Silent Hill: Quiet Streets
-:ONE:-
None of the books held any meaning anymore. Full of the thoughts and actions of people long dead, along with the rituals they spent their primitive lives toying with, they served as nothing more than slight diversions. Archer had tried all the incantations, performed all the rites and gestures, and drawn all the symbols he could find in the ancient pages of the dusty tomes. And now, as he sat in the deserted library with its high vaulted ceiling, Archer finally began to question the very activities that had given his life much needed purpose over the past months.
The town was empty when he walked out onto the lonely main street after the days research was done. He remembered when the eerie calm was unsettling to him, when he had first stumbled upon the community known as Silent Hill. Now, after having been there for 7 months, it was second nature. In fact, Archer found the silence comforting, for he knew that silence meant a lack of the Tortured. They could not move without emitting some kind of auditory signal, and his realization of that fact was what kept him alive for so long.
Walking up Koontz St. towards the apartment he "borrowed" for the duration of his stay, he heard a familiar rustle from underneath an abandoned car nearby. Even though he could not see very far due to the pea-soup thick fog, he knew what was there. It stood up, shining dully through the fog and twitching uncontrollably. Archers hand slipped into his overcoat pocket and his fingers rested on the hilt of a service revolver. Sometimes these things just shambled away, as if he wasn't there, but that was when he was lucky. And Archer was rarely lucky.
It took notice of him almost immediately and began its slow persuit. There was no fear in Archers demeanor, though; he had dealt with these things so many times they were almost a joke to him. He drew a bead where the things head seemed to be (lacking facial features, he could barely tell the head from a lump of diseased flesh,) and shot twice. The monster fell to the ground, pulsating and reeking of decay. Archer walked casually over to the slumped form and stomped down on its head, resulting in a satifying squelch and a gush of decayed meat and ooze. Archer grinned in spite of himself and continued up the street, not looking back once. There was really no point, because he had every aspect of those faceless things memorized. They didn't hold any surprises anymore.
The door to his aparment was shut tight, which was always a good sign. Whenever he arrived to a door that was ajar, he knew a Descent was approaching, those times when the town erupted in pus spewing, blood gutted insanity. His apartment took on a consciousness and grew flesh, and he was... visited. He tried not to think about those times too much, but he couldn't help it as he unlocked his door and walked inside. The apartment was by no means luxurious. A small one bedroom cluttered with old books, papers and trash, and furnished with an old couch and a broken down bed that was serving as little more than a makeshift desk. Archer didn't sleep much, and when he did, it was usually an exhaustion induced pass-out on the ratty sofa while pouring over the volumes and charts he carted home from the library.
Archer closed the door behind him, locking 3 deadbolts before replacing the chain locks and dropping his revolver on the small table next to the door. Walking into his small kitchen area, Archer grabbed a bottle of warm water and a can of peaches he lifted from the local grocery store on one of his supply runs. Food wasn't easy to come by in Silent Hill, and if you found water you counted yourself as unnaturally lucky. He looked around his cabinets as he ate, taking a quick inventory of his supplies and shaking his head.
"Down to the last 10 bottles... and no more fruit. There's still some soup in the back, and those twelve packs of Jolt and Pepsi, but... I'll need to make another run tomorrow."
He sighed deeply as he walked over to the couch, throwing his empty can in a dark corner of the main room as he went. The prospect of another supply run did nothing for his mood, which had worsened steadily since he left the library. None of his research had led anywhere except in circles, and it was disheartening. And now, on top of his not being able to make any headway into the problems within Silent Hill, he'd have to brave an all-day trek around town to find another store that he had not yet exhausted of resources. He leaned his head back and covered his eyes with his hands, feeling that sensation of sleep creep over him. Although he wasn't sure it was the best thing to do, he was greatful when the darkness overtook him, and he descended into a restless sleep filled with poundings, moans, shrieks and fleeting images of entities that even the most fevered mind could not imagine.