Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Henry, Eileen, Walter or any other aspect of "Silent Hill". The only thing I claim is the story itself.
Henry dispassionately inspected the box before him. It was an ordinary cardboard box with the word "Halloween deco stuff" printed hastily on the side in Eileen's girlish scrawl. It was an ordinary container barring the unique items within: googly-eyed spiders with legs made from matted pipe cleaners, armfuls of orange, green and black streamers, felt jack o-lanterns and candles fashioned to look like candy corn. One, though, looked like someone had taken a hearty bite out of the top, it had been melted down to such an unrecognizable state. It was only October fourth, a day that dawned as unremarkably as the day before it, yet Eileen was in such high spirits that Henry couldn't bear deny her entry into his apartment with a box of not so gently used Halloween goodies.
She kicked off her tennis shoes near the door and strode into the living room, placing the box on his coffee table.
"It'll really spruce up your place," she explained, hands on her hips, surveying his uncluttered, simple quarters. He knew she wasn't trying to be rude. "And it's not like you'll have to keep them up forever. Heck, you can tear them all down after midnight on the thirty-first and I won't so much as blink. But, I mean, I've already decorated my apartment and had some stuff left over and thought you could use 'em."
Henry hadn't known, though there was a bit of a scuffle next door yesterday which sent him into a bit of a panic before he rubbed his temples and repeated his familiar mantra, 'Walter is gone, Walter is gone, I saw to it myself...' And he couldn't bring himself to check the peephole in his wall. Not since Eileen came home from the hospital.
"It's fine," he said in that stale tone of his. Eileen beamed and Henry felt his mouth twist into some semblance of a smile, but never showed his teeth.
She pried apart the flaps of the box top and fished elbow-deep through the decorations before finding a lopsided holiday wreath. The plush face of a yowling black cat stared back at Eileen from the core of the wreath and she tittered, plucking lint from its open red mouth.
"This thing used to give me nightmares. I couldn't stand to have my parents hang it on the door until I was thirteen."
Henry's smile-but-not-a-smile broadened. Ever since she was discharged from the hospital, they had become companions. Not on purpose, they merely gravitated toward each other inexplicably. Henry didn't know if it was because of the nightmarish journey they embarked on together or how often he visited her with flowers or stuffed bears (never rabbits) while she was bedridden. She told him on his fourth or fifth visit that none of her old friends came by to see her, only Henry. "Sweet Henry", she groggily said once.
Back at South Ashfield Heights, Eileen was the one who visited him. She never brought a bouquet or toy animals, just herself and a whole repertoire of stories. Stories of her worst date ever, of her father passing away from a cancer in his stomach, how she calls her mother every Sunday afternoon. Henry would make egg salad sandwiches in the kitchen and found himself hooked on her every word. He wanted to share a tale with her, but always found his tongue withering against his teeth, never able to manage more than a hum of sympathy or a wheezy huff of laughter.
And here she was, sharing again about her fear of that yowling cat wreath she was presently fastening to his open front door. He should say something back, like how his cousins used to tease him for being so scrawny as a kid or how he'd love to take Eileen's picture one day or how he failed high school chemistry. Anything!
"Yeah," was all he could muster and bowed his head in embarrassment.
"Aw, man," she dejectedly exclaimed from his front door. His eyes darted over to her. She crouched to the floor and picked up a little rubber spider from the floor. Eileen held him aloft between her thumb and forefinger, squishing his pliable body. "He tried to escape. Hang on, I've got glue." And she swept out of sight. Henry could hear the weary creak of her door swinging open and sat on his couch.
Blowing an errant piece of mousy brown hair from his face, he berated himself for being so quiet. Eileen was lively and kind and always confided in him. For that, Henry felt admittedly uncomfortable at first, but that was quickly being tempered by pride. She could have talked to Frank Sunderland, who was equally as kind, or she could've even had a superficial friendship with Cynthia Velasquez were Cynthia still alive. But no, Eileen chose Henry and that exhilarated him to the point of nausea. He still couldn't speak to her beyond neutral conversation about the weather, her day, how Mr. Sunderland was doing; never Walter. It wasn't that he didn't like her. He recently realized that he liked her a lot and perhaps that was the problem.
Before he could agitate himself further, Eileen returned with the rubber spider and craft glue. Henry busied himself with the box of decorations, occasionally throwing her sidelong glances as she daintily glued the critter to its old spot on the wreath. He directed his attention to a spot of puckered carpet between his feet when Eileen elicited a cry.
"What's wrong?" he asked, turning his head to her so fast it dizzied him for a moment.
Craft glue had accidentally dribbled down the front of her shirt. She fretfully dabbed at the mess with a finger, pulling out a gooey strand, nose wrinkling.
