"Uncle Henry?" He looked up from the letter to see his niece looking over his shoulder. He absent-mindedly hid the letter behind the back, but Jeanne attempted to snatch the letter away from him instead. Snorting in annoyance, Henry relinquished the letter to Jeanne.

"It's a letter from my former boss." He reluctantly explained as his niece scanned through the letter eagerly.

"From Joey Drew Studios?" Henry nodded. "I think its name was Sillyvision, but yes, the very same." He was slightly worried about his boss though. Despite continuing to remain in the field in a different studio, he still felt worried about what was going on with his old workplace.

Henry had intended to investigate the venue personally, but this made less and less sense the more he looked at it. The last he heard, Joey had dropped out of the business. And no one had heard of his whereabouts. In a small industry like animation, Henry knew that no one could disappear so completely.

Henry had been deployed, but he had not rejoined his workplace after the war. First, he had three kids to raise, and he did not want to go back to such a poisonous atmosphere after a grueling time at war. Joey had said something about appeasing the gods even during his spell working with Joey; Henry did not know what he was going on about, but it was nothing good.

Henry felt it was a shame that Bendy was now dead as far as the public was concerned. The animation industry was cutting staff, and there wasn't much of a point going back into the business, let alone producing his own cartoons.

Dear Henry

It seems like a lifetime since we worked on cartoons 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.

The words were a bit loopy, but it was unmistakably Joey's handwriting, which was why Henry had not dismissed it as a fluke straight offhand. He could call or even fax, it was not as if he could not be found on the phonebook just a few hours off from where the studio had been. Furthermore, the letter had been written on yellowed copy paper. Then again, Joey could have just used some random paper off the table and not recognized what he was writing on.

"Are you planning on meeting him?" Jeanne asked, making the implications clear; he was not allowed to go alone.

"Yeah, I think I should. Check up on the old boy…" Thirty years was hopefully enough to smooth over the multiple arguments they had during his last days at the studio; hopefully enough to talk to Joey on even ground.

"But the workshop hasn't been outputting anything since the last few years, is it safe?" Jeanne argued.

"I think it should. Joey and I are quite old, we can't do much to each other."

"Rar rar, gab the geriatrics as they attempt to hit each other with biros and brushes." Jeanne rolled her eyes, but did not object further as she stood up.

"I'll tell the coffee vampires not to wait up and prepare a supply of their favorite drink to tide them over."

"Jeanne!"

"What? They wither away in the sunlight and shroud themselves in darkness while bent over their drawings and manuscripts! What's a better metaphor than that?"

"…You do have a point." Henry thus spent some time helping her to dump the remaining coffee together and scribbled a note to remind Louis to continue working on upcoming projects.

Henry's current studio was a co-production studio, and thus rather than initiating their productions, they were often called up to finish touching up on cartoons made by Disney and Paramount. Henry did not like the drudgery of that sort of work, but it paid well enough and the workers weren't forced to spend their entire weekday at the studio, so Henry considered it a win. However, this also meant that they did no creative stuff on their own, and Henry often had to see off some of his junior animators from time to time and help finish up on cartoons from the bigger studios. Henry and his assistant director Louis were the only permanent staffers while the rest were an eccentric mixture of interns hoping to score contract with the major studios, part-timers looking to put food on the table, and older members hopping between jobs. There was no loyalty to the studio, but hey, at least they were able to watch what they were showing on screen, unlike other small-timers who were forced to close as the behemoths swallowed them one by one.

Henry was nostalgic about Sillyvision; he liked the camaraderie before Joey went nuts and they were focused on pushing out Bendy cartoons. He wondered what his workplace looked like now. After all, he had left a few months before the war effort started in earnest and the government pressured studios to push out war propaganda. Henry probably would have bailed out before that happened.

"I'm done Uncle Henry!" Jeanne was dressed in a relatively shabby leather jacket and jeans she had worn yesterday while in the studio, causing Henry to sigh in disbelief. He could not see how this was appealing to the younger generations. He very much preferred the trousers and vest that people his age still wore.

"You stay outside for two hours. I think there's a pub around here if you get bored." He instructed Jeanne.

"Fifteen minutes." She interjected, twitching her lip in dismay.

"At least an hour, I want to talk with him, not just say hi!"

"Okay, thirty minutes." Henry huffed. That was probably as good as he could get from his overprotective niece. Jeanne was persistent about his safety, and he could not see why she thought a perfectly healthy sixty year old could be in any danger, even if the studio was slightly dilapidated. However, Henry was quite confident of his ability to take care of himself, and so he strode forward, hand on his hip, ready to have a good long talk with Joey for the first in thirty years.

Meanwhile, back at the car, Jeanne noticed that her uncle had stupidly forgotten to bring his pocket watch.

"That careless, clumsy man!" She exclaimed as she picked it up. "Uncle Henry? Uncle Henry!" But her uncle had disappeared into the ramshackle place, and she scratched her head in thought. On one hand, he was fit for a sixty year old, but on the other hand…

"Fifteen minutes, then I go in if he cries for help." Jeanne started rummaging through the glove compartment. "I'm sure I've got a torchlight and some equipment here…"

Henry was once reminded of how long he had not been back as he once again stumbled into a dead end which never existed in his time. Once again, he had been freaked out by a cutout, tripped over ink messes and stopped in dismay at the writing on the wall.

When he stopped by his old desk, he winced. He was used to the cel shading with colour, but this really took him back.

