Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome
by Egglesplork
Chapter 1
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1.
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Those jack-holes just wouldn't quit. Banging on the walls of his apartment, banging from beneath the floor, banging from beyond the ceiling, they were having a Hell-load of fun. At least somebody was having fun, because the dude in this apartment wasn't.
They wouldn't let him sleep. Sometimes they left him alone with the noise. Whenever he felt himself getting all noddy, then they just start it up again. Let a dude sleep, would they? Nah. Those jokers were partying like they were all drunk as skunks and it was the end of the world. And guess what? If the end of the world did take place, there wouldn't be any booze. Drink and be merry! For tomorrow, we are headed for a place in the afterlife where the weather report always says hot and smoky with a chance of fiery brimstone.
Headed there? Hell, it was feeling like that now. To be tired yet never be able to sleep was a really, really stupid way to be. Sleeping is supposed to be the most natural thing in the world—whatever world one is in at the moment, probably. Some smart-ass from a biology class would probably point out that such a statement probably isn't true, that some animals actually don't sleep. But human animals need shut-eye, damn it.
What a joy it would be to just lie down on his bed or even on the floor and just sink into the darkness of oblivion. Just for a little while. Like say, maybe a few thousand years or so. Yeah, several millennia of beddy-bye could really do him heaps of good. Never mind if it was still light out—the orange-reddish sunlight of a dying day filtering through the dirty windows. He'd sleep from sunset now to sunset tomorrow.
About those windows, it was a wonder that anything was visible out of them. They were just downright nasty, all crusty—blurring the sunset-toned scenery of the outside. How dirty were they? Uh-oh. That sounds like the start of a joke! So... Let's dig up a comedian from somewhere, put him in a in a night-time comedy club and get the show started, shall we? It would go…something like this.
Thank ya, thank ya...! Ladies and gentlemen, I gotta joke for ya. Course I got jokes! Why else would I be up on stage and dressed like this? Ain't doin' this for my health. With all the second-hand smoke y'all are puttin' out, I couldn't. (Rr-r-rgh…) Don't worry, folks! I'm just gettin' wahmed up.
Anyway...! Let's get back to the question. How dirty were his apartment windows? That guy's apartment windows were so dirty on the outside that the cockroaches use 'em for mountain-climbing practice! (Rimshot! Ba-dum, tsh-h-h…)
No, no... Even bettah! Stop me if ya done heard this one. The windows were so dirty that not even a whole street of crack-addicts armed with chisels and battery acid could clean them things!
(Booh! His jokes suck! Let's skin 'em alive.) Thank ya, thank ya, ladies and germs! Thank ya. Good night. And go to Hell. Then the comedian would run off the stage…
It wasn't the young man's fault the windows were like that, though. He couldn't clean the windows because they were dirty on the outside, mind you. What was he going to do, climb out and float in midair to give them a scrub? It was actually more possible for him to float than it was for him to open up the windows, because those suckers were jammed shut forever. So was the door, probably
But no. He didn't want to get out. The young man did not want to leave this apartment. Home is where the heart is, though it more felt like his soul was here. Never mind the crustiness over the windows. The inside was just fine. Looking through dimmed vision at the dirty window in this poorly lit apartment, sitting in this wooden chair, he could barely see the world outside. Orange-red sunlight illuminated the day out there in sunset-colored tones, streets shadowed by some buildings, those buildings softly aglow in that light of the dying day. Outside was... His mind drifted just a little bit about what was out there while a dim darkness of slumber began closing over, consciousness being darkened as thoughts of rotten comedians and vicious hecklers drifted along.
Thump-thump-thump! His head snapped up. They were at it again, as usual. Noises and chaos came from the right-side wall. It was like they knew that he was drifting off. Trying to sleep on us, eh buddy? You'll sleep not today, not tomorrow and not ever. Put the words not and ever together, take out two letters, and you get never.
