(Disclaimer, I don't own the rights to Silent Hill, those Konami guys do.)
(I was going to release this sooner but I didn't have the time, so sorry for the delay here it is.)
Chapter 1 Path
Harlan looked at the clock on his friend's wall and saw that it was almost midnight; His mother was going to skin him alive if she found out he stayed out this late. He said his goodbyes and started for the front door when Alex, his friend, stopped him.
"Dude, you're not going to walk home from here are you?" he asked him. Harlan just nodded and continued to go outside.
"But what about all the weird things that always happen here?" Alex asked him.
"Look, I have to get home or my ma will get mad and ground me! That's a lot worse then anything I could possibly run into out there." he said and started for the door again.
Alex grabbed his arm and pulled him back, he looked at him with his cold blue eyes and shook his head. He didn't like anyone walking out there at night especially someone his own age. Silent Hill was a weird town to live in and Alex barely ventured outside at night. Only when he absolutely had to.
"Come on man, I am tired and I have to get home. I don't need your stupid ghost stories tonight!" Harlan said in an impatient tone.
"They aren't ghost stories, they're true. Don't walk, I'll have my dad take you home, he can drive you." Alex suggested.
"Fine, but hurry and get him because I really have to get going." he replied.
Alex walked up to his fathers study and knocked on the door lightly. His mind flashing through all of the stories he had heard about the Silent Hill woods. The ones about creatures getting people and dragging them off into the darkness. A new story had started surfacing itself through the junior high lately. One about a creature that turned people into one of it's own if it caught them.
He walked in shivering at the thought of something turning him into a mindless creature of the Silent Hill woods. His father was sitting in a big old chair looking up from a book expectantly. Alex smiled and sat down on a recliner that was parked near the desk.
"What can I do for you sport?" Joseph asked his son.
"Dad would you be willing to take my friend Harlan home?" he crossed his fingers and chanted furiously in his mind, Say yes, say yes, say yes, say yes, over and over. His dad smiled at him and then bookmarked his book getting up and stretching.
"Sure I'll give him a ride, I need to get some air anyway." he said. Alex felt an inner relief suddenly wash over him. He seriously hated living a quarter of a mile outside of Silent Hill.
They went downstairs together and when they got there Harlan was gone, Alex felt a sudden uneasiness spread throughout his stomach. He felt sick, he knew that he was going to be that way until he went to school tomorrow.
"Well maybe we can go see where he went?" Joseph said to Alex. He nodded hoping that they'd run into Harlan out in the driveway.
They called out to him for a few minutes and when he didn't answer back Joseph shrugged and went back inside. Alex hung around for a few more minutes before he to fled to the house. He felt sick and scared for Harlan. The woods were no place for a kid of only thirteen years. Even if Harlan was a little tall for his age Alex doubted that he could fight off the creatures he'd heard about in all of those stories everyone whispered in class.
Alex went to his room and locked the door, he made sure his window was locked as well. He jumped on his bed and and covered up hoping that Harlan would make it home, even if he went on the path. That was where the soulless creature was supposedly creeping around. It took you and made you into a mindless zombie. It happened to a kid named Zeke Morrison.
Supposedly he was walking home from fishing all day and some jogger happened to be out for a jog that night and had heard Zeke screaming. The jogger being a curious fellow went down the path and found Zeke. He was walking towards a creature that in no way could have been human, it opened it's arms to Zeke and he walked right into them.
The jogger as it turned out ran the other way screaming, he made it all the way home and called the police. No one ever found Zeke's body or the creature that the jogger described. That was a perfectly fictitious story, Joseph had once told Alex. Of course Alex thought that as well then he read an old paper and found out that there really was a Zeke Morrison. Ever since then he was wary of the path.
He laid in his bed hoping against hope that Harlan was out of the path and onto a street near his home by now. He felt like he was partly responsible for Harlan, he had invited him to his house for dinner after all. He grabbed some of his hair in his fist and slightly tugged at it, why did his parents have to move out here in the woods? He knew the house was big but it really wasn't worth all of the weird noises that they sometimes heard at night.
