A Change in Fate

Chapter Ten: Trust

    Blowing his breath out through his nose, against his better judgement, Gregory stepped farther into the narrow room. A short distance from the first animatronic sat another, directly across from the opening to what Gregory assumed was the other hallway. This animatronic didn't look the same though. Not at all. Gregory froze before he even neared it, his mouth falling open and his flashlight escaping his grasp. It hit the floor with a loud clack, its dim beam lighting up the disfigured animatronic sitting paces away from him. It, too, was deactivated, slumped forward and unmoving, but it wasn't the same. At all.

    Gregory remembered the old pizzeria. How could he forget it, after what happened there? He hadn't given the animatronics there much thought, since they'd seemed to only be simple children's entertainment. Now he did. This looked like that chicken...Chica, right? He remembered this, after seeing Michael's scribbling of the name beside the picture of that missing child, Susie. This animatronic looked like Chica—a yellow chicken with an orange beak and classic bib. But it wasn't normal, it looked like something out of a nightmare, with a dirtied, torn body, sharp deadly claws, rows of teeth, and bloodshot eyes. Though it sat on the floor, Gregory could already tell this thing was massive. All feeling left his body while he stared at the animatronic. As the floor swayed beneath his feet, for a moment, he thought he might faint. The feeling passed as quickly as it came. Swallowing, he shakily bent down and retrieved his flashlight.

    "What...what the..." He approached the animatronic, taking tentative steps. He couldn't even bring himself to get much closer to her, spinning around and rushing in the opposite direction. Terrifying animatronics beneath Michael's place? Basically a monster version of those weird original animatronics? Nope! Nope! Nope! He shook his thoughts off as he shoved through a nearby door, entering into a hallway even skinnier than the original passage he took here. "Wait, I'm supposed to be going back," he said. He hadn't meant to enter yet another room; he wanted to return to the original bedroom, go back through the passages to Mike's house. "There...there's more?" Despite his urge to leave, he forged on. His morbid curiosity carried him through the hall, around a bend, and down the rest of the corridor to a metal door. Afraid of what might lay behind it, he grasped the handle and turned it. He pushed the door open, greeted by another hall, this one wider and much different. The place still had dim lighting, but the actual appearance was much different. It had a black-and-white, checkered floor and dingy wallpaper with a confetti-like design, now faded and covered in black smudges running from the ceiling high over his head. Pipes layered the walls, along with a few stray wires. It all looked suspiciously similar to the rental service, if not a bit dirtier.

    Most fear left Gregory's form; he entered and shut the door behind him. Now curiosity and this odd sense of determination kept him going as he plodded down the halls. He passed a strange stage, tucked in the corner of the corridor, which branched off into another with practically the same appearance. It was shorter and ended with a doorway off to the right. All the others he'd passed had doors, but this one was only a doorway. Gregory entered to find himself standing in what looked like an office. It had a desk and everything, complete with an old cup, a fan, crumpled paper, and an eerie plush bear for some reason. He eyed three, staticky televisions that sat on it, then examined the rest of the room. Another door stood on the other side, and both had green buttons beside them. Over the desk was a vent, with the same button, and below that a poster of the infamous Circus Baby. With the eerie, shadowy environment and a new realization forming in his mind, Gregory should have felt afraid. More than anything, though, he felt almost proud of himself for this new discovery, and suspicious too.

    "I knew it," he said, glaring at the image of Circus Baby. "This is Circus Baby's place, isn't it?" His dark look fell away. "But that...that doesn't make any sense. None of this does!" It truly didn't. The events leading up to this discovery didn't feel real; they couldn't have happened. Finding a trapdoor in the basement of a seemingly normal house, following it to a creepy bedroom with halls and horrifying animatronics, and then after that, this? Then again, Gregory had seen and learned a lot of frightening and seemingly impossible things so far. Perhaps this wasn't as farfetched as he thought. "But it still makes no sense!" He resisted the urge to kick the desk. He wanted to ramble on about it, but without knowing what to say, he merely threw a glance over his shoulder. A normal door stood behind him, well...normal wasn't exactly right. It had no handle or knob, and beside it, attached to the wall, was something he didn't entirely recognize. It looked almost like...a scanner?