Chapter one: Common Ground
Disclaimer: The rights to Silent hill are not mine and neither are the characters.
You find yourself nearly jumping out of bed from it, but you thank gravity isn't so easy as it keeps you down on your bed and can feel cold sweat running down your cheek. You look up in the mirro and tell yourself it wasn't real, it was all just a nightmare that has no affect on you in the physical world and you go back to sleep. What James Sutherland wouldn't give to be able to do that, to be able to wake up in his bed from his nightmare and say without a doubt that it wasn't real, but he knows he can't say that because his nightmares came true. It was that one town out on the interstate right before you reach Brahms, an exit for the town of Silent Hill, a place that he had had fond memories of once, but those memories were now nightmares that haunted the shadows of his dreams. He never went to a psychiatrist or a shrink because he didn't think that he would want to go there and be pronounced crazy, plus the fact that he was a psychiatrist himself who worked at an insane asylum in Brahms, just close to Silent Hill. That town had called to him, just as it had called to some of the other people that he had met, but it was for different reasons. He had killed his wife out of the hatred and the want to live his own life and the town called him as a chance to help him come to grips with what he had done.
Now he spent most of his days listening to people who were crazy talk to him and he would try to make them feel better about themselves, but he was trying to get his own practice as one of the private psychiatrists because he couldn't take listening to them. Somehow it made him feel a bit better, but that was only because it was good to hear from someone who was crazier than he was, it helped him feel good about himself. His friend, Dr. Alliahs Kauffman, had been working to try and help get him promoted to that, but the world of psychiatry was one of survival of the fittest and he couldn't help but think that he would never get out of it. He often wondered if it was a good idea to stop beign a clerk. Every day he wondered why he didn't just take Laura, his adoptive daughter and leave Brahms, put some distance between him and Silent Hill, but there was still that magnet that stopped him from getting far from it.
Cheryl Mason was another person who was still somehow held in place by the magnetism of Silent Hill, even though she had had a lot of her worse times in there, but her father had stayed in Brahms. He wasn't her real father, but she didn't want to know who her real father was and she damned sure didn't want to know who her real mother was. Dhallia Gillespie, a witch by another name, a witch who was cruel enough to sacrifice her own daughter's life and condemn her to torment just so she could be mother to some god. She was dead though, poetic justice had made sure of that as she was burnt to death by her other half, that half that was filled with hate nurtured until it turned everything into a nightmare, the hate that she had avoided.
Cheryl didn't know what she was doing in Brahms, it was just an odd that she would take such a risk of staying so close to silent hill when the hatred could still be there, just waiting for her. It was a magnet keeping her in place and it would never let her go and so she had to stay there with her guardian, private detective Douglas Cartland, a gruff man who looked like he something out of a pulp novel when they talk about gritty old detectives. She had completed school there and was now pursuing psychology as a field to be interested in as well as some of the liberal arts, but she was somehow drawn to psychology. Maybe Douglas was right about her, she didn't know nor cared, all she knew was that she was old enough and she started sharing an apartment with an old friend of her dad's, Cybil Bennet. She was going to be an intern at a psychiatric clinic that was also the one overseeing the insane asylum.
James was barely awake as he stood at his desk, filing out another report on the trouble makers in his wing that he was responsible for even though he was too important for that shit. He just couldn't stand that he was the one who had to be called whenever one of the hopeless cases started philosophizing in the nurse's bathrooms when they were on the toilet. It was more hassle than he had to put up with when he was busy helping other people come to realizations that they were trying to suppress and he couldn't help but think of himself whenever he helped one. He looked up at the clock with a bit of annoyance and then he saw that it was his lunch break and Alliahs was also probably going for his lunch to, just as soon as he dealt with the patient known by his alias of "ratman." "Ratman," or Andrew Kauffman, had a problem with every room he was in, claiming that there were rats scurrying through the walls at night, complaining that he could hear them.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," said Alliahs as he peered out from the doorway at James with his trademark grin that made him the prankster of the staff. It was strange that he would have something to cheer about when "Ratman" was older brother. "Come on, let's get out of this dump and go into town, get something good to eat for a change."
"Fine, let me finish this thing," replied James as he finished signing the papers then got his coat with him as he headed out of the door, making sure his wallet was in his pocket. Well, at least I have more money in my wallet than when I was a clerk. But still this is less than sane, I mean I thought I would be in a better place for the most part than having to relive the depravity that I faced. "Okay so why today of all days to go and eat out I mean it's a Monday, the beginning of the week."