"Eeewww..." she softly exhaled. "My favorite shirt. Why do things like this always happen to your favorite shirt?" Eileen looked at him with eyes as round and fevered as a little girl who lost her most beloved doll. "Help me." Henry had a sudden and unpleasant flashback to her blood-soaked apartment, a dirty trench coat, 20/21... 'God, stop it.'
He stood up, patting the air reassuringly. "If we get it in the wash soon it should be okay. Go back in my room and pick a shirt to wear in the meantime. It'll be okay." Another mantra.
She pulled at her collar, looking at the hardening glue stain distastefully before following his insistent, gesturing hand to a room down the hall, last door on the left. His bedroom.
It was as Eileen anticipated. A drab blue blanket pulled taut across the mattress, a polished desk with leather notebooks neatly fanned across the top, a small dresser with drawers that didn't hitch or stick when you pulled them out, not that she would give that theory a test run. It was just something she felt to be true. The whole of his apartment mirrored Henry perfectly; timid and maddeningly fastidious. She hoped the bedroom would give her more of a clue as to the kind of person he was deep down, but there was nothing here to indicate a wild side. Even the photo hanging over his bed depicted a scenic arctic river.
Sighing, she whipped her off her soiled shirt and draped it over his desk chair. The closet doors were folded open so she helped herself to the clothes inside, flipping through hangers of dark denim jeans and button-up shirts and pressed slacks before coming upon a black t-shirt emblazoned with the face and name of a pretty blond singer. Eileen chuckled, took it off its hanger and held it up to the meek light of his bedside lamp. 'So he's a music fan, enough of a fan to buy this shirt anyway. That's a start.'
"Who's Mary Elizabeth McGlynn?" she wondered aloud, slipping the top on and smoothing it down against the short expanse of her torso. She made to leave, but the faint glimmer of shiny purplish material caught her eye. The tattered hem of a dress stuck out invitingly between an ash brown blazer and worn khaki shorts. "Wh--..."
Eileen's hands shook as she reached for the dress, catching it between two quaking fingers before clutching it in her fists and furiously tearing it from the closet. Henry's clothes violently swayed on their hangers, the khaki shorts slipped and hung from a cuff. Eileen's purple party dress lay on the floor, the one she had been beaten nearly to death in, the one Henry swore he had stuffed into a sewer in front of the bar across the street when no one was looking. Yet here it was, the skirt mockingly upturned, the bodice sweat stained and checkered with blood. Her blood. She angrily gathered the outfit, quashing the clench in her stomach, and stormed into the living room where Henry was unraveling streamers.
"What the fuck?" she demanded, forcing the question through her teeth. She held up the dress, balled tightly in her clawed hands. Henry could vaguely determine what it was, what it might be. It was like the relic of a dream he didn't care to remember. Speechless, he could only shrug.
Eileen chucked the thing at him. It hit him squarely in the chest before tumbling to the ground in an ugly heap.
"It's disgusting that you would do that, really -- you promised, Henry! You lied! You're a -- a liar and a sicko." She pressed her back flat against the wall, sidling along it like she was on the edge of a great precipice. "I want you to stay away from me, understand? Don't you dare come near me or I'll make you sorry you did." When she reached the open front door, she fled into the hallway, leaving her shoes behind. He presumed she would go back to her apartment, but the fleshy clap of her bare feet receded to the northern stairwell and then faded into nothingness.
Henry mindlessly dropped the orange streamer he was holding and bent to pick up whatever it was Eileen threw at him. He shook it out and emitted a strangled gasp when he could finally identify the material. That dress, that damnable dress. The skirt in bloody strips, the bodice torn. There was even a little chafe on the velvety waist where her cast had rubbed against it.
"How... ?" How did it get here? He had disposed of it in a sewer. Rolled it up as tight as he could and pushed it through the grimy slot. It gave a little thunk-splash on impact and he remembered thinking it was the most glorious sound in the world. The final vestige of a lunatic named Walter Sullivan, gone. At the time, he told Eileen what he had done and she hiccuped grateful little sobs. Yet somehow, someway, some-fucking-way, the dress was back. Found its way into his closet, like he put it there as a joke.
"Enough." With the offending item in his right hand, Henry reached across his island counter and retrieved a silver Zippo with his left. He loped to his door, but stopped to contemplate Eileen's abandoned tennis shoes. He resolved to give them back to her. And he would talk. Talk about how he'd burned the dress, how magnificent the fire was, how sorry he was, that they should move out of these apartments because this place had too many awful memories and they both deserved a happier life. He would talk about photographing her like he always wanted because she was so beautiful.
'Later, though, later.' He stepped outside, his eyes sweeping the plain corridor and locked his door for the first time in months.
My first "Silent Hill" fic ever. I wrote this as a fic exchange for a friend, but liked it so much that I felt the need to pimp it everywhere. Including here.
Comments and critiques are loved! Thanks for reading.