"I've wasted so much time in this chair." Continued drawing in the same chair, heated discussions over…Henry could not remember over what exactly, but it was little things like that which had driven him up the wall until his tolerance had reached its limit and was almost relieved to be drafted. He was not happy that his best years were spent in Asian jungles though; just a bit sad. It must have been small and unimportant if he could not remember what had sparked off the frustration he had experienced though.

Then again, he was too young to have much patience. Much like some of the younger interns, he had thirsted to prove himself, and hence he was probably more difficult to work with back then. It really was a golden age of shorts…

Henry nearly bumped into a gigantic, wooden engine that seemed to be propped up on hope and dreams, or as Jeanne would put it, a 'disaster of gears and nightmares stuck together with obstinacy.' This must have been the "Ink Machine" which Wally had complained about.

"So this is the Ink Machine huh? Wonder how you turn it on." Henry said as he walked around it. He walked down a hallway, hoping to see it in action before the inevitable showdown with Joey, whichever form it might take. He felt for his watch, but upon searching his pockets, Henry realized that he had left it in the car. Jeanne would be harping on him the next time he saw her.

But first, the ink machine. Henry searched around the rooms until he found the power room, where there were six pedestals waiting for something to be put on them. Luckily for Henry, there were picture frames depicting what was going to be placed there, and thus he searched through the rooms once more-–

"Gah!" Of course, the occasional Bendy cutout left him stunned for a few moments. Henry felt a wave of dread settling in for the long term as he caught the sight of a strange figure carrying the cutout as they rounded a corner. Chasing after the figure, Henry had been shocked to the core when he caught sight of what appeared to be Boris' dead body.

"Oh my god. Joey, what were you doing?" Henry asked, feeling utterly appalled at what his boss, no, his friend, had got up to. This was too cruel, and Henry, who had been in an actual war knew that this went far beyond torture. Boris was evidently dead, in a comically horrible manner with his Wingding eyes in the shape of crosses and all his internal organs excised. Henry felt nauseous, especially when he chanced upon the candles. And the 'Who's Laughing Now?' message written in ink across the board. It all seemed ...satanic and ritual-like. He didn't know that Joey was interested in this matter, but evidently Henry did not understand his boss at all if he was capable of doing such…such things, things that Henry had no words for.

He said a small prayer, hoping that at least something of good intent would have reached Boris or whoever was listening up there, before departing to look for the remaining items. Henry soon found the Bendy doll he had tripped over earlier, picked up the record wedged behind a shelf, the ink he had found earlier in his desk, a gear leaning against the wall, a wrench near the projector, and finally, a book, 'The Illusion of Living' by Joey Drew.

Henry flipped through the pages. Pentacles and witchcraft shit which had landed their show in trouble with the censorship authorities; it took a long time before Joey was able to negotiate a distribution deal. This was probably an inspiration for the ritual that involved dissecting Boris, but Henry refused to think on it further until he could confront Joey for answers.

Placing them on the pedestals, Henry started checking for the switch to increase the ink pressure, and hopefully alert Joey along with it. He knew Joey was probably staying on the upper levels if he had returned to the studio, but Henry was more concerned about how long he had taken to just switch on the power. Jeanne would come rushing in if she had thought that Henry was in danger, and would have no doubt dragged him out once she saw Boris there. Thus he hurried, bumping against yet another cutout which seemed to be peeking at him.

The projector had abruptly turned on as he searched throughout the projection room for the switch, adding another level of terror to his already frazzled nerves. Finally finding it (and watching the character prance across the screen), he pressed the switch and was relieved to hear the ink running about the pipes in the walls. Hurrying back to the switch, he flipped it, hearing the power turned on with a satisfying 'kerchunk'. Ink started to flood the hallways once more, much to Henry's irritation. Wandering down the hallway, he chanced upon a corridor with a plank indicating the position of the Ink Machine.

…Why was it boarded up? Henry had no clue, but as he peeked inside, a cold shiver crept down his spine and he lunged backwards, narrowly missing the creature trying to grab him. Seemingly composed of ink and spirit, it looked humanoid, and almost Bendy-like, except in a more sinister and hellish fashion, with realistic devil horns and a wide smile that was too big to be natural.

"What the hell did Joey cook up!" Henry muttered to himself as he felt his jaw drop in shock. Forget looking for Joey, he would be happy if he never saw this place again! The lights flickered throughout the hallway as the creature made another grab at him, swiping its claws at his face. Henry needed no further encouragement to run, dashing away from the monster as he tried to look for the exit. Closing in, he was about to see the metaphoric light at the end of the tunnel…

When the ground beneath him gave way and Henry dropped through the resulting hole. It would have been funny if it were less terrifying, Henry thought to himself. For the first time since stepping foot into the studio, Henry wished that Jeanne would come in soon; he had lost track of time and could not estimate how long it had been since he stepped foot into the studio. Shivering as he caught sight of the unsettling message on the wall, Henry turned his eyes in delighted approval upon the axe hung on the wall.

Thus he started chopping up the boards that were blocking his way to what seemed to be the nearest hallway. As he found himself standing upon a pentagram symbol on the floor, with two coffins placed on the wall and candles yet again, Henry sighed.

"This place must have been taken by some kind of Satanic cult I suppose." He tried to reassure himself, hoping against hope that Joey was not the culprit behind that monster. As the world around him shook with the force of a quake, Henry felt adrenaline bleeding out of his body, and slumped onto the floor in a dead faint, exhausted from the earlier run.

Meanwhile, outside the studio, Jeanne felt the ground around them vibrate. She hissed, before taking her uncle's pocket watch, her wallet, her torchlight, and Henry's satchel for good measure.

"I'm coming in whether you like it or not Uncle Henry." She muttered under her breath even as she stepped across the hole that Henry had just fallen in.