Never sleep… As if to confirm the thought, a muffled howling came from beyond the right-side wall. What did they have over there, werewolves? Do werewolves even exist? Even if they did, would they be allowed around here, since werewolves were sort of like big dogs or something? (About pets, landlords hate them. But they don't seem to mind the presence of cockroaches big as cats.) Well, given the way the apartment building's landlord let things go, the presence of a howling, hairy, humanoid beast probably ought not be much of a surprise. That is, if there was anything like a responsible landlord in this place. If there was, the dude would probably be next door and act just as crazy as the rest of those freaks.
Freaks, jerks, bastards, werewolves, even the damned landlord, everybody was in adjacent apartments and having a good ol' time! Everyone else was having a time of making him feel like the worst crap in existence. That would be if this even counted for an existence. He didn't even want to exist anymore…
Now there's an idea. A quick suicide session would put an end to all of this nonsense. Let's talk business. What'll it be? A rope in the closet? Who in tarnation keeps rope around at home—besides cowboys? Most folks nowadays are partial to clotheslines for various purposes, but the young man didn't even have that since nobody who lives in the city hangs up laundry unless they want to smell like smog all day. How about a slashed wrist? No, with wrist-slashing, it's double or nothing. Otherwise, you just wake up with blood messing up your fine duds. What about…a bellyful of sleep-time fun-pills? Oops! Forget that last one. There is no sleep for you, buckaroo. Then again, this is all pretty moot since you can't kill yourself if you're already dead. So, so sorry.
Thump-thump-thump! There they go again. The jerks were banging from beneath the apartment floor and beyond the walls and beyond the ceiling… Don't forget about banging from above the ceiling! They were banging the heck out of that ceiling of his. That was a bit poetic. Let's see…
Their floor was his ceiling, which was all the more demeaning. They were banging on the floor, kept it up even more. A world full of dread, and all of that noise was going on above his head. All he had to do was think about suicide, and they were suddenly… What rhymes with suicide that would fit? Bonafide? It rhymes, but it doesn't make much sense. Snide? Hmmph… Not strong enough. So, what would be a really good way to call them stupid in rhyme?
No, that's wrong. He couldn't call them stupid. He could call them jack-holes, jerks, psychos, fools, mother-forkers, Neanderthals, chuckleheads and all manners of names. But he just could not call them on intelligence because—truth was—they were really smart. Maybe too smart. They seemed to know some things. He wasn't sure how, but he had the idea that those freaks banging from beyond the walls, floor and ceiling knew a lot more than he could ever know. In fact, he had the creeping suspicion that, somehow…it was like they sometimes even knew what he was thinking.
That's psycho, he thought. Psycho, not psychic or telepathic—if not pathetic. There is no way that they could read his mind. Everybody knows that mind-reading is only the stuff of LSD-dosed sci-fi writers and paranoiacs in psychiatric wards. No such thing as that stuff.
Ba-bang, came the noise from the right-side wall as soon as he thought about how mind-reading can't exist. Really? He gave a mental pause and thought out a question. Bang twice if you think I'm dumber than you.
He instantly got his noisy response. Would it be too much to believe that he heard two bangs coming from the right-side wall? Ask ye for bangs, and bangs ye shall receive.
No friggin' way… Maybe he only thought he heard two bangs. Maybe it was actually one banging from behind the wall, and he was just so shocked from the coincidence that he just imagined the second bang. He just miscounted, is all. Well, gosh 'em-golly! If he forgot how to count, maybe he ought to go back to pre-school and sit very quietly on the carpet while Miss Florffenhuffler (who was called or Miss Fluff because there was no way a bunch of little munchkins that age were able to wrap their cute lil' minds around too many syllables) taught everybody how to count. Altogether now, class! This is how we count our numbers. O-o-one… Two-o-o… Three-e-e-e…
Two… It stopped at two bangs—a double shot, bang-bang. Like the pounding equivalent of going uh-huh. Did they know what he was thinking sometimes? Bang-bang! Uh-huh.
