A.N: Thanks for the reviews, always nice to see people excited by the idea of this kind of crossover, like I am lol. Still making it up blindly, but I suppose it will flicker between Claire's P.O.V and more traditional third person narrative (mainly to depict flashbacks). Anyway, enjoy this simple new chapter if it pleases ya.

Telaka

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So I decide to take stock in the graveyard; not exactly to add a spooky effect into my new adventure but because the fog seems to have given up a little of its lustre around the decrepit headstones and shabby, rusted iron fence perimeter. Of course there are parts of me – parts which are not by my nature but rather by horrifying personal experience – that say to sit in the middle of a graveyard in the middle of a strange nowhere is like some form of unwitting suicide. But a more predominant part of me is tired and eager to sit down. The woody path to Silent Hill is long, and uneventful…

In my knapsack – amongst less exciting things – are water, chocolate, the fading remains of a day-old tuna sandwich, some crudely fashioned lock picks, a breast pocket flashlight, a change of shirt and underwear, limited ammo for my 9mm – which is nestled snugly at the base of my spine – and a one anonymous diary. Any self-proclaimed Sherlock Holmes could deduct, I'm sure, that this is no random 'adventure', and I, no longer, a pure amateur.

Perching on an unassuming boulder next to a toppled tombstone of indistinguishable maturity, I begin indeed to take stock. Most frustratingly I note the change in my pocket is wearing thin, and with the chaos of the past month I have hardly had time to nip home and grab my purse. Here is hoping that the folks of Silent Hill take kindly in one way or another to wanderers with pretty legs.

I drink a little of the stale water from a bottle and cautiously entertain the idea of pulling out the anonymous diary that unofficially became mines just a few weeks back. In one of the many ways there could be to describe it, the anonymous diary has become my new nemesis.

It became mine in the days that followed off the back of the Racoon City 'adventure' and ever since it has troubled, sickened and propelled me into a whole new crazy level of the 'search-and-find-missing-relatives' field of expertise. Laying to me in barely coherent format a new trail to follow, with the vague and uninsured inkling of clues and tit-bits pointing roughly to where the hell Chris might be. And what exactly happened in doomed, burnt out Racoon, why it happened…

I brush the little hand-tied booklet with an unconscious flicker of my fingertips, hardly aware of dragging it out from the bottom of my knapsack in the first place. It is in essence a form of crudely collected mismatch papers, newsprint cut outs, foggy photographs and computer print-offs, all bound with piss colour string. Though it radiates an uncomfortable foreboding, as I stare absently at it on my lap I notice again its childlike quality, ingrained in its handcrafted construction. I cannot shake the disturbing instinct which identifies this as a child's work.

Half of its contents appear as nothing better than a mystery, if I really concentrate on them. The awkward handwriting, as it shows up randomly on stapled post-its and crumpled A4 sheets of line and such, often trails off in mid-thought. Scrawls like 'The creepy crawlies are the only clue he gives…' sound like and end like the norm amongst the little world of these pages. All I can tell for certain is that they speak of Silent Hill, of a town with a dead spirit. The only reason why I am following it is because of its unconfirmed linked with Racoon. Leon thought I was mad, deluded by fatigue and frustration, but—

There is a sound to one corner of the graveyard and everything in me freezes, including my thoughts. Memories that were about to surface, of long, stressful discussions around campfires, come to nothing as I half rise on my knees, my hand creeping back towards the 9mm.

A grunt. Like something inhaling through its nose, hungrily. 'Zombie dogs.'

I shake my head, knowing I'm deluding myself, that I became half insane during my rampage through Racoon and now paranoia has settled in to my personality and there's hardly a noise I don't raise my hackles at anymore. Leon's snoring on the desert floor was no exception.

There are no zombies in Silent Hill, and none on the way to it. There are no zombies anywhere. Racoon became another crater of America, I still doubt that even dust survived Umbrella's 'prevention-of-spread' provocative. It makes me sick to think I nearly didn't.

Another grunt. It seems likely there could be wild hogs spreading in a place like this, or even wildcats and wolves. Nothing a bit of stamping about in my size eights wouldn't fix. Or a single shot into the nondescript sky from the 9mm. I pull it out from the ass of my jeans just in case.

Straightening out my legs I begin to take a little walk around the headstones, most of them defeated to the ground, drowning in straggly weeds or dry, dead mud. Its point-blank middle of the day but the attitude in the air suggests its night; lifeless, silent, deserted. Apart from the grunting. Another groggy snort drudges through the fog and I spin 90degrees to the left, to where a gate lies open, a gate I had known to be shut before I sat down to take stock fifteen minutes ago.

The graveyard is small and square and sloped. Before, it was also empty, save my presence. Now I begin to see thick plumes of fog turn to shapely shadows from behind mounds of stone and those shadows flicker into low, hulking figures. 'Zombie hogs' I nearly suggest out loud but I keep it to my mind. A part of me wants to scream because I can no longer tell if I'm just seeing things, or if I'm surrounded by native wildlife, or if I'm really being rounded up by something altogether unnatural. I'm a walking wreak after Racoon, unfit to be outside and functioning, but I'm also looking for Chris and so I do the only thing that sensibly answers to any possibility; I run. I run for the open gate and out of the graveyard. I run with powerful kicks from the balls of my feet back to the path that's to lead me to Silent Hill, back into the thick membrane of the fog, back into a trail unknown. Kept together by one thing alone; finding Chris.