Black Holes and Revelations

Chapter 2

As I sit and hold Claire, I see a shape out of the corner of my eye. I whip around, and see that there is a person walking into the bowling alley across the street. I don't get a good look at him or her because they are walking fast. They can't be a creature; creatures can't come out in light.

"Hey!" I call, but he or she is already inside. However, yelling has woken Claire up.

"Who are you yelling at? And what happened?" She asks as her hand touches her forehead. Maybe she has a headache, or maybe her head is spinning.

"I just saw someone walk into that bowling alley. Oh, and you fainted, by the..."
I don't even finish because she is already standing and walking towards the door of the convenience store. She throws open the door and starts to go inside, but this time I do grab her.

"What are you doing? You saw what was in there!"

"That's my daughter, Jack! Maybe there's something I can do. I don't know, maybe I can save her..."

"I think the coal fumes are getting to you. I've heard that they'll kill you if you breathe them in too long."

"What are you talking about?" She asks impatiently and as though I'm talking nonsense.

"The coal fires that are still burning underneath us." I tell her, and the knowing look on her face tells me that she remembers hearing about it," Anyway, we need to go back through that hole and go home. That crying we heard, and that voice that sounded like Aubrey's crying for us, was just that..." I stop, searching for the right word, but I don't find one. "That" seemed to sum it up pretty well.

"That?" Claire repeats, her expression turning to disgust," Our daughter is now a 'that?'"

"That's not our..."

"That's what she is now, Jack!" Her voice is getting louder as gets angrier and angrier, but I realize that it isn't at me. She, like me, is still reeling over the fact that our daughter is stuck here forever, doomed to be that... thing," She's a 'that?"

Ok, maybe she is angry at me still. But that creature is not our daughter. I don't know what she thinks she's going to do by going to see it again. Does she think that by staring at it, that all of a sudden it's going to turn back into our beautiful Aubrey? Does she think that if she talks to it, it's going to just all of a sudden be Aubrey? She was kidding herself. But it's not like I could tell her that. Oh, fuck that! Of course I can break that piece of harsh reality to her.

"Claire, were you paying attention?!" I raise my voice at her, and she jumps and intinctively backs away from me. But I'm getting so pissed at her and her naivity that I don't really notice," Did you see what that thing was?! That..." I purposely stress the word so she knows I mean to say it," ..is not Aubrey! That..." I do it again because I can see that it's starting to upset her," ...is Aubrey's corpse come... alive or whatever the fuck it is! We are clearly in some sort of alternate universe, Claire, where these things are possible. Where holes in the wall leading to alternate universes are possible..." I'm rambling now, and I know that I'm not actually mad at her, but I am so devastated by what I've just seem that I can't help but take that out on someone," Do you want to go in and be a mother to that thing? Go ahead, be my guest."

She is squeezing the bridge of her nose; something she does when she's either frustrated or about to cry. I think both of those apply here.

I sigh, guilt taking over me. I know that she's not herself right now. She hasn't been herself for more than a year. I am always so careful not to upset her, and I'm not sure what made me snap. I see tears start to fall from her eyes, and I walk towards her, expecting her to back away from me again. I hold her as she cries for the thousandth time since Aubrey died.

"I'm sorry." She tells me, and I kiss her head.

"No, don't be sorry. I shouldn't have snapped on you. I'm sorry."

"It's ok. What are we gonna do? Why did that hole appear if..."

"I don't know. We're gonna figure this out, ok? At least we're out of the apartment for awhile though.." I tell her, with a small smile. We both laugh slightly at my bad joke and kiss quickly.

"Whoa, what is this?" A voice asks and we both jump and turn around, me putting her behind me quickly. There's a man standing there, about twenty five, if I had to guess. He was holding a gun on us, and his expression was steely and emotionless; he'd shoot us if he had to," Who are you two lovebirds?"

His dry sense of humor and his sarcasm are quite annoying, especially here. How can anyone have any sense of humor in a place like this?

He is looking mainly at me, but his eyes fall on Claire.

"Oh my God..." He put the gun down quickly, and laughed slightly," Aubrey's mother? Claire and Jack, right?"

I look at Claire, who looks shocked.