"First to celebrate your promotion to regular patients instead of being an insane asylum shrink," said Alliahs as he gave James one of his savage pats on the back which James would always say would break his back one of these days. "Next we got a fine new recruit coming in whose going to be studying under you, Dr. Sutherland, the man who used to be a clerk, but went into the field of insanity. You're going to be rolling in the pussy now my friend."
"You know that whenever you say things like that the nurses start to look at you weirdly," said James as he used his key card to move through the gate and towards Alliahs's car. "Anyway, why is that a reason for us going out to eat all of a sudden? Does she not like skinny guys so we have to start stuffing you to make you more appealing to her?"
"No, you're supposed to meet her and check her out to see if she would make a good employee and then she gets that rare opportunity you never got," said the prankster of Helton Falls Asylum as he started the car and pulled out to drive down to the residential burger joint. "Look, her father was the famed horror novelist who was killed by that cult that originated in Silent Hill and she seems to have some significance with it so we might get something useful from it, but also look out for any signs of emotional distress. She was the first to find her father dead before going after the cult herself and she studied psychology soon after that. Her name is Cheryl Mason and she rooms with an old friend of mine."
"When you say old friend, you must be talking about a lady you banged," laughed James as he looked out his window and gazed out there and just for a second, he saw a face that looked a lot like Mary's. He rubbed his eyes thinking that it was Maria again, that manifestation of his sexual desires and repression, but he passed it off as another mirage that was just trying to remind him of what he really was, as if he needed help with that.
"No, it is a female, but I wish I banged her, her names Cybil Bennet, she's the police officer who uncovered that drug trafficking scheme," replied Alliahs as he looked into his rearview mirror at the other car behind him. "She made Silent Hill a safe place for people again, but she always said that it was Cheryl who did it, probably because she killed the Claudia, the current leader and the other one seemed to disappear completely. It doesn't matter, but we have been looking into reopening the psychiatry ward in Silent Hill since everything else is growing back."
She stood there waiting for the two men to pick her up, one was supposed to be her trainer or the psychiatrist who was going to be instructing her on the practices of Helton Falls. It was a bit chilly outside so she decided to wear a white shirt with a black jacket and blue jeans, a bit different from the clothes she had worn in Silent Hill, but she couldn't wash the blood stains off of it. The nightmare was supposed to be over, but it never ended all happy and cheerful, it wasn't a movie ending. Her father, the only person she cared for, was dead and she was left to pick up everything that had broken with a little help from her father's friend, Cybil. The train station of Brahms had brought back a lot of memories about what happened, she still stayed far away from the ledge so nothing could push her in. She was just glad to be out of them when they happened, it was a bit scary to be there when someone else wasn't, but she just calmed herself down and assured herself that it was all over, she didn't have to hide or live in dread of that nightmare. Her cell phone ringing brought her out of her day dreams.
"Cheryl Mason, how can I help you," answered Cheryl as she sighed, thinking it was the men who were supposed to be picking her up, but it turned out to be something more sinister.
"It's been so long, Cheryl, I see you're using your real name," said a familiar oily snake like voice through the other side, a voice she thought had long since been silenced.
"Vincent, wha-…how are you alive," asked Cheryl as she looked around for some sign of the manipulative priest of the Order. "I saw Claudia stab you to death, I saw you die."
"That is something for another time, but like always, I'm on your side," said Vincent. "But don't think that you are out of the nightmare, it's still looking for you and him as well, you both have been touched by the old god of Silent Hill and it never lets go."
"What do you mean? Is that thing going to come after me?"
"Relax, Cheryl, it was just a joke," said Vincent with his tone that told her that he was smiling on the other end of that phone. "I don't know if the demon of Silent Hill is still alive, but if it is then it will be after you and that man."
"What are you talking about me," demanded Cheryl as she looked around to see if anyone was there, but it was deserted and she felt an all familiar cold feeling well up in her gut. She realized that Vincent had hung up time ago and as soon as she put up her phone a car pulled up with two men, one a sandy blond man and the other a dark haired man who had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth with a look on his face that said "I'm the kind of guy who wants you to have my children, then deny they're mine."
"You need a ride, Ms. Mason," asked the man with the cigarette while the other one looked annoyed and a bit humored by his partners immature actions. "We know the way to burgers if your interested."
"Hello, I'm James Sunderland," said the sandy blond as he got out and held his hand out. Cheryl didn't know what else to do besides shake it.
"I'm Cheryl Mason."