The Best of Me – Prologue
(A Silent Hill fan fiction)
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Autumn had begun to crawl in through the American mid-west, changing green leaves to brown and gold and red and painting naked branches in a cool evening's frost. Each morning, the mercury crept closer and closer to zero as lakes and ponds turned to ice and rain to sleet and snow. The sun rose progressively later and lower and set earlier than the day before and there came a sudden demand for firewood and furnace filters and thermal underwear across the state.
The bus – a cross-country transit – cruised to a break-squealing stop beside a derisory little green signpost with peeling paint and a faded, golden, bus stop number, barely discernible amongst the bushes and long grass of the encompassing forest. The atmosphere was dark and eerily still. In the distant, foggy, shadows, birds and insects chirped and foliage rustled like paper tassels in a cool draft.
Murphy Pendleton – travelling under an acquired alias – begged pardon from the elderly, grey woman half-asleep in the chair beside him as he rose from his seat a third of the way down the bus.
The lady – whose name he had forgotten – had boarded the bus five states ago and began, immediately, to chat with Murphy as though he was an old friend with whom she had not seen or spoken in some time. Murphy, for his part, remained silent for he had adamantly attempted to maintain a sense of anonymity among the bus' other passengers. Although Anne Cunningham had reported him dead several weeks earlier, and he had easily acquired a false identity and a little money with which to travel, he had little interest in drawing any attention to himself. He was – for all intents and purposes – a convicted criminal; he'd caused a lot of people a lot of trouble. He'd contracted with the Devil – he'd committed murder – and paid a heavy price for it. Acquittal – as grateful as he had been for Cunningham's forgiveness – and ease of conscience could not change that. Therefore, he remained cautious and vigilant – lest he inadvertently cross paths with a police officer or someone who knew him.
The elderly woman didn't recognize him – She didn't look the type to watch the local news – and couldn't care less either way. The other passengers had boarded and travelled in couples and small groups and those that hadn't occupied themselves on cellphones and computers, keeping in touch with family and friends. Murphy decided that the lady's eagerness to talk to him – to talk at all – suggested that, like him, she was alone and looking for companionship, as ephemeral as theirs may have been.
The bus came to a complete stop and as Murphy rose from his chair, the lady stirred and smiled at him as she drew her handbag and her knees back to give him room. Murphy moved passed her into the aisle and carefully opened the overhead compartment. He grabbed a dingy duffel bag patched up with duct tape and staples and checked the seat once more to ensure he had not left anything behind. The elderly woman blessed him and touched his hand – the gentle warmth lingering as he crossed the bus, mumbled a shy "Thank you" to the driver and stepped out into the chilled afternoon. The bus' engine roared and sputtered. It had been years since anyone had shown him any genuine kindness and Murphy watched with a sudden twinge of sadness as the bus – and the elderly, grey woman – disappeared into the mist.
After the bus could no longer be heard rippling down the street, and a mild, misty rain had started to fall, Murphy followed a narrow, gravel road away from the highway. A couple of miles away was a small town of only a couple hundred people; the type of town where a man could lay low for a few days, maybe a month – just long enough to earn a little money. Cunningham had given him a hundred dollars – in cash – and Murphy had used the money to buy himself a bit of food, a few articles of clothing and the duffel bag from a thrift store, and a bus ticket to the nearest city.
The first step had been falsifying his identity and that hadn't been difficult at all.
During his incarceration, Murphy had acquired a great deal of information about the American underworld – anything and everything from the best dealers to the most affordable hit men, to cities with corrupt police officers willing to ignore or even participate in crimes for a percentage of the profits, which districts belonged to which gangs and on which streets a crime could occur with minimal – to no – response. Murphy never participated in discussions himself – he'd simply become a good listener.
Therefore, he knew exactly where to go – and who to speak to – about a fake identity. A few hours and fifty bucks later, convicted criminal Murphy Pendleton was gone for good. The fabricated driver's licence and social insurance number had allowed him to apply for credit cards and jobs that required criminal record checks. He felt like a chrysalis recently hatched; a new man with a new name and a new purpose.
After an hour of walking, Murphy reached a diner and gas station on the edge of town where three large trucks were filling up at the pump. The bright, fluorescent lights of the diner beckoned and Murphy glanced briefly left and right before darting across the road. A bell jingled above the entrance as Murphy opened the door and stepped inside, where he was assaulted by the aroma of bacon and freshly brewed coffee, the chaotic cacophony of conversation and cooking food and dinnerware, and the warmth of central heating. Beside the door, Murphy hung up his coat along with a dozen others to dry on a plastic coat rack and scrapped the leaves and mud from his boots in the carpet. He approached an empty booth in the corner, overlooking the gas station, and moved the crumby plates and crumpled napkins that had been left there by the previous occupants to another table before sitting down. The rain had picked up outside and the sky darkened to black, interrupted occasionally by flares of lightning. The fluorescent lights in the diner flickered.
A few minutes passed before a bubbly, twenty-something-year-old waitress approached with a coiled notepad of paper and a laminated menu. Murphy briefly perused the menu, ordering a cup of black coffee and buttered toast. He didn't have much of an appetite – or money – but he needed a place to dry off and wait out the rest of the storm.
It only took a minute or two for the waitress to return with his coffee and toast; she asked – with a peculiar sort of eagerness – if there was anything else he needed. Murphy had made a conscious effort not to look at her but the fervour in her tone caught him off-guard and he glanced up, finding her smiling at him in the sort of way he had not seen in years.
Murphy briefly glanced around the diner. The other clientele comprised mostly of couples, families and hard, overweight truckers with calloused fingers and heavy Southern drawls. An attractive, single man was probably an anomaly – not that Murphy considered himself particularly attractive.