"Yes." She replied, walking out from in back of me," I'm Aubrey's mother. But Aubrey's... she's..." She looks at me to say it, because she's been unable to say that word "dead" or any of it's synonyms for the past year.

"Our daughter died a year ago. Her, um... she's in there, actually."

"No, she's not." The guy told us, laughing slightly," Oh..." He nodded and pointed at the convenience store," In here?"

"Yeah." I answer, amd he turns and goes inside the store. We follow him, and see that he's banging on the shelves.

"Aubrey!" He calls," Hey Aubrey! Come out and play, bitch!"

"Do you have to do that?" Claire asks, clearly annoyed.

"Ma'am, this thing..." Aubrey is in the dark snarling at this man, wanting to run out and kill him but knowing that she can't," That thing isn't your daughter. Oh, someone's in a bad mood today." He tells the thing," Come on, baby. Come to Daddy."

She leaps forward, and he shoots her dead in the eye socket. She falls to the ground, but isn't out yet. She twitches upwards, her broken arms lifting her. But she's gasping now, her mouth open wide again. We see that the sunlight is making her skin bubble and melt off.

"Adios, bitch." He yanks her head back, as she starts shrieking as the sunlight burns her face, and fires the gun at her face. She collapses, and Claire and I stare at her shriveling body in horror.

"That, lady and gentleman, was not your daughter. But I can take you to your daughter, if you'd like."

"What?" We both ask.

"Oh, Aubrey's up in the hotel, or what's left of the hotel. Walk with me." He tells us, and we follow him, trusting him even though we really had no reason to. He pulls a cigarette out of a pack that's in his pocket and lights up.

"Cigarette?" He offers us one, and we both refuse.

"Cool. I'm Luke, by the way." He puts the pack back in his pocket and as we pass the bowling alley, we see a man and a woman going inside.

"Yo, Tommy, pick up some more silver bullets. I just used my last ones on dead Aubrey."

"Dead Aubrey? You finally saw her?" He asked," Hey, who are they?"

"Aubrey's parents. We're going to the hotel. When will we see you two up there?"

"About a half hour. We need more food." The girl tells him.

We keep going until we are at the Silent Hill hotel.

"Some things you should know about our fair town..." He turns to us at the door," First of all, besides the humans here, nothing is as it seems. You two probably thought that was your daughter, right?"

"Of course we did. She was killed in a car accident, and that thing was..." Claire stops, not able to find the right words, but both me and this man knew what she was trying to say. Given the severity of the accident, that's probably what Aubrey's body would have looked like.

"Right, but things here... the things you'll see, they play on your vulneribilities. Remember that." We walk up the stairs of the hotel, taking in it's state of decay. We pass two other women along the way. They start talking in hushed whispers as we pass, and Claire looks at me. I try to keep the worry off of my face, but it's difficult. What if these people are all a bunch of psychopaths that are planning on killing us? But then again, he did save our lives. Dead Aubrey, as they seemed to like to call her around here, would have killed us had she gotten the chance. But he killed her before she could kill us, and that was our only motivation for trusting him.

"Fuck!' A female voice yells, and we both recognize it.

"Aubrey?" Mark asks, cautiously pushing open the door," I have company here to see you."

We both look into the room, and to our surprise, it is Aubrey that turns to face us. Claire runs forward, and they throw their arms around each other, both sobbing. Claire pulls away every few seconds, puts her hands on Aubrey's face and just looks at her, moving her long dark hair out of her face so she can get a better look at her face. Though Aubrey is whole, unlike that zombie Aubrey that we saw, something about her looks different; her body is smaller, her hair is slightly matted and her mascara and eyeliner were running down her face, making her tired and almost insanely horrified eyes look even more electrically blue.

"God, I've msised you both so much." Aubrey sobs, as she rests her head against Claire's chest and wraps her arms around her middle.

"You have no idea how much we've missed you. What happened, honey? How did you end up here?"

"I don't know." Bree replies as she looks at me, clearly trying to figure out why I haven't hugged her yet. Claire looks at me expectantly, and I walk forward and hug Aubrey, tears sliding out of my eyes finally. She really is alive. I am so afraid that this is just a dream and that I'm going to wake up and never see Aubrey again. But after a while, I realize that it isn't a dream. It's all real, and though I have no idea how all of this is possible, it's happening, and I don't want to think about why.

