Michael’s Late Night Escapades
After all is said and done, and they’re trying their best to build a life as normal as they can, Mike and Vanessa still have no idea what to do about Michael. He bounces between their houses as he pleases, though he’s still very reclusive.
However, no matter where he’s staying, at exactly 3am, long before the sun has risen above the horizon, he slips out of the house as quietly as he can. Sometimes he walks for a long time in no clear pattern. He just… wanders. At the end of his walk, he always ends up at Freddy’s. The old location, now vacant of the animatronics that he had once controlled.
When Vanessa followed him the first time, she’d worried that he was up to something. Planning something again to follow in their father’s footsteps. But when she’d come back the next day and checked the cameras, he hadn’t done anything that looked suspicious. In fact, he hadn’t really done anything at all. Just sat silently at one of the long abandoned tables, until the sun came up, and then he left.
Vanessa told Mike about Michael’s late night escapades. She’d tried asking him why he goes back there every night, but he never answered her. She just wanted to understand, to catch up on the years spent tearing them apart. But she couldn’t get a word out of him, he wouldn’t talk to her. Mike was pretty sure he had a good idea of how to find out.
Abby had been more than happy to agree to the plan, never one to turn down an opportunity to stay up late. Plus, she’d developed a sort of bond with Michael in the past few months. The two of them would sit across from each other in Mike’s living room, drawing various pictures of the animatronics, and sometimes Mike and Vanessa would hear Michael talking quietly to Abby. About Foxy the Pirate, or old features of the Freddy’s buildings, or whatever was playing on TV.
So, it was Abby that they sent along with Michael on his 4am trip. As much as they wanted to intrude, Mike and Vanessa stayed in Mike’s bedroom, listening carefully.
At around 3:55am, Abby slipped out of her room, finding Michael sitting on the couch, flipping through channels on the old TV. She asked him if she could come with him tonight, and with some convincing, he’d agreed to let her tag along. Mike and Vanessa listened as Michael helped her with her coat and shoes, and the two of them set off into the night.
Tonight, he took a direct path to Freddy’s, not wanting to keep Abby out in the chilled night air for longer than he had to. When they got there, he sat down at one of the tables, and Abby sat across from him. Silence filled the empty building, though it wasn’t eerie as it had been months ago.
No, the silence now was calm. Almost… peaceful. She could understand why Michael liked it here.
“Do you miss your friends?” She asked.
Michael hummed inquisitively, leaning back in his chair.
“I miss my friends. Especially Chica,” she continued. “Do you miss them too? Like Charlotte?”
“Charlotte and I weren’t friends,” Michael said, and she was sure she could hear a small amount of sadness in his voice. “I was too young. And Father would never allow it anyways.”
“You weren’t allowed to have friends?” Abby asked, incredulously. She’d known that Mr. Afton was a bad guy, but it was hard for her to wrap her head around how he’d been as a dad.
“Nope,” Michael said, making a small pop at the end of the word. He was quiet for a moment, before speaking again. “But… I do miss someone.”
“Is it your dad?” Abby asked, curiously. She knew that while Vanessa didn’t like her dad all that much, Michael’s feelings seemed to be a lot more complicated.
“I do miss him,” Michael said, softly. “But I come here, where it’s quiet, to hear my mother. If I listen closely enough, it’s like a I can almost hear her voice. She’s trying to tell me something, I just… don’t know what it is.”
Abby nodded solemnly, not questioning nor doubting what Michael said. After all, she’d had her own experiences with ghosts.
“God, no. My mother hated Freddy’s almost as much as she hated my father; at least, near the end,” Michael said, picking at the dusty tablecloth. “She wouldn’t step foot in here, not unless I asked her to. Maybe I should’ve stopped asking.”
Michael didn’t say anything more after that, and Abby didn’t push. They sat together silently until the sun started to peak through the restaurant’s boarded windows.
The pair walked home together, hand in hand, Michael’s jacket wrapped around Abby’s shoulders to keep out the morning breeze.
When Vanessa and Mike asked her what she’d discovered, she’d just shrugged. “He misses his mom.”
They couldn’t pry anymore information from her, stubborn as ever.
