want you both to grow up with all your noses!" he cried, and he swept them up, one in each arm, swinging them around as they laughed.

[terriblething]

The night guard was blocking the alley behind Freddy's, his arms folded across his chest. He had no flashlight, and so he had been invisible, hidden in the darkness until they were almost upon him.

"I had a feeling you wouldn't leave it alone," he said with an odd, uneven smile.

Marla whispered something unpleasant under her breath.

"I could have you arrested for trespassing," he said. "Saw you here last night, but I couldn't see where you got to; I guess now I know," he added with a smirk.

There was something almost immediately off-putting about the man. He was tall and slightly too thin for his uniform, which bagged at the shoulders and waist, as if he had once been a more robust man but had lost his form somehow to illness or tragedy; his nametag, reading "Dave," hung askew on his chest. His skin was sallow, and his eyes were undercut by heavy lines, adding to the impression of longstanding ill health.

"What were you all doing back here, anyway?" he demanded. "You kids partying? Drugs? I could have you arrested right now, you know." Charlie and John glanced at each other.

"We're sorry," Lamar said quickly. "We'll go. We don't have any drugs."

"Says who? Says you?" The guard wore an odd expression, and his words were harsh and fast; he seemed not to be responding to what they were saying. He looked angry, but his mouth kept quirking up at the corners, like he was trying not to smile.

"What do we do?" Jessica whispered.

"Probably the most action he's ever had out here," Carlton said with a hint of disdain, and Charlie remembered suddenly that Carlton's father was a cop. She remembered him in his uniform, tilting down his dark sunglasses at them with a mock-glare, then smiling, revealing the joke. The guard, however, looked like he meant it.

"We'll go," Lamar said again. "Sorry."

Charlie looked at the man, considering him: the ill-fitting uniform, his peaky, almost exhausted-looking features. He really could kick them off the property or even have them arrested for trespassing, but still, she could not really fear him. His inadequacy shone through him like a kind of negative charisma. He would always be shoved to the back of a crowd, always shouted down in an argument, always picked last, forgotten, ignored in favor of those who were simply more vital, more vigorously attached to life. Charlie frowned at herself. It was an unusual train of thought for her—she did not usually assume she could read the lives of strangers through the lines on their faces. But it gave her an idea.

"Why don't you come with us?" she said. "We just want to explore a little bit more, then we'll leave. You know your way around better than any of us," she added, hoping that some of the flattery would stick.

"And then we'll never come back again," Carlton said. The guard did not immediately dismiss the idea, and the others quickly chimed in with their own assurances. The guard peered at them one by one, fixing his gaze on each in turn. When he looked at Charlie she looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes, as if she would be giving something away if she let him look too deeply. Once he had inspected them to his satisfaction, he nodded.

"Sure," he said. "Only because I've always wanted to take a walk in there myself." He jerked a thumb behind him, and, catching the surprise that must have shown on their faces, added, "I'm not an idiot. I've been working here for years, walked this building inside and out every night. You think I don't know what's back there?"

Charlie felt herself flush; she had somehow assumed their discovery was unique. The guard looked down at his nametag suddenly, then pointed to it. "Name's Dave," he said.

"I'm Jason," Jason said, and, a little warily, the others recited their own names in turn. They stood there, looking at one another awkwardly for a moment, no one wanting to be the first to move, then Jessica shrugged.

"Come on," she said. She walked quickly to the scaffolding that hid the alley to Freddy's and pulled back the plastic, revealing the break in the wall, and they all filed through, squeezing past the piled boxes. Dave hung back politely, letting them all go first. He motioned to Charlie to go ahead.

I don't want you behind me, Charlie thought. She looked at Jessica, who wasn't moving either.

"Please, go ahead," Charlie said with an edge in her voice, and Dave ducked his head shyly and went. Charlie followed him, and Jessica tucked the plastic carefully back where it was, concealing their passing even though there was no one left to catch them. As they made their way down the dank alley, Charlie touched her fingers to the brick wall, dragging her hand along it as if to guide her. The flashlights seemed a little dimmer now, though she knew it could only be her imagination.

They led the guard to the heavy, wooden shelf that hid the entrance, and Lamar, John, and Jessica dragged it out of the way, revealing the door. Charlie expected their new companion to be impressed, but he just nodded, as if he had suspected this all along.

One by one, they entered the hall to the restaurant, and again Charlie lagged back from the group. She caught Carlton by the arm as he passed her.

"Carlton," she whispered. "Have you ever seen this guy?"

Carlton shook his head. "It's not that small a town; I don’t know everybody."

Charlie nodded absently, her eyes still on the newcomer as they made their way down the long hallway into Freddy's main dining room. She had invited the guard because it seemed like the only way to get back in, but now she was beginning to regret it. Letting a stranger into Freddy's was like letting him into her home, like giving something up.

"What happened to the restaurant?" Lamar said, his tone carefully even, forcing a friendliness he could not have felt. "Why is it boarded up? And why is the mall abandoned, anyway?" His voice sounded thin in the narrow hallway, a little muted.