"I'm all right for now, thanks," Murphy answered quietly in response to her earlier question and watched as a cloud of dejection crossed over her face. She flashed a quick smile and informed him she'd come back a little later, if he should decide he needed anything else.
He found himself admiring her as she cycled through the booths and tables, particularly interested in her backside and legs – long, pale and thin – stretching out from beneath a black, hemmed pencil skirt. Almost immediately, he glanced away, feeling horribly ashamed and guilty.
He couldn't say why. His marriage to Carol had ended several years ago; although she had been his best friend – his confidante, his lover, the mother of his child…his everything – he didn't delude himself with fantasies of happily ever afters. He didn't dream of driving home to Brahms and their small, suburban house by the lake. He didn't dream of holding her, of kissing her, of making love to her and pretending everything had gone back to the way it used to be.
After all, Carol was the one who had ended it.
And Murphy couldn't blame her.
He never could fathom how Carol had fallen in love with him – and forgiven him – despite the man he used to be. He couldn't understand how a beautiful, intelligent and wonderful woman like her could find anything good in a degenerate man like him. Sometimes, during their courtship, he imagined that Carol considered him something of a charity case. He convinced himself that she didn't love him in the same way he loved her; she pitied him. She cared for him, and helped him, only because that was the decent thing to do and one day, she'd come to realize that and she'd leave him – alone and heartbroken – for some decent, handsome, successful middle class man.
All of that changed the first time they made love. He could still remember everything about that night: Carol's flavoured lips – passion fruit and wine – and small, soft hands, roaming his hair and his skin, the dark evening sky, the heat of their breaths – and their bodies – as they'd abandoned their clothing on the bedroom floor, the rain and thunder, the sensation of their bodies coming and moving together, the sound of his name falling over her lips, the way every moment – every move, every response, every whisper – let him know that there was no one in the world she cared for more.
After that night, Murphy did everything he could to become – and remain – a man she deserved. Any lingering shadow of the person he had been before her, he abandoned completely. Carol – and, within a few years, Charlie – became his entire existence. He attended church on Sundays, cooked dinner every other night, cut the lawn on Saturdays, got a job at the local garage to provide for his family and paid his taxes on time. He always remembered anniversaries and birthdays and bought Carol flowers occasionally, just to remind her he cared. After Charlie was born, he enjoyed getting up at night to care for him, to change his diaper and feed him once he'd stopped breastfeeding, and to rock him to sleep when he was scared or sick. As Charlie grew up, Murphy always found time to attend baseball games and drive him to school; he decorated the house for Christmas and Halloween and helped Carol arrange birthday parties and family dinners. He played board games and video games, read him stories before bed, sailed kites with him in the park, taught him all about cars – about engines and horsepower and pistons – and took him on afternoon fishing trips out on the lake.
Everything about his life with Carol and Charlie had been a dream, a perfect reverie. But all dreams – Murphy came to realize – ended eventually.
His dream – his life – ended the afternoon Charlie disappeared. And after he died, everything began to spiral out of control.
Carol blamed him for Charlie's death; hated him for letting her down. Murphy blamed himself – he always blamed himself – but he blamed Patrick Napier more. The county couldn't prove Napier had had any involvement in Charlie's abduction, assault or murder; any evidence found was circumstantial at best. A short time afterwards, Napier moved to another part of town and Murphy began plotting his revenge.
He couldn't divulge his plans to Carol – even if he had thought to. He'd already decided to beat and kill Napier – he wanted Napier to suffer the same way Charlie had suffered – consequences be damned; he couldn't drag Carol into it. Even if she didn't try to stop him, he couldn't allow the police to believe she had had any involvement.
After he was arrested, he didn't expect Carol to ask for a divorce. He didn't blame her – perhaps she shouldn't have married him in the first place – but he didn't expect it. He could have argued, and tried to reason with her, but he hadn't. Every accusation, every insult, she made was true. He had betrayed her when he failed to protect Charlie, and although he desperately needed it, he had no right to ask for her forgiveness, much less her heart. So he divorced her, and abandoned any notion of a future with her, or anyone.
Carol was the last good thing about him, and after the divorce, Murphy no longer cared. He no longer cared about freedom, or happiness, or love. He accepted blame – for Carol, for Charlie, for Napier – and a future, a life, behind bars.
The bell above the diner door jingled again and brought Murphy out of his thoughts. He glanced up out of instinct, and saw a couple enter in muddy boots and plastic raincoats. They shifted away from the door and lowered their hoods, hanging up their jackets on the rack, three pegs from where Murphy had hung his coat half an hour before.
The man was a handsome fellow – black hair combed neatly, a designer polo shirt, fitted jeans and a gold wrist watch. He carried the keys to a chrome Jaguar XJL Supercharged. The specs flew through Murphy's head: five litre, V8 engine, supercharged, four-hundred seventy horsepower; retail value approximately a hundred-ten thousand dollars.
His companion, likewise, looked lovely, despite the brewing storm outside. Her hair was chestnut and drawn up into an elegant, partial up-do, with the remaining shoulder-length strands curled loosely. She had a beautiful figure, curved and slender – a little thin, perhaps, but otherwise very nice – under a black cocktail dress that brushed her knees and carried a clutch and a pair of matching black pumps in her hand to keep them from getting muddy.
She said something to the man – something Murphy couldn't hear across the restaurant and over the music streaming from the speakers in the ceiling – and headed towards the restrooms at the back of the restaurant. She froze in mid-stride, her dark eyes falling on him in his booth. Murphy's breath caught at the back of his throat as he caught a clear glimpse of her face and realized – once again – how horribly cruel fate could be.
"Carol…"
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/Prologue
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Disclaimer: Carol Pendleton, Murphy Pendleton and all Silent Hill-related characters are property of Konami.