He didn't imagine that noise. "Get out!" he shouted from where he sat. "Get the Hell away from here! This is my apartment! I deserve some peace...and...quiet...!"
Did they make noises after that? Does a bear crap in the woods? (Or in this case, does a cockroach crap in the wooden cabinets?) The answer to those questions would be yes. Not only did they banging, they were throwing in some extra sound-effects too—noises coming by the band-load. Meanwhile, even more banging and thumping with even more moaning with more howling came from behind the walls and from beneath the floor and beyond the ceiling (can't forget the ceiling) and everywhere else. It was getting so intense that he thought the whole damned place was going to cave in. He looked at the window and worried about it breaking. Goodness knows what kind of nasty air was out there. The window might not handle it, the window with all of its crusty dirtiness outside that not even a street-load of money-desperate drug-addicts could get clean while sentient insects with slick brown-shelled bodies went mountain-climbing on the outer surface in the meanwhile. Hey Franny! Secure that safety line! We're almost at the summit... Hee-hee! "Just shut the Hell up, you noisy freaks!"
They did. Just like that, all the banging and thumps with the howling and moaning sounds were silenced for the moment. That's more like it, he thought. Then came a bang-bang of agreement in response to the thought. Uh-huh. We agree.
Ah, screw it. He didn't bother to say anything after that. If they were going to make all the noise they wanted, there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe they could read his mind. Bang-bang. Two bangs, that means yes-yes.
How-w-w smart are they? (Yup, it's the comedian again. Looks like the crowd didn't skin 'em alive after all. Not yet at least.) They were so smart that the dumbest among them had more brains than a morgue full of dead college professors after a plague! (Ba-dum, tsh-h-h...) Then a person would start to wonder how those brains would taste. Knowing those freaks next door, they probably wouldn't mind finding out. Inquiring minds want to know how brains taste. After all, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
They probably knew that too. Bang-bang! The young man just nodded his head in agreement because he knew that they know a lot. Maybe brains taste like chicken? Bang! If a double bang was the affirmative, then a single bang was what they were giving him a no. Brains do not taste like poultry—not fried, baked, sautéed, sauced, chopped, raw, processed or pure. So what do brains taste like? Pork grease?
Come to think of it, if they were so smart, then why couldn't they figure out what to do with him? They let him stay in this apartment for goodness knows how long even if they did bang a lot. And it's not like they made a mistake in letting him stay here.It just could be that they had a very good reason for keeping him here for some reason. Something like this happened to someone named Henry Townsend, for those who took interest in such matters.
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2.
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Gather 'round, folks. This-here little vignette is the ballad of Henry Townsend. (How can something be a vignette and a ballad at the same time?) Quiet down in front! You're not telling the story. Anyway… Here goes.
Henry was a young man who lived in an apartment much like this one, not being able to get out. Rumor was that some reporter guy disappeared in the apartment and was never heard from again, rumors of his apartment being haunted. Henry didn't give a damn. He was just one of those people that were so calm and quiet-like that they didn't even get loud when they were angry.
Maybe Henry-boy should've listened to those rumors, because one day…his door got locked up tight all by itself. Chains came out of nowhere and appeared on his door. These were some really good chains, probably magical or cursed chains too. Magic, curses, the same thing if you really think about it. He couldn't break the chains or undo the locks. Henry-boy was trapped in his own apartment. Don't get sassy and say that he should've jumped out a windows, because the windows were jammed too.
Yes-sir-ee-Bob… The guy was trapped in his own residence by unknown forces, like some kind of house-arrest, and the rest of the world is abso-freaking-loutely ignorant of what happened. The rest of the world probably wouldn't even believe how he was trapped. He was trapped…until he began to do the bidding of strange, unknown forces not of this world—or so he said. The rest of the apartment building was the same way.