"You don't know?" Dave said. "This town needs money, jobs, revenue, things like that, and one thing we've got a lot of is space. So they decided to build a big mall, try and attract businesses, maybe even tourists. They built up around where Freddy Fazbear's was, but when it came to it, no one would lease the restaurant, you know, because of what happened. So someone had the bright idea of sealing the whole place up, intact; someone who had a sentimental attachment to it perhaps. I don't think they even tried to clear it out. But it wasn't enough. Something about that place spilled over into the rest of the building, maybe right down into the soil. No one wanted to bring their business here. Sometimes business owners, franchisers from outside the town, would come and look at the place, but they never signed the papers. Said it just didn't feel right. I think it's got an aura, a mystical energy maybe, if you believe in that sort of thing." Dave wiggled his fingers in the air as though casting a spell.

"I don't believe in that sort of thing," Lamar said shortly, but the guard did not seem to notice his tone.

"To each his own," he said. "All I know is, no one ever wanted their stores here, and they abandoned the construction before the building was even finished. Now nobody comes up here except kids wanting to screw around. And me," he added with what sounded like pride. He must have felt possessive, Charlie thought, the only one who ever came here for years and years. It must have felt like it belonged to him, this strange, half-finished building. To him, they must be the invaders.

They came to the end of the hallway, and the space opened up before them. Jessica ran ahead to the control room beneath the stage, her flashlight bobbing merrily ahead of her. She disappeared for a moment, then hit the light switch, and all at once the room was warm and bright. Charlie stopped, blinking in the sudden light. Dave brushed past her, and as he did something caught her eye: there was a scar on his neck, curved and ugly, almost a perfect half-moon. The tissue was knotted and white—the cut that made it must have been a deep one. Only a few feet away, Dave turned in a circle, taking in the restaurant, awed, and as he did, Charlie saw that the scar had a twin; the same half-moon, in the same place on the other side of his neck. She shivered a little. The marks were too clean, too perfectly placed; they almost looked deliberate.

The group fanned out. Carlton, for some reason, headed toward the kitchen, and Jason wandered away toward the arcade again.

"Be careful!" Marla called after him, but she was already following Lamar to the control room to join Jessica. Charlie hung back, and John stayed with her. There was something different in the air, Charlie thought. It felt thinner, like she had to breathe deeper to get enough oxygen.It's just a guy, she told herself, but that was the problem. They had brought an outsider in with them, and now the restaurant felt less secure, no longer hidden away. Freddy's had been breached. Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica had begun to jerk in their stiff, single movements. Charlie looked at Dave, but he did not appear surprised. He's been here before, she thought. Then: Of course he's been here before. The whole town used to come here, back then.

John motioned her on, and reluctantly she went with him to the control room, Dave tagging along behind them like a stray.

In the booth, Jessica was hunched over, pressing buttons, and Lamar was studying the control board, trying to make sense of it. Dave peered intently over their shoulders, watching. He was nodding slightly to himself, wrapped up in some private calculation, and when Jessica stepped back and stretched, he cleared his throat.

"Um," he said. "Could I try?" He drew himself up a little, extending his arm graciously.

Jessica and Lamar exchanged glances, then shrugged.

"Why not?" Jessica said. They shuffled around so that he could reach the board, and he stared down at it for a long moment without moving, then touched a short series of buttons. A hum rose from the speakers, a long, low tone that did not waver.

"Whoa," Jessica said and pointed to the monitors. Charlie saw movement on the screen and backed out of the control room to look for herself. Onstage, the animals were dancing. Crudely, awkwardly, without the grace or complexity Charlie remembered, but they were moving in sequences, not just one motion at a time.

Charlie went back to the control room but did not go beyond the door.

"How did you do that?" she snapped, not caring if it was rude. Dave raised his hands in the air.

"Beginner's luck," he said. "I just pressed some buttons."

"Right," Charlie said. She rubbed her temples. "Can someone please turn the speakers off?"

[terriblething]

In the control room, Dave had his hands on the buttons, his fingers wandering lightly over them without pressing anything. The movement looked careless, instinctual, like a habit. Charlie leaned close to John.

"He's been here before," she whispered. "Look at the way he touches the controls."

"Maybe he's just good with computers," John offered, not sounding convinced.

"Can you make them dance again?” Jessica asked. Dave barely seemed to acknowledge the question. His mouth hung slightly open, and he seemed to be staring at something none of them could see. In the bright lights, they could all see that his uniform was grubby and torn in places, his face poorly shaven and his eyes a little unfocused. He looked less like a guard than a vagrant, and he looked at them all as if he had wandered in ages ago and they were the newcomers. It took him a moment to register the question.

"Sure, let's see what we can do," he said. He smiled at her, his mouth askew. His eyes were a little too intent on her face, holding her gaze just a little too long. Jessica swallowed, seized with an instinctive revulsion, but she smiled back politely.

"All right," Dave said. "I've been here a few times before; I think I can work some magic."

Charlie and John exchange glances.

"You've been here before?" John said in a careful, even tone, but Dave ignored him, or did not hear.

