Five Nights at Freddy's Fazbear Frights Collection, page 82
So, once again, Arthur pedaled toward Heracles Hospital. Today, he was wearing full rain gear because there was no arguing with the colossal churning storm clouds that dominated the sky. Not a single ray of the sun’s light was finding its way through the black and gray cloud stacks that made it seem more like twilight than 10:10 in the morning.
Rain began falling as the hospital came into view. Arthur kept his head down, navigating by the markings for the bicycle lane at the right edge of the driveway. Every car that sped past sprayed Arthur with water and buffeted Ruby so her tires wobbled a little on the pavement. Arthur was relieved when he glanced up and saw he was almost to the portico.
But then his feet fumbled with Ruby’s pedals. Had he just seen what he thought he’d seen?
Glancing up at the portico, taking in the majesty of the building’s vine-covered facade and its intricate statuary, he was sure he’d just seen a child’s head peek out from behind the stone Cerberus.
Arthur braked, wiped his eyes, and stared through the gauzy rain curtains separating him from the hospital. He squinted, focusing as intensely as he could on Cerberus and the top of the columns flanking the portico. No. Nothing was there.
He must have imagined what he’d seen. All that talk about the little boy; it had put the idea in his mind.
But … he didn’t think he’d imagined it.
Arthur tried to take a last look, but the rain curtains turned into solid walls of water pounding the earth as if Mother Nature was trying to obliterate an enemy. Now Arthur could see nothing but rain, so he stood on Ruby’s pedals and got both himself and his poor drowned bicycle under cover.
Ten minutes later, still dripping water wherever he went because he carried his wet rain gear with him, Arthur sat in front of a very different desk from all the desks he’d sat in front of during his campaign for the trip to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. This wasn’t the desk of some low-level paper-pusher. This was the desk of someone with power—in this case, legal power. Arthur sat in front of the desk of Carolyn Benning Graves, Heracles Hospital’s head attorney.
Ms. Graves had much nicer chairs than Pete and all the others in the administration office. Arthur was quite comfortable in a burgundy leather wingback chair.
“You understand, Father Blythe, that any damages resulting from this patient transport, be they property or personal, shall be wholly and completely your responsibility?”
Arthur nodded. “I understand.” His stomach did a somersault. What if something went wrong?
Arthur adjusted his attitude. Where was his faith? He and the man in room 1280 would be watched over.
The attorney pushed a stack of papers across the clean polished surface of her mahogany desk. “Please read through these agreements, sign where indicated, and initial where specified.”
Arthur started to lean forward.
“Not here, Father Blythe,” Ms. Graves said. She made a motion, and a thin, well-dressed young woman appeared and picked up the papers. “Please go with Ms. Weber here. She’ll take you to a place where you can read and sign. I’m afraid I have another appointment.”
Arthur dutifully vacated the wingback chair, feeling victorious.
Mia hovered in the hallway outside the hospital’s legal offices. She’d been told Father Blythe was still signing papers giving him the authority to take the man in room 1280 to Fazbear Entertainment Distribution Center. In spite of those papers, she hoped she’d be able to talk him into giving up the idea.
Leaning against the wall, Mia nodded and smiled at everyone who went by, but she didn’t really see anyone. Her mind wasn’t in this hallway with her. It was reviewing what had led her to this place and this time and this mission.
Mia hadn’t really understood why the only job she could find was on the hospice wing at Heracles Hospital. She was highly qualified and had excellent references. She should have been able to get a better position. In fact, she’d been feeling pretty resentful that she was stuck with what she’d gotten.
If it wasn’t for her boyfriend continually reminding her that the job was a stepping stone, she’d have been pretty miserable. But between his encouragement, his wonderful sandwiches, and her own naturally optimistic nature, she’d been reasonably content here … except for being creeped out by her fellow nurses on the hospice wing and their disturbing hushed conversations.
But now she understood them. Oh boy, did she ever!
Mia also understood why she had gotten this job. She was needed here.
“Why hello, Mia.”
Mia focused and realized Father Blythe was standing in front of her.
“What are you doing here?”