After later escaping from the whole apartment building with his girlfriend and (somehow) the landlord, Henry-boy had some stories to tell—sounding like urban ghost stories. Stories, everybody likes stories. People like that guy up in Maine or over in California make millions of dollars off of them. And, goodness gracious, did Henry-boy's stories sell. He became briefly famous in the local news. A person wouldn't think that the stiff-neck city people of modern journalism would take to those sorts of stories, but they did. The journalists will do anything for extra ratings—like those occasional blurbs about odd sights on security camera recordings and people claiming to have caught weird animals.
People just thought that Henry Townsend was maybe a little nuts, and so most of them forgot about him at some point. Whole apartment complexes full of people disappearing? Monsters and a ghost killed them? Ri-i-i-ight… Things like that don't happen in real life because… Well, that's just crazy. That's all. There are no such thing as ghosts, werewolves, vampires, abominable snowmen, creatures under the bed, things in the closet (unless you count those female talk-show hosts who cut her hair short and dress like men), fairies (don't say it), leprechauns, the Loch Ness monster, space aliens, or modern-day demons, damn it. Like honest politicians, things like that just don't exist.
In fact, a lot of other stuff doesn't exist either. Global warming? Nah, nobody believes that crap. That's just a conspiracy theory cooked up by drugged-up hippies to discredit conservative politicians. Psychics, they aren't real either. They don't really predict the future. Those jokers are just con-artists TV out to trick rubes into emptying their wallets. UFO talk is for people who make money off of book deals and conventions over in Roswell, New Mexico for about those crazy people who think those little gray men come down from space in flying saucers to perform acts of amateur surgery on livestock. You want to see amateur surgery on cattle? Okay, put on a pair of calf-length boots with anti-slip soles and to any slaughterhouse. Don't forget to bring guts strong enough to withstand the sight.
Okay, so they let Henry Townsend have his day of fame. Then the news back to talking about more important things, like millionaires getting more money, celebrities having lots of sex with other celebrities and all the violent warfare in other countries.
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3.
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It's all crazy talk. Never-mind how police departments sometimes hire psychics to deal with some disappearance cases and train them in some abilities. Never-mind how the FBI has been completely unable to explain bloodless acts of cattle mutilation despite over thirty years of investigation. And while you're at it, never-mind the fact that ninety-nine percent of the world's scientists say global warming is a problem while ninety-nine percent of the world's ruling families say that it isn't. In fact... Just never-mind everything crazy and stupid. Just throw all the crazy people and their crazy ideas in the loony bin. Bunch of drugged-up, crystal-gazing hippies who think they can predict a future wrecked with global warming while channeling their mental energies to summon their space-brothers from another world. It's a lot easier to call those people crazy than... Well, just don't think about that craziness.
Just maybe the young man sitting in this apartment was one of those crazies himself and didn't know it. Maybe he spent too much time reading those books about ghosts, flying saucers, and what-not—especially books about ghosts. Those things are pretty easy to find and buy around here. Or rather, they were when he was able to leave this apartment. Just as the flying saucer followers out in the American west have the City of Roswell, the locals who believe in ghosts and such have Silent Hill.
There's a major difference, though. Roswell is a gigantic tourist spot. Everybody in Roswell is alive and having a rockin' good time with talk of bug-eyed little gray men flittering around in circular craft. Endless flying saucer conventions and perpetual talk of that sort, it's like a party that never stops. Meanwhile, Silent Hill won't ever see a party again. Silent Hill is dead.
Ever hear the term ghost town before? (Hey, I gotta joke for ya!) Joking aside, a ghost town is essentially a place that has simply become uninhabited, if not permanently uninhabitable. Silent Hill is dead because it is condemned, plain and simple. Can't buy land there because real-estate jerks won't sell it. The real-estate people blame the government. Go to government bureaucrats, and they'll tell you that the real-estate people are giving you the run-around. So just fill out these forms, and we'll get back to you. Meanwhile, they'll suggest that you speak with the real-estate agencies with holdings in the area…
Get back to you? They never do. Neither do real-estate agencies. Real-estate people say to blame government. Government people say to blame real-estate people. It's circular. That's why they call it a run-around—making people go from place to place, asking for permission to buy land or have other dealings with Silent Hill.