There was a keypad to the far left of the control board that no one had touched yet, as it did not appear to be connected to anything. Now Dave reached for it and began to press the buttons quickly, as if he had done it a hundred times before. He gave Jessica a conspiratorial glance. "For special occasions, you can request a dance." He smiled at her again with that crooked intensity.

"Great," Jessica said, breathing a sigh of relief. Anything to get out of such forced proximity to this man.

[terriblething]

Bonnie turned to them, and Jessica startled as he seemed to look right at her. But he turned away just as quickly to face the rows of empty seats, lifting his head to sing.

"It's strange seeing them like this," Jessica said, taking a step back to get a better view. Bonnie's foot tapped along in rhythm, and his mouth opened and closed with song. There was no voice; there was no music. There was only a strange humming coming from the speakers and an orchestra of mechanical snaps and squeaks. Bonnie sped up, strumming and tapping faster. His eyes suddenly seemed out of sync, looking left while the head went right, then rolling back into his head.

Dave approached the stage with deliberate steps. "Nervous little fella, aren't you?" he smiled, seemingly unbothered as the rabbit moved faster and faster.

[terriblething]

In another hallway, Dave was moving toward a goal. Without the others there to watch, he moved fast, scuttling almost sideways and darting his eyes back over his hunched shoulders from time to time to see he was not followed. There was a large key ring at the belt of his uniform, but only a few keys hung from it. He selected one, opened a door, and let himself into the restaurant's office. He closed the door quickly behind him, cushioning it against noise even though the group would never hear it this far away or note it between their own shouts and the blaring of the speakers. He turned on the overhead light; it was steady, illuminating the room without a flicker. On the far wall there was a tall closet flat against the wall, and he used another key on his ring to open it. Dave stood still in the open door for a long moment, breathing deeply. As he did, his back straightened and his hollow chest seemed to expand, drawing an uncharacteristic confidence from what he saw. An odd, thin smile on his lips, Dave reached out with his fingertips, savoring the moment, and brushed yellow fur.

[terriblething]

"What are you doing back here by yourself? Come on, let's go," Carlton greeted him with a warm smile.

Awash with relief, Jason took a step forward, opening his mouth to speak—and stiffened, struck still with fear. Bonnie suddenly broke through the darkness, appearing beneath the stage lights before them. But it was not Bonnie: this rabbit's yellow fur was almost blinding in the light. He rushed at them, and before Jason could cry out the giant rabbit had a hold of Carlton from behind, smothering his face with a giant, matted paw and wrapping his other great arm around Carlton's chest, gripping tightly. Carlton struggled silently, hitting and kicking, but the creature barely seemed to notice. He screamed into the rabbit's paw, but the sound was swallowed whole. As he fought, the rabbit slunk back the way he came, dragging Carlton with him like a prize from the hunt.

[terriblething]

"What?!" Jason wailed, and they all looked up from the spill. He was pointing at the door.

"What is this?" Marla gasped. The door had chains strung across it from top to bottom, three enormous padlocks holding them all together. The links were bolted into the metal frame of the door, and they were heavy, too heavy to cut without special tools. It was all rusty; the whole thing looked as though it had been there for years. Charlie walked up to the door and touched a chain, as if to be sure it was real.

"This wasn’t here," she said, the words sounding inane even as she spoke.

[terriblething]

The office was not quite empty: there was a small desk, and a folded-up metal chair leaned against it. A large cabinet stood against one wall, its door open just a crack. There were no exits other than the one Dunn was standing in. He swept the light up and down the length of the cabinet and took a deep breath. He bounced his nightstick lightly in his hand, reassuring himself of its presence, and carefully assessed the small space. Standing to the side, he used the stick to open the door, moving slowly. It came open easily, and again, everything was still. Relieved, Dunn looked inside. The cabinet was empty—except for a costume.

It was Bonnie, or rather it wasn't. The face was the same, but the rabbit's fur was yellow. It was slumped lifelessly against the back wall of the cabinet, its eyes dark, gaping holes. The rabbit took him. The kid hadn't been lying, then; Carlton must have gotten someone to dress up in this outfit to help him play his trick. Still, Dunn's unease did not abate; he did not want to touch the thing. He lowered his light and stuck his nightstick back in his belt, intending to go.

Before he could turn, the costume pitched forward, landing on Dunn with the lifeless weight of a heavy corpse. For a moment it did not move, then all at once it was writhing violently, grabbing at him with strong, inhuman hands. Dunn screamed, a desperate, high sound, struggling as the rabbit gripped his shirt, then his arm. Dunn felt a sudden, vicious pain, and a small, detached part of his mind thought, He broke it, he broke my arm. But the pain was washed numb by terror as the rabbit swung him around and slammed him into the cabinet door, taking Dunn's weight as easily as if he were a child. Dunn struggled to breathe; the rabbit's arm was pressed against his neck so tightly that every movement choked him. Just when he thought he was on the brink of passing out, the pressure lifted, and Dunn gasped with relief, clutching his throat. Then he saw the knife.

The rabbit held a slim silver blade. His big, matted paws should have been too clumsy, but Dunn knew as he stared down at it that he had done this before and would easily do it again. Dunn screamed, an indistinct shriek. He had no hope that he would be heard; it was only a guttural, despairing noise. He breathed deep and did it again, a bestial sound, his whole body vibrating with it, as if this could somehow be defense against what happened next.

