SILENT HILL

CHAPTER 2 – ARRIVAL

"The fear of blood tends to create fear for the flesh."

Harry Mason awoke in his Jeep, cold and confused. His head swam with thoughts and images, and he wasn't quite sure just where he was, or what he was doing. He sat forward in the driver's seat, and witnessed the front end of his car on one side of a wall, while, turning, he witnessed the rear of his car on the other side of the wall.

"Shit…" he muttered to himself.

He shivered, and then sat back in his seat once again, pulling the keys from the ignition and pocketing them. He seemed to have conveniently crashed through a wall that ran parallel to a well-paved road – maybe it led somewhere that he could get help?

He had just begun to get up and had his hand on the door when he remembered – it felt like lightning striking through every bone in his body – Cheryl! He whipped back around, and saw nothing beside him but an empty passenger seat, and the door hanging open. "Cheryl!" he yelled. "Cheryl!"

No sound met him but the wind carrying the snow along outside. "Oh shit!" he yelled again. Just to be sure, he turned completely around to verify that she was not in the back seat, and, sure enough, she wasn't.

"Oh hell…"

He wasn't quite sure what to do. He didn't know where he was, nor remember where he was going, he crashed his car, and now Cheryl was gone. His mind simply could not wrap around this extremely unfortunate set of circumstances. Sitting back, he sighed, put his head in his hands, and breathed.

After a few seconds to himself, he opened the door with a creak, and stepped out of his car. He looked around as he walked into the street that his car was facing as it hung on top of the remaining section of wall. Snow drifts moved everywhere, creating wispy clouds racing along the asphalt, and blowing in his vision. The sky was a slate grey.

And wherever he was, it seemed to be deserted, like a ghost town. No traffic had passed since he had awoke in his car, and there were still no headlights coming down the road to the left or right.

Even if there were, he wouldn't have an easy time seeing them. The wind and snow were so intense, that they created an effective reduction in visibility, making it hard to see further than twenty or thirty feet. He blew into his hands, rubbed them together and yelled, "Cheryl!" again.

He walked back to his car. He had gotten extremely lucky – the wall wasn't very high, maybe 5 feet, and there wasn't much left underneath his car, but just enough that it seemed to hang, balancing on the remaining wall. He jumped back into the driver's seat, put the keys in the ignition, and prayed for a miracle.

Unfortunately, he received no such thing. The engine rumbled, but would not turn over. He sat for three more seconds, tried again, then repeated the process four more times, to no avail. He snapped the keys out of the ignition and threw them out the open door. "Fuck!"

He usually wasn't an angry or violent person, but this situation was getting the better of him. He grabbed his cigarettes and lighter from the dash, pocketed them in his suede jacket, and got out of the car to retrieve his keys. Once he did so, he began walking up the street. He neared a corner, and approached the green, rectangular street sign indicating the street running perpendicular to the one he was on.

"Matheson Street"

This instantly triggered a memory, like when you wake up and you are struggling to hold on to a dream you just had, and it instantly comes back to you. Matheson Street. It was on the map he had been using… he had been heading for –

Silent Hill. That was it. Silent Hill. He was on a trip, a vacation, and he was taking Cheryl with him. Another memory instantly shook him – the crash. He had been driving along, no radio, just enjoying the silence and listening to the occasional howl of the wind (which wasn't so violent then), and occasionally glancing over at Cheryl, sleeping soundly. Suddenly, someone – a girl, he thought, had appeared in the road in front of him. He didn't know how, and he couldn't explain it, but it was real – he knew it. He swerved, and that was all he could remember.

A knot tightened in his chest, and he started to feel sick. None of this was right… something was very wrong.

He proceeded up the street, and found evidence to support his feeling. Quaint little shops line the streets of the town, a diner, antique stores, bookstores, even a small tobacco emporium, everything you could imagine in a small town. The sidewalks were wide, especially in front of the cafes where wrought iron table and chair sets sat under trees. The occasional park bench was even sat under a tree. The sidewalks were cracked with tree roots growing up under them.

It would have been the perfect image of an idyllic little vacation town, had there been people there.

He could see nor hear no one as far as he could see or hear. No person walked the streets, bundled up for the weather, No warm lights came from inside one of the cozy little café's, nothing. No signs of life.

The knot in Harry's chest grew tighter.

Suddenly, he heard footsteps. Ah. So I'm not crazy. All of that little drama, the bad feeling, all just my mind playing tricks. See, there's someone now.

He followed the sound, turning right at the next intersection, when he suddenly stopped. Down the street, on the left side, he spotted a girl. She had jet black hair that hang around her neck, and she was wearing a blue plaid dress. Cheryl. She was standing with her back to him, with her arms crossed, as if observing something.

"Is that Cheryl?" he muttered to himself. The girl took off running, headed in the direction she was facing. He gave chase. "Where are you going? Wait! Stop!" he yelled as she somehow outran him, and disappeared from his view.

"What… the… fuck…?" he said as he continued chasing after her, headed in the direction that he had seen her go. He continued up the left side of the street until he caught another glimpse of her, turning into an alley. He followed her, barely able to see her shadow up ahead.

This was a wide alley, with garages on either side and trash cans sitting beside them. No one came out to throw anything away. No cars pulled into their garage, and likewise, no one came out and left in a car. Harry had now given up hope of finding anyone who could help him. This was a frightening thought, so he ignored it.

The alley came to an end, and he saw her small body dash around the corner of a garage to the left. As he rounded the corner, a wire fence gate swung open and closed, squeaking as it went. He opened it, stepped through, and stopped in fear.

His eyes widened, and the knot became so tight that he thought was going to hyperventilate. He had trouble breathing at the sight that greeted him. Laying in front