Welcome to the 6th part of this huge FNAF4 Ultimate Guide! We are starting to pull all the pieces together now and there’s only a few major events to address, this has been the shortest I can make it, which gives you a hint about the expansive nature of this game and how tightly interwoven it is with every other game in the franchise.
Index
Here’s a quick (not comprehensive) idea what the other parts cover in case you want to hop around.
Part 1 – Timeline, House, Toys, I Will Put You Back Together, Fredbear
Part 2 – Foxy kid, The Bite, The Box, Lally’s Game, Balloon Boy, The Immortal and the Restless
Part 3 – The Real Jake, The Doll, The Magician
Part 4 – Dittophobia, Cake, Happiest Day, Caught in a Loop, Desk Man, Afton Family, Fear Research
Part 5 – Security Logbook, Balloon Boy, Log Book Conversations.
In this part, we will start with a (hopefully brief) look over one of the other book stories that apply to FNAF4. The first of these concerns the relationship between the crying child and his siblings but has other elements interwoven.
Step Closer
Step Closer is a story that from the outset is dominated by Foxy. The first lines declare “You can be a pirate, but first you’ll have to lose an eye and an arm” and this story appears to concern a curse of sorts, with this loss interwoven into the events that follow. I think the curse itself gives us insight into William Afton primarily, but the relationships between the characters provide key insight into the relationship between the crying child and his older brother. It is one I would be remiss not to go into.
The story itself begins with what appears to be a nightmare about Foxy where he removes the protagonist’s eye. Immediately this nightmare imagery returns us to the cyclical nightmare imagery of FNAF4. The image is brief but visceral and sets the stage for the rest of the story.
Step Closer itself concerns two main characters Pete and Chuck, two brothers with a complex relationship. Pete resents having to take care of his younger brother when he would really rather not, thinking of him as a whiner. Peteis sixteen and his brother is twelve and their father has left the family behind after a divorce, leaving his mother to work to keep food on the table. He really doesn’t like that he is forced into a role he didn’t choose as the eldest son.
Pete’s Bitterness
His mom’s words were stuck in his head. You’re the man of the house now, Pete. Take care of your little brother. How was Pete supposed to be the man when he was just sixteen? Did anyone ask him what he thought of his new responsibilities?
In this story, Pete overhears that Foxy the pirate has been taken off display at Freddy’s and is in the maintenance room. His friend Maria is there with her little sister for her birthday party and she catches up with him and invites him to hang out with her friends later. He can’t go due to watching his brother and this riles him up even further against his brother, who he blames for his problems.
We find out that Pete has a poor attitude about more than his brother (who he has unfairly dubbed “Chuck the Chump” – incidentally possible to abbreviate to CC – Crying Child.) Through his internal dialog, the reader finds out that he was even thrown ouf of football at school for a “bad attitude” and “unnecessary roughness” on multiple occasions. This shift in personal attitude seems to have come over him after his parents divorce. Pete seems to feel out of control, resentful that he couldn’t stop them breaking up and about the subsequent shift in his responsibilities.
“Pete had so many emotions inside of him that sometimes he just didn’t know what to do with them. Sometimes he felt like a ticking bomb about to explode, like the tension in his body was just under his skin, begging for release. For a while, football had helped. He’d been a beast on the field, taking down players, throwing people out of the way. By the end of practice, he’d been exhausted and empty. Empty was better. It was good. But since he was off the team, Pete was stuck without an outlet. He hated these feelings. He hated everything sometimes.”
The above passage to me really sums up the anger that Pete is carrying around with him, and I think also gives us insight into the way that Mike feels about his brother in the earliest eras we get insight into.
We actually see a small sliver of this in the preview of the movie novelization.
There is something in Mike’s past that seems to have dragged him down and which he blames to some degree for his failures in the present. This is a mirror of this kind of blame shifting attitude that we see in Pete. His latent anger also parallels Mike’s violence towards the man in the mall later in the movie novel.
Another trait we see in Pete is that he frequently chews gum. This is mentioned in several locations and on several days throughout the story so is not a throwaway moment.