The knife went in. Dunn felt it tear through skin and muscle, felt it sever things he could not name to plant itself deep in his chest. As he seized with pain and terror, the rabbit pulled him close, almost in an embrace. Dunn's head went light; he was losing consciousness. As he looked up, he could see two rows of smiling teeth, horrid and yellow, the costume peeling at the edges of the mouth. The two gaping holes for eyes looked down at him. They were dark and hollow, but the creature drew near enough that Dunn could see smaller eyes peering back at him from deep within the mask. They held Dunn's gaze patiently. Dunn felt his legs go numb, his vision clouding. He wanted to scream again, to somehow voice his final outrage, but he could not move his face, could not raise the breath to cry out. The rabbit held him upright, supporting his weight, and his eyes were the last thing Dunn ever saw.

[terriblething]

"You remember being three when you moved, but you didn’t turn three until May, so we knock out five months. Do you remember anything about the restaurant the night Sammy disappeared?"

Charlie felt herself flinch with an almost physical pain.

"Sorry," she said. Her face felt too hot. "Sorry, you startled me. Let me think." She closed her eyes.

The restaurant. The closet, hung full with costumes. Her and Sammy, there safe in the dark, until the door opened, and the rabbit appeared, leaning over them with its awful face, its human eyes. Charlie's heart was racing. She slowed her breathing and held out a hand; John took hold of it. She held on tight, as if he could anchor her. The rabbit leaning over them, the yellow teeth beneath the mask, and behind the rabbit... what was behind the rabbit? The restaurant was open; she could hear voices, people. There were more people in costumes—other performers? Robots? No... She almost had it.

[terriblething]

Carlton was too hot; the air felt too thick. He tried to stand, but without his arms he could not brace himself, and as he moved he felt another violent wave of nausea, and a sudden, angry surge of pain in his head.

"I wouldn't do that," a raspy voice muttered. Carlton looked around, seeing no one, then the door opened. It moved slowly, and somewhere beneath his terror Carlton felt a twinge of impatience.

"Who is it? Let me out of this!" he said in panicked desperation.

The door squealed like an injured animal as it glided open, almost of its own accord, the frame empty. After a moment's pause, a yellow rabbit poked its head around the corner, its ears tilting at a jaunty angle. It was still for a moment, almost posing, then it came in with a bouncing walk, graceful, with none of the stiff, mechanistic movements of the animatronic animal. It did a small dance step, spun, and took a deep bow. Then it reached up and took off its own head, revealing the man inside the costume.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised," Carlton said, his nerves triggering an automatic wisecrack. "Never trust a rabbit, I say." It didn’t make sense, it wasn’t funny, but the words were coming out of his mouth without any input from his brain. He still felt sick, his head still ached, but he had a sudden, visceral clarity: this is what happened to Michael. You are what happened to Michael.

"Don't speak," Dave said. Carlton opened his mouth to answer back, but the smart remark died on his tongue when he saw the guard's face. He had seemed somehow faded when they met, depleted and ineffectual. But now, as he stood over Carlton in his absurd-looking rabbit's costume, he looked different. His face was the same, technically: his gaunt features and sunken eyes, his skin that seemed to have worn thin, ready to snap from strain, but now there was a mean, undeniable strength in him, a rodentine vitality that Carlton recognized.

It had occurred to Carlton years before that there were two types of nasty people. There were the obvious ones, like his sixth grade English teacher who yelled and threw erasers, or the kid in fifth grade who picked fights with smaller children after school. That type was easy, their offenses public, brutal, and undeniable.

But then there was the other kind of petty tyrant, those who grew spiteful with their small scraps of power, feeling more and more abused by the year—by family who did not appreciate them, by neighbors who slighted them in imperceptible ways, by a world that left them, somehow, lacking something essential.

Before him stood someone who had spent so much of his life fighting like a cornered rat that he had taken on the mantle of bitter sadism as an integral part of himself. He would strike out against others and revel in their pain, feeling righteously that the world owed him his cruel pleasures. The guard's face, with its malevolent delight in Carlton’s pain and fear, was one of the most terrifying things he had ever seen. He opened and closed his mouth, then, valiantly, found his voice.

"What kind of a name for a serial killer is Dave?" he said. It came out as a trembling croak, lacking even the echo of bravado. Dave did not seem to hear him.

"I told you not to move, Carlton," he said calmly. He set the rabbit's head down on a plastic crate and began fiddling with the fastenings at the back of his neck. "It's not an order, it's a friendly warning. Do you know what I've put you inside?"

"Your girlfriend?" Carlton said, and Dave made a thin curve of a smile.

"You're amusing," he said with distaste. "But no. You're not wearing a costume, Carlton, not precisely. You see, these suits were designed for two purposes: to be worn by men like me," he gestured fluidly toward himself, with something that might have been pride, "and to be used as working animatronics like the ones you see on the stage. Do you understand?"

Carlton nodded, or began to, but Dave's raised eyebrow stopped him.

