Fazbear Frights #6: Blackbird

Stitchwraith Stingers #6

The sixth Stitchwraith Stingers epilogue.

Larson pulled his brown sedan just inside the gaping doorway of the abandoned factory. He turned off the engine and looked around. A murky twilight was beginning to slip down the mountains on the far side of the lake, threatening to swallow the remainder of the day's light. Larson figured it would be dark in about an hour. Looking in the rearview mirror, he noticed a couple security lights mounted on tall poles, standing like sentinels guarding the factory and the dock extending out into the lake beyond. Some of that light would make it in through this door, he figured.

And he'd need the light if he didn't start moving.

"Get on with it," Larson commanded himself.

Picking up his portable radio and tucking it in his jacket pocket, he reached for the plastic garbage bag into which he'd stuffed the evidence he'd purloined from the evidence locker. It had taken some fast talking to get it past the sergeant on duty. He couldn't explain what he needed the evidence for because he hadn't quite convinced himself that he actually needed it. His intuition said he did. His logical mind was laughing hysterically.

Getting out of the sedan, holding the garbage bag, Larson looked around again. He waited and listened. Unless a situation was pressing, he always liked to take a minute to assess where he was. Take it in. Feel it.

It wasn't going to require a minute to assess this place. In just five seconds, Larson had felt enough. What he felt was so strong it hit him like an invisible force, and he had to grab the open sedan door to steady himself.

Larson wasn't sure he believed in evil, but if evil did exist, he'd have said it resided here, or at least it was visiting.

He cocked his head and listened for another few seconds. He heard nothing but the sound of cars passing on the street beyond the building and

a couple crows cawing from atop a corroded shed about ten feet from the factory's outer walls.

Wait. Was that movement he'd seen? He turned to look at a yellowed, dirty window in the shed. No. Nothing was there.

Larson quietly closed the sedan's door. The space he was in looked big enough for two more cars like his, and beyond it, another larger room beckoned.

It was dim inside the old factory, but Larson could see well enough. He could hear, too, and what he heard told him where he needed to go.

From the far side of the expanse that opened up ahead of him, scraping and rustling sounds warred with plink s, thud s, and clatter s. Someone was in there.

Larson stopped and wrapped the plastic bag's ties around his wrist. Once it was secured, he drew his gun. Extending the automatic in front of him, he crept forward.

A whisper came from what felt like a few feet away, just up ahead.

Larson went rigid. Someone was close enough that he could hear them whisper? Why couldn't he see them?

He took a breath, steadied himself, then strode to the edge of a huge room dominated by a massive blue trash compactor. The compactor contained a pile of electronic and metal debris.

And next to the compactor's chute, his quarry stood.

"A strange cloaked figure," Larson muttered. Yep, there it was.

Larson pivoted left and right, trying to find the source of the whisper.

But he was alone on a wide concrete platform that encircled the factory floor.

Alone, with the strange cloaked figure.

The figure didn't seem to care about Larson's presence, though. It looked to be sorting trash. It was emptying a large garbage bag. Larson watched gears, hinges, and tangles of wire drop from the bag. Then he saw the bag let go of the distorted face of a fox wearing a pirate's eye patch. The disconnected arms of a fox followed, one arm ending in a hook.