“Chuck’s face screwed up. “Ow, Pete!”
“Shut up and walk,” he muttered, then blew a bubble till it popped.”
This is one of the few features of Mike that we actually know as he mentions it as a bad habit in the security logbook.
Pete’s first act is in a fit of spite to take his brother to the maintenance room immediately, well aware that his brother is terrified of Foxy and aiming to frighten him. Chuck doesn’t want to go, but Pete forcibly drags him, without any regard for his feelings.
The Ritual
Bizarrely, in the room, they find some kind of vestiges of what can only be described as a ritual of some sort.
“He flashed the light back down to the floor. He stopped on what looked like dark melted candles and strange, black markings. “What is that? Are those symbols?” Chuck wanted to know.”
This implies some kind of dark magic was happening backstage, which is completely bizarre until you take this as a parallel for what William was up to with remnant. We know William was involved in something strange with Foxy, as we see in the Foxy GO GO GO between night cutscene in FNAF 2.
We see Pete heft his brother up and throw him onto the stage as Foxy emerges, which is obviously reminiscent of Mike lifting his brother up to “give Fredbear a kiss.”
However, in a deviation from what happens in the games, in this story Chuck gets away while Pete is the one who finds himself face to face with Foxy who sings the first line of his pirate song over and over, repeating “You can be a pirate, but first you’ll have to lose an eye and an arm!” incessantly. Pete finds himself overcome by a strange feeling, “like an invisible cold, heavy blanket was covering every inch of his body, then sinking through his skin and into his bones.” He is left dazed and a little confused from his experience and his brother has run off.
Organ Donation
Later Pete’s brother is still rattled by what happened, though he lies to their mother about it, covering up Pete’s cruel behavior either out of respect or out of feeling threatened if he tells. Their mother announces that they will all be family organ donors out of nowhere, which is frankly unexpected narratively. It is something completely out of place for a short story but very dark humor when you consider where the Afton family members all end up in the games.
Pete finds the concept distressing, particularly given the fresh memory of Foxy’s apparent “threat”.
Chuck’s Feelings
We get a look at Chuck’s perspective in the next part of the story, where he feels guilty that his mother forces Pete to watch over him all the time. We learn that he deals with his father’s departure by trying to keep busy and that he enjoys online video games and puzzles. The insight we get into his mentality is of an intelligent kid who just wants his brother to like him.
He tried not to be annoying. But everything that came out of his mouth seemed to annoy Pete. Maybe it was just like that with all brothers? Chuck didn’t know because he didn’t have another brother to compare to.
Pete is sick, and Chuck is worried, but when he offers to try call mom Pete insults him by using the Chuck the Chump nickname that he hates and Chuck gives up as his brother leaves. Once again there are parallels here with the Crying Child who doesn’t seem to really understand why his brother resents him so much, with Fredbear telling him “he knows that you hate it here” when he’s left behind but with no real explanation as to why.
Pete is having bad dreams, dreams about blood that are bad enough to leave him sick. I don’t need to point out the parallel between characters plagued with nightmares and Mike in the movie and beyond, we have reason to believe nightmares were a key part of William’s research and manipulation of his family and others. Pete struggles through a dissection class understandably, but his teacher forces him to go back to work.
Accidents
The first element of whatever potential curse is at play here kicks in as Pete trips and is almost stabbed in the eye with a falling scalpel, batting it away at the very last second. The kids make fun of him for his misfortune, as kids do.
These events are all framed as accidents, and it is worth mentioning that in the Security Logbook, the crying child’s death is described that way by Mike too.
His mother asks him to pick up meat from the butcher and just as he struggled in dissection class, he struggled here too, distressed by the smell of meat and blood and upset by the cleavers. He almost loses a finger to a falling cleaver which has no reason to fall, is spooked by the employee who actually is missing some fingers and then leaves, rattled by his continuing near-miss experiences.
Chuck is left to bike to school alone and return himself, but swears to cover for Pete. We see the very young crying child in FNAF 4 return home from Freddy’s himself through the neighbourhood in a similar sort of way.
