Five Nights at Freddy's, page 1
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Authors
Epilogue
Copyright
Series Ad
The screw’s sharp metal threads bit at Bob’s fingertips, scoring deeply into the pads. Blood smeared the screw head and dripped onto the rusty, gray metal vent cover Bob was laboring to remove from the wall.
Bob had already freed two of the vent’s screws. He’d tried to bend the cover back away from the wall, but the metal was too strong. He had to get a third screw out so he could swing the cover out of the way. The vent was large, big enough, Bob thought, for him to get through. It had to be. If it wasn’t … well, he couldn’t think about that.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he muttered. The words came out in staccato gasps because Bob’s heart was pounding so violently it felt like it was beating the air out of his lungs.
A heavy bang sounded behind Bob … a loud bang that vibrated the table Bob was crouched under. Involuntarily, Bob raised his head, whacking it on the table as he turned to look over his shoulder. The throbbing that erupted in his skull added syncopation to his rapid-fire breathing. Bob stared at the barrier he’d built up in front of the office’s metal door. Was it going to hold?
Another bang. This one reverberated through the office; Bob felt the vibration course through all the bones of his body. The vibration turned into a panicked convulsion as one of the filing cabinets he’d piled on top of the desk teetered. The desk was wedged against the door, but if the cabinets fell, would the desk stay in place?
The wobbling filing cabinet bumped into the desk chair that topped the pile of office furniture Bob had cobbled into a blockade. The chair toppled over and crashed onto the office’s linoleum floor. The desk twitched, but it stayed in place.
Ignoring the prickles between his shoulder blades as he rotated away from the door, Bob returned his concentration to the screw. The blood-slicked screw stubbornly refused to turn for a couple more seconds.
Bob gritted his teeth and put all his focus on the screw head. And finally, the screw came loose. He dropped it as the vent cover swiveled on its remaining screw and swung away from the opening in the wall.
Bob peered into the black shaft extending in front of him. Stuffy air wafted from the opening. Dust billowed upward. He suppressed a sneeze.
Behind Bob, a fingernails-on-a-blackboard screech preceded a deafening clang. Bob’s head swiveled. The filing cabinet was no longer on top of the desk. It lay on the floor. And behind it, the desk began to move away from the doorknob.
Bob sucked in his breath and looked around wildly for his flashlight. He’d set down the club-style light when he’d begun working on the screws. Where was it?
Bob spotted the flashlight a few feet to his right. He lunged for it as another deafening metallic thud came from the office door. The overhead speakers hissed, and then they emitted a tinny shriek.
Time to go, Bob thought.
Flipping on his flashlight, Bob crawled into the narrow darkness. More thuds and thumps chased him away from the office. He scrabbled as fast as he could.
In his thirties, Bob had come to terms with his nerdish looks and receding hairline, but he’d never been thrilled with his slight body. For once, though, he was grateful for his narrow shoulders. And even so, he still had to squirm and wriggle his way through the tightened enclosure of the vent shaft. In spite of the close quarters, he made quick progress. The continued caterwaul coming from the speakers and the echoing bangs and thumps that sounded like they were pursuing Bob through the inkiness impelled him through the shaft at lightning speed.
In what felt like both seconds and centuries, Bob reached the end of the vent shaft that led away from the office. The passage split. Bob aimed his flashlight beam left, then right. The light revealed the same thing in both directions: darkness and more darkness.
Sweat stung Bob’s eyes and dripped off his nose. The stench of his perspiration was fetid in the confined space.
Bob set down his flashlight so he could wipe his face. Another scourging howl came from the building’s speakers. Bob snatched up his flashlight. Without thinking anymore, he headed down the left passageway.
Losing himself again in frantic crawling that defied his ability to quantify seconds or minutes, Bob clambered forward until he found himself looking at a vent cover like the one that he’d removed in the office. Bob groaned. Was he trapped? If this vent cover was screwed on as securely as the one in the office …
The cacophony coming from the speakers crescendoed. The vent shaft shook as the entire building quaked.
Bob hefted his flashlight and used the end of it to pound on the vent cover. To his shock … and relief … the vent cover came loose. It flipped away from the shaft and slapped the wall with a crash that made Bob cringe. Even above the din that filled the building, the sound carried, which meant it easily gave away Bob’s location.
Bob quickly pulled himself out of the vent shaft. Every nerve ending in his body on alert, Bob stood and whirled in a circle, shining his light around him.
When the flashlight beam revealed stacks of boxes, restaurant supplies, and a closed, frosted-glass door, Bob let out a pent-up breath. He was in one of the pizzeria’s storage rooms. And he was alone. For the moment.
Bob took a step toward the door. Reaching for the knob, he hesitated.
What was on the other side of the door?
Although Bob could see no looming shadows beyond the murky glass, his heart rate ratcheted up a couple more notches. His chest felt contracted, like metal bands were constricting around him. Bob really, really did not want to open the door that stood between his current … temporary … safety and what was roaming loose beyond the door. But he couldn’t stay here forever. Locking himself in the office hadn’t worked. Hiding in here wouldn’t, either. He had to get out of the building.
