Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes(84)

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 Afton was as robust and lively as Henry was withdrawn and shadowy.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, and 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. 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, and 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 it. 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 in his fist, 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 them, 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.

Clay flipped the page back, to see why the check had been requested, and his face drained white, his breathing stopped for a moment. Clay stood, grabbing jacket in the same motion, then stopped. Slowly, he sat, letting the jacket fall from his fingers. He took the partial file back out of its drawer, and delicately, he lifted one of the photos out. It had been taken in the aftermath, when the place was no more than a crime scene. He paused for a moment and closed his eyes, then he looked again at the picture, willing himself to see it as if for the first time.

There was a glimmer of light he had never noticed before. One of the animatronics on the stage, the bear, Freddy, was looking toward the cameraman, one of his eyes illuminated with a smear of light.

Clay put the picture aside, moving to the next one. This one was from a different angle, but the side of the main stage was still in the frame. Chica’s body was facing away from the camera, but her face was turned directly toward it, and another smear of light streaked across her left eye. Clay rubbed it with the tip of his finger, making sure it wasn’t a defect in the paper. The next photo showed Bonnie in the darkness behind the chairs. A pinpoint of light, like a star, shone from one of his eyes as though reflecting a spotlight that wasn’t there. What is this? Clay could feel his face flush; he realized he hadn’t been breathing. He shuffled his hands on the desk like a conjurer calling forth a picture to reveal itself. One did. The last picture had been taken in Pirate’s Cove. Tables had been disturbed, he remembered. The scene was chaotic: the tables and chairs in disarray, clutter strewn through the halls. But unlike so many other times he had stared at this picture, he ignored the disorder, focused only on the stage. The curtain was pulled back slightly, a figure barely visible in the recesses behind it, one eye illuminated by the flash of a camera. Clay studied the rest of the pictures, looking for more reflections, but found none. There was no flash.



Jason opened his eyes. His leg hurt; it was a steady, dull pain. He flexed it tentatively, and found he could move easily; it could not be too bad. He was lying on something lumpy, and his whole body felt stiff, like he had been asleep on a pile of—he looked at what he was lying on—a pile of extension cords and wires. He sat up. It was dark, but he could dimly see what was around him. He bent over to examine his leg: his jeans were ripped where Foxy’s claw had gouged him, and the gash in his leg was ugly, but it was not bleeding badly. The hook had mostly got hold of his jeans. Jason felt a little relief. Satisfied, he began to examine his surroundings. He was in a corner, and there was a heavy, black curtain strung from one wall to the other, cutting the space off from the room outside. He crawled forward over the cables cautiously, careful to make no sound. He made his way to the edge of the curtain, where there was a tiny sliver of a gap between it and the wall. Jason took a moment to steel himself, then peeked out, conscious of his every movement.

He was on the small stage in Pirate’s Cove, behind the curtain. He could hear something moving out there, something large, but from his position he could see only an empty room. He pushed his head out a little further, craning his neck to look. He couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, but with each second he grew bolder, readying himself to leap from the stage and run. A light was pulsing in the main dining room, illuminating the hall for brief seconds at a time with bright, dizzying carnival colors. It wasn’t much, but it gave Jason a direction to run. He watched it intently, until it was all he could see, and then it stopped. The room was dark, darker than it had been before—his eyes had adjusted to the light and now he was nearly blind. The shuffling sound went on, and Jason pulled the curtain open farther. This time he moved too fast, and as the curtain was drawn the metal rings that held it clinked together.