Alex Looked out his bedroom window into the dark parts of the woods, it was where the path was. He saw the solitary street light that was set in the middle of the path, the half way mark. He hoped that Harlan was past that part of the path and well on his way home. Or better yet, already at home getting in trouble by his mother. At least his mother wasn't some soulless beast that turned people into the living dead.
He laid back down and still thinking about all of this, it made him scared. What was it about Silent Hill that made him so jumpy? He couldn't pin point what it was and maybe he was better off not knowing. Some things were better off left alone. His father had told him that once. He laid there thinking about all of these things and fell into a light doze.
Harlan walked out the door, he was too impatient to be waiting for Alex's dad. He needed get home right away and the only way would be to walk out there and take the path. He walked it only two or three other times at night and only when there were at least two or three others along with him. He'd never taken it alone, not ever.
The path was an old dirt path that was in the woods of Silent Hill, it stretched on right into town and led to a sidewalk. It was a quarter of a mile long and had only one street light in the middle of it. It was kind of like a marker of sorts to let people know that they had walked exactly half of the path. There were plenty of trees and bushes alongside the path and a few benches here and there. The benches were more than likely put there for the old people.
Harlan looked around at the beginning of the path, it was very dark and he could barely see anything at all. It would only take him a minute or two to get to the street light if he walked fast enough. He thought about going back and accepting the ride that he so rudely walked out on. He could hear Alex and his dad calling out to him. He kept walking though, he could make it home on his own. He looked around again, this path made him nervous. Maybe it was all the stories everyone at school talked about.
He shook his head, everyone talked in school, sometimes they made things up just to scare each other. He decided to think about something else, he wasn't quite to the light yet. He thought about beating on Dustin Crover, the town wimp. Dustin was two years older then Harlan but Harlan still beat up on him. Most of the kids did, mainly because he never told anyone and he was easy to beat up.
He smiled at the thought of beating up Dustin tomorrow when he heard something out in the bushes. He stopped dead in his tracks and looked to his left. There was a slight movement in the bushes. He felt his pulse start to race as he continued to walk ignoring the noise. He continued to walk the path looking back every few seconds to make sure he wasn't being followed. He felt like he was being followed now.
He picked up his pace a little bit, he could see the light in the distance which meant he was nearly half way through the path. His pulse started to quicken at the mere thought of getting out of the woods. He was nearly jogging now, his fear was starting to get the best of him and suddenly the woods were alive with noises. Noises of things he'd never heard before. Just before he made it to the light he heard a noise that sounded like a woman screaming.
He made it to the light and decided to stop for a second and gather his bearings before he got too scared. It was ridiculous to think that monsters existed, even in Silent Hill. He felt like he was able to relax a little bit now. The woods seemed to be quiet, that eased his mind a little bit. That scream though...he shook his head violently, he didn't want to start thinking about that now, he just got rid of all the scary thoughts in his head.
He rested his hand on an old tree and started to dig a rock out of his shoe. As he did this the tree seemed to move suddeny. He looked up at it and fell back on his butt. Standing in front of him was a big dark figure. It had no eyes, only sockets. That was all he could really make out, he was too terrified to look at the rest of it's details. He got up and ran away from it, going in the opposite direction of the creature.
His mind was working now as he ran deep into the woods, it had a stitched mouth and a long pointy nose. It's hair was stringy long and greasy and it smelled like something rotten. He looked back to see if it was following him. It wasn't but he kept running anyway. It was wearing a big long leathery jacket and he kept seeing that jacket when he shut his eyes. The jacket looked like it might have been made of human skin. He looked at the hand that had touched it, yeah it had to be human skin he thought as he ran for his life.
He managed to stick near the path as he ran away from the thing that was near the light. How long had it been following him, he wondered as he ran faster and faster through the woods. He saw lights up ahead, that had to be Alex's house. He felt relief go over his terrified mind, he closed his eyes for a split second and when he opened them he saw a white flash and pain suddenly flew through his head.
He was lying on the ground looking up at a low branch that he must have hit. He touched his nose, it was bleeding. He closed his eyes again and then opened them. At first he wasn't sure what he was looking at, it wasn't the night sky or the tree anymore. Then he realized what it was and in that second he managed to let out a scream. The sockets got closer and closer to his own eyes as he screamed...
