Jacob woke up with a start, almost falling off the wooden bench he had slept on. He stood up quickly and readjusted his dirty trench coat, his eyes seeing the unfamiliar and large space he was in. Rows and rows of wooden benches, all leading up to a pedestal in the middle. He saw the cross with a crucified Christ hanging from the ceiling behind the pedestal. He knew instantly that he had fallen asleep in a church. Only problem was, he couldn't remember how he got to the church or why he had fallen asleep inside. The only thing he remembered was driving past a "Welcome to Silent Hill" sign before he lost conscious.
"Silent Hill?" Jacob whispered, remembering the sign he saw.
"You're awake?"
Jacob jumped at the sound of a female's voice. He spun around to see a tall woman standing near two open wooden doors. The woman wore punk clothing; Tight jeans, a black vest over a purple tank top, and purple highlights in her long hair. She looked to be around twenty five, the same age as Jacob. In her hand, she held a magnum pistol.
"Who're you?' Jacob asked, standing up. He stumbled, his knees feeling weak.
The woman hurried over to Jacob, closing the wooden doors behind her. She grabbed Jacob's arm and helped him stand, while placing her gun into the back of her jeans.
"You've been sleeping for a while now," she told him. "Found you on the side of the street next to a wrecked car. I guess you had an accident since you have a nasty cut on the back of your head."
Jacob touched the back of his head but pulled his hand back when a sharp pain coursed through his head.
"I'm okay, I can stand," he said moving away from her. He was a bit dizzy but okay.
"My name's Esther Halling," she said holding out her hand. "You?"
"Jacob," he replied shaking her thin hand. "Where am I?"
"Balkan Church," she answered turning away from Jacob and walking to the back of the church. she rose her voice so he could hear him. "It's in the old part of Silent Hill."
"Why are you looking back there?"
Esther came out of the back and made her way back to Jacob. "Checking to see if we're still alone in this church."
Jacob eyed her magnum. "Is there some dangerous animal here?"
Esther laughed at his response. "Dangerous animal? It's a lot worse than that."
The wooden doors open and Esther reacted immediately, pulling out her gun and aiming it at doors.
"Whoa, Esther, it's me!" A man yelled holding his arms up. The man had a sort of cowardly look to him. He wore glasses and had red hair. The long sleeves of his shirt were cut up like someone had slashed at them. Like Esther, he too had a gun but his was a shotgun that was strapped to his back.
"Just Audrey," Esther said relieved, placing her gun back into the back of her pants.
The man Audrey looked at Jacob, eyeing him like he was something dangerous. "Who's he?"
"He's Jacob and he's not someone from this town," Esther told him. "I just found him on the street and helped him out."
Hearing that, Audrey calmed down. "Maybe he can help us find our professor. And maybe out of this crazy town."
"I'm not understanding anything here. What is going on here?" Jacob asked.
"You're trapped here with us in this nightmare," Esther answered with a hint of sadness. She went through the pocket of her vest and gave Jacob a folded up piece of paper. "This is the first paper of our professor's reports on Silent Hill's supernatural activity. It's better for you to read it than for us to explain it."
Jacob unfolded the paper and began to read.
This is the first of my reports on the supernatural activity in the town of Silent Hill. I write this report after surviving a day in this nightmare.
I came to Silent Hill because of the many rumors I have heard and took a week off to research this town, but now, I wish that my curiosity didn't make me come here. Silent Hill isn't just a supernatural spot, it becomes the hell of whoever enters it. It knows what your afraid of or whatever you keep secret and creates nightmarish monstrosities from them to terrify or kill you. If it weren't for the gun I carried for self-defense, I would have been killed by the first creature I met, for it scared me so much I could barely move. The creature was shaped after my fear of insects, being a tall moving human-like body of insects with one large eye. Having survived by shooting it's eye, which held the insects together, I have named the creature Bug-Eye. Even though it is my fear, whoever encounters Bug-eye must shoot its eye, for shooting its body of insects is useless.
The one thing that has scared me even more than Bug-Eye, was the fact that Silent Hill has something like a "Otherworld" where reality itself becomes the nightmare. Reality flakes away, turning into some kind of nightmarish factory, where bodies and blood are everywhere. Much more Bug-Eyes attacked me while I was in this world, leading me to think that when reality is like this, these creatures come much more often.
Right now, I am writing this in one of the only houses with the door unlocked. I am not safe here but I will continue writing these reports in the hopes someone may find them and survive because of them.
Dr. Charles Noming, Professor of Psychology at the University of Maine.
