Black Holes and Revelations
Disclaimer: I don't own Silent Hill, or anything that has to do with Silent Hill. I do, however, own Jack, Claire, and Aubrey, and anyone else I make up. New worlds, probably the old worlds too, instead of 21 Sacraments, it's something else. All new characters. Peace!!
Chapter 1:
My head hurts. The air is too heavy in here now. It smells bad, like death. The way a corpse smells when it's been in the hot sun too long. It's also hot. Dreadfully hot. Claire and I lay here, with the comforter thrown on the floor at the foot of the bed, and the ceiling fan turned up to full speed. Even the ceiling fan can't make the room less hot. I turn over, looking to see if she's asleep. Her eyes are closed, but I doubt she's actually sleeping. She hasn't slept much. Not since our daughter died.
I look at Claire and remember a time when she used to smile. That was before our daughter died.
Aubrey would have been seventeen if she was still alive. She was killed in a car accident a year ago. She and her boyfriend, Brian both. Well, that's what the cops said anyway. Their bodies were never found. Only Brian's shitty Camero had been found. Of course, it was even shittier once it was wrapped around that light pole. All of this happened about a mile from where Claire and I lay now. It was on a road that led to the deserted ghost town, Silent Hill.
For the life of us, Claire and I couldn't figure out what they were doing up there. Aubrey was terrified of her own shadow. With the ghost stories that people made up about that town, there's no way that she would be up there snooping around. She would have been far too scared.
I shook thoughts of Aubrey away because I just couldn't take her smiling face in my head. Smiling her mother's smile. That gorgeous smile that I missed seeing from both of them. Thinking about how happy Aubrey had been, how she had been on top of the world, with her straight A's, colleges sending her scholarship offers, her perfect boyfriend, her friends that brought her so much joy... all of this saddened me beyond anything I'd ever felt. I opened my eyes and they landed on Claire again. Looking at her wasn't any better; Aubrey looked exactly like her. They were both so beautiful it was hard to take. Claire wore her light red hair straight, while Aubrey had worn her dark brown hair in curls that framed her face perfectly. Their hair style and color preference was the only difference between their looks. They both had bright blue eyes that pierced you in a good way, when they wanted a gaze to be loving, or in a bad way, when they wanted a glare to be harsh. They had the same straight white smile, and the same small nose. Yes, looking at my wife brought Aubrey back into my head.
I noticed that Claire was holding something. She had been holding it the entire time, but I was just now taking notice. It was the picture that she kept on her nightstand; Aubrey's last school photo. Claire had it pressed against her chest; she had probably stared at it until she couldn't stand it anymore. She blamed herself for Aubrey's death. She hated herself for letting Aubrey leave that day, even though she couldn't have known what was to happen that day. Even though no one watches their child leave the house and think that they won't be coming home.
I gently tried to pull the picture from her loose grasp, but she moaned softly and held it tighter. I took my hand away and rested it on her arm. Her body relaxed, and I realized that she was sleeping probably for the first time since this ordeal began.
The walls here scream Aubrey. Every part of this apartment has her on it. Every part of this whole complex reminds us of her. South Ashfield Heights holds Aubrey in this world. At least that's what it feels like. So why don't we leave? Why don't we move away and never come back? Why stay where memories of our perfect daughter haunt us? Simple. We can't. We are confined on this room by the chains on our door. They're on the inside, but how someone got in and put them there is a question we don't have an answer to. We've been stuck here for three days now. These circumstances mirror what happened to our neighbor. Henry Townshend, had disappeared without a trace, all of his things still in the rooms. His body had been found later, along with his neighbor's, Eileen Galvin. I remember how all of that had scared Aubrey, especially when she heard that the bodies had been found in Silent Hill. This story was one of the several she had heard that kept her away from the place. She had spoken to Eileen and Henry on many occasions, and when they disappeared and were then found murdered, both she and Claire and I all wondered what had happened. Who had killed Henry Townshend and Eileen Galvin?
I don't know what to do now. We can't stay in here forever. We'll die of starvation or of insanity. Even the windows won't open. Everything is sealed, as if God Himself made it fool proof. The phones don't work, the vents won't open, even the goddamn TV doesn't turn on! Who would do this? How could anyone do this?
I move my hand up to Claire's face, and gently stroke it with my thumb. Her hand comes up and rests over mine.
