Daycare Center

The Daycare Center is the third location John is instructed to explore by his companion Father Garcia in Chapter III.

Apparently, Garcia obtained strange reports of children exhibiting bizarre behavior at this building, but there's nobody inside besides four corpses of Thralls, who are low-ranking cult members of the Eternal Order of the Second Death. A squad of police officers from the Sterling Police Department are stationed nearby the front entrance and are anticipating shooting anybody who opens it from inside. There's also a secret underground tunnel system inhabited by cult members, but history beyond this is unknown.

## Appearance

The Daycare Center is a rectangular one-floor building nearby woodland. There's a play area in the middle of the building and secured by a chain fence, presumably so that supervisors or assistants can monitor children anywhere at any time and ensure they don't escape the premises. The building is color-coded purple in the game's artstyle, the exact purple color as Amy, Jason, and Nate Martin.

## History

### October 30th, 1987

Before we begin, it's important to state here that there's an underground tunnel system below this daycare center, file named as Garyland, where cult members a part of the Eternal Order of the Second Death inhabit. Below Garyland lies a dense forest littered with stick dolls and white trees, file named as Nowhere Forest, and just beyond is a secured area called the Crucible. We don't know how long the cult has been operational for, nor how long the Daycare Center has been active, but its rest assured that Garyland is a secret hideout hidden from public view where nearly all cult members reside. The main cult leader, Gary Miller, resides here as well.

Basing off of demonic imagery we'll eventually go over, its greatly suggested that children are influenced, or even taught, by the cult. The cult's ultimatum with the children is unknown, and we don't know if the Daycare Center was specifically built for cult activity, but it's clear that the children are in danger. Unfortunately, we don't know much else about this building.

Now flashing forward to October 30th, our series protagonist John Ward finds an instructional letter left behind by his companion, Father Garcia, to investigate the Daycare Center, located somewhere called 4th Street in Sterling, Connecticut. For some reason, Garcia has been receiving strange reports of children exhibiting bizarre behavior at this building, and he believes that if they can find the Martin Twins there then it'll be the same place where the cult would summon the great demon named Malphas. John hops into his silver sedan and speeds off.

As John almost reaches his destination, he spots a police car blaring their sirens. Believing that he's signaled to pull over, he does so, but the vehicle zooms right past him. John hops out of his car and follows the officer's trail to check the commotion. After walking a bit, he sees seven police officers, with their weapons drawn, preparing to shoot anybody who opens the front door of the Daycare Center. There's blockades and police tape around the entrance to ensure nobody would escape.

So far, the series never fully elaborates why the Sterling Police Department are blocking the Daycare Center. Father Garcia stated that children were exhibiting strange behavior here, but currently its late into the night and there's no other vehicles nearby so it's very unlikely children or supervisors are inside. It would make more sense for officers to prepare firing during the day, when other people are more likely to lurk inside, rather than at nighttime. In fact, Garcia's word choice in his letter implicates that he's affiliated with the Police Department.

As a small theory, we could propose that their appearance here corelates to an unnamed officer's death on October 28th. On that day, John snuck into a birthing clinic somewhere in Sterling because Father Garcia suspected that cult members may summon Malphas somewhere inside. There was a lone police officer guarding the entrance to the building for an unknown reason. Flashing forward a bit, the officer and John fended off and killed a gigantic creature inside that somewhat resembled a baby. After walking out, the officer spotted a group of Thralls, low-ranking cult members, burning his vehicle and chased them in pursuit. Ultimately, the officer was cornered in an alleyway and shanked to death. We could suspect that the Sterling Police Department eventually caught wind of this death and tied back the trace of these Thralls to the Daycare Center. Unfortunately, we're not given much information about this because the Daycare Center lacks any concrete history.

The officers are fixated towards the front door and completely ignore John. John sneaks behind them and crawls through a hole in a chain fence.

There's a note nearby that simply states:

A riddle, priest.
How do you make a portal to Hell?
ㅤ
Come see me and I’ll show you.