Bob turned the knob and threw open the door. Willing himself not to think, Bob stepped out of the storage room. Checking left and right and seeing nothing but the dimly lit hallway, Bob took off at a sprint.
His rubber-soled athletic shoes slapping at the black-and- white-checked floor, Bob reached the hallway corner in seconds. He rounded it, and his gaze locked on the glowing red EXIT sign above the door just thirty feet away. Pumped up by hope, Bob shot toward the door.
Bob hit the door’s metal crash bar at top speed. Fully expecting to catapult through the door into the sweet freedom of the night outside, Bob was shocked when his body bounced backward off the bar.
He windmilled his arms and kept his balance, barely. For a few seconds, he hung on to his hope, too. He threw himself at the door. Even though Bob knew he had no bulk, he wasn’t a small guy. At five foot eleven, he had a little heft. Surely, he could bash the door open.
But no. The door remained closed, like it was nailed shut.
Bob tried again. And again.
Finally, panting heavily, he leaned against the door. And that’s when he heard it.
“Diddly dum dum diddly da …”
The singsong voice echoed through the building as it came toward Bob. Its playful tone was like a spider crawling up Bob’s spine.
Goose bumps erupting on his bare arms, Bob turned and looked down the long hallway behind him. As soon as he did, the corridor’s lights went out. What little illumination there’d been turned to utter blackness.
“Dum da dum dum …” The mocking tones came closer.
Bob lost it. Turning, he pounded on the exit door.
“Help! Someone! Help me!” Bob screamed so loudly that the words abraded his throat like a metal file scouring at his vocal cords.
In spite of his cries, though, Bob easily heard the pounding footsteps that rushed up behind him. Going rigid, his whole body immobilized by his brain’s inability to accept what was happening, Bob waited for the inevitable attack that would—
Clinging to a tenuous thread of awareness, Bob’s brain attempted to process all the stimuli that were bombarding his senses. His eyes registered fluorescent lights, at once scathingly bright and then terrifyingly dark. His feet relayed burning pressure, vice-like clamping across the arches. His spine communicated jarring and bumping, cracking into a seemingly endless rock-hard expanse. His forehead felt warm with thick moisture; it ran into his ears. Bob blinked as his brain worked to make sense of all these bodily reports. He attempted to move.
As soon as Bob tried to get his body to follow his command, his brain reached a conclusion about his situation. Bob lifted his head and looked down the length of his prone body. He was being dragged down the hallway by his feet.
Looking into the on-and-off shadows, Bob couldn’t see what had hold of him. But he didn’t need to see it. He knew what it was.
Corkscrewing his spine in an attempt to get away, Bob’s head slammed against the floor beneath him. He felt his hip kn ock against something sharp and realized he was being dragged around a corner. Stiffening, his stomach flip-flopped with the realization of where he was.
The grayscale of intermittent light was abruptly replaced by a swirling kaleidoscope of color. Red and yellow and purple and blue floodlights streamed swaths of radiance across Bob’s field of vision. As his fingers flexed, in his attempt to grab at something—anything—to stop his progress toward wherever he was being dragged, Bob recognized the detritus of long-forgotten fun. His hand grazed over a party hat. His thigh rubbed up against a table leg.
Bob was tugged hard, and his body twisted. As it did, Bob’s gaze landed on a wall covered with children’s drawings. The yellowed, curling paper covered in crayon-rendered stick figures ruffled in an air current as Bob was heaved past the wall.
Bob had looked at that wall long and hard just a few hours earlier, well before he’d realized the danger that he was in. The wall had given him the creeps, serious creeps. One drawing in particular, one that was noticeably larger than the others, had captured his attention. This drawing, hung as if it was the central masterpiece of an exhibit, depicted a large yellow rabbit standing hand in hand with five happy children. In spite of the gaiety suggested by the cheerful scene, the image had troubled Bob.
As Bob caught a glimpse of the rabbit drawing now, he felt bile rise in the back of his throat. He tried to scissor his legs to free himself from his captor. The motion did nothing but amp up the pressure around his feet.
Bob was yanked hard. His head smacked against the wall as he went around yet another corner. For a few seconds, he thought he heard the undulating, distant sound of laughing children. Then the hint of cognizance that had surfaced to make him aware of his surroundings once again sank beneath a layer of cobwebbed dullness.
Bob, coward that he felt he was, welcomed the muffled understanding. Unwilling to face the truth of what was happening … and what was about to happen, he slipped into a dreamlike state that eased the hard edges of his predicament. He let himself float in and out of reality until, suddenly, his body was whipped from the floor and thrown.
When Bob’s back smacked into cold metal, his mind was jarred into full alertness. His gaze immediately scanned his surroundings as he took in the pinching, pressing steel wrapping itself around his back, buttocks, and thighs.
Bob cried out and attempted to leap from the metal chair he knew he was in. Before his muscles could lift him upward, a green luminosity shone from a button on the side of the chair, and metal restraints snapped into place around his wrists. A thick leather strap snugged tightly around his chest. Bob writhed, but he knew he was wasting his energy,
The Parts and Service room, Bob thought.