"Are you awake, baby?" I ask her, and she nods and moves closer to me. I wrap my arms around her rail thin body and kiss her forehead.
"I can't take this anymore, Jack." She whispers to me, her voice quivering as though it was about to break," How long can we stay like this?"
She is sobbing softly now. It brings tears to my eyes. I'd give just about anything to make her happy again. If only I could break the chains off of that door... Maybe getting out of this God-forsaken shithole would help her. What am I saying? Of course it would help her! Being confined to our apartment didn't exactly inspire happiness within her.
"Do you think..." She asks, tears falling from her eyes as she looks up at me," Do you think Aubrey is doing this? Is she keeping us here? Do you think that she knows that we were going to leave, and she's angry?"
"No. Aubrey doesn't have anything to do with this. Whoever chained the door shut is human, and Aubrey is..."
I stop, knowing not to say the word "dead." She can't handle that. I can't even believe that I almost said it. I hope that she didn't hear, but I know she did when her sobbing intensifies.
"I'm sorry, baby. I didn't think." I tell her, hoping that this will soothe her, and hating myself for making her upset.
She shakes her head, and kisses me quickly, telling me without words that it's ok. I hold her tighter and just let her cry against my chest.
"God, Aubrey..." She cries, not to me, but to Aubrey's ghost," You have to help us, honey..."
Out of nowhere, we both hear a loud crash. We sit up quickly, both of our hearts pounding in apprehension. Maybe the door got blasted off the hinges! Maybe we can get out!
I throw open our bedroom door and we both run down the hallway that leads to the kitchen and living room area. To our immense disappointment, the door is still chained from the inside, and we are still stuck. However, when I look down at the floor, I see a red slip of paper.
"Claire, stay here." I tell her as I walk forward cautiously. Was someone right outside the door? Were they good or bad? And what was this red slip of paper?
"What is it, Jack?" She asks as I walk back to her, my eyes glued to the red piece of paper.
I look at her, at her tear-stained face, into her still tearing eyes.
"It's from Aubrey." I tell her, my voice shaking as my heart pumped faster than I thought it possibly could," It's her handwriting. Look."
I hand the note to her, and her eyes widen slightly.
"Oh my God..." She smiles for the first time in months, as she scans over the writing, just looking at the huge neat writing that belonged to our daughter. Neither of us had even read what was written, we were just so thrilled and shocked to see her writing on the page. We both had held out hope that Aubrey was alive somewhere, that she had somehow escaped death when the car had hit the light pole. This note was proof that she had.
"Mom, Dad..." It read," Silent Hill." Blood smeared some of the writing, but we managed to pick out a few more words," Alive. The hole is the way. The way."
"What hole is she talking about?" I ask out loud as we stare at the note, as though the words would spell out their meaning in front of our eyes.
Claire just shook her head, looking as confused as I was. As we walk back towards the bedroom, a look came across her face. An instinctive look. The one that she got when her womanly intuition kicked up. Instead of going back into the bedroom, she opens the bathroom door, and as we stand in the doorway, we see that there is a hole a little bigger than the shower in the room. I walk towards it cautiously, feeling her hand gripping my arm, as we get closer to this hole that had manifested itself there.
Right in the opening, there is a broken pipe that had been severed in half when the hole had appeared. I grab it and rip it easily off of the wall. It is about five feet long, metal, light but it could be used as a weapon, in case we needed one.
I hear something coming from within the blackness of that hole. I strain my ears to hear, but as I get closer, it gets louder and louder. It is soft sobbing, and a girl's voice.
"Mommy... Daddy..." My heart practically jumps out of my chest as I look at Claire, who by the shocked look on her face was hearing it too.
"We have to go." She tells me, an urgency in her voice that I had heard only one other time before; when she was telling me that we had to get to the accident site where they found the car. She had clearly been thinking that once we got there, we'd be able to magically find Aubrey, that we'd be able to magically heal her. Needless to say... we never found her.
Like the last time, I took her urgency as a hint not to object, and I climb into the hole first, and then reach out to take her hand and help her in.
We are silent as we crawl through it. Once our bathroom is no longer in site, and once the light is gone, I wonder if maybe this had been a mistake. No end is in site, and my mind is thinking the worst. What if the hole had closed up again, and we would be stuck in here? Someone had clearly wanted us to stay put, and here we are, making an escape.
