(Disclaimer: I don't own Silent Hill or any of the characters mentioned from the games. Konami owns all of it.)
1. two years later
"Come on! Come on!" Dahlia said to Alessa.
She was being dragged across a floor in a house that was near the outskirts of town. Her mother was being rough with her again. Making her do things she didn't want to. It was always like this since as far back as she could remember.
"No! No! I don't want to!" Alessa cried out as her mother tried to drag her to her feet.
"Just do as your mommy tells you now. I just want you to lend me a teeny bit of your power, that's all." Dahlia said still struggling with her daughter.
Alessa began to cry as her mother drug her across that floor of the dark dusty hallway towards a staircase. She didn't trust Dahlia in the least bit anymore, but still wanted to be with her.
"No! I don't want to!" Alessa screamed out.
"It will make everyone happy...and it will be good for you as well." Dahlia replied.
Alessa tried to struggle out of her mothers grasp but she had dug her nails into her arm. Her mother was overpowering her. As they continued to struggle she caught a glimpse of someone, more of a ghostly presence off in the corner of the room. It was a man in a brown jacket with brown hair combed back.
"No! Mommy please understand, I just want to be with you. Just the two of us, can't you understand?" She whimpered.
Dahlia suddenly stopped what she was doing and loosened her grip on her daughter. She looked down at Alessa and then let out a sigh. Her shoulders slumped as if she had resigned to her daughters pleas.
"You really mean it... Yes, I see. Maybe your mommy has been wrong." Dahlia said thoughtfully.
"Mommy..." Alessa whimpered.
"Why didn't I see this before? There is no reason to wait. Herein lies the mother's womb! To obtain the power to create life. I could have done this all by myself!" Dahlia said to her self.
Alessa looked up frightened by her mothers expression. She knew that something bad was going to happen very soon. Something that would cause a dark cloud to rest over her for the rest of her life. The beginning of a long nightmare.
"Mommy?" Cheryl mumbled still halfway sleeping.
Cheryl Mason sat up and looked at the clock, her head was pounding again. It always hurt when she had nightmares. She saw that she had an hour until she had to go to work. She looked at the picture resting on the bedstand, it was one of herself and her father, Harry Mason. A deep longing rushed through her as she took her eyes off the picture.
"Man, my head hurts." She said.
She got out of her bed and walked into the bathroom to get cleaned up for work. Another day, another dollar, she thought to herself as she climbed into the shower. She let the hot water spray down on her and closed her eyes for a few seconds. The hot water made her feel better and released some of the tension that caused her headache.
She climbed out after a few minutes and got dressed walking out of her apartment quickly. She walked to work everyday because it helped to clear her mind. That and she didn't really like to rely on her vehicle to get her places. She looked at the rusty old yellow Volkswagon Beetle that sat in the parking lot of South Ashfield Heights. She glanced to her side and saw Frank Sunderland standing near the front door with a bag of garbage. She smiled and waved, something she only did to people she knew well.
He stopped her, rushing up to her, the bag nearly ripping open. He looked slightly concerned as he approached her. She began to wonder if maybe he was going to evict her.
"Hello Cheryl, I was just wondering how the room is working out for you?" He asked.
"It's working out good Mr. S, thank you for asking." She said feeling just slightly uncomfortable standing here talking to him.
"That's good to hear. Seems like lately I've been getting a lot of complaints, mainly from the third floor. But there were a few exceptions on the other two floors." He began mumbling more to himself.
"Well everything is A-Okay in my room, nothing to complain about here." She replied.
"That's good, I'm glad to hear that. Um, one other thing though, if you see a young man with blond hair wandering around that place just call the cops okay?" He said.
She smiled, nodded and began to walk away turning back to look at the apartment once. She then stopped once more and called out to Frank Sunderland.
"Mr. Sunderland?" She said.
"Yes what is it?" He asked.
"Have a good day." She muttered and walked off.