Mia smiled as she watched Father Blythe juggle a stack of papers, orange rain gear, and his bright red bicycle helmet. The rain gear dripped on Father Blythe’s black leather shoes. For some reason, he always smelled like coconuts.
“Actually, I’m here to talk to you, Father,” Mia said. She glanced around the busy hallway, then she looked down the hall to a small waiting area. “Could you come with me a second?”
Father Blythe glanced at his watch. “Peggy’s going to be meeting me out front with the church van. It’s wheelchair accessible. I’m going to trade her Ruby for the van.” Then he looked into Mia’s eyes. “But okay.”
Mia took Father Blythe’s arm and led him down the hall. She smiled at everyone as they went, noticing that several nurses gave Father Blythe disapproving frowns.
In the waiting area, Mia sat in one of the tan plush chairs and motioned to the one next to it. Father Blythe sat beside her.
“What is it, Mia? You seem troubled.”
“I am.”
She looked at Father Blythe’s warm brown eyes. He had such a kind face, such an open face. She could see that he’d known suffering, but she could also tell that he was resolute in his intention to see the good in everything. He had one of those mouths that curved upward, even when his face was expressionless. He was designed for seeing light in darkness.
Realizing that he was waiting for her to speak, Mia looked around to be sure they were alone. She leaned as close to Father Blythe as she could without being weird, inhaled, and then said in a rush, “Father, I know I gave you that advice about how to get permission to take the man in room 1280 out of the hospital. But you can’t take him. You just can’t. The man in room 1280 … he can’t leave this place. I can’t explain why I know this, but I know it. He can’t go where he wants to go. You can’t take him. The other nurses are right. I thought they were lunatics. I admit it. I did. But now I understand. They’re right. There’s something in that poor man. There’s something in there, and you can’t take it where it wants to go. You can’t. It will be devastating, even catastrophic, if you do. I don’t know how or why but I do know it. You have to believe me. I—” Mia stopped. She realized that she could gush forth another thousand or even million words and Father Blythe wasn’t going to change his mind. It was right there on his face.
Lips pressed into compassionate regret, thick gray brows drawn together, crinkles drawn in at the corner of his wide-set eyes, slightly weak chin tucked—these were all telegraphing what was going to come out of Father Blythe’s mouth.
“Mia,” he said when she’d finished her case, “I’m so sorry. But I have to take this man where he wants to go. It’s his last request.”
“Just because it’s his last request doesn’t make it a good one,” Mia attempted futilely.
“Why is this so important to you?” Father Blythe asked.
Mia had no logical answer. She wasn’t about to explain what she’d seen in his hospital room; she knew how crazy it sounded, and she couldn’t lose this job. But beyond what she’d seen, all she had was a feeling, an intuition. Maybe it was a premonition. “It just is,” she said finally.
Father Blythe set down his rain gear and bicycle helmet. He tucked the papers under his arm, and he took Mia’s hand.
“Mia, I’ve lived long enough to see the kind of evil that exists in our world. I haven’t seen it all, by any means, but I’ve seen more than enough to understand that my glass-is-always-full attitude has no basis in earthly reality. I should be jaded by now, I suppose. I should be pessimistic, ready to see the worst. But I’m not. I’m not because I choose not to let the past color the way I see the present. I choose to expect, in every moment, to find what’s good.”
“But what if you don’t?”
“Then there’s always the next moment.”
“And what if there isn’t?” Mia could hear the fear in her voice. She brushed away the tears that threatened to spill.
Father Blythe breathed in and out slowly. “Then I’ll move on to whatever my journey holds next for me, I suppose. That’s all we can do. That’s all I’m trying to do for the man in room 1280.”
Mia swallowed and nodded. “You won’t change your mind.”
“I’m sorry, but no.”
Mia stood, and Father Blythe gathered his things.
“May I hug you, Father?” she asked.
“Of course.”
They hugged, and she tried to pour into Father Blythe the inexplicably huge amount of warmth she felt for him. Or was it worry?
They separated, and he said, “Bye, Mia. I’ll see you again soon.”
“Bye, Father,” she said as he gave her a little wave and headed down the hall.
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.
