Chapter Text
Dear Henry,
It seems like a lifetime since we worked on cartoon together. 30 years really slips away, doesn’t it?
If you’re back in town, come visit the old workshop. There’s something I need to show you.
Your best pal,
Joey Drew
“Why am I even doing this?”
The graying, middle aged man, dressed in simple brown pants, a white shirt and black suspenders, sighed and looked up at the building before him. The windows that weren’t boarded up had tarps over them, the paint was faded and peeling and the sign over the entrance that had once bore ‘Joey Drew Studio’ was nothing more then a big hunk of cracking wood over the door.
Yeah, the studio had seen much better days.
Henry sighed again and pushed opened the door. The hinges whined loudly, almost like fingernails on a chalkboard. The floor creaked under Henry’s feet as he walked in.
He couldn’t help breathing in the smell of the place. Aside from the extra dust and rotting wood, the inside of the studio still had that odd mix of paper, ink and just a hint of what everyone said was the blood, sweat and tears of the animators but was really just the crummy pipes.
Henry absently looked down yellowing piece of paper in his hand, glaring slightly at the signature at the bottom before he stuffed it back into his pocket, “Okay Joey, I’m here. Now what did you want to show me?”
Silence was the only response.
Henry let out a low hiss between his teeth. “Of course he’s not here. Good old Joey Drew, never around when you’re looking for him.”
The entrance hall ended, opening up into the main entrance room. In the studio’s heyday, the room would have echoed all the noise from the offices and departments, the cramped quarters of the building intensifying the chatter until it felt like there were far more people at work than there really were. But now it was silent, save for the occasional creak as the building settled.
Henry couldn’t stop his head from moving to the left, looking at the open doorway that was only a few steps from him. He absently wandered into the narrow hall that led into the tiny office. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight of the dusty wooden desk and stool. “My old office. Ha, I wasted so much time at this desk,” drawing the little devil himself and his band of friends for hours at a time. Not even stuff for the show half the time, just sketching out the characters. Joey used to get pretty mad at how much paper Henry would ‘waste’ just doodling.
Speaking of his old boss, Henry had yet to see the man.
He ventured back into the main area of the studio and walked into another hallway. If he remembered correctly, this led into an old storage room, where the crew usually just stored odds and ends and took lunch breaks in. But the hall was very different than the one in his memory.
For one, the stench of ink had never been so strong thirty years ago and he certainly didn’t remember them having so many Bendy cutouts. They had always had just the one in the front room.
Then again, thirty years.
But what really stood out were the words painted on one of the walls. Large, bold brush strokes spelled out the words ‘DREAMS COME TRUE’ in all capital letters. It made Henry pause and stare, wondering who on earth had thought painting something like that on the wall was a good idea. But he only stopped for a moment before shaking his head and moving on towards the storage room. It was probably someone’s idea of boosting morale.
Henry stopped momentarily when he came to the wide doorway. From where he was standing, he could see some huge, mechanical looking thing sitting in the large storage room. The floor and walls were splattered in ink and a large sign reading ‘Ink Machine’ was over the doorway.
Henry frowned and stepped into the room, taking in the large machine in its entirety, “I guess this is the Ink Machine.” Henry said absently. “…wonder how you turn the thing on.”
He walked around the machine, looking for anything that resembled a switch or button. Gears and pipes stuck out of the box shaped contraption, with one huge nozzle jutting out of one end and a large puddle of ink under the mouth of the nozzle. But it didn’t seem to have any sort of ‘on’ switch.
Henry frowned and wandered back into the hallway. What was the point of having a machine to produce ink if you couldn’t even turn the thing on? Unless Joey was in charge of building the thing then he would have to jump through elaborate and unnecessary hoops to get the thing to function. Henry had never really understood Joey’s tendency to make everything into some kind of game.
But, curiosity had always been Henry’s weakness and he was already here anyway. Might as well figure out what game he needed to play to turn on the Ink Machine.