They have a conversation which ends in Chuck telling Pete that their mother filled out their organ donation consent forms for them and graphically describing how organs are removed which ends their temporary truce as Pete freaks out about this mental image.
Pete still has nightmares but isn’t sick any longer and his next encounter is at a building site where a whole circular saw comes careening towards him. He gets clipped on his wrist this time, sustaining a bloody injury and is sent home.
Pete’s Father
His mother is fussing over him and his wounds when his father arrives.
The figure of Pete’s father is interesting given that with the framing of this story he presents a parallel with William Afton, Michael’s father. He wants to take Pete fishing with him. We find out that he hasn’t actually seen his father in months, only spoken to him on the phone a couple of times, and their relationship is strained.
Of course, the point in this discussion where my eyebrows went way up is when Pete’s mother addresses his father, trying to dissuade him from dragging his injured son to the lake with him.
She hesitated. “He’s tired, Bill. Maybe another time. It’s been a crazy morning.”
Bill.
Bill is not just a random name, it’s just quite openly short for William. We even have a strong hint that Bill is what William’s wife actually called him in the game canon too from the Retro CDs/Therapy Tapes in Security Breach.
Oh! We’ll get to know each other in no time. I’ve read through all your files so I feel like we’ve been talking for weeks. I feel like I know your dad, too. Bill, right? Your dad’s name was Bill?
People contended previously that Vanessa couldn’t possibly be William Afton’s daughter in the game storyline, but we now have more reason to believe this is the case than we ever have in the past thanks to her openly stating this in the movie.
However, Pete’s father doesn’t care to be put off and insists that Pete come with him, taking him out to the lake regardless.
Fishing
Fishing is also associated with Henry and William throughout the games and there are several instances of it. The most memorable figure associated with fishing is quite obviously Old Man Consequences, who appears in FNAF world and Ultimate Custom Night. He is markedly a separate character to William (referring to William as a demon to be left to his demons) but nevertheless seems to point out the importance of fishing to us.
Following up on this thematic thread, we also see Helpy fishing in the ball pit in Pizza Simulator, where he has a chance to fish up Music Man, one of William’s spidery animatronics. It is possible to infer from this that fishing might well be a nod to Henry and William’s research as they are in essence “fishing” for knowledge without a real understanding of what horrors they might dredge up.
William also presumably had a literal lake on one of his properties, as we see this lake in the Halloween DLC for Help Wanted, it is not out of line to consider that actual real-life fishing is also something that he also enjoyed. This lake even has a chance to be cast in the same ominous red light that we see in Old Man Consequences layer of FNAF world.
Pete in the story thinks that he doesn’t remember his dad ever catching any fish at the local lake and realises that he hadn’t been in years. He realises Chuck usually did most of the talking when they interacted, and he didn’t care to talk much at all. His relationship with his father is complicated and we can see from the outset that his father is somewhat controlling and accusing in his attitude to Pete.
His dad didn’t use an accusing tone, but Pete could feel his disapproval, just like he had with his messy room. His dad always acted like it was Pete’s fault when things went the wrong way. Outside events—like, say, parental actions—didn’t come into the equation. It must be cool to be an adult and be right all the time, Pete thought.
Their conversation does not go very well with his father at first offering platitudes before moving on to offer a counselor, implying that Pete might well have injured his own wrist. We do know that at the very least Vanessa ends up at a therapist, did any of the other kids attend one?
As his dad says he’s there for Pete and his brother, Pete hits a limit and snaps at him accusing him of expecting far too much from him, unwilling to take his place in the family. He gets angry rather than crying and demands to be taken home, only to get a fishing hook lodged in his skin by one of the fishermen casting their lines around the lake.
Pete finds himself teetering ominously on the edge of the dark water, pulled by the line and thinking that he is going to fall into the lake, but interestingly his father saves him from the fall, severing the line with a knife and pulling him away from the edge. Given the ominous nature of the “drowning” lake within the wider FNAF franchise, this was always a little interesting to me. Did William at some point actually do something noble and pull Mike away from some dark and terrible precipice? It could also represent a more horrible event, that of William refusing to let his son die.
