This gets rather
wacky and intense at times, but I've let it go where it may.
Spoilers for just about everything in the Silent Hill games. Standard disclaimers apply...you know the drill by now.
(Yes, this starts with "Night Two". You'll see why.)
…he was waking up in the middle of the night. Or was it daytime? The windows were so dark…but somehow it felt like day, like late morning. His internal clock must be screwed up.
The ceiling is…stained…
No, not stained.
It's covered in blood…blood and rust…
He could see now that everything was. The walls, the floor, the furniture…even the single bedside lamp that cast a faint circle of light on the nightstand.
…I don't own a lamp like this…
Everything was covered in reddish-orange gunk and cobwebs. Even the blanket on his bed was wet and crusty under his hand. It repelled him, and he pulled himself to his feet as quickly as he could to get the hell away from it. Still, it took longer than usual to figure out which way was up. As soon as he was upright, though, dual sledgehammers slammed into his temples, and he remembered about the headache.
…it still hurts. My head's been hurting for days. Why?
Why wasn't as important just now, though. That could wait. He had to concentrate on standing up, which was taking a ridiculous amount of effort just now.
Something was unfamiliar about this room. It was his bedroom, had been for years, but…
…I don't remember having a globe over there. Or these...these boxes in the closet…I don't even recognize the names on them. And…oh my God, where's my typewriter? I need my typewriter!
There was something he had to type, something important that he had to tell somebody…but now he couldn't type it. He knew that there was no way that he could manage to write, either, not with his head like this…as much as the clack of each key on his old typewriter split his skull open, it wasn't as bad as the concentration it took just to move a pen over the paper of his old diary. He couldn't manage that, not any more. But it was important. Really important, and he had to tell him…and now he couldn't, couldn't do a damn thing, couldn't even remember now what it was. It was gone, too.
He managed to get the door open somehow. The bathroom door was still sealed shut, and the baseboard extended across it now. So, nothing doing there. But he hadn't needed to use it for days, so that was OK. He did need to get the hell out of his apartment, though, but the front door was in even worse shape. Its edges were beginning to blur into the rusty crud that coated everything out front, just as it had in his bedroom. All that remained was the faint shape of the paneling and the peephole, and the outlines of the doorknob and locks that were now completely useless.
There was a static-y noise. That was new. For that matter, so was the large black TV that sat where his record player had been. It was the source of the noise, and its screen was filled with snow. He stared at it in confusion.
…I don't even watch TV. Why is this here?
The pictures on the walls were unfamiliar, too…there was a small one of some guy he'd never seen before behind the floor lamp, a young man with dark hair in bad need of a haircut. Something in his brain told him that he should know who this was, but he shook it away. Ridiculous. He didn't know anybody that young well enough to put up a picture. The large one over the couch, though…
…a pile of bodies, stacked to a point in the middle like a church spire. Reaching for…for what?
One, two, three…
It took every ounce of concentration he could muster to count the people in the painting.
Twenty-one bodies, I think, but there might be more under the pile. I can't see them well enough to know for sure.
Twenty-one.
Damn it. Yet another thing that was important, really important, but that he didn't understand and couldn't remember. What was wrong with him?
The appliances in the kitchen were different, too. There were odd magazines and books on his coffee table. He picked up one slim volume, but it was damp and the pages were stuck together. He could barely read the first few…it looked like a fairytale about a baby or something. Squinting to try to make out the letters just made his headache worse. He closed the book and dropped it back onto the table…
…and stopped cold. Somebody had pushed the cabinet by the sofa back into place. Where it had been before, before he'd…he'd made that hole in the wall…why had he done that, anyway? He didn't remember, except that it had taken days and days and in the end, he just didn't have enough energy left to finish it. Just above that cabinet, there was a strange shadow on the wall. He stood right in front of it and peered at it, ignoring the nearly-blinding pain that shot across the back of his skull. This was important.
…it looks like a face. That's weird. A face with its mouth open…screaming? Yawning? Maybe he's got a bad headache too. I don't know.
This was VERY important. Damned if he knew why, but he had to tell him about it. It was the most important thing he'd ever had to do. His heart sank when he remembered that his typewriter was gone, but then he remembered the notebook that he'd seen sitting on his desk in its place. Maybe he could manage to work a pencil long enough to leave him a note…
He turned to the hallway, gripped the tall stool to his right, and began to make his way back to his bedroom. It was just then that he heard a noise behind him…he turned around so, so slowly to see what it was…
…oh no. Not now. I know who you are.
Suddenly, something slammed into him, and he was knocked to the floor.
Go away! I have to…
...he was on his back. The room spun around him, orange-red rust and blood and cobwebs circling as the white, peeling face leered at him from above the overturned kitchen stool. Something black and goopy dripped from its eyes and mouth onto his face as he opened his mouth to scream.
But nothing came out but a gurgle.
The pain behind his eyes grew and grew. He was pinned. The face leered at him, its charnel breath choking him. As the rotten hands clawed at him, his vision blurred, and he knew no more.
Henry sat up in bed. He blinked once, then again.
It took him a minute to realize that he was back in his bedroom, not in the front room, and that his walls weren't covered in blood and rust, but were their usual dingy off-white color. The sky outside was dark, but he was very awake. He was soaked in sweat, too, and cold. Very cold. He shivered for a few seconds, but not only from the chill.
What...the...hell.
