The Forgotten Night

Journal Entry: October 23, 2024

We reached Crestwood early this morning. The town feels lifeless, like it's holding onto secrets the way Willow Creek did. There's a tension in the air, something heavy that presses down the moment you step inside. We found the old facility—Afton's last known project—at the edge of town. It's huge, much larger than we expected, and fenced off with 

rusted wire. The place looks like it hasn't seen a living soul in years.

We spent most of the day circling the perimeter, trying to find a way in. Lucas finally spotted a gap where the fence had been pulled apart, as if someone—or something—had forced their way through a long time ago. The facility was dark inside, and we had to use flashlights to navigate. The smell of mildew and decay was overwhelming, like the building itself was rotting from the inside out.

We found something strange almost immediately—a row of old animatronic parts scattered across the floor of one of the halls. They looked disassembled, but not in a clean, orderly way. It was more like they'd been torn apart. There were scratch marks on the walls, too, deep grooves like something with claws had raked across them. Sarah tried to joke that maybe the animatronics went feral, but no one laughed.

Further in, we stumbled on a locked door marked "Authorized Personnel Only." Lucas managed to pick the lock after a few tries. Inside was a small control room with dusty monitors and an ancient computer terminal. The screens showed static at first, but after some fiddling, we got one of them to power on. It displayed an old security feed—grainy footage of the main floor from years ago.

The footage flickered between empty rooms, but then it cut to something else. A figure, dressed in purple, moving quickly through the halls. We couldn't see his face, but we knew. It had to be Afton. He was carrying something—small, limp—dragging it towards the room we were standing in now. The feed abruptly cut to black after that.

Then, we heard it—a metallic scrape from deeper inside the facility.

We froze, our flashlights casting jittery beams of light on the walls. The sound came again, louder this time, like something dragging itself toward us. Lucas muttered something about leaving, but before we could move, a low, mechanical whirring sound filled the hallway outside.

We're not alone here.

We grabbed what we could—blueprints, old files, anything that might give us answers—and got out fast. But I can't shake the feeling that whatever we heard, it was watching us the whole time.

We're back at the motel now, but none of us can sleep. I keep hearing that sound in my head—the scrape, the whirring, like something mechanical but alive. Tomorrow, we're going to dig through the files we found, but I'm not sure if I even want to know what Afton was doing here.

Something is still in that facility. And it's waiting.

- Ethan