AN:/ Welcome to a SilentShoggoth and Violentartista co-production. For those of you terribly familiar with the Silent Hill games, you're in for a treat! For those of you less familiar, there's plenty for you to enjoy as well. (Special note for the sticklers: Some of Douglas's details and specific events are foggy at best. The possible time line suggested is one of several possibilities, particularly with regards to the Sullivan cases and James' disappearance. A few other details and events as well, that weren't clearly described as canon have been tweaked. Quite possibly only the most avid chronicler would even notice, so nothing too major here folks.) There are spoilers in here for Silent Hill 2 in particular, and a few minor ones for 3. Comment and critique is strongly encouraged so don't be shy, review! Onto the show...
The Hanged Man
I
Douglas Cartland had heard long ago, that a man's waking mind was like a chapel, a devout cult that held a single denomination of the self; perception.
If that was accurate, then his dreams at night must be a crematorium, filled to the brim with burnt thoughts and ashen memories. The things that were best left to rot, forgotten, forever.
But even the fires of hell can light up the night sky, and deep in dreams that are best left to dust, lost children can appear like blackened ghosts, birthing themselves from flames red as blood.
Like a nexus of evil, the darkness spread from Ashfield's central plaza, extending its long fingers into the night as though reaching for the pendulous moon above. The smell was damp and the street was wet- but not from a fresh rain. Only fetid water sat unpleasantly in the fountains, the gardens and gutters, offering up a malodorous stench to the black sky. Tattered ivy crept across the worn brick and writhed down into the heart of the commercial district, pausing to wrangle around the 'Saving & Trust' bank, Ashfield's biggest repository for the material wealth of its citizens.
Under the white moon and empty sky, it swelled like a living thing, its wide bricks held with mortar and sticky with blood. Inhaling ambitions and breathing out, bleak despair.
He stood before it, like a child stood before an angry god. There were sirens, he could hear them coming from far away in the distance, like a bleak echo of his memories.
He ran from them.
His breath almost gave out before his foot landed in an errant puddle, drenching it in sticky, swampy water. The reflection that stared up at him from the murky wet wasn't a child. It was just a musty old cop that had come to save his son, from his own abject miseries. He was an adult and as an adult, was well equipped to face his own fears.
At least, that's what he would tell himself when his heart threatened to beat out of his chest and his palms grew shaky, covered in sweat.
With two steps the world had spun on its axis and Douglas was standing beside a familiar blockade, bright orange and yellow.
Police Line. Do Not Cross.
"I am the police!" he hissed, to no one.
He shouldered through the yellow plastic, snapping it aside and ignoring the flicker from the corner of his eye, as it fluttered madly around. There was a shadow in the window, a figure holding a gun.
"Don't!" Douglas shouted.
But the gun was dropped to the ground with a loud thud, closely followed by the sound of it firing. It might as well have been a canon, the shot was so loud.
Like an echo, shots rang out around Douglas as he stood mutely, unable to look away. But the shadow simply stood stock still, its hand extended.
"Robert! Robert!" Douglas began to shout, banging his shoulder against the glass door, "Open the goddamn door!"
Why?
"What do you mean why? I'm your father!" he shouted, his shoulder finally bending the hinge on the door enough for it to hang lax, to the side.
Douglas crawled through the hole and stumbled into the broken glass, crunching the empty bullet casings as he went. He staggered forward, reaching out to the figure enshrouded by the darkness at the till. His hands gripped something soft and meaty. He pulled back, his fingers sticky with blood.
But I'm dead.
Sirens wailed in his ears.
The alarm was thrashed violently to the ground. Douglas groaned and blinked, the morning sun filtering through the small blinds.
Just a dream. It was just a dream.
Perhaps, he should have been used to it by now. Most of the time, he dreamed about Robert and the robbery that went terribly awry, other times he dreamed about dear dead friends. But occasionally, it was just the town and the cold moon, lingering in his subconscious like a bad taste at the back of his mouth.
He staggered to the bathroom, nearly tripping over magazines, books and unwashed laundry. The water from the tap was cold but it was clear, nothing like the musky swamp that hovered in his nightmare. He splashed it against his face, like holy water to ward off evil. If he were a religious man, perhaps he would call the dreams a form of penance and the scentless water from his tap, a means to forgiveness.
He laughed dry and rakishly, his gray hair and yellowed teeth grinning back at him from the mirror. Maybe he was becoming an old man before his time, with thoughts like those.
Five minutes later, Douglas left the apartment with his case files folded neatly into a pocket of his trench-coat. He pulled his fedora down further over his eyes, to keep out the glare of the early morning sun and perhaps, to hide the fact that his sleep had been a little more than restless of late.
In his empty apartment, a stiff breeze rattled the blinds, casting shadows haphazardly around the room. It was a miserly home compared to the house his son had grown up in, sold naturally, after the divorce. But money had never been a great motivator of Douglas' soul, much to the chagrin of his buddies on the force. Instead, he lingered on in low income housing, stomaching the peeling wallpaper and bad paint that only barely masked the mildew lurking under the walls.
If someone asked, it was just a temporary abode until things were more 'settled'. In reality, it was the misery that he had sewn into the place that kept him there.
It had become like a deranged buoy, a mournful beacon in the vast spiritual void, a dark talisman to remind him that his soul wasn't quite dead.
A self imposed exile was better then no life at all.
And thus he had walked into the light, nursing a sorrow that fed on his fears like a cancer, sustained out of desperation.