You won’t die.
On his return home, Pete is bandaged up and we see things from Chuck’s perspective once more. He thinks that his brother looks like Frankenstein but doesn’t call him it, once again possibly nodding to the mess that Michael ends up in the post Sister Location cutscenes. Michael does end up pretty mangled and plenty of fan depictions have him bandaged up.
Chuck asks Pete how he managed to get such a streak of bad luck and points out that it might have started when he first tried to scare him at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.
Karma and Luck
Pete rejects that it is karma, however, we know that luck and karma are actually very real and valid concepts within the FNAF universe, we see them come up several times, entwined with emotional energies and the concept of visualizing what you desire and manifesting it into reality. Characters throughout the frights from Hudson in What we Found (a William parallel) to Colton in Jump for Tickets (a Mike parallel) discuss their almost cursed luck.
William in the movie also jests about luck with his “Lucky Me” line as he encounters Mike and keeps a lucky rabbit’s foot on his keys on his desk. Luck is something he keeps close to his heart.
In the story Pete doesn’t like the idea that his misfortunates are something to do with his own tarnished luck, but he has to concede to Chuck that it is strange.
It is also worth mentioning here that in FNAF AR, William literally has a skin called “The Curse”
This skin is themed after Tezcatlipoca, a Mayan god known for his Jaguar symbolism, he is known as “the smoking mirror” due to his associations with obsidian mirrors which were used for divination and fortune telling. He seems to wear a nod to the Mayan calendar around his neck, interesting given William’s facination with his temporary mortal shell and limited time in the world. Once again through the name of this skin however we have overt links between the Aftons and this “curse”.
“Yeah, crazy close. I mean, if I believed in weird stuff, I’d think something was up. But I don’t believe in anything like …”
“Curses?”
Pete decides that if it has to do with dragging Chuck to Foxy then apologizing should undo any of the damage caused. Chuck is still curious and still feels that he needs to get to the root of the puzzle.
The Wizard and The Mage
Pete and Chuck have a seemingly throwaway interaction where Chuck is playing one of his “indie adventure” games. He explains to Pete that he is playing a game where he is a mage and is looking for all of the ingredients to stop an evil wizard.
Now, I don’t need to point out the thematic parallels between this particular game and William’s meddling in dark magic. If Chuck represents the Crying Child, then he later goes up against his own father. In this instance, he’s a mage, the “younger” version of a wizard in your typical RPG class system. Pete asks him what the lose state for the game involves.
“What happens if you’re too late?”
“Then I lose them forever. They remain under the control of the evil wizard. And that is not happening.”
Pete smirked. “You like to be the hero, don’t you?”
“It’s the only way to win. Want to play with me?”
“Sure.”
Chuck’s eyes lit up as he grabbed the other controller. “You can be my apprentice.”
This section of dialog is frankly fascinating to me as it brings to mind almost immediately another character we have discussed previously in this guide who is talented at games and who appears to be going up against the forces of darkness with a helper at his side. Gregory is exceptional at games and we see that Chuck is too. I would argue the parallels in this story are too numerous to disregard.
We also see this story paralleled in Freddy in Space 2, where Freddy finds his friends under the control of L.O.L.Z.H.A.X. (who I think is a William Afton parallel, he has “bunny ear” antenna and when we are introduced to him purple smasher is playing, this is the same theme played in balloon world in Security Breach much later)
L.O.L.Z.H.A.X. also appears in Fazerblast as an antagonist looming over the whole play area.
His friends in this game are Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, the Puppet (and we find out later also Golden Freddy) and the whole game thereafter is an attempt for him to save his son in time.
I think that the crying child ends up being the one who plays a game to go up against the threat to all of them, and it is very possible that the game is Security Breach itself.
The Villain
After their game session, the two brothers declare a truce and not long afterward Chuck brings Pete his notes on the puzzle he has been mulling over of Pete’s run of bad luck. He declares that the point of origin of everything that he can deduce is the maintenance room with Foxy.
