Room 302
Disclaimer: I do not own SH4, Konami does.
A/N: Inspired by the novel 'Rebecca' and my own boredom. My first SH fic. Whee!
Henry brushed his sweaty fringe out of his eyes. He grasped the blood-stained rusty axe in one hand. Several of the twin-headed creatures lay dead at his feet, their grisly, long white arms stretched out. The narrow corridor was choked with them.
He felt nauseous. The apartment walls crawling with red tissue that seemed to have a life of its own was enough to make anyone sick. But he was back here at last, thought Henry as he looked at the patch of normal tiled floor and room 302.
There was no sound of a bell tolling here. It was strangely quiet…almost comforting. Henry gave the door a light push and it opened, for he hadn't bothered to close it when he left. The door shut behind him with a snap.
The room was bathed in a grey evening light. After the ominous business of sneaking through holes into rooms of past tenants, some utterly alien to him and Eileen, Henry felt quite relieved to be back. The sudden change of environment made him act cautiously though. He took a few steps forward…and jumped at a growling sound.
"Oh, silly me…it's just my stomach." He had practically no food ever since Walter chained up his door.
He surveyed his room. There was some ooze spreading over the living room wall. He lighted a holy candle on the drawer beside all his childhood photos. It dwindled away. Henry looked round his room again, and it now seemed surreal and impersonal. After all the events that took place here, he couldn't recognize it anymore. It was not the room where he once sat on the sofa, watching TV, a mug of hot chocolate in his hands. It was not the room where he woke up every morning, and opened the windows to the sound of traffic below.
This was a room where beastly things came out from the wall…where a woman's painful cries of labor could be heard in the bloody bathtub…something Walter called 'mom'. Even if things went back to normal, he could never see his room the same way again. Henry had lost his personal space.
Henry ran a hand through his tousled brown hair. He thought for a minute. Ok, he got back here…now what? He had to find Eileen, she was in terrible danger. He couldn't afford to lose her too. Panic was really getting to him now; hehoped Eileen wouldbe here.
Henry felt anger as he had not felt since he saw photos of what Walter did to Eileen. He remembered Cynthia in the blood-covered room…the way Richard's eyes rolled backwards in his head when he died…and Joseph…
Walter…he killed so many people. And now Eileen was to be sacrificed. Henry knew Walter only wanted to be reunited with his mother, but…
Henry couldn't help feeling something was amiss here. He went inside the hidden room and gasped. Walter's body was gone. Henry looked around fearfully, dropping his scrapbook in the process, memos scattering themselves everywhere. As he bent to pick them up, he saw the one about the 'crimson tome' floating in the black fluid underneath where Walter's body used to be.
If thou would stop the descent of the devil, you must bury part of the Conjurer's mother's flesh within the conjurer's true body…
Was it just him, or was the paper disappearing into that black liquid?
Thou must also pierce the conjurer's flesh with the 8 spears of 'Void', 'Darkness', 'Gloom', 'Despair', 'Temptation', 'Source'…
The memo sank through the fluid, still visible through the other side, as if the fluid was a mirror, before vanishing completely. Henry knelt before it, peering into its depths.
"What…the…hell?" he whispered. He understood now. This is where he must go to save Eileen and kill Walter to redeem his soul, or be killed himself in the final battle. Henry closed his eyes and reached into the black fluid, before a white light engulfed his consciousness.
Complete