Alex heard something outside and he was almost sure it was a scream. He buried himself deep inside his blankets and laid in the dark, terror gnawing at the parts of his mind that produced fear. He wanted to run to his mom and dad's room so badly that he almost did. Then he reasoned with himself, why would a thirteen year old need to go to his parents room? Yet he felt the urge to go his parents room anyway. It all boiled down to how scared he was and he was scared out of his mind.
He heard a tapping on his bedroom window, it made him jump. He listened for it again, he was on the verge of running to his parents room. There was only silence for a minute, then he heard it again. This time it was more distinct.
TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP TAP!
That was Harlan's secret knock. Alex felt some of the tension he had earlier leave his body. He looked to the window and saw Harlan standing out there waiting for him to open it. He unlocked it and let Harlan crawl inside.
"Where did you go man?" Alex said in a hushed but excited voice. Harlan didn't say anything at all as he stood at the foot of his bed.
"Harlan you okay?" he asked in a nervous voice.
Harlan walked slowly to the side of the bed and looked down at Alex. There was silence for a moment and then Alex screamed as he realized that Harlan was missing his eyes. He rolled out from under Harlan's reaching hand and ran for the hallway. He shut his door on the way out and ran for his parents bedroom. It was his only hope, at least that's what it felt like in his mind. He pulled the door open and ran to his parents bed shrieking incoherently.
They looked up at him in confusion and concern. His mother held him while his father went to check things out.
"Tell me what happened Alex." his mother said in a soothing voice.
"Harlan came in, he didn't have any eyes." he said.
They waited there for a few minutes and still Joseph didn't return from his room. Alex's mother got up and left the room insisting that she and Joseph would be back together. Alex waited in fear for his parents to return. He glanced at the clock, it was only eleven thirty. He sat there and tried to replay all of what he'd seen in his mind. Was that really Harlan or just a bad dream. To Alex it seemed way to real to be a dream.
The lights went out.
Alex let out a small gasp as he stared into the blackness that suddenly engulfed the room. He got off the bed and stumbled into the darkness looking for the door.
"Mom, Dad?" he called out in the darkness.
He felt around and found the dresser and a flashlight on top of it. The electricity went out from time to time so his dad kept a flashlight handy just in case. He grabbed the flashlight and went into the hall. It was so quiet, even though it was getting windy outside it still seemed really silent. He felt uneasy walking into the darkness looking for his parents.
He turned the corner and saw them standing in the living room with their backs turned to him. He walked behind them and then reached for his mom's robe sleeve.
"Mom?" he said in a shaky voice.
She turned around and stared at him with empty eye sockets. His dad was the same. Alex ran for the hallway again as his parents took after him. He ran into the hallway closet and made his way to the back of it. There was a gun back there, a twenty-two. He grabbed it and made sure it was loaded.
He shut the flashlight off and waited for them to find him. He could hear them shuffling slowly towards the closet. He lifted the gun up and pointed it towards the door. He closed his eyes and prayed that he wouldn't miss.
Thump!
Someone hit the door. Alex fired off three rounds into the door, he heard something fall to the ground. There was some noises behind the door and then it flew open and he could see his mother standing there. He shot his father dead.
She walked slowly into the closet, he shook violently as he aimed for her head. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. His mother fell to the floor dead, a bullet hole above her right eye socket. Before he could get up Harlan lunged out of the darkness and tackled him.
They rolled out of the closet, the gun still in Alex's hands. Harlan reached for it and tried to pry it away. Alex pulled the trigger and missed. It was harder to hold onto the gun as Harlan shook it violently trying to get it out of Alex's hands. He held it as tightly as he could. The gun went off again and Harlan let it go. A big dark circle began to expand on his chest and he fell forward. Alex killed him without meaning to.
He began to cry as he saw the dead bodies lying on the floor at his feet. He threw the gun down and went to the phone and dialed for the police. Then he sat in the kitchen and waited for them to show up.
Alex was considered the youngest murderer in Silent Hill's history. His trial was swift and he was sent to a correctional facility for youths. He was also told that he had to see a psychiatrist. He never knew reality from his imagination after that and would often wake up screaming from nightmares about his parents and friend. Then one day the security guard found Alex's dead body in the back of a storage closet. He gouged his own eyes out.
The End. (For now)