He explains that forgiveness from him might not be enough to undo the curse.
“Of course I forgive you,” Chuck said. “But in all the games I play you have to face the ultimate bad guy. The villain. Just like with the game, we played last night. The mage had to fight the evil wizard in the end in order to set the village free with the potion.”
Pete confesses about the pirate song lines he heard Foxy sing and Chuck decides that whatever it is, the “curse” is coming after Pete’s eye and arm. He tells Pete that Foxy for some reason wants him to become a pirate. Pete rejects this solution and tears up the notebook in a rage, throwing Chuck out of his room. He accuses Chuck of just trying to scare him for all the times that he has scared him.
Pete jammed a finger in the air toward Chuck. “No, you’re trying to scare me for the all times I’ve scared you! It’s always winning with you, right? Well, this isn’t some game for you to win!”
They descend into calling one another Chuck the Chump (CC again) and Frankenstein Face and they depart in a rage, with Pete so angry he bursts into tears. Frankenstein Face as an insult for Mike who ends up a complete mess is pretty amusing to me.
Pete goes to bed but is completely paranoid, seeing shadows behind his curtains and hearing creaking in his house, progressing to hearing footsteps and noises outside his bedroom door. This moment is reminiscent of FNAF 4 in its nighttime gameplay. In no time Pete finds Foxy standing over his bed, hook held aloft and repeating his mantra about an eye and an arm. The Fox brings down his hook and rips out Pete’s eye and tearing off his arm. Only as he reels from this assault, does Pete wake up and realise it was a nightmare.
Just a nightmare. Why did it have to seem so real? Pete swallowed hard as his stomach turned and he started to tremble. He felt as if he’d had a version of the same dream before, but this time he remembered every detail.
When he gets to school Pete is miserable to find that the homecoming carnival at school is themed after pirates. However, he no longer shies from it, willing to attend school anyway. He seems almost fatalistic at this point, resigned to what is to come. He even turns to his mother and tells her she is a good mom before he leaves her when she drops him off.
All his family problems seem somehow diminished to him at this moment as he heads to class. His friends tell him the scar on his face looks cool and he seems to enjoy that too.
Yeah, he had the “don’t mess with me” vibe going on and he liked it.
Making Amends
Pete reassures himself at school that he just needs to make amends with Chuck again and it will solve his curse problems, adamant to avoid having to go back and face Foxy at all costs. He reassures himself that an apology will work and that they will be able to start fresh.
Pete was really ready to start fresh, as his mom would say sometimes. It would be like a new beginning. He never really understood what she meant by that until now.
It is worth mentioning at the very least that Pete does seem to have let go of his anger at this point for whatever reason, the nightmare with Foxy seems to be the point where he decides that he needs to start over and that his life is acceptable and his problems are not as substantial as he has previously thought. He seems to be focused on getting through this particular incident and moving on with a new perspective.
Pete runs into Maria again at homecoming. It’s worth mentioning here that her name is Maria which to me at the very least brings forth the mental image of Marionette, your mileage may vary on this front.
However, connected to the puppet or not, his friend Maria coaxes Pete into putting his hand into a box to win a prize. Petecomplies only to freak out when he realizes his hand is trapped, assuming another dangerous accident is at play and the harder he tries to escape the tighter he becomes stuck.
His panic means however that when Maria comes to set him free from the trap, she cannot and the trap gets tighter and tighter, cutting off the circulation to his hand. He is finally cut free but feels betrayed, telling Maria that she shouldn’t have tricked him at all.
Completely rattled by yet another near miss, he leaves the table only to be forced into a mirror maze by a crowd of children.
Once again I feel it is important to point out how completely out of place this moment feels. Pete is literally pulled by a crowd of children into a mirror maze like a human river. This setting being a carnival is also strange. Mirror mazes do feature in FNAF frequently too, with the labyrinth additionally being a key theme of the mind throughout the games, books, and movies.