"I said don't move," he said. The neck of his costume came open, and he began to undo a second fastening at his back as he talked. "You see, all of the animatronic parts in that suit are still in it; they are simply held back by spring locks, like this."

Dave went to the pile of costumes and selected one, bringing the fuzzy green top, headless, over to Carlton. He held out the costume, waggling two twisted pieces of metal that were attached to the sides of the neck.

"These are spring locks," he said, bringing the piece of metal so close to Carlton's face he almost could not focus his eyes on it. "Watch." He did something, touched some piece of the lock so imperceptibly that Carlton could not see what he had done, and it snapped shut with a sound like a backfiring car. Carlton stiffened, suddenly taking the order not to move deathly seriously.

"That's a very old costume, one of the first ones Henry made. You can trip these spring locks very, very easily, if you don't know what you're doing," Dave went on. "It takes almost no movement at all."

"Henry?" Carlton said, trying to focus on what he was being told. He could still hear the snap, as if it had lodged in his head like a song that kept repeating. I'm going to die, he thought for the first time since waking. This man will kill me, I will die, and then what? Will anyone even know? He set his jaw and met Dave's eyes. "Who's Henry?"

"Henry," Dave repeated. "Your friend Charlie's father." He looked surprised. "Did you not know that he made this place?"

"Oh, right, well," Carlton said confusedly. "I just always thought of him as 'Charlie's dad.'"

"Of course," Dave said, the kind of polite murmur people made when they didn't care. "Well, that's one of his first suits," he said, gesturing at Carlton. "And if you trigger those spring locks, two things will happen: first, all the locks will snap right into you, making deep cuts all over your body, and a split second later all the animatronic parts they've been holding back, all that sharp steel and hard plastic, will instantly be driven into your body. You will die, but it will be slow. You'll feel your organs punctured, the suit will grow wet with your blood, and you will know you're dying for long, long minutes. You'll try to scream, but you will be unable to: your vocal cords will be severed, and your lungs will fill with your own blood until you drown in it." There was a faraway look in his eyes, and Carlton knew with chilling certainty that Dave wasn't predicting. He was reminiscing.

"How—" Carlton's voice broke, and he tried again. "How do you know that?" he said, managing a raspy whisper. Dave met his eyes and smiled widely.

"How do you think?" He set the costume he was holding down and reached up to undo the final piece of his own. It took time; Carlton watched for several minutes as Dave romanced whatever mechanisms lay under the collar. He took the costume top off with a flourish, and Carlton made an involuntary sound, a helpless and frightened mewl.

Dave had been shirtless under the costume, and now his bare chest was clearly visible even in the dim, flickering light. His skin was horribly scarred, with raised white lines that scored his flesh in a symmetrical pattern, each side of his body mirroring the other. Dave saw him looking and laughed, a sudden, happy sound. Carlton shivered at it. Dave raised his arms out from his body and turned slowly in a circle, giving Carlton ample time to see that the scars were everywhere, covering his back like a faint lace shirt, stretching to the waist of the rabbit pants as if they continued all the way down. On the back of his neck, where they were largest and most visible, two scars like parallel lines were etched from the nape of his neck all the way up to his scalp, disappearing into his hair. Carlton tried to swallow. His mouth was so dry he could not have spoken, even if there had been anything to say.

Dave smiled unpleasantly.

"Don't move," he said again.

[terriblething]

"He's here, he has to be here!" Marla cried, staring despairingly at the door to Freddy's. She was clasping and unclasping her hands, the knuckles going white. Charlie watched her helplessly. There was nothing to say. The door was no longer covered in chains; instead it was simply no longer a door. It had been welded over; the metal was melted seamlessly into the frame, and the hinges were gone, covered in crude, patchy solder. They all stared, not fully able to comprehend what they were looking at. Charlie shifted her feet. She had stepped in a puddle as they hurried from the car, and now her shoes and socks were soaked and freezing. It seemed unforgivable to be focused on her own discomfort in such a moment, but she could not stop her attention from drifting to it.

"This is insane," Marla said, her mouth agape. "Who does this?" She threw up her hands in frustration. "Who does something like that?" She was almost shouting. "Someone did that! Someone welded this shut. What if Jason is in there?"

[terriblething]

"Okay," Charlie said doubtfully. Then something he had said finally registered. "Carlton, you said 'serial killer man explained' for you not to move. You saw who did this to you?"

Carlton got to his knees carefully then stood, bracing himself on a nearby box. He looked at Charlie. "I was trapped in that thing for hours; I'm all tingly." He shook out his foot as if to make the point.

"Did you see who it was?" Charlie repeated.

"Dave, the guard," Carlton said. He sounded almost surprised that she did not know. Charlie nodded. She had known already.

"What did he tell you?"

"Not much," Carlton said. "But..." His eyes opened suddenly, as if he had just remembered something of grave importance. He looked away from Charlie and slowly dropped to his knees.

"What is it?" Charlie whispered.

"Do you want to hear?" he said. He seemed suddenly calm for someone who had so narrowly escaped death.

"What is it?" she demanded. He glanced nervously at her for a moment, then took a deep breath, his face draining to white.