Then, the obvious explanation presented itself.
Oh...man. What a nightmare.
The far window was open a few inches to let in the cool night air. Henry hauled himself off of his bed, scrambled over to it and pulled it down. The old window slipped from his fingers and slammed shut with a BANG.
"Keep it down over there!" came the angry voice through the wall.
What do you know...apparently, he does sleep when he's not...
"Sorry," Henry called back.
He leaned back against his pillow, still wide awake. Light filtered through the windows from the garish neon signs across the street. It cast strange shadows across the room, reflecting off of the metal armrests of his chair and shimmering against the frames of the pictures by his desk. The digital clock on his nightstand glowed red in the dark.
3:30. Man. I'll never get back to sleep now...
He swung his legs over the side of the bed, grabbed his robe and trudged down the hallway. A short rummage around in his fridge produced a single bottle of chocolate milk. Only a few were left in there, along with an old bottle of white wine that he was going to get around to opening one of these days. He really needed to do some grocery shopping…he'd gotten pretty lazy about that lately. But it was enough for now. He'd do that tomorrow. Well, later today.
"Cribs" isn't coming around here any time soon. I'll hold off on ordering the case of Cristal.
He pulled out one of the kitchen stools, then remembered his nightmare and thought better of it. Instead, he plopped down on the couch, unscrewed the top of the bottle, and lifted it to his lips as he reached for the TV remote.
TV usually sucks at this time of night, but maybe there's a monster movie on or something...
As it turned out, nothing came on at all. The remote didn't seem to be working, or maybe the on/off button was broken. Or maybe it needed new batteries. Well, he was out of those too. Henry got up and pushed the buttons on the TV itself, with no result. Nope, not the remote's fault.
Crap. Damn thing's on the fritz again.
It was too late at night to give the TV the loud smack that sometimes brought it back to life. That would have to wait till tomorrow, too.
At least I have my chocolate milk.
Good old chocolate milk. Comfort food from his youth. His mother had always had some in the fridge, just in case little Henry had a bad day at school. No matter what was bothering him back then, chocolate milk always made it better. Still did. He'd bought a mini-fridge for his college dorm room just so he could have his chocolate milk when he needed it, and he'd always kept it stocked with a few bottles…well, that and an emergency six-pack of Jolt for late-night cram sessions. There were a lot of those. By all rights, he should have been a raving caffeine addict by the time he graduated, but somehow he'd escaped that fate. Who knows…maybe it was the chocolate milk. Nah, maybe not. Whatever.
Leslie had teased him mercilessly about it. They'd stopped by his room during their first date, so that he could grab his camera on their way to the lake by the PRU library. Once she found out that he was a photography major, she'd wheedled him into taking her picture by the lake, and he'd thought, Why not? She was about as photogenic as they come, he thought, and it would probably make for a great image. As he opened his desk drawer and reached for his old camera, she'd pulled open the door of the mini-fridge and burst out laughing.
"Chocolate milk? Gawd, Henry. What are you, twelve?"
"Eight, actually," Henry muttered under his breath.
She hadn't shut up about it for the rest of the evening. Or the next evening, either. Or the day after that. By the time the weekend rolled around, Henry was sure that she'd yapped about it to everyone in his dorm and half of the female undergrad population, and when she didn't call him back after that he was very relieved. But now, he and his chocolate milk were alone in their front room at 3:35 in the morning, and it could only do so much to help him get his head in order.
Pull yourself together. It was just a nightmare. Nothing remarkable about it. Five minutes from now, you probably won't be able to remember half of it.
But it seemed so real...more than a nightmare usually seems. The pictures on the walls were different...and nothing seemed familiar. And the doors wouldn't open...and the windows...and the fridge stank. Like something had died in there.
And that ghost...
Wait. Ghost? It didn't look like...well, like a ghost is supposed to look.
Come on, Henry. What's a ghost supposed to look like? A kid with a sheet over his head? Some see-through shadow saying "Boo"? What do you know about ghosts?
So how do I know that it was a ghost? Hell, it looked more like a corpse or something...
Henry shook his head to clear out the images of red, everywhere red.
Enough of that. It was just a dream. It doesn't matter.
He was tempted to open up one of the windows just to make sure they worked, but it would be far too noisy at this time of night. Instead, he drained the last of his chocolate milk, and padded back down the hallway to the bedroom.
Henry settled into the chair at his desk. It squeaked slightly as he sat down, and the noise echoed like a gunshot in the small room. He picked up the scrapbook in front of him and flipped it open to roughly where he remembered putting those notes on his latest project the previous evening. Perhaps he could get a little work done...
The scrapbook fell open to blank pages. Henry stared at it for a moment. Then, he turned the pages back and forth rapidly.
Completely blank. Everything is...gone.
Where could it all have gone?
His head started to pound at that moment. The pain was as sharp as it was sudden, and he could barely see the desk in front of him. He closed the scrapbook and groped his way back over to his bed, scrabbled at the blankets, stuffed himself under the covers, and pulled them over his head. He curled up into a ball and squeezed his eyes shut miserably.
And I ran out of ibuprofen last Thursday. Damn. This is the last time I go more than a week without picking up food and supplies. Thank God I don't have anywhere I need to be tomorrow. I'm going to be a wreck.
He felt himself falling asleep in spite of the jackhammers inside of his skull, and just had time to register surprise at the fact before he slipped into unconsciousness.