Although we're jumping the gun a bit, this question was written by Gary himself. It won't be detailed here, but Gary elaborates further with this question within Nowhere Forest. John enters the building via an unlocked backdoor.

#### the tunnels await

Even though there's kiddie drawings, toys, and other objects, the atmosphere is abnormal, and the building is empty. There's a drawing left behind on a table, signed by a child named Ben:

The eerie red figure with wide eyes implies that the children are somewhat influenced by cult or demonic activity. The red, falling star becomes relevant later.

As a minor footnote, there's chalkboard hung on the wall that illustrates somebody partaking in the Second Death ritual. It's difficult to tell, but there's a hand sticking out of the face.

John walks downward to the next room and comes across a gory site. There are four decimated bodies of Thralls laced on the ground. The phrase, "Gary loves us", is crudely scribbled on the wall with blood. The bodies are layed nearby some kind of sealed entrance and four symbols, a Moon, a Chalice, a Bird, and a Star.

There's a riddle left behind, all written in purple text:

Mother Moon watcheth her little ones behind a door of sleep
Daughter Chalice is filled, an offering to the Master in the Unseen World
Spirit Bird arriveth from afar and cometh back to roost.
These vessels are the Unholy Trinity.
The Fallen Star shall guide them.
What colors can you see?
Look to the children if you are lost.

First and foremost, this poem is supposed to indirectly tell the reader that they're supposed to align the symbols on the floor in specific color. Lorewise, this poem indirectly details what "The Unholy Trinity" is. Densely decoding what this poem means is irrelevant to the Daycare Center, so if you want to find out more, check out Tiffany Robinson's or Amy Martin's wiki page.

To gain access to whatever is behind the entrance, John has to use his crucifix to align the symbols layed on the floor into specific colors by looking at drawings left behind by children. Specifically, these drawings:

There're two other drawings that should be pointed out. One of the drawings depicts the UNSPEAKABLE, a deity worshipped by the cult, hovering over children, who are celebrating after mutilating and tearing a blue person's torso, who has a red creepy smile:

It's clear that the blue person is John, the children within this daycare center truly are influenced by the cult, and actively want John to be killed. This drawing here indirectly iterates that it was drawn recently, since John was not targeted by the UNSPEAKABLE or the cult until after Chapter I's events, which took place on September 21st, where he unintentionally caused a possessed teenager named Amy Martin to plummet all the way down from her three-story house, nearly killing her. The cult wanted to use Amy to summon the Antichrist from her face portal to Hell, but John accidentally disrupted their plans by attempting to exorcise Amy himself.

The other drawing depicts a blue crow pecking the face out of a scarecrow, who seems to be showing an agonizing expression. Each time the crow pecks, blood strews out from its face:

This scarecrow somewhat ties back to another scarecrow shown in Chapter II Prologue, a dream that John experienced where he explores one of the places he used to live in as a kid, Snake Meadow Hill Church. Each time John would look back at the scarecrow, a hole steadily increased on its face.

If he banished a demon lurking within the church's basement and came back, blood protrudes from the scarecrow.

The fact that this scarecrow is somewhat referenced once again by a child, who was not even alive when Snake Meadow Hill Church was operational in the 50s nor when orphans were murdered by a "thing in the cornfields", establishes that they're influenced by the cult and the events surrounding the church and the cornfield are still relevant. The exact reasoning is unclear.

If John explores one of the upper rooms, he wouldn't see anything besides a lone drawing. We, the player however, can see a strange purple statue. John cannot see or even encounter this statue at all because the statue will always teleport into one of the adjacent rooms.

Scourging through the game files, this statue is file named as "Malphas Idol". At first glance this object doesn't look anything like Malphas, or even an avian creature for that matter. The problem here is that this idol only has two colors, purple and black. If we were to outline it, you'll notice that it's supposed to be some avian creature holding a severed bird head with a beak (shoutout goes to Abortion Steve from the FAITH Fan Community Discord for figuring this out).