"Charlie, the kids, all those years ago..." Charlie snapped to attention.

"What?"

"All of them, Michael and the others, they were taken from the dining room when no one was looking, and they were brought here." Carlton suddenly recoiled and moved toward the doorway, watching the walls as though they were crawling with invisible creatures. "He—Dave, the guard—he brought them here..." Carlton rubbed his arms like he was suddenly cold and squinted in pain. "He put them into suits, Charlie," he said, his face twisting in sorrow or disgust. "Charlie." He stopped abruptly, a faraway look in his eyes. "They are still here."

[terriblething]

Carlton looked at the yellow bear for a long moment, and when he turned back to Charlie his face was calm. He opened his mouth to speak, and Charlie put a finger to her lips. Something was coming; she could hear footsteps out in the hall, moving toward them. Deliberate, heavy steps, the approach of someone who did not mind if anyone heard. Charlie looked wildly around the room and spotted a pipe in a corner. She grabbed it and hurried to stand behind the door, where whoever opened it would not see her. Carlton picked up the torso, as though to use it as a weapon somehow. He looked confused, like he was not thinking clearly.

"Don't," Charlie warned in a low voice, but she was too late. Something snapped inside the suit. Carlton dropped it and stepped back, a shimmer of blood on his hand.

"Are you okay?" Charlie whispered. He nodded, and then the doorknob turned.

Dave appeared in the doorway, his head held high and his face grim. It should have been imposing, but he just looked like a man walking through a door.

"Now you've done it," he announced to the room in general, then his eyes lit on Carlton, unfettered. His face darkened. Before he could move, Charlie raised the pipe high, stepped forward, and swung it down on his head with a sickening thunk.

Dave turned, shock on his face. Charlie lifted the pipe, ready to attack again, but the man just stumbled backward against the wall and dropped into a sitting position.

[terriblething]

As if he knew what she was thinking, John said, "Charlie, we have to go in.”

She nodded. John moved as if to take the lead, but she shook her head. Whatever was in there, it was her doing. Her responsibility. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, then turned the knob.

He was dead. He was lying on the floor on his back, his eyes closed and his face ashen. She felt herself put a hand over her mouth, but it was as if someone else were moving her body. She felt numb, the knots in her stomach gone still and dead. John pushed past her. He knelt and slapped the man's face.

"John," she said, hearing a note of panic in her voice. He looked up at her, surprised.

"He's not dead," he said. "He's just out cold. He can't tell us anything like this."

"We have to tie him up or something," Jessica said. "Don't wake him up like this."

"Yeah, gotta agree with that," Carlton said. His eyes searched the room for devices, tools, or costumes: anything that Dave could—and probably would—use against them, given the opportunity.

Charlie just stared, the numb feeling lingering. He's not dead. She shook herself all over like a dog, trying to rid herself of the remnants of shock, and cleared her throat.

"Let's find something to tie him up with," she said. "This place seems to have everything." Jessica headed to the back of the room, where costume pieces were piled haphazardly, empty mascot heads staring out from odd angles with ghastly eyes.

[terriblething]

Carlton was on his knees, and he walked toward Dave without standing, a clunky, unsteady walk—he looked like he might tip over at any moment. "Wakey, wakey, sleepy head," he whispered.

"We've got this, Carlton, thanks. You just relax." Charlie rolled her eyes toward Jessica, then turned her attention back to Dave, slapping his face lightly, but he remained inert.

"Hey, dirtbag. Wake up." She slapped him again.

"Here, try this." John reappeared with a can of water. "Water fountain," was the only explanation he offered. "The can didn't hold much," he added.

"That's okay," Charlie said. She took it from him and held it over Dave's head, letting the small streams of water dribbling from the holes in the tin fall on his face. She aimed for his mouth, and after a few moments, he spluttered, his eyes opening.

"Oh, good, you're awake," Charlie said, then dumped the rest of the water on his head.

He said nothing, but his eyes remained open in a stiff, unnatural stare.

"So, Dave," she said. "How about you tell us what's going on?"

His mouth opened slightly, but no words came out. After a moment he became still again, so still that Charlie reluctantly pressed her fingers to his neck to check for a pulse.

"Is he alive?" John said, creeped out by what seemed to be an on-again off-again animated corpse. He moved closer to the man, kneeling so their eyes were level, and looked at him gravely, searching for something.

"His pulse is normal," Charlie reported. She pulled her hand back, more startled than if he'd been dead.

"Charlie, there's something different about him," John said urgently. He reached out and grasped Dave's chin, turning his head back and forth. Dave did not resist; he just kept staring without expression, as if the world around him were not really there.

"What do you mean?" Charlie said, though she saw it too. It was as if the guard, the man they had met, had been stripped away, and what sat before them was nothing but a blank canvas. John shook his head and released the guard's chin, wiping his hands on his pants. He stood and stepped back, putting a distance between them.

"I don't know," he said. "There's just something different."

"Why don't you tell us about the kids?" Carlton was leaning back against the wall, emboldened but still not completely balanced. "The kids you killed, you stuffed them into those suits out there." Carlton motioned toward the stage outside.

"Carlton, shut up," John said angrily. "Everything you're saying is nonsense."