If somebody just gets fed up with the nonsense and tries to have an actual look at the legendary place, even that is difficult. Driving there, one finds that the roads going into the town are out. In other words, the roads in are out. As in, barricades are up. Whole streets have somehow been chopped off to make cliffs. Then there's that fog.
Ah yes, about the fog… They said a person can see things in that odd gray mist. People hear things, odd noises. Maybe they heard footsteps, maybe claws or the flapping of wings. But the fog disappeared for a good long while. It came back recently, though.
By the way, remember that Henry Townsend guy? He said that the man responsible for making almost everybody in that apartment complex disappear was originally from (you guessed it) Silent Hill.
This was an awful lot like the Henry Townsend setup, except that the young man wasn't necessarily trapped against his will. It was just that he didn't want to leave. In that they let him stay, albeit keeping up that noise, the fact remained that they wanted something from him.
"So...!" he began aloud, sitting in the glow of the light shining through the dirty window—light from a dying day. "What do you want? You're not keeping me around for kicks and giggles, that's for sure."
Blink-flicker...! He quick-turned his head to look at what just flickered. The electric lamp next to the sofa had just blinked on and off, the light bulb giving off a double-flare of illumination before turning back off again. But he would've sworn that he had that lamp off. He was in the habit of leaving electrical appliances off during daylight hours—a habit borne of having to pay for electricity and having been raised by parents who did the same, who in turn had parents who did the same. We're not made out of money.
Because his parents had bodies of living flesh and bone instead of hard-curled currency bound to golden skeletons, the young man here learned to leave things turned off when not in use. Except…those dudes from beyond the apartment walls didn't care who was made out of money and who wasn't when it came to paying electric bills because nobody around here has to pay them. In fact, the young man sitting here hasn't seen a bill of any kind in goodness-knows-how-long. Don't ask where the electricity comes from anymore, because the young man who lives here didn't bother to think too hard about questions like that. All he knew that the electricity worked even when and where it wasn't supposed to work, like with that electric lamp just now. Flick-flicker…
He thought, You're trying to tell me something, aren't you? Something thump-rattled in the walls—a gentler form of the double bang. You want me to guess or something, like some kind of game show? What'll I win if I get the right answer? A free trip to the tropical location of my choice and a lifetime supply of chorkumbleff? Don't know what chorkumbleff is, but I'm sure you'll fill me in on that. No? How about a nice new toaster? Everybody seems to win one of those even if almost nobody wants another one.
Thumping and moaning came from the ceiling. The thumping sounded angry at such irreverent thoughts, yet the moaning sounded downright miserable—like they were feeling sick with sadness.
They sounded terrible, basically. He never remembered them sounding so bad. Something was definitely not right. What could they possibly want from him now, after all of this time? No, that is the wrong line of thinking. This is the big reveal. This is when they were going to tell him what they needed him for.
He stood up. "What's going on here? Whatever's bothering you, I can't help if I don't know what I can do. What can I do?"
Then came rumbling and roaring from beyond the walls, floor and ceiling. It wasn't just them making a ruckus. This felt more like an earthquake. The apartment floor started rattling and shaking like all get-out. It was suddenly as if this whole building was ground-zero for the kind of earth-shaker that would wipe out half of California some day. Good-golly Miss Molly, because it's bye-bye Miss American Pie! What'd they call that big earthquake again, the one that was supposed to dump half of California into the ocean? Oh yeah, they said it was going to be the Big One. As the young man swayed and shimmied with his arms out and feet positioned forward-and-back surfer-style, he thought about the near-apocalyptic effects of a major tectonic event. This probably wasn't The Big One, but it felt like something pretty significant. Just when the young man didn't think he could take it any more and was about to fall over like someone who forgot how to walk, the living room door to his apartment...opened up.
