Disclaimer: Konami owns Silent Hill.
AN: This is a response the Valentine's Day challenge on SHHet, an LJ comm. Basically, write a fic for Valentine's Day with a Silent Hill theme. This idea was inspired by a mix of my original idea and the mix of two users' ideas on the group, AnarchicQ's and TheDisillusionist's. I hope you enjoy it.
From Metatron, With Love
Alessa Summers, a.k.a. Alessa Gillespie, woke up with a headache. Someone was hammering on the roof. She sighed to herself and brought a hand up to swipe down her face. Of all the times for him to work on his little 'project', why did it have to be in the morning?
She supposed she'd best get up and check it out. She got up and pulled on a robe over her negligee. There was nothing Alessa hated more than getting up unnecessarily early in the morning, but oh well. Looking at the sleeping figure still on the bed, she decided not to dally around. She went to investigate, but not before she gave Lisa a kiss on the forehead. She stroked the side of Lisa's hair. She thought of doing more, but she wasn't one to pull that stuff unless she had the person's permission.
Outside, the sights and sounds of winter greeted her. It was still a little frigid this time of year, so she had to wear a jacket over her robe. Mentally she reviewed what had happened over the past several days.
It was about a week ago that he showed up. Pale gray skin, yellow-hued skull, a grin out of her worst nightmare; it was all she could do not to scream every time she saw it. It was early morning when it came.
Alessa was coming out of the shower. Usually she left the bathroom window uncovered. She had to admit, she was a bit of an exhibitionist. Besides, it would take someone sitting up in a tree with binoculars to spy on her. She was going to going to dry off with her towel when she saw the face in the window and screamed. Alessa quickly covered herself. The creature gave her a lecherous grin, like it was amused by what it saw, and then it climbed up onto the roof like some kind of spider.
Her parents panicked at first. But when the creature did them no harm, they quickly settled into a reluctant tolerance of it. The creature stayed confined to the roof most of the time. Only the occasional glimpse of it was managed, usually by accident. That was more than enough to unsettle Alessa.
Every morning, they heard it working and pounding on the roof. And every morning they ignored it, pretending as if the creature wasn't even there. Nobody was fooled; they knew something weird was going on. It was just easier to pretend everything was alright.
She walked around to the side of the house. The demon was also working on that area of the house. Getting there, she saw the traces of unkempt status on the lawn. They hadn't been around to this side of the house in quite a while. Nobody dared to investigate what it was building. Thankfully, nobody in the neighborhood had noticed anything strange. Alessa was rather unsettled nobody had noticed an eight foot tall demon with a yellow head working on their roof. What else wouldn't they notice if the situation arose?
But now she'd had enough. She was going to find out once and for all what was going on here. The hammering had stopped a while ago. Alessa wasn't sure what to expect, but she wasn't going to let that stop her.
She stared open mouthed at the side of the house. There was a huge tarp laid out over the wall, like some of artwork in a museum. Suddenly she noticed the creature standing tall on top of the roof. It was hunched over like some kind of primordial beast. Its whole posture screamed at her with meaning. It was time to reveal the masterpiece he had been working on. Bending forward, its fingers grasped the sides of the tarp. Alessa wished dearly she'd brought a gun.
Suddenly he let the tarp fall. Alessa's jaw dropped to the ground as she stared at the remarkable sight underneath. An enormous looking heart covered the whole side of the house. Strings of what looked like tendrils or muscle hung down from the top of the design, back dropped against a sea of crimson and the fleshy tendrils that formed the main outline of the heart (were those intestines? she wondered in icy horror). It looked like it had been made on a massive sheet of plywood and then nailed to the wall. Large circles of cardboard were nailed to the board, simulating cheerios glued onto a greeting card, Alessa assumed. But it was the message in the center of the heart, scrawled in what looked like white glue, which truly rattled Alessa's mind.
Happy Valentine's Day, Mom, Love Valtiel