"No, it's true," Charlie whispered. John gave her a searching look, then turned to the others, who had no more answers than Charlie. He looked back at Dave with an expression of renewed disgust. Seeing John's face, Charlie was suddenly struck with the weight of memory. Michael, who had been a cheerful, careless little boy, Michael who had drawn portraits of them all, passing them around with a solemn pride. Michael who had been killed, whose final moments must have been all pain and terror. Michael, who had been killed by the man before them. She looked to the others, and on each of their faces she saw the same single thought: this was the man who killed Michael.

Without warning, John's arm shot out like lightning and struck Dave across the jaw with a loud crack. Dave slumped back, and John lunged and almost fell from the impact of the strike. John regained his posture and bounced a little on the balls of his feet, alert, waiting for a reaction, or a chance to strike again. Dave's body moved upward, straightening, but the movement was too smooth. He seemed to make no effort, use no muscles, and exert no energy. Slowly, his posture corrected, unfolding to his slumped state, his mouth hanging open.

Carlton stumbled forward. "Take that, jackass." He swung his arm into the air and swayed on his feet. Jessica leapt forward just in time to catch him in her arms.

Dave continued to stare, and it was only after a moment that Charlie considered that he might actually be staring at something. She turned, following his line of sight, then suddenly she recoiled. On the table along the wall sat a rabbit's head.

"That's it? You want that?" Charlie stood and approached the mask. "You need this?" she added in a whisper. She picked it up carefully, the light catching the edges of the spring locks that filled the mascot head. She picked it up and carried it almost ceremoniously to Dave, who tipped his head down in a barely noticeable fashion.

Charlie placed it over his head, not being nearly as cautious as she had been with Carlton. When the mascot head was fully resting on his shoulders, the large face raised itself until it was almost completely upright. Dave’s eyes opened steadily, glassy and without emotion, like the robots on the stage outside. Lines of sweat began to trickle down from under the mask, a stain darkening the collar of his uniform shirt.

"My dad trusted you," Charlie said. She was on her knees now, looking intently at the rabbit's face. "What did you do to him?" Her voice broke.

"I helped him create." The voice came from inside the mask, but it was not Dave's, not the pitiful, sour tone they would have recognized. The voice of the rabbit was smooth and rich, almost musical. It was confident, somehow reassuring—a voice that might convince you of almost anything. Dave cocked his head to the side, and the mask shifted so that only one of his bulbous eyes could peer through the sockets.

"We both wanted to love," he said in those melodious tones. "Your father loved. And now I have loved."

"You killed," Carlton said, then burst out with something that sounded like a laugh. He seemed more lucid now, as if anger was focusing his mind. He shook loose of Jessica's hands on his arms and knelt down on the floor.

"You're a sick bastard," Carlton sputtered. "And you've created monsters. The kids you killed are still here. You've imprisoned them!"

"They are home, with me." Dave's voice was coarse, and the large mascot head slid forward and tilted as he spoke. "Their happiest day."

"How do we get out?" Charlie placed one hand on the mascot head and pushed it back into position on Dave's shoulders. The fur felt wet and sticky, as though the costume itself were sweating.

"There isn't a way out anymore. All that's left is family." His round eye reappeared through one of the sockets, glimmering in the light. He locked eyes with Charlie for a moment, struggling to lean in closer. "Oh," he gasped. "You're something beautiful, aren't you?" Charlie recoiled as if he had touched her. What's that supposed to mean? She took another step back, fighting a surge of revulsion.

"Well, then you're trapped too, and you're not going to be hurting anyone else," John said in response to the veiled threat.

"I don't have to," Dave answered. "When it gets dark, they will awaken; the children's spirits will rise. They will kill you. I'll just walk out in the morning, stepping over your corpses, one by one." He looked at each of them in turn, as if relishing the bloody scene.

"They'll kill you too," Jessica said.

"No, I am quite confident that I will survive."

"Really?" John said suddenly. "I'm pretty sure they're the spirits of the kids you killed," he all but spat. "Why would they hurt us? It's you they're after."

"They don't remember," Dave said. "They've forgotten. The dead do forget. All they know is that you are here, trying to take away their happiest day. You are intruders." He lowered his voice to a hush. "You are grown-ups."

They looked at one another.

"We're not—" Jessica began.

"You’re close enough. Especially to a vengeful, confused, and frightened child. None of you will survive the night."

"And what makes you think they won't kill you?" John said again, and Dave's eyes took on something shining, almost beatific.

"Because I am one of them," he said.

[terriblething]

[Clay Burke] didn't have to search for the box of evidence from the Freddy's disappearances; he had been here before. There was no one around, and so instead of taking it upstairs to his office, Clay sat down on the concrete floor, spreading papers and photographs around him. There were interviews, witness statements, and reports from the on-scene officers, Clay included. He sifted through them aimlessly. He didn't know what he was looking for; there was nothing new here.