If John decides to open the front door of the building and walk outside, he's startled by the officers pointing their guns at him, so he raises his crucifix in submission. The police falsely claim that he's holding a gun and erratically fire their weapons. Long after John succumbs to his bullet wounds, they continue to fire their rounds.

Once John solves the puzzle regarding the symbols, the seal on the floor opens by itself, revealing a descending staircase. John steps below and enters the underground tunnel system, Garyland.

### October 31st, 1987 (Ending I and II)

We flashforward to John and Father Garcia stumbling out of the entrance of the Daycare Center. Although this was skipped, they either temporarily blocked access of anybody venturing into the Crucible by purifying a floating slab or John defeated Gary, his mother Miriam Bell, and Malphas within the Crucible (the outcome depends on the ending). As the duo stumble out of the building, they trample over the bodies of police officers and thralls. Apparently, while the priests were within Garyland, thralls attempted to ambush the stationed officers, but there were no survivors.

### October 31st, 1987 (Ending III "A New Vessel")

In this alternate route, John's anxiety gets the better of him when he pulls over nearby the Daycare Center. He wussies out from exploring the area and gets back in his vehicle to drive back home.

The next day, in the middle of the night, John wakes up from another nightmare of reexperiencing his first exorcism of Amy Martin and notices that the atmosphere in his house feels wrong. If he checks the peephole of his front door, he sees a group of thralls eerily smiling back at him in anticipation to barge in.

The Daycare Center isn't brought up again in this route, but to somewhat explain why thralls are showing up now, we have to date back to what happens in Garyland if John did not wuss out. Inside there, Gary pricks him in the neck with a syringe, causing John to seep into a drug-induced rampage. By the time he slumps over from the side effects and comes to, he comes across a gory site where he decimated waves of thralls by himself. Since John did not kill any of these thralls in this route considering that he never explored the Daycare Center/Garyland, we can assume that these thralls overpowered the police officers and are targeting John to kill him off.

## Trivia

* The concept of the Daycare Center appears to be based off of publicly released FBI documents concerning a real child trafficking cult in the 80s called The Finders.
	+ In the New Haven Apartment Complex in Chapter III, if you stand idly for roughly ten minutes when the power of the whole building cuts out, you'll hear very faint audio of somebody hurriedly whispering. The voice is not text-to-speech, it's a real person whispering. If you decompile FAITH, locate the files, and manually slow the audio file to the point its comprehensible, you'll hear a man (likely Airdorf considering you can faintly hear somebody clicking a computer mouse) whispering select sections of FBI documents regarding this cult. The admin of this wikipedia, Screamin' 'n 'Hollerin', made a rough transcript of these files with the help of users and posted it in the Unused Content page (these files are not unused, a wiki page directly relating to these files will be made soon).
	+ To keep everything brief, some of these files loosely correlate to the Daycare Center. The building located somewhere called "4th Street", police officers raiding the premises, locating children's toys & other objects, and a makeshift tunnel discovered underneath a classroom are all mentioned in these audio files.
	+ Although The Finders loosely influenced the concept of the Daycare Center, some obscene details were left out from the final game, such as child exploitation, sexual conduct with a minor, child trafficking, and other sensitive topics. If these were ever included in the final game, it would paint the series narrative and Gary Miller in an entirely different light. We don't know what happens to children who are influenced by Gary's cult, but there's no evidence that there's any misconduct mentioned earlier.
	+ If you want to read these extensive public documents, click here, you'll be directed to FBI Records. You can also do your own research and look up documentaries regarding The Finders.
* The hexadecimal color for the Daycare Center is #4b0191, the same color as Amy and the Martin Twins.
	+ Purple color in this series is supposed to represent corruption or give indication that something is wrong.
	+ Although you would assume that the Sterling Police Department are also color-coded the same purple as the Martin Children and the Daycare Center, their purple color is a lighter shade, #4305e1.
* For some strange reason, Note #31, the Color Puzzle Riddle, is not purple colored when you reread it in the pause menu.
	+ Note #39, the note addressed to "Master of Spirits" found in Garyland, is also purple colored when you first collect it, indicating that they're both written by the same unknown person, but is not colored in the pause menu.
* In one of the drawings depicting the UNSPEAKABLE, the way John's body is torn might be a reference to how Michael Davies would kill him in Chapter I. If Michael catches up to him, he will tear his torso in half.
	+ It's hard to tell because it's a white background, but the UNSPEAKABLE is holding John's crucifix, which is now inverted.
	+ There's a singular black dot on one of the girl's faces. It's unknown what this is supposed to represent considering that the other boys and girls don't have this.