Henry made his way towards the official break room, even though no one really used to use it as one, on account that it always felt too stuffy in that room for everyone to take a breather from work.
The stench of ink grew stronger the further he went into the studio, steadily growing in intensity until he could practically taste it.
‘Who uses that much ink? Seriously Joey, what on earth-’
THUNK
Henry jumped when a board clattered to the floor in front of him.
“This place is falling apart.”
The retired animator stepped over the board and kicked it to the side. He fully intended to continue on his path after moving the broken wood until something caught the corner of his eye.
Henry’s blood ran cold at the sight of one of the old toons he used to draw, strapped down to a huge table, like some sort of morbid parody of Frankenstein. Boris the Wolf lay limp, eyes x-ed out and chest cavity cracked wide open.
“Oh…god, Joey what were you doing in here?”
Henry turned away, walking down the opposite hall in fast paced steps. ‘What whack job thought that that would be okay? Seriously, it looks like something from a horror movie.’
Henry felt an involuntary shiver run up his spine. He shook his head, trying to push aside…whatever he just saw and kept moving on to the break room.
The sight that greeted him there wasn’t much less freaky then the horror show in the previous room.
The room had been stripped of the fold out chairs and the simple wooden table. In there place sat six pedestals, three on each wall, with pictures handing over each of them. Across from the doorway, an absurdly huge lever jutted out of the wall, above it read ‘Main Power’ in big bold letter and on the left of it a smaller sign glowed lazily, reading ‘Low Pressure’.
‘…this is excessive even for Joey.’
Henry stepped into the break room, eyes roaming over the entire area as he walked the length of the room until he was standing in front of the power lever. He frowned and tried flipping it, only to get a sputtering, groaning sound in response and the switch flipped itself back down.
‘Oookay, so now what?’
He looked at one of the pedestals, looking from the flat, off white surface of it then and the picture of the musical note that hung over it. His brow furrowed thoughtfully as he tried to mentally puzzle together how all of the odds and ends laying around were supposed to fit together and yield a result. The room, however, offered very little in terms of clues.
So he went back to the hallway, scanning the walls and floor for anything to give him a hint. He nearly ran smack into a large Bendy cutout.
“Who the hell put this here?! Joey!”
No one answered.
Henry growled slightly and stepped around the Bendy cutout before continuing down the hall and towards the projector room.
Some of the tension that had wormed its way into Henry’s shoulders eased somewhat when he saw the projector room was mostly unchanged. At least he thought so until he found an extra button on the back wall, the word ‘FLOW’ glowing faintly in the dim lighting of the room.
‘Okay…’ He pressed the button, only getting a small click in response. ‘Well, that didn’t work.’
He wondered back to the hallway, scanning the area for any indication as to what the hell he was supposed to be doing, when he noticed a tape recorder sitting on a little shelf. Curious, Henry picked it up and hit play.
‘At this point, I don't know what Joey's plan is for this company.’
Ah, Wally Franks, the janitor. Henry had always liked pulling little jokes on the guy.
‘The animations sure aren't being finished on time anymore. And I certainly don't see why we need this machine. It's noisy, it's messy. And who needs that much ink anyway?’
Joey Drew apparently.
‘Also, get this, Joey had each of us donate something from out work stations. We put them on these little pedestals in the break room. 'To help appease the gods' Joey says. 'Keep things going.’
To appease the….what on Earth?
‘I think he's lost his mind, but, hey, he writes the checks. But I tell you what, if one more of these pipes burst, I am outta here.’
Henry stood for a few moments after the tape ended, letting the information process in his brain. “….Joey definitely got into some freaky cult at some point. But at least I have an idea of how to get that machine working.”
He just needed an object from each department, six in total. And Henry had a few ideas of what he needed to gather up.
It took a few runs through the building, but Henry managed to get four of the objects he needed; a cogwheel, a Bendy plush doll, a vinyl record, and a wrench. That still left two more departments and there was only one room Henry had avoided.