There was nothing to find, really. They knew who did it. At first he had suspected Henry, just like so many others around town. It was a terrible thought, but it was a terrible crime; there was no solution that would not be shocking. He had not been the one to question Charlie's father, but he had read the transcript. The man had been almost incoherent, so shaken that he could not give straight answers. He sounded as if he were lying, and to most people that was proof enough. But Clay had resisted, had delayed having him arrested, and sure enough they came to William Afton, Henry's partner. Afton seemed like the normal one in the venture, the businessman. Henry was the artist; he always seemed to be off in another world, some part of his mind thinking about his mechanical creatures even when he was holding a conversation about the weather or the kids' soccer games. There was something off about Henry, something almost shell-shocked; it seemed like a miracle that he could have produced a child as apparently normal as Charlie.

Clay remembered when Henry had moved to town and begun construction of the new restaurant. Someone had told him that Henry had a kid who had been abducted several years prior, but he didn’t know much else. He seemed like a nice enough guy, though he was obviously terribly alone, his grief visible even at a distance. Then Freddy Fazbear's opened, and the town came alive. That was also when Charlie appeared. Clay hadn't known Henry even had a daughter until that day.

William Afton was the one who made Freddy's a business, as he had the previous restaurant. Afton was as robust and lively as Henry was withdrawn and shadowy. He was a hefty man who had the ruddy geniality of a financially shrewd Santa Claus. And he had killed the children. Clay knew it; the whole department knew it. He had been present for each abduction, and he had mysteriously and briefly vanished at the same time as each child went missing. A search of his house had found a room crammed with boxes of mechanical parts and a musty yellow rabbit suit, as well as stacks of journals full of raving paranoia, passages about Henry that ranged from wild jealousy to near-worship.

But there had been no evidence, there had been no bodies, and so there could be no charge. William Afton had left town, and there was nothing to stop him. They did not even know where he had gone. Clay picked up a picture from the pile; it had been taken, framed, from the wall of Henry’s office at the restaurant. It was a picture of the two of them together, Henry and William, grinning into the camera in front of the newly opened Freddy Fazbear's. He stared at it; he had stared at it before. Henry's eyes did not quite match his smile. The expression looked forced, but then, it always did. There was nothing unusual here, except that one of the men had turned out to be a killer.

Suddenly, Clay felt a shock of recognition, something indistinct he could not quite catch. He closed his eyes, letting his mind wander like a dog off the lead: go on, find it. There was something about William, something familiar, something recent. Clay's eyes snapped open. He shoved everything back into the evidence box, cramming it in messily, keeping out only the photograph. Clutching it, he took the stairs up two at a time, almost running by the time he got to the main floor of the station. He headed straight for a particular filing cabinet, ignoring the greetings of his startled officers. He tore open the drawer, pawing through it until—there it was: employee background checks requested by businesses from the last six months.

He pulled out the stack and flipped through it, looking for photos. In the third folder, he found it. He picked up the picture and held it up next to the one of Henry and William, turning so his body did not block the light.

It's him.

The background check application was labeled "Dave Miller," but it was unmistakably William Afton. Afton had been fat and affable; the man in the picture was sallow and thin, his skin sagging and his expression unpleasant, as if he had forgotten how to smile. He looked like a poor facsimile of himself. Or maybe, Clay thought, he looked like he had dropped his disguise.

[terriblething]

Charlie nodded toward Clay, and the rest started forward, heading almost reluctantly to the hole in the wall. Charlie hung back. John stayed beside her, but she gestured him forward, taking up the rear.

She had barely had time to take a step when something took hold of her throat.

Charlie tried to cry out, but her windpipe was being crushed. She was whipped around as if she weighed nothing, and she found herself face to face with the yellow rabbit. Dave's eyes were shining through, triumphant. He had his arm around her neck, squeezing her throat so tightly that she could scarcely breathe. He held her so close it was almost an embrace. She could smell the costume, stained fur and years of putrid sweat, blood, and cruelty.

He spoke, still staring at Charlie.

"You are staying."

"Absolutely not," Clay said, taking on the group's authority.

Dave dug his fingers deeper into Charlie's neck, and she made a strangled sound.

"I will kill this one, right here, while you watch, unless you do as I say," he said, and his voice was almost pleasant. Clay looked at him for a long moment, calculating, then nodded.

"Okay," he said, his voice calm. "We'll do as you say. What do you want?"

"Good," Dave said. He relaxed his grip on Charlie's neck, and she took a shaky breath. Clay began to move toward them, and the others followed. Charlie looked up at the man in the rabbit suit, and he met her gaze. It was you. You killed Michael. You killed Sammy. You took them from me. His eyes should have held something fierce and dangerous. They should have been windows to the rotten core inside. But they were only eyes, flat and empty.

Charlie plunged her hands into the gap beneath the costume's head. Dave drew back, but she held on.

"If you want to be one of them, then be one of them!" she shouted, and she tripped the spring locks. Dave's eyes widened, and then he screamed. Charlie jerked her hands free, barely evading the locks as they snapped open and plunged into his neck. She took a step back, watching as Dave crumpled to the ground, still screaming as the costume released. Part by part, the animatronic insides pierced his flesh, ripping up his organs, tearing through his body as if it were not even there. At some point he stopped screaming, but he still writhed on the floor for what felt like long minutes before he was still.