Aubrey's voice cried for us again, and this proved to be the motivation I needed. Both Claire and I started moving even faster, trying to get to her. She was really alive. She was really at the end of this tunnel, crying for us. Those last words of the note scream in my head, and they are the hope that is pulling me forward. I wouldn't stop until I found the end of this tunnel. I would keep going until I was back with Aubrey.
I pull my way along, Claire close behind, adrenaline pumping through us both. Up ahead, it looks like light is faintly on the walls, or maybe I'm just hallucinating. Maybe none of this is happening. Maybe I'm just crazy.
No, there is definately light on the walls. It's getting brighter and brighter as we round a corner and start moving towards it.
"Almost there." I assure Claire. She doesn't respond, I know she is deep in thought. Probably thinking of how she will react to seeing Aubrey alive. Thinking of all the things she had not been able to tell her that she could now tell her. I step out into the bright light, and reach my hand in for Claire to take. She grasps my hand and steps out. We both turn and look at where we're standing.
It's a convenience store, like a Rite Aid. The light streams in through the windows, and I see that outside, there is the main street of Silent Hill. A thick fog is covering the town, and the fog is even inside the store with us.
We can still here the soft sobbing from our daughter, and every once in awhile a "Mommy" or a "Daddy" is said. We both look around, wondering where it is coming from. Claire starts to walk towards the back, motherly instinct guiding her, and I follow closely behind. In the back of the store, back by the freezers, it's dark. In the corner, we see a shaking figure. Aubrey.
She is turned away from us, towards the wall. Her dark hair is even longer, cascading down to the middle of her back. Her body is trembling viciously with fear and because she is crying hysterically.
"Bree?" Claire walks forward, and something tells me to grab her. Something tells me to stop her. But I am so tempted to just run to Aubrey and hold her and tell her how much I love her that I follow Claire towards our little girl.
Claire turns Aubrey around and I hear her draw in a deep gasp. But I am so petrified and terrified by what I am seeing that I can't move or react at all.
The girl on the floor is not Aubrey. Well, maybe it is Aubrey. I don't know what that thing is. I don't know. I don't know.
Her face is mutilated beyond any recognition; her nose is gone, her lips are hanging off, one eyeball is out of the socket, and her other eye is swollen shut. Her neck snaps to one side suddenly, the bone jutting out at a sickly angle. Her limbs begin to contort and snap and she seems to be forcefully turned onto her stomach. Her hands slam to the floor, one facing towards the back wall even though she is facing us. Even her fingers are turned in all different directions, some are even missing. Her dark brown hair is in her face, until her broken neck snaps her head upward so she is looking right at me. I quickly grab Claire, and pull her away. She is in so much shock that she isn't screaming or crying or even moving. Her eyes stay glued to that... thing.
Aubrey, if that creature is Aubrey, begins to twitch violently, as though having a seizure. Her sobs have a certain echo to them that chills us both to our cores. A mutilated hand jerks forward and she pulls herself towards us. We both jump and back away quickly. Dead Aubrey must see this as a challenge, because she starts to move faster, her legs and arms moving in awkward ways at top speed. She is crawling along like a spider, her dead face never looking away from us.
We are both so horrified that we don't think to run. This is what our daughter has become? This is what she is doomed to be for all eternity?
We get into the light, and suddenly, Aubrey's mouth opens to twice it's size and she shrieks horribly and scurries backwards into the dark. That shriek echoes through my head, pounding my eardrums, and ripping my heart to shreds.
Claire is squeezing my hand, when all of a sudden, her grip lessens. I turn to her quickly and catch her as she collapses. I quickly lift her into my arms, and kick open the door of the convenience store. Through the window, I can see the back of the store where Aubrey is kneeling in the dark, staring at the wall again. That is what my daughter has become. This is what she is doomed to be for all eternity.
"Claire... Claire..." I look around, see that I have nowhere else to put her, so I lay her down on the sidewalk gently. I gently tap her cheek, thinking maybe this would bring her around. I put my hand under her nose, and feel that she is still breathing. The shock of seeing our daughter like that had just been too much for her.
I put my arm under her neck and bring her to a sitting position. I will just sit here and hold her until she wakes up. That is all I can do. I didn't realize it for awhile, but I am rocking back and forth slightly, whether it is a deep down subconscious way I show fear, or if it is to soothe Claire, I don't know.
That was what my daughter had become. That was what she was doomed to be for all eternity.
How could God be so cruel?
Author's Note: Update coming soon. Hope you all liked it!!