Of all the eerie rooms in the pizzeria that he’d been hired to “guard,” this was the room that had freaked him out the most when he’d first seen it. Its walls were lined with metal shelving that surrounded multiple stainless steel worktables and industrial-looking metal “recliners” that in no way conjured feelings of relaxation; the Parts and Service room was stuffed full of tools, wires, fasteners, and various disembodied robotic endoskeletons. Metal feet and arms and hands and legs and elbows and shoulders were tangled on the shelves and strewn across the worktables. When Bob had first seen the room, he’d felt like he was standing in a robotic torture chamber. He had quickly backed out and slammed the door closed.
Once again, Bob thrashed in the chair. Using all of the strength he could muster, he tried to free himself. The chair held on to him, and then it snapped backward, stretching him flat.
As soon as Bob was supine, a massive, furry brown bear mask loomed over his face. Bob screamed.
As Bob’s pointless bawling filled the room, the bear mask opened up. The two halves of the bear face peeled back like the wings of a beetle, expanding outward. As the fur parted, spinning robotic mechanisms filled Bob’s vision.
Razor-sharp and in constant motion, the inside of the bear mask was a blur of clicking, clanking knifelike protrusions and pincers. Every edge of exposed metal was a small lethal weapon that would easily pierce human skin. Bob began fighting like an animal caught in a metal-toothed trap. He whipped his head from side to side. He bucked his torso. He kicked his legs.
At first, Bob felt like his efforts were futile, but then he felt one of the armrests begin to wiggle. Straining to crane his neck, Bob looked at his wrist. He couldn’t see what was loosening, but something was. Maybe a bolt was coming free.
The despair that had been clutching at Bob since he’d hit the metal chair relaxed its grip … just a little. Bob let himself start to think he might be able to escape.
The mask’s first cutting assault slashed into Bob’s jaw.
Overcome by the stabs and slices that ripped at his forehead and cheeks and jabbed into his eyes and mouth, Bob realized escape was impossible. So was survival.
Mike squinted in annoyance as the sun’s insistent rays speared through the glass of the vaulted ceiling in the mall’s food court and jabbed him in the eye. Scooting his yellow plastic chair a couple inches to the left, Mike ducked when a foam dart shot toward his head. He managed to avoid the spongy projectile as he wished he was anywhere but where he was. Rubbing his face, Mike blinked dry, scratchy eyes. His head felt so heavy that he wasn’t sure his neck and shoulders had the strength to hold it up. Man, he was tired. He was so tired.
What I need is a vacation, Mike thought as he idly built a little tent on the table in front of him, using his napkins and paper cup. The notion of an actual vacation elicited an audible snort from Mike, and he brought down a fist on his napkin-cup construction. As if. Vacations were for people with lives. People with money. Mike had neither. If not a vacation, Mike would have settled for a little peace and quiet, but he wasn’t going to get that, either. Certainly not here.
Mall security guards were only given twenty minutes for their lunch break, so Mike and his coworkers had only two choices for where they spent their compressed rest time. They could either hole up in the guards’ dingy break room, which stank of pickles and bleach—not a good combination—or they could come to the food court. Usually the food court was preferable, but today, Mike wasn’t so sure it had been the best choice. A kid was having a birthday party, and screaming munchkins were running amok. Some moron had given the birthday boy foam-dart guns as a gift, and the food court had turned into a chaotic battle zone of inept and giggling assaults.
In and around the pint-sized revelers, mall shoppers plowed through a variety of fast food. The aromas that surrounded Mike were another battle—an international one. Italian sauces warred with Mexican salsas, which sparred with the smells of fried egg rolls and sizzling burgers. Mike’s nostrils were inundated with a jangling mix of curry and ginger and oregano and cayenne and dill.
Mike balled up the paper wrapper from the refried bean burrito he’d just eaten without tasting. Now that it was in his stomach, he belatedly realized the hot sauce on the burrito had been a little too hot. An inferno began to burn in his solar plexus.
Mike shot the balled-up burrito wrapper into a nearby trash can. Dozens of the large steel-mesh receptacles were interspersed among the rows of small square tables dotting the expanse of the mall’s food court dining area. Mike’s paper ball hit the back rim of the can and then dropped in with the rest of the food wrappers, napkins, and paper cups.
Score, Mike thought inanely.
Too bad he wasn’t tall. For a few seconds, Mike blocked out the screaming children and imagined being someone much different than who he was.
At twenty-five years old, Mike was okay with his age. He was cool with his looks, too. He was five foot six and in pretty good shape, even though he didn’t have time to work out too much. He didn’t think his dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and regular features were particularly handsome, but they weren’t ugly, either. On one of the rare dates that he’d had in high school, a girl had told him his eyes were “intense,” because of his pronounced brow ridge. She’d also said he had a “chiseled” jaw. He thought she read too many romance novels. For sure, she’d expected a lot more “chivalry” from him than he’d been capable of. She hadn’t wanted a second date. Now he couldn’t even remember the girl’s name.
No, it wasn’t Mike’s appearance that was the problem. It was his circumstances. Or maybe it was him.
