Chapter Text
For as long as he’d been in Hurricane, Gregory had known of the Afton house. It was a fairly large building at the edge of a suburb Gregory often frequented; separated from the other residential buildings by the playground in between them and a thinly populated forest, the house could only be seen from certain angles, however what you could see was enough to inspire the imagination of keen eyed kids who, as kids tend to do, spread wild rumours about the house.
Gregory was vaguely aware of the rumours. He had often overheard older kids whispering to their scared younger sibling about the house. That it was haunted. That you mustn’t go too far into the sparse tree line, or venture down the road where vans occasionally came to and from the house, or whatever else was out there.
However despite all he’d heard it wasn’t until a bleak day people-watching at the park that he had the story of the house told to him directly.
Gregory sat on the swing, slowly swinging himself back and forth without the real momentum required to get his feet off the ground. He watched as a father and his toddler played on the slide. Other than them there was only two other people in the playground: a boy a little younger than him and a girl, presumably the boy’s older sister, sat on a bench at the edge of the playground. These siblings did not interest Gregory however, and his focus for the majority of the time remained on the father and child.
As he watched them he wondered if he should feel jealous, or even upset. But his emotions remained a neutral emptiness, and after a short while he turned his head to face forward, looking away from the pair.
He now faced the rusty fence that surrounded the park and the tree line beyond. He stared at the blurry gaps in-between trees that lead back so far it was near impossible to see. Lost in thought, Gregory bit his lip and continued mindlessly pushing back and forth.
“If you’re looking for that house you can’t see it from here. I’ve looked and looked but you have to be over there by the monkey bars.” Slightly confused, Gregory turned to see the only other boy in the park sat on the swing next to him. He had a runny nose and had stuck his face uncomfortably close to Gregory’s, a look of persistence clear in his wide eyes.
“Uhm, what?” Gregory asked, stopping swinging and leaning slightly away from the boy.
“The house! That must’ve been what you were staring at, right? It’s over there, behind those trees. It’s real creepy but I’ve only seen one side. Laura, my sister” the boy gestured vaguely towards the girl on the bench, “well she’s been over there. You’d think it’d be all smashed up but she says it actually quite nice. She and her friends saw a ghost in the window.” The boy grinned, then wiped the snot trailing down his face with the back of his hand.
“Really.” Gregory said flatly, unimpressed. To be honest he didn’t really enjoy having this musty kid come up to him and stick his snotty nose in his face. Or tell him stupid ghost stories.
“Yeah! But then they all had to run because some workers by the road saw ‘em, and you’re not really supposed to go over there even though no one lives there no more.” The boy sniffed and after a moment of contemplation yelled louder than Gregory could have ever been prepared for. “LAURA. Come tell us ‘bout the ghost you saw!”
The girl on the bench looked up from staring mindlessly at her fingernails and glared over at the boys.
“I’m not telling you or your weird little friends anything. I’ve told you a thousand times and you only get scared anyways.” She said the last part with a small grin. However despite her vocal protest she blew on her nails, stood up abruptly and walked towards the two boys.
Gregory supposed she must’ve been about 16, definitely one of the cool older kids he saw hanging around in groups with their vibrant eyeshadow and smoking shared packs of cigarettes. Something about her made Gregory inexplicably nervous, and he grasped his backpack from the foot of one the swing’s support beams and placed it firmly in his lap. You never knew what type of stuff one of these kids might pull.
The girl, Laura, as her brother had called her, leaned against the support beam closest to Gregory and loomed over the two boys, a mischievous smile pulling at her lips.
“So, you wanna hear about the ghosts at the Afton house, huh?” She addressed Gregory, tilting her head to the side slightly, her eyes seemingly scanning him. He furrowed his eyebrows.
“Sure, why not. I’m pretty sure I get the gist of it though.”
Laura shook her head, her dark hair bobbing back and forth. “You guys are too young to remember when it all started. Y’know the pizza place down the road?” She stopped and pointed at Gregory’s backpack. “The one that’s from, Fazbear’s or whatever. A few years back the guys who owned it had another place. It got shut down because a kid got murdered.” Gregory’s eyes widened in shock and the girl seemed to revel in his reaction.
“Well, officially it was an accident with one of the robots, but the people who were there said they saw it. One of the owner’s kids killed his younger brother by lodging his head in one of the mascot’s mouth.” Gregory felt a slight urge to inform her that the correct term was animatronic however he quickly decided against it, sensing the girl would not take kindly to being interrupted midway through her story.
Gregory had only been in Hurricane for a couple of years, first arriving when he’d hitchhiked his way over from a nearby town after he’d had the cops and child services called on him. However he was still slightly surprised he hadn’t heard of this. He knew there’d been another, more high tech Freddy Fazbear’s that had shut down a month or so after he’d arrived, but he hadn’t heard of this other place or this ‘accident’. He was aware of the many scandals surrounding the restaurants, but assumed it to just be gossip, much like the rumours about the house. The idea that they were connected intrigued him.
The girl continued; “That family, the Aftons, lived in the house over there.” She turned her whole body to face towards the treeline. “A while after that incident what was left of them packed up and left the house. The land is mainly used for the father’s business stuff, pretty sure there’s a warehouse somewhere over there, but I didn’t see one when I checked the place out. The story goes that they were driven out of the house by the ghosts of their dead kids. See, there was another Afton kid that died a short while before the brother, a girl. So it’s said they both haunt the house and scare off trespassers.” She leaned back once more on the support pole, still staring at the treeline with an intensity Gregory assumed was for dramatic effect.
She had stopped talking, and Gregory realised she was waiting for him to say something.
“So… you went looking for the ghosts?”
Laura flashed him a wicked grin. “Yep,” she said, popping the ‘P’. “I went with a few friends late one evening. We were just mucking around. But then…” she paused before lowering her voice to a whisper “we saw her.”
Laura’s brother giggled uncomfortably beside Gregory. Although he made a point not to buy into any of this superstitious stuff –and he’d never admit it to anyone ever–, Gregory couldn’t help but feel a slight chill down his spine.
“What did she look like?” He asked breathlessly, staring hard at Laura’s face for any hint she was lying. However Laura’s previously playful expression had completely vanished, replaced instead by a grim look of recollection that had a type of sincerity to it Gregory couldn’t quite place.
“She had long hair with a bow.” Laura said carefully, as if saying every word with immense consideration. “And she was looked at us. I mean RIGHT at us. It’s probably the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Still Gregory searched the teen’s face for any hint of falsehood. He considered himself rather good at reading people. Scratch that, very good. In his position, he needed to be. Yet as certain as he was Laura was trying to scare him, he couldn’t find anything to insinuate she’s was lying. To say it unsettled him would be an understatement.
Laura sighed. “And then some workers or something started yelling at us from the road about trespassing or some BS. Not that it matters, the house itself is completely empty. But we ran before they could catch us. After we left what we saw really started to sink in, y’know? So we never went back, and I don’t intend to either.” She paused and checked the watch on her wrist before reaching over for her brother’s hand. “C’mon, we’ve gotta head back.”
The pair briskly left the park, leaving Gregory alone– at some point during Laura’s story the father and child also occupying the park must’ve left. Gregory hugged his backpack to his chest as the sun started to set on the playground. Guess it’s time to leave, he thought. In one swift movement he leapt from the swing and swung his backpack over his shoulder. He took one last look at the treeline before heading in the opposite direction towards the downtown of that part of Hurricane. He didn’t look back until long after the park was obscured from view.