He knew, logically, that there was now way that it was his old toon strapped down in that room. It was impossible.
But it still put Henry on edge to see Boris the wolf there. Whoever made the thing had to have been some kind of genius, Henry had briefly entertained the idea that maybe this wasn’t just a real world copy of the wolf toon when he first stepped into the room.
He shoved those thoughts aside and instead focused his attention of the rest of the room. There wasn’t much remarkable about it, other then the large, inky letters across the right wall, spelling out ‘WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?’
It made another involuntary shudder crawl its way up the man’s spine.
He shook his head and looked down, then furrowed his brow. Next to Boris’s feet was a book. A simple, black book with silvery lettering on the cover. Henry plucked it up and read the cover, his confusion worsening when he read the title.
“The Illusion of Living by Joey Drew.” Definitely a weird cult. “Sheesh Joey, I know me leaving was a hard hit but all of this is pretty extreme.”
He walked around the room until he found an ink well, tucked against the wall behind a chair. He took the book and ink and headed for the break room.
He dropped the book onto a pedestal, not really sure if it counted but it was all he could find that had any attachment to Joey. With an item on each little podium, Henry started to walk back towards the projector room.
“Turn on the flow, flip main power and then I can see what all the fuss is about.”
The man nodded to himself and looked up just in time to see something large, black and white slip around the corner.
The sudden movement made Henry freeze mid step. He cocked his head, listening for anything to indicate he wasn’t alone in the building. But all he could hear were the soft creaks of the wooden studio settling.
A sensible person would have left at that point. A sensible person would have left far before that point. Just turned around and left and never look back.
But it had taken Henry the better part of an hour to find and set up everything and he had quite a lot of things he wanted to ask Joey about. Leaving like a sensible person was out of the question in Henry’s mind.
So he pressed on down the rest of the hall. He leaned around the corner, narrowing his eyes a bit at the cutout leaning on the wall. He could not remember clearly if it was or was not there before, but he decided that it had been there the whole time, what with how many of the things were lying around.
He tapped the flow button and a low hum with a gurgling whoosh responded to him, “Okay, that should do it.”
Henry started a fast walk back to the break room and flipped down the switch. The entire building seemed to rumble to life with a huge heave and shudder before a dark substance started to flow though the pipes in the ceiling.
Henry smirked a bit as he headed back for the Ink Machine room. Sure, Joey liked making weird and over complicated puzzles just to turn on a lamp but Henry had used to love it whenever he found one of Joey’s little puzzles. It had been a bit of a running gag between them back in the day, Joey would make the puzzles and Henry would figure them out. Those days were….
Henry sighed and his paced slowed a bit. “Dang it, don’t think about stuff like that.”
He shook his head and squared his shoulders. Once he saw how that Ink Machine worked he was going to head back home and leave this place behind for good. If Joey wanted to talk, he had to show up within the next two minutes or come to Henry himself.
Henry nodded to himself as he turned the last corner, then his steps faltered. The door to the Ink Machine was boarded up. He could hear the gears turning inside the room and could see the machine through the gaps in the wood.
“What the-?” Henry moved closer, frowning in confusion. “Who-?”
An ear splitting screech made Henry jump back. A lanky, black, dripping figure shot up behind the blocked doorway. It growled and thrust a long, willowy arm through a gap between the boards. Hook-like fingers swiped at the air. A crooked, almost demented grin stared right at Henry.
Henry ran.
Ink started to pour from the ceiling, bleed from the walls, coating the floor in a matter of seconds. It soaked into the bottoms of Henry’s pants, sticking uncomfortably to his skin. His left leg was starting to protest the strain Henry was putting on it.
But all Henry could think was to run.
The exit was just ahead, he could practically see it just ahead of him.
He had to run, had to get out. Get out, get out, get out!
Henry didn’t even realize the floor had caved from under him until the sight of the door fell away, replaced by planks of wood flying past his face. An involuntary yell tore from his throat as he fell.
Faster and faster.
Down, down, and then…nothing but darkness.