“Come on, Carlton!” Caleb whined, stamping his foot down. “I wanna s-see if I got any mail!” He held his golden bear plush closer to him, and looked up at the ginger teen walked down the stairs, smiling.

Carlton walked past all of Caleb’s plushies, carefully stepping over Chica and her cupcake. “You know, you could always go out to the mailbox by yourself. It’s not that far away.” He watched as Caleb’s smile slowly dissipated. “Or not! It’s fine, Caleb.” He took the younger boy’s hand in his and opened the door into the crisp autumn afternoon.

The two stepped onto the old house’s front step, and followed the grey pathway to the white mailbox. Caleb excitedly opened it up, and grabbed all that was inside. He quickly shoved all the letters in his hands to Carlton, looking down at the magazine in his hands, an issue of Food Network. He ran inside, leaving Carlton smiling and shaking his head.

Once Carlton entered the house, he sat down next to Caleb on the couch, who was flipping through the magazine to find out which recipe he wanted to make. He set the pile of letters down on the coffee table, and started to open each one individually.

“Let’s see if we won the lottery with letters today, Star.” He smiled wider and broke open the first one. “Aaaand it’s just an ad.” He threw it back down on the table, and picked up the second. “Another ad.” He said sadly. He grabbed the third and last letter, and opened it. It had no return address, interesting enough.

The letter was written in excellent cursive penmanship, and although the paper was crumpled and torn, still conveyed the feeling that whoever wrote it still wanted to convey an element of social class.

Carlton started to read, his happiness turning to dread as his eyes swept over the perfectly penned letter. He took deep breathes as his mind slowly analyzed what he was reading. The final line sent chills down his spine.

Your Father, William Afton.

Caleb was leaning over on Carlton’s shoulder and reading it. The older boy didn’t even notice, until Caleb let out a small gasp. “D-Dad? What does he want?! I don’t want him back! I-I want to forget about him!” He gripped Carlton’s hand tighter, his animatronic eye shifting.

Carlton pulled him into a hug. “Shh, it’s ok. He’ll never get out. He’s in jail. This is just… a stupid letter. Nobody’s going to hurt you.” He planted a soft kiss on the top of his hair. “Star, we’re in this together.”

Caleb reached his stubby arms and grabbed the letter, and pointed to a string of letters. “What’s this mean? I-Is it something they haven’t taught me yet? Is it homework I should have done?!”

Carlton suppressed a large chuckle, though it wasn’t an easy feat, and looked at the letters. VS RD GT RZ QZ. There was a paragraph attached to them, which directly linked into the paragraph for Michael’s, which mentioned Carlton as “that Burke boy”. The ginger boy sighed. That’s how most people thought of him. He wasn’t really remarkable in anyway.

He turned towards the small boy and pointed at the letters. “They’re a code. A cipher. Maybe we can figure it out together.” He stared at the letters. Nothing comes to mind when I stare at it. Not Pig-Latin. He scratched his smooth chin. “Hey, Caleb. How do you feel about a trip to the library?”

Caleb smiled and hopped off of the couch. “Can we get lunch?!” He practically squealed with excitement. He grabbed his Fredbear plush and stuffed it under his arm. The smell of birthday cake wafted through the air.

Carlton shrugged. “Sure. After we’re done at the library, we can get pizza.” He lifted Caleb up and put him on his shoulders, walking out of the door and locking it behind him.

All the kids were in school, and all the parents were either at work, or cuddled up with a good book and hot chocolate inside, so their walk through the yellow and green leaf-covered ground was unremarkable. Carlton felt a chill go down his spine every time he looked down at the letter.

He walked into the large, old library, and smiled. Just the smell of the library calmed him down. The silence, only interrupted with the sound of flipping pages. Carlton set Caleb down and took his hand, walking to the reception desk, where the librarian, Serena, sat.

Serena looked up at Carlton, and smiled, pushing her glasses up her nose, and brushing away her hair. “Hello, Carlton. What brings you here today?” She was the nicest person Carlton could think of. He’d never seen her frustrated, passive aggressive, or sad. She was always in a perfect, happy mood, making Carlton smile.

“Oh, we got this note, and it has a weird string of letters in it. Do you have any idea what it might be?” He turned the letter over to her, and she read over it quickly, her eyes scanning over the page quickly. She looked up at him.

“Well, if I had to guess, it’s a cipher. And it uses the Play-Fair engine, as indicated by the paragraph before it. Let’s see…” She searched around, and pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil. “Alright, Play-Fair uses all of the letters in the alphabet, except we translate J to I, so we leave out that one.” She wrote down all the letters in a square.

A B C D E

F G H I K

L M N O P

Q R S T U

V W X Y Z

“Now, you need a five-letter word to start with. Let’s say… Times. And you push each letter down.”

T I M E S

A B C D F

G H K L N

O P Q R U

V W X Y Z

“So let’s say you want to send the message ‘Hello’.” She wrote down Hello as ‘HE LL OX.’ She smiled. “You always have to put X at the end. Find H and E, and make a rectangle with the other corners, and put it as the corner on the same row.”

T I M E S

A B C D F

G H K L N

O P Q R U

V W X Y Z

“So H becomes L, and E becomes I. Do it all and..” She wrote down the letters Li uu qv. “there’s your letters. If you’re trying to translate, you do the same in reverse.”

Carlton smiled. “Thanks Serena! Let’s go get a table, Caleb.” The two boys went and sat down at a table, as Carlton tried to think of what William was best at. Deception? Lies? Hurting others? No, none of those are 5 letter words. There was only one thing when someone thought of William Afton.

Murder. But that wasn’t a five-letter word. What if I take off the R from the end? Murde. I plug that in and follow the rules Serena told me, and I get.

Carlton let out a gasp. No, this can’t be true. He took a few deep breathes, as he stared down at the badly scribbled letters. YO UR EN EX TX. It was easy to see what it said. Take the X off the end, like Serena said, remove the spaces but one, and add an apostrophe.

You’re next.

Carlton took a deep breath again. He looked over at Caleb, as he absent-mindedly colored in a picture he had drawn. He can’t make anyone else his “next”. He won’t come back. He can’t come back. Not for Caleb, not for Carlton, not for Ellie, not for Michael, who he’d already come for once.

He couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t let that happen. Finally when they were starting to move on, he sends them this letter. Carlton knew what he had to do. He took a deep breath, and ripped up the letter into shreds, before laying his head down on the table and letting tears flow out of his soul, onto the rough wooden table.