* Three drawings found in the Daycare Center are references to other video games.

Besides giving a hint that the Mother Moon symbol is orange, the mushrooms, boy, monkey, and the ghastly figure is a reference to one of Airdorf's games called Summer Night. The name "Mason" is probably a reference to Airdorf's real name.The name "Uncle Earl" is reference to one of Airdorf's games, called Earl's Day Off. The fact that a red creature is in the water indicates that FAITH and Earl's Day Off take place in the same universe.The figure depicted here is a character named V1, the protagonist of a New Blood game called ULTRAKILL. The developer of that game is named Asri Patala, thus the signature shown below. This drawing suggests that FAITH and ULTRAKILL take place in the same universe.
* One of the drawings found depicts a portrait of a child's family. There's a red figure, probably a demon, lunging into frame. The positioning of this red figure is a nod to a popular image that was circulating around 2009, depicting a family posing for a camera while sitting on a table. You can see a dark figure lunging into frame, almost as if it's about to crash into the table. The backstory behind this is currently unknown, the exact origins is unclear, and the "Cooper Family" story surrounding the photo may be fictional and only made for horror art.

## Gallery

### Interior

A classroom.Another classroom with the entrance to Garyland in the center.Cafeteria.Front entrance.Hallway.A pair of rooms. The statue will always be in the opposite room that John is in.
### Children's Drawings

A drawing showing that the Fallen Star is red.A drawing showing that the Mother Moon is orange. Doubles as a reference to Summer Night. The name Mason may also be a reference to Airdorf's real name too.A drawing depicting some flowers.What appears to be a girl and her cat getting frightened by a monster/demon. An unknown figure in the window is also visible.A drawing referencing Earl's Day Off.A drawing showing that the Daughter Chalice is pink.A frightening depiction of a family with a demon. Appears to reference a famous ghost photo.Another drawing showing Mother Moon.A drawing referencing V1 from ULTRAKILL. The developer of that game is named Arsi Patala, thus the signature on the drawing.A drawing of several people cheering at the mutilation of a blue man (likely John), while the UNSPEAKABLE looms above.A drawing saying "Thanks Satin", featuring two decapitated people and a third one surrounded by money.A drawing showing that the Spirit Bird, perched on a scarecrow, is blue.
## Reference List

1. ↑ Ref. - Note #29 Ch III
2. ↑ Ref. - Note #4 Ch III
3. ↑ Ref. - "Inside Door" Dialogue
4. ↑ Ref. - "About Amy" Dialogue
5. ↑ Ref. - "About Gary" Dialogue
6. ↑ Ref. - All the notes in Ch II Prologue, Note #33 in Ch III, young versions of John and Lisa appear inside Snake Meadow Hill Church during a drug trip, and other factors are all supposed to insinuate that John was an orphan at the Church. If this weren't the case, it would not make sense for this church to frequently appear in his dreams and be this relevant well after Ch II's events.
7. ↑ Ref. - Note #12 Ch II (Essentially establishes that the church was functional in the 50s)
8. ↑ Ref. - Note #1 Ch II Prologue
9. ↑ Ref. - Note #2 Ch II Prologue
10. ↑ Ref. - Airdorf Body Color Message