A\N: Hi, this is DissidiaLord98. I know I haven't done an Author's Note yet in any of my stories, but right now I am going to start. This is my first SH fic involving this pairing so be nice and let me know how I did and how you liked it. If not, at least I tried.
Note: As you can see, I useed snip-its from the lyrics of the four songs from Silent Hill 4 in the beginning of each chapter. I myself don't own Silent Hill, Konami does. I wish, but its not to be. *sigh* Enjoy!
Haunted
Chapter 01104: A Bloody Memory
'Not again, not again, not again, this dream I can't awake. What is real, what is real, what is real, it's getting hard for me to take.
What I need, what I need, what I need, a little somethin' I rely and the white sugar gently hides me.
Oh the sweet sugar saves me, it's the room that confines me...Confines me...Sweet sugar.' ~From SH4's 'Tender Sugar'~
It felt like a distant memory for the now slumbering soul. Awakening from a well deserved sleep from all the 'paranormal' events in Room 302, Henry Townshend felt different from how he previously felt. Slowly and carefully, he got up from the floor to scan his surroundings. Something didn't feel right to Henry, the air felt like it was tainted with darkness; making it a bit hard to breathe. He looks around the room more closely, realizing that the walls, doors and some other things were rusty with a few stains of blood. This kind of scenery was awfully familiar to Henry almost immmediately. He realized he was still in Room 302, but how the surrounding looked made him a bit stressed.
"What...The..Hell? I'm back in my room? Something doesn't feel right, am I still in a dream?" Henry questioned to himself. He begins to walk down the hall to see if the rest of the room was in the same rusted condition as the hallway. As he continued down the hall, he soon hears the door open, revealing a brownish-blonde short haired child wearing a striped dark blue shirt walking towards the couch. Henry couldn't believe this, but he's seen this child before. As he slowly drew closer, he heard the child speak, maybe to an imaginary friend. However, it didn't seem the case to Townshend. "...I'm not going to let anyone stand in my way...I wanna stay here with you forever. I'm home, mom," the child said, snuggling up to the couch.
Henry finally arrives to the living room and spotted the little boy, curious of what is going on. He decided to not bother the child, because he appeared to be asleep on the cushioning of the rust fashioned couch. 'What is going on? What is he doing here? Wha-' Henry's thought was cut off by the radio playing the news on a station. A sillquet of a tall man with long neck length hair stood in front of the radio, listening to every detail of what was transpiring. "This just in with the breaking news. Two tragic deaths have accured in the same complex as of Richard Braintree in the South Ashfield Heights Apartment Complex," said the newscaster.
'Eileen...Is she still alive?' thought Henry. He soon remembered about Eileen, who was assualted by the phantom serial killer, but the child interfered to save her. He wondered if she's still alive. The newscaster then reveals the big details that will soon haunt the poor man for an eternity. "One of the victims, Miss Eileen Galvin, was rushed to the hospital at St. Jeromes, but was pronounced dead upon arrival," said the newscaster. Henry froze in shock, then realized something that could've contibuted to this. During the battle against the conjurer and the ghost, there was a machine in the blood pool that was made to kill; plus Eileen was walking towards it in a type of trance.
He fell to his knees, torn apart on the inside of his neighbor's death that he tried to prevent, but he couldn't in time. He didn't save her in time and this was the only thing that tore him up from the inside of his failure to prevent another death. The more shocking news was yet to come. "On that very same day a few hours later, a body was discovered inside Room 302. The body was disfigured and chopped up enough to render the victim unidentifiable. According to the superintendent, Frank Sunderland, the only occupant in 302 was twenty-eight year old Henry Townshend. All the police have to comment on this matter was that they have assumed that the disfigured body is Townshend's til proven otherwise," said the newscaster in detail.