Pete finds himself lost and beset by images of Foxy the Pirate. He gets whipped up into a frenzy of panic and runs through the event and onto an active darts booth, where people trying to hit balloons hit him in the face near his eye. This doesn’t stop him and he charges headlong through the entire carnival, past parrots that seem to taunt him, and on into a teacher who finally derails him from his rampage, taking hold of him and tells him he wants to help him. Pete doesn’t accept his help, pulling away, still frantic to tell him.
“No, it’s bad. Really bad. But I know what I have to do now. It’ll all be over soon. I have to go back to the point of origin, where it all began. I have to face the villain.” Before the teacher could stop him, Pete slipped away.
The Curse
Pete calls Chuck, who is still in class, and leaves him a voicemail telling him that he was right all along and that he has to go back to face Foxy. He apologizes to his brother, telling him that he is sorry he didn’t believe him and to meet him there where they can finish it together and face the villain.
However, on the way to Freddy’s, Pete is hit quite suddenly and brutally by a truck.
Chuck receives his brother’s voicemail, ditches school, and runs out, desperate to get to Freddy’s to help his brother. Chuck does this despite his asthma, poor physical shape and not having a bike, showing his absolute commitment to his brother He drops everything and even dodges the police to get there in time, slipping past a manager at Freddy’s to get to the maintenance room.
However, Pete isn’t there and Chuck attempts to call him to no avail. He is about to switch on Foxy’s performance when his phone rings. It is his dad, who tells him that Pete has been in an accident.
Chuck’s dad comes to pick him up and drives both of them to the high school, only to find themselves faced with the chaos in the wake of the truck accident. His father reassures him that Pete will be fine, but is tense and upset and it is clear that he doesn’t believe even himself.
As they get through the barriers, they get to take in the full scope of the accident and make their way to a gurney where his mother stands. His dad turns to him, crying and Chuck realizes he has never seen his father cry before.
“He’s gone, Chuck,” Dad said through tears. His words made Mom cry even harder.
This scene is utterly heartrending and as far as I’m concerned gives us a potential insight into the distraught place that the Aftons would have found themselves in at the death of their son. In this story, we have a reversal of fate between the two brothers, but also find out that for Pete (much as it was for the game’s crying child), it isn’t quite over.
Pete finds himself on the slab, unable to move or talk as the workers at the morgue talk about his body, discussing that he won’t close his eyes and that it’s a good thing that he is an organ donor. They set about removing his organs, beginning – much as Foxy warned him – with his eyes. He appears to be concious throughout.
Does this mean that the curse Pete received got him killed but rendered him unable to fully die?
Chuck’s Villain
Chuck comes home from school to find the house too big and empty for his liking, calling out for Pete even though he knows that he isn’t there any longer. We find out that Chuck’s parents got back together after the funeral and are both at work at this point. He considers events that followed Pete’s death but ultimately finds himself drawn back to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza despite himself.
When he considers it, he finds himself realizing that there has been a heaviness on his chest since the accident happened, like there is some puzzle left incomplete. He recounts the last message from his brother over and over and we are informed that Chuck is falling behind in every subject, disengaged from the world beyond trying to put together what happened to his brother and how they could have stopped it.
Chuck cycles over and makes his way to the maintenance room, no longer afraid and no longer willing to waste time along the way. He dismisses his fear entirely, no longer afraid of Foxy, rendered independent and brave by his resolve.
A shiver crawled down his back, but he ignored it. If he hesitated, he knew he wouldn’t do it and he’d been replaying this moment over and over in his head. He had to do it. He had to find out what happened to Pete. “This is for you Pete,” he said into the dark room. “I’ll face the villain and beat the game.”
However, when he slams the start button nothing happens and he is met with only silence.
Ending
The ending is very open ended and unexpected, but I think that there are a number of potential conclusions that can be drawn from it.
In one regard I think that it possible that the villain that Chuck wants to face can ever be beaten without his brother by his side. He can’t defeat the wizard without his sidekick and apprentice. They need to do it together, just as they played the game together. That would be an interpretation founded on the exploration of their relationship and how it only seems when they finally align they can progress.