It was…the way out of this apartment. Out from the walls being banged on for so long. Out and away from the window that was so grimy on the outside that drug addicts would never get it clean and roaches wouldn't want cleaned. Outside of this apartment and through the doorway was a golden glow, like the gentle illuminating warmth of a thousand lost sunsets—bringing to mind all the colors of yesterdays gone by...
The young man suddenly felt very afraid. "Please don't make me go back there. There's nothing for me. Can't you find somebody else? I can't do it."
In response, the moaning from beyond the ceiling became more demanding. This time, the young man could feel the dark misery from which the sounds came. He just had to go. This was why he was here. Instead of leaving the young man to vanish into the void, they had him in this apartment and chose him for this very task—however large that task would be.
He began taking steps to the golden brightness. He may have been trapped in his apartment before, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing considering what was in other places. Yet they needed him to go out and do something even if it hurt like Hell. And maybe, something that could be called Hell was involved. Beyond the light...
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4.
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Somewhere else, off in a forest so deep that it was practically a nature preserve, the massive fortress-like place of gray concrete walls was a hard contrast to its location. Gray blocky towers rose up from a foundation of concrete and asphalt amidst all the greenery. The blocky towers themselves were made of that kind of smooth polished concrete which was highly weather-resistant and low-cost at the same time. Such design made it perfectly suitable for public institutions ranging from college dormitories and mental institutions (which weren't too different from each other, all things considered) to high-security prisons.
This wasn't a psychiatric institution full of college students, nor was it a dorm full of mental patients. So if it wasn't one or the other, which was it? Yes, it's a jail—one great big forking mother of a jail, which people would probably think was Hell on Earth.
Of course the penitentiary was nothing so burningly dramatic as Hell, nor was it anything at all like Heaven. Heaven? Oh Hells no. It's no fun. Life at this place for the mostly involuntary inhabitants was not the most thrilling of places most of the time, but it was not allowed to be physically torturous even if it was mentally so. Nobody would be physically tortured here because even people like mass murderers, serial rapists, and corporate fraudsters have civil rights under the state and federal constitutions. Prisoners cannot be given any forms of cruel and unusual punishment. That meant no fun stuff, like strapping folks to torture devices for the sake of making their bodies bleed, their bones break, or their voices come out like choked screams. So sorry, there'll be no getting medieval on anybody today even if the place did have the look of a modern-day castle on the outside.
So this massive, fortress-like place off in a forest is a penitentiary, a slammer, a big-house. Big…friggin'…deal! What's so damned special about just another great big oversized lockup?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the population is said to be largely involuntary. At least one person in the prison is there simply because he chooses to be. He could leave any time he wanted and did so occasionally. He just found the penitentiary to be a laughably convenient place for his…works. Those works so happened to be continuations of things once practiced in that crazy town of fog which everybody seems to know about. Everybody knows but nobody cares because anything affiliated with that town is really just crazy stuff.
…
"I'm not going to tell you his name," began the big-faced man, his big-bellied body covered with tailored clothes—a pin-striped black business suit and vest. He thought he looked snazzy, but he actually looked like someone out of the American 1920s who bootlegged booze and battled it out with Tommy guns instead of someone in an important public office. "No, not going to tell you at all. In fact, if you think anybody will tell you his name, forget it. Not happening."
Since the big-faced man talking was wearing expensive business clothes, it was quite appropriate that he talk trash from behind a great big expensive-looking desk. That desk was more to impress people than it was to do much in the way of paperwork. Paperwork is what secretaries are for! In addition to doing all the paperwork, secretaries also good for the occasional sexual favor.
An important man's desk serves the same purpose as the shiny thing a monarch puts on his head. That is, it serves no practical purpose at all—other than something to bend the secretaries over for a quickie. Even if important people are often stupid as tree stumps and probably just as physically active, they tend to get lots of impressive furniture and flashy clothes. Oh, and important men get heaped with lots and lots of money just because they know the right people, dress up in expensive clothes and know how to recite memorized speeches—those speeches written by other people a Hell of a lot smarter than they are.
