Fear pulsed through her body as she lay on the cool pavement.
Ember Montgomery, aged seventeen years, struggled to draw in breaths as her eyes peeled themselves open. Every cell within her very body ached. Her skull felt heavy and weighted-down. Legs felt utterly as if they were composed of gelatin. Her muscles felt stretched and her fingers were numb. Red hair was matted in all directions, causing a ball of hair to form at the back of her neck. Too frightened to move her body, she slowly reached an arm up and wiped hair from her face. No pain. Her arms bore no pain to them, but the bottom half of her was the exact opposite.
Darkness filled her pupils, surprising her heavily. Night had fallen over the Earth.
Her knees had been skinned, even through the tight jeans that contained her skinny legs. Her elbows the same, the skin having been scraped violently as she had hit the pavement, her thick sweater creating no true protection.
No matter how much she put her mind to it, she could not remember what had happened.
"What the hell?" she whispered to no one as she lay sprawled. She rolled her head to he right side, only to find her smart phone lying idle next to her. The screen had been shattered. "No," she said, as she quickly reached out and grabbed it.
Holding it before her face proved only that it was indeed ruined and completely useless. Her fingers pressed buttons quickly, the keys not even beeping as they normally did when they were dialed. The phone was now a piece of junk. It was nothing but a piece of plastic. Ember slammed it back onto the ground angrily.
Knowing that she had to figure out what had gone wrong, she began to sit up. She got on her knees without an immense level of pain, just a few twangs of it here-and-there on her lower half. She sat idle for a moment, on her hands and knees. Her head hung between her arms as they supported her, hair resting in front of her face, blocking her view of the darkness. Forcing herself upright, pain shot threw her back, and she cried out as she straightened herself on her feet. Once she was able to stand upright without the feeling of falling over, she bent down and scooped up her dead cell phone. She pushed it deep into her back pocket and scanned her surroundings.
Taking a good look around concluded that she was in the center of a road. Pine trees thickly coated both sides of the road. A little frightened, Ember turned in a circle, observing everything around her. The moon, a brilliant crescent, hung high above the tree tops. The pines swayed in the breeze, their shadows dancing everywhere around her, confusing her into thinking that there was some animal waiting to pounce on her.
She knew nothing of where she was, or what she was even doing there. She couldn't figure out why she had been lying in the middle of a road, either. Nothing seemed right at that moment. No matter how much she attempted, she couldn't bring forth the memories of what she had been doing before this had happened. The road was silent, so desolate that she wondered if she wasn't dreaming.
Taking deep inhales, she paused when she noticed a shadow figure standing beside the road, just ahead. Finding the right footing, she began to head towards it. Her feet like jell-o, she still managed to stay upright. The possibility that it could be an eyewitness to past events made her stomach turn. She held her hands as she strode, reaching for anything she could grab on to. If it was a person, she didn't care who it was, she was already planning on weeping on them.
The shadow was no person.
It was a road sign.
The sign stood on the right side of the road, beside a guard rail. More pines inhabited the hillside that ducked down on the opposite side of the guard rail. Ember halted for a moment to study it. It was older, obviously, for half of the paint was chipping and the wood mostly rotted. But it was not so rotted that it deemed it ineligible.
Welcome to Silent Hill.
Ember half gasped. "Silent Hill?"
It was a town she had only heard of by eavesdropping on her parent's conversations. They often spoke of the town shrilly, but she could never understand why. Ember hugged herself. Although Silent Hill was territory she had never set foot in, it was a town, nevertheless. She could inquire about receiving help getting back home.
Ember swallowed took a deep breath, and took one step, passing the sign. This was the first time she had ever felt nervous stepping into a place she had not been.