Another interpretation might be one rooted in Pete’s anger and bitterness, the fact that he wants to be seen as a threatening figure, someone who doesn’t care and would gladly terrorise his own brother manifests a situation where that is offered to him and he accepts, but that like Foxy says, there is a price to pay for that destiny. Mike accepted this destiny when he tormented his brother and one might even argue that William also accepted a similar destiny when he resorted to being the kind of person who could terrorise his own son.
Another valid interpretation in my opinion would be to consider a more metaphorical interpretation, that in this context at least that the villain that Chuck must face in the end – and if we take his situation in this case to be Michael’s situation in the games, missing his brother – is not actually Foxy or a villain at all. It could be that the real villain that needs to be conquered for the brother that remains is the silence of the other being gone.
However, due to the ambiguity of the ending, it could be any number of resolutions, ranging from those stated to there never being a curse at all, or that it only applied to Pete and not Chuck because of his rage and hatred being drawn forth as Agony.
Conclusion
As you can tell this is a very, very strange story. One of my main barometers of how much a short story in the book series has to tell us about the larger narrative of the games is how much it deviates from the typical structure of a conventional short story.
Short stories tend to seek to be self-contained narratives, they are frugal with characters, introducing us to individuals who will be useful to the story and flesh things out as much as possible. Anything that doesn’t drive the narrative or give value to the story is stripped back. However, this story brings up some unresolved story threads and never addresses them again.
Who was doing a ritual in the back room? Was there a curse at all? What did Pete see? Was he pursued by his karma? Did he manifest his terrible luck himself? Why was Maria included? Numerous threads are not actually answered within the structure of this story, this isn’t typical, an air of mystery is certainly common in horror short stories, but these strewn pieces feel like they are hidden keys to a larger puzzle.
Even the mention of puzzles within the story is important to me, I think the constant reminder to the reader that Chuck is trying to pull together a larger mystery using the events that happened to his brother Pete is a meta-contextual nod to the reader that they should also be questioning things on a grander scale using the pieces that we are given.
If the author wanted to pull this story away from the events of FNAF 4, it would have been simple to use an animatronic which ISNT the one that the game’s older brother dresses as to terrify his sibling, and the same animatronic he wears a mask of when he eventually gets the crying child killed by Fredbear.
The story structure, so focused around the two brothers and their complex relationship, with the inclusion of their father “Bill” made this a story that I could not ignore within the context of FNAF 4, with the themes incredibly close to the existing themes of lakes, fishing, fate, siblings and family that run throughout the series. It is undeniable to me that there are parallels present throughout this story and to ignore them is to ignore some fascinating information we are given.
An Eye and an Arm
It is also worth mentioning here as an addendum that there is indeed a character who loses an eye and an arm within the continuity of the games.
William Afton loses an arm as Scraptrap, along with having an eye that is consistently damaged from his Springtrap design onwards. This ties this curse which kills Pete to the same damaged karma that seems to blight William, potentially as a result of dabbling with the forces he does.
We even see William Afton actively lose his eye in the novels when Charlie damages it beyond repair. We don’t know when it was damaged in the games, but it is fair to say that it was possibly a similar act of violence or retribution.
She grabbed his head with both hands, desperate with fury. She lifted his head and brought it crashing against the rock where it lay. He made another sharp grunt of pain, and she did it again. This time something began to ooze from the back of his head, running thickly down the rock. “What did you do to him?” Charlie demanded. “Why did you take him? Why did you choose him?” He looked up at her; one of his pupils had swallowed the iris of his eye. He smiled vaguely.
…..
Springtrap’s mismatched eyes seemed to focus for a moment, and even he seemed to have difficulty muttering his next words.
Now what this might mean is beyond the scope of a FNAF 4 guide, however I thought it was worth mentioning, for curiosity’s sake.
Next
Next we will have a look at another important story in the frights. Lonely Freddy ALSO deals with brotherhood, and we’ll have a closer look into this.