Since the big-faced important man here was the warden of this grand institution of incarceration, he had on the most over-priced clothes, the best-looking desk and a big comfy chair to go with it. He also needs a really big expensive chair too…for hold that big fat ass of his. The inside of the chair must be made of the same sort of metal alloy used to make construction vehicles, by the way, because your typical run-of-the-mill steel-core office furniture could probably not hold up that much weight.
"Now I didn't hear you ask for his name," continued the warden, that big-faced man sitting behind the desk, "but I know that you're going to want to know it at some point. I know how people think. I'm smart in ways, and people like me are in charge because we're smart in those ways."
That wasn't exactly the truth. The big-face man became warden because his uncle was part of a very important committee in the senate. His brother was mayor of the town, what little town existed in this heavily forested region. Something happened to the last warden, so they needed a replacement—someone who has important relatives in the senate and the municipal government… You can draw the connections from there.
"I'm telling you ahead of time so you don't start asking too many questions…like his name," continued the warden because he just likes to hear himself talk and sound all important.
Talking important and exercising his legally granted power of being a warden, just being a man of power, it's all about a man's power over other people. Now that really raises the ol' crotch-tower and feels good. After he left for the afternoon, it'd be time for one of those sexual favors from a secretary. Never mind if the secretary was maybe an illegitimate niece.
"So don't ask about the odd prisoner," finished up the warden. (Yes, the fat-ass was finally shutting up.) "It's just not a good idea to ask for what you can't get. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!" responded the prison-guard who was being spoken to all this time. Yes sir was all he would say at this point. Do not speak unless spoken to. Everything is yes-sir and no-sir as is taught in training.
…
The underling to whom the warden was talking was named John Wright—a newly hired prison guard. Fresh out of corrections training, he was here to do a good job—yes sir, yes ma'am. He stood with hands behind his back, the back straight and feet apart—his pressed dark-blue uniform as fresh as his professional attitude. So he stood here and took every word very seriously.
Thing is, John Wright was hired up because something happened to the last one, just like how something happened to the previous warden. That previous prison guard left off working here in good physical condition. And they say the guy is still is physically health. After all, psychiatric institutions these days tend to take good care of their patients' physical health.
That's right! That last prison guard was someone who had lost his mind. Rumor had it that the prisoner being talked about—the one whom shall not be named by the warden—had something to do with it.
Later, questions in various sizes, shapes and forms ran rampant through the new prison guard's mind even while he followed his colleague out of the warden's office. There ought not be anything extraordinary about just one more prisoner—the odd prisoner. What was so special about him? Was the odd prisoner a convicted serial killer, going for a high score in human lives? That couldn't be it, because there were more than a few killers of humans in this prison—nothing special about butchering folks around here. Was the odd prisoner…a rapist? Not even if he was a molester of women or men, was he a rapist of the corporate sort—raping the stockholders' holdings? A few of that sort were here too. How about…drug kingpin? Guess what? Guess again, because that wasn't special either. Even if he was any of those things, even if he was all of those things, it would still not make the odd prisoner be an outstanding member of the convicted populace.
What made the odd prisoner so special was that he could do things that were maybe not supposed to be possible. The people running the place didn't understand how. What they once saw on surveillance cameras that looked into the odd prisoner's cell, along with what they saw painted on his cell's wall, what the odd prisoner did with those strange symbols he painted on the wall—painted with a substance that looked suspiciously like blood. Rumors within rumors said that the odd prisoner himself only painted some of those strange symbols and how some of them…painted themselves. The people running this place didn't like any of that crazy talk and just left it all alone.
The new prison-guard, Mr. John Wright, he didn't know the rumors. All that he knew was that he was here to do his job—part of which included not trying to get the name of the odd prisoner. Too bad, because the odd prisoner's doings were going to make things very interesting soon enough.