It was a huge irony that after her little encounter with evil two years before, she found herself working in a mall. There she sat in a quiet little bookstore near the middle of a busy part of the shopping center sitting thoughtfully in the corner of the room staring at the random people that walked by the store. A co-worker stood at the desk chewing gum, looking bored, and flipping through a magazine. Multi-talented, Cheryl thought sarcastically.
She got up from the corner she was sitting and grabbed a book that had been carelessly dropped by a customer and put it in it's respectable place. She looked at the title of the book, it gave her a chill.
The Holy Mother by Nick Carroll.
She quickly took her hand away from it and began to walk to the checkout desk. In her hasty retreat she nearly knocked a customer over.
The very title of the book sent a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach, it was almost as if it was a premonition. Out of the thousands of books she put away on shelves she had never seen that particular book ever, even though she worked there for almost a year.
"Hey Claire, did you ever put any weird books on any of the shelves lately?" she asked her co-worker as she went behind the counter.
"Uh...take your pick, I think most of them are weird." Claire groaned.
Heather knew when her fellow employee was getting bored. It was mainly the impatient clicking she did with her nails. Not that it wasn't understandable, Claire unlike Heather, had a life outside of the book store. She partied and went to the clubs a lot. So much that some days she'd come in late and hung over.
She was thought to be the one employee that would end up quitting or get fired. But much to Heather's surprise she held onto the job for the last seven months, almost as long as Heather managed to hold onto it. In her opinion Claire was a little too stuck up and a bit vain but all in all she was easier to get along with then the rest of the employees.
Suddenly without warning a feeling struck her, it came so suddenly that she knocked over a cup of coffee. She watched it spill all over the counter in slow motion seeing every drop of it hit. The lights began to dim slightly and then just like that the feeling left her.
"What the hell was that about Heather?"
"What did you call me?" Cheryl asked.
"I said what the hell was that about Cheryl, why is something wrong?" Claire asked her.
She nodded her head and began to clean up the mess she made. Her mind began to race with a thousand thoughts and even worse, with something she couldn't quite put her finger on. She looked back up at Claire who was now watching her with the utmost interest.
"What?" Cheryl asked defensively.
"Nothing, I'm just making sure you don't go schizo and try to kill me." Claire shot back.
Suddenly another jolt hit her, this time she knew what it was. But I ended it! She thought as she grabbed hold of the edge of the counter and began to grip it tightly. She felt an evil presence somewhere in the building, somewhere near her.
"Maybe you should go in the back and and stack boxes for awhile." Claire suggested.
"Yeah maybe I should." She mumbled and began to walk to the back.
She sat on one of the boxes in the back room feeling no energy to even work at all. It seemed as if just sensing a familiar presence made her tired and weak. It made her feel helpless at the same time. Her head began to ache and her stomach cramped. Everything was going black.
"What's wrong with me?" She asked as she fell to the floor.
She was standing inside a room full of people, some of which she thought looked familiar and others that didn't look familiar at all. They stood in a dark candle lit room with an altar of some kind in the middle. On the altar was a child, a little girl.
This can't be happening! She thought in a panic.
"It's all in my head." She moaned.
They began chanting something she'd never heard before, they dressed in dark robes and even though it wasn't familiar it seemed achingly so. As she watched helplessly she saw to her horror that they were getting ready to burn the little girl. She tried to close her eyes but she realized that she couldn't. She begged not to have to see this horrible vision any longer but was not given the mercy she desired. She witnessed the child writhe in pain, watched helplessly as the little girl was transformed into something ugly and charred. She smelled the smoke and burning flesh that came from the little girl.
Then as they wrapped her in a shroud and began to haul her body away, a person began to chant a prayer of some sort.
"To the new mother, Holiest of them all. She sacrificed everything to give us peace and in the end perished. Praise to our Holy Mother Dahlia! May we resurrect her with our new found powers! Praise Dahlia!" They chanted in unison.
Cheryl felt like screaming but couldn't even will herself to move. Slowly she began to float off through a dark void and when she was finally able to move again she was in the stock room with the boxes and boxes of books. She curled up on the floor and began to shiver, praying to whatever may be out there that none of what she just saw was real.