"No...I'm right here...I'm still here. I haven't been chopped up. What the hell is going on?" gasped Henry, not believing what the newscaster said about the second victim. The man in the shadows spots Henry a few feet away where he stood, turning to face him with a crazed smirk on his face. "Aww...Mother brought you back to us, Reciever of Wisdom. Did you hear the news? They found you in your room, torn to pieces and not able to be identified," the man said, waving a steel pipe in his left hand.
"Who are you? What are you doing in my room?" questioned Henry. "Your room? You mean 'our' room. I have awaken Mother at last, finally finishing the 21 Sacrements. We are finally together as one big family," the man responded. He then steps into the light of the room, revealing his full appearance. The man was garbed in a navy bright blue trenchcoat and tannish yellow pants. His neck length hair was dark blonde. He looks at Henry and gave a wicked smile.
"Welcome home, Henry," the man replied. Townshend's jaw dropped and all his breath was sucked out of him. Standing right before him was a ghost he just killed not too long ago. It was none other than the phantom serial killer, Walter Sullivan. "No..No...I killed you! I killed you! How are you alive?" screamed Henry.
"Let's just say it was a case of 'coming full circle'. You made me mortal as soon as you putted that cord into my monstrous self and pierced eight spears into it. You killed me and now I have become a ghost once again. Its all coming full circle and I have finally finished what I started. We are going to be roommates in this building for the remainder of time...Together," replied Walter, smirking at Townshend in the process. "No...I'm not a damn ghost! I'm still here! I'm not going to be stuck with you here. This is just a dream!," said Henry, believing still that all this was just a simple dream. He rushes towards the main door, hearing voices and sirens on the other side.
Henry opens the door and walks out of 302, realizing that he was in the real world. He spots all the other occupants of the apartment complex permenantly leaving and the superintendent, Frank Sunderland, on a stretcher clinging to his chest. "I'm not staying here for another second. With those murders here, I rather move somewhere else than stay here," said one of the occupants to another. "First Richard; then Eileen; and now that poor young man in 302...I don't want to be next!" said the other occupant.
"Hey! I'm right here! I'm okay, look! I'm not dead!" Henry shouted out to the people, waving his arms in the air to get their attention. To his shock, no one saw him. "What's going on? Why aren't they looking towards me?" Henry asked himself out loud. He walks in front of another occupant of the complex to stop her, but what Henry found out next was beyond belief and purely shocking. He stood there to stop her to just talk and ask questions, the woman actually walks through him like mist, shocking poor Henry to the core as he discovered that people could walk through him, like as if he was a ghost.
"What the hell? Wha...What just happened?" questioned Henry. Within a few more minutes the entire complex became silent and abandoned, devoid of life. Henry looked at his hands in pure horror, trying to hold onto his sanity from what just happened. Without his knowledge, Walter walks towards him with something to say. "They can't see us. We're nothing but ghosts now. Accept it, Henry...You're dead and you're bound here for the remainder of time. You are dead, Henry...You're a ghost, just like me," said Walter, telling him the hard truth to the twenty-eight year old. The child from 302 comes out to the two, the younger apparition of Walter, and grabs hold of the older Walter's left leg.
"No...No...I'm not no damn ghost!" growled Henry, "No..This is a dream...This is just a dream...Why won't I wake up?" "Henry...You are dead. You heard the news on the radio and its true. Accept the one truth, Townshend...Accept it. Death took you," said Walter, still telling him that he had died in 302.
"Shut up! Leave me alone!" screamed Henry, moving towards the main door out of the appartment complex. As he approaches the door, Walter calls out to him, "You can't leave! You're bound here as an earthbound spirit!" Townshend didn't hear Sullivan and went through the door, but instead of going outside, he was back into the apartment on the first floor. Instead of the normal environment that first surrounded him before, it was rusty with blood stains, cobwebs, and abnormal features. This felt like a unlikely return to the Apartment World of one of Walter's Otherworlds. Shoken to the core by pure fear and shock, Henry gives out a shout.