Once I let go of Aubrey, she quickly hugs Claire again. Claire holds her tight, and I see that she's still crying happy tears. She had prayed ever since the day that Aubrey died that maybe she was alive somewhere. And now, here she was, right in front of us.

"None of us know how we got here." Aubrey explains to us," But... we all had near death experiences before we showed up here. I got in the accident, and Marcus, who is eavesdropping..."

"Hi." Marcus came back into the room, and sat down on one of the dusty couches.

"Marcus was shot just outside of here."

"Oh my God." Claire replies, turning to face Marcus," You weer shot?"

"I was. Robbery. My girlfriend and I both were shot. I'm assuming she lived." His already pale skin is even whiter as he talks about this," I thought I saw her awhile ago. I thought it was her."

Something about him is changing as he talks about this, and Aubrey seems to be getting agitated. She runs her fingers through her hair, and grabs Claire's hand. Clearly what he's talking about is upsetting to her. Marcus notices how she's on the verge of tears and clears his throat.

"Either way... they only come out at night. Bree..."

Bree looks up at him, and dabs the tears away from her eyes.

"They only come out at night."

Though both Claire and I want to know what only comes out at night, we don't ask because we can see how upsetting the topic is to Aubrey. Aubrey lets go of Claire's hand and walks over to the window.

"How's it look out there, Bree?" Marcus asks her, standing up.

"The sun's going down. We gotta move." She reaches behind the couch and pulls out a 12 gauge shotgun. She tosses it to Marvus who catches it with one hand. She also pulls out a lead pipe, exactly like the one I had taken. I realize that it's still in my hand, even though I thought I had dropped it.

"Wow, Dad... great minds, huh?" She says, and hits the end of her pipe agaisnt the end of mine. I laugh and we sword fight brefly, playing around even though there something coming our way, something that both she and Marcus are scared of.

Just as I start thinking about what it could possibly be that they're afraid of, something that sounds like an air raid siren starts going off. Aubrey and I stop abruptly, and she whips around and looks at Marcus, her eyes wide with terror.

"Let's go."

Aubrey grabs my hand and grabs Claire's, and we run down the hallway of the hotel. Marcus leads us out into the street, and stops. We look swhere he's looking and see that there is what looks like a wave of darkness moving slowly towards us. We start running again, following Aubrey and Marcus towards the convenience store where dead Aubrey had been. The two women we had seen earlier are there, and they look frantic. We run inside the brightly lit convenience store, and Marcus and Aubrey stand by the door.

"Aubrey, go back there with your parents."

"Both of you need to get away from the door!" A male voice yells from behind us. We turn, and to our shock, there is Henry Townshend, and behind him, grasping his arm, is Eileen Galvin. Henry touches Claire's arm as he passes, and for some reason, I defensively put my arm around her, as though staking my territory. He notices, but keeps walking towards the front of the store. I had always been slgihtly suspicious of the two of them, but had never said anything. In the back of my mind, I knew that he had just touched her arm as a greeting, a gesture saying," Nice to see you." But that didn't stop me from holding her close to let him know that she was mine.

"Henry!" Eileen called after him, running forward to pull him back inside.

To my horror, I saw that Eileen was missing an eye, and had on an eye patch. Her arm was in a cast, but she didn't seem like she was in pain. I thought she was dead, same as I thought Henry was dead. But I also thought Aubrey was dead. Nothing was making sense.

" Come on, Jeremiah!" Marcus was yelling to a guy that was still outside.

"Shit, we have to close the door!" Henry told him.

"Jeremiah is still out there! So is Christine! We can't just leave them!" Aubrey exclaims.

"We have to, Aubrey." Henry tells her, his voice firm yet carrying a hint of guilt," Close it, Marcus."

Marcus shut his eyes, and slams the door shut. He backs away, and pulls Aubrey with him. Aubrey squeezes her eyes shut and buries her face in Claire's neck. Claire kisses her head and looks at me, her expression asking me what the hell was going on. I wish to God I knew an answer to that question.

"What's out there?" I ask, my curiosity getting the best of me.

Henry laughs slightly, and kisses Eileen's head before answering," Hell. That's what's out there."