After reading the report, Jacob still didn't understand but he did recognize the name of the one who wrote the paper. "I don't understand this, but Dr. Noming has come many times to the place I work."
"You know the professor?" Audrey asked.
"I'm an editor for a supernatural magazine," Jacob told them. "Dr. Noming has come to me many times and gave us some interesting articles on some supernatural spots." Jacob shook his head, remembering his reason fro coming to Silent Hill. "My boss told me to go look for him in Silent Hill, since he was declared missing a week ago. He said he got a phone call, saying he might in this town."
"That's why we came to Silent Hill too," Esther told him. "We were worried about Dr. Noming and remembered him telling us on the last day he was teaching that he was going to Silent Hill."
"You're college students?"
"Yeah, we both are," Audrey answered. "We both came to Silent Hill…"
Audrey didn't finish, as they all heard a siren outside. Jacob didn't like the sound of the siren but seeing the terrified faces of Esther and Audrey, he knew that this was something to be scared about. The siren continued to blare outside of the church while the two students grabbed Jacob and hurried to the back of the church. Esther flung open the door and the three ran down a hallway. The wooden boards of the hallway's floor were moldy and looked like it could crumbled any minute.
"Hey, what's happening!" Jacob yelled running with the students.
"The Otherworld's coming!" Esther answered.
"We have to stay away from the big spaces," Audrey said. "More likely to be swarmed in that room. We have to find a room with only one way in and wait for things to turn back."
Jacob opened his mouth to speak but when his foot touched the ground, the boards gave way and broke under him. He yelled out as he fell down to the floor below. With a loud thud, Jacob fell on his back onto the dusty floor of what looked like a empty basement. He gritted his teeth, the pain in his back intense.
"Are you okay, Jacob?" Esther yelled looking down the hole Jacob fell through.
"Esther! We have to hurry!" Audrey yelled.
"I'm sorry!" Esther yelled pulling out her gun and a small flashlight. She dropped them into the hole and the objects landed next to Jacob. "Use those to survive! We'll meet later!"
With that said. Esther turned around and ran with Audrey down the hallway. Jacob cursed under his breath as he got up and picked the gun and flashlight Esther had left behind. The siren was still blaring outside.
That was when Jacob heard crackling. He turned to the source of the sound and what he saw terrified him so much, he fell backwards and dropped the gun.
The whole ceiling was on fire and the fire was spreading to the surrounding walls. The fire spread at such a fast rate that soon, the whole room was on fire. For some reason, the fires didn't burn Jacob but that didn't mean it didn't terrify him. Jacob held his head and closed his eyes, screaming to drown out the sound of the flames. The crackling of the flames went down and Jacob opened his eyes to see that the flames were becoming embers, falling down and disappearing into the floor.
"What the hell?" Jacob whispered looking at the new look of the room he was in.
The walls were made out of metal and were blackened, how metal would look like after being burned. Some parts of the wall fell off and dissolved into ash once it had hit the floor. The floor had changed from stone to tiles, ruined and also blackened from the fire. The wooden door out of the room had changed into a bigger iron door. Jacob could understand why the room was blackened but he couldn't understand how it had changed into metal.
He picked up the gun and walked to the iron door, grabbing the latch and turning it. The iron door opened, screeching as Jacob opened the door. It was dark, so Jacob had to turn on the flashlight Esther had also left.
The hallway outside the room was different. It still had the burned look and the blood but some parts of the wall were replaced with rusty fences. Jacob looked out of the fences, seeing iron bars and many other things he would expect would be in a factory. One other thing that he saw, was that chains hung from the ceiling, some even having bodies hanging off the hooks at the end.
"This must be the Otherworld," Jacob said taking out Dr. Noming's report, having not given it back to Esther.
Something like rock scrapped across the rusty floor and Jacob flashed his flashlight at whatever was making the sound. He saw the source of the sound and his heart began to beat faster. His hand trembled, making the light unstable.
Limping towards him, was a creature with the shape of a human body but had rocky skin. Some of its skin was broken, revealing a pulsating red stone underneath, as if it were burning. Its had no eyes, only having black rock in its place. Ash fell out of its mouth and nose as it limped. The creature reminded Jacob of coal, how it looked when it was burning.
The creature noticed Jacob and it's face twisted, its coal-like skin cracking. It opened it's mouth and screamed, it's whole body bursting into flames.
Then it began to run towards Jacob.
...
Author's note: Big fan of the Silent Hill franchise, which is owned by Konami (I think). For those reading, please review and say how my writing could be better, I'll really appreciate it. Also, to find out the symbolism I put in the creatures and the Otherworld, even though it's still the beginning of the story.