"No! No!" he screamed out, eyes wide open with pure fear. It actted like deja vu to him, as if all the events from being trapped in his room and the attempts to escape Walter was all flooding back to him. Henry runs up to the third floor, with no control of his mind and reasoning aside for the moment. Walter soon walks through the doors, spoting Henry running up the stairs. "Henry! Let us help you! Your're delusional and upset," Walter called out, allowing his younger self to hold onto his coat. Little Walter was worried for Henry as well.
"Leave me alone!" screamed Townshend, "This has got to be a nightmare...It all has to be a dream!" "He's heading to Room 303...He'll be hurt even more if he goes there," said Little Walter. The older apparition nodded in agreement and the two rush up towards the third floor after Henry, hoping to calm him enough for them to heal the tortured soul. With no control over his body, Henry continues to run up the stairs to the third floor. Now arriving on floor three, he rushes through the door and makes his way to Room 303, the very room Eileen was in during and before the whole situation involving the phantom serial killer. He finally spots a door with '303' on it and almost immediately rushes in. wondering if this was all just a bad dream. Henry enters the room slowly and quietly, remembering the scene trapped in his mind from this very room.
He could remember the scene very vividly. Eileen was sprawled out on the floor from an attack with the numbers '20121' on her back, bleeding and wounded from the ghost's attack, but the child version of Sullivan interfered and saved her for only a bit til she died by the machine in the blood pool. Blood of the fight was still stained on the floor and the room was disshuffled. Lightly shaking in shock and gawking at the room's interior, Henry falls onto his knees in sadness. At that same moment, all emotions surged through the man's heart; making him shout out in pure sadness of someone he was trying to protect. "Eileen!" Henry screamed out, slumping forward to the ground. He cries heavily onto his white long sleeved over-shirt like jacket. He sobbed in remorse, not knowing that one of the two Walters walked into the room, "Why? Why is this happening?" The older apparition stood still for a bit, til Henry heard his footsteps.
With tears still streaming down his hazel eyes, he looks at the older Walter and stood up. A surge of another emotion overtook Townshend, an emotion that he had never shown to the serial killer that was well hidden inside. It was an emotion of rage and the instict to attack the one that killed Eileen. "You killed her...You killed her...You bastard!" Henry roars out, lashing out at the serial killer. He takes his hands and tries to strangle the phantom, amazingly touching him like a solid human. Henry's attent was to kill the murderer that killed Eileen. Walter fought off the attack with stregnth, pushing Henry to the ground. "Your surrounded by delusions. Let us help you," said Walter.
"I'm gonna kill you! I'm gonna kill you exactly how you killed her!" Henry roared once more. He grabs hold of the serial killer and rams him out of the room, giving him enough room to run off to better arm himself. Henry finds a steel pipe and takes hold of it as a weapon. "Murderer!" Henry yelled out, swinging the steel pipe at Walter, but with speed, the killer dodges it. Henry didn't stop, he continued to swing the pipe as hard as he could.
"Henry stop! Stop!" the child called out. The older appartition grabs hold of the man attacking him, causing Henry to drop the weapon he had. Henry then began to beat his fists on the blonde while he tried to kick him, growling out 'You murdrer!' in a chant. He begins to run out of energy, struggling less and less as the older apparition held onto Henry to make sure he didn't hurt himself from the struggle. Tears continued to stream down the man's eyes, crying from the regret he always harbored at the final battle against the monster corpse and the phantom when Eileen walked towards the machine, ending her life before he could save her. The child walked towards the crying Henry and hugged his head, as if trying to calm him from his distress.
"Eileen! I'm sorry, Eileen!...I wasn't fast enough. I'm sorry!" cried Henry, hoping that Eileen's ghost heard him. The two Walters stayed with him til he cried himself to sleep, allowing the older Walter to carry him back to Room 302. The two returns to the room of which they originated from, taking the upset slumbering Henry with them so he could rest and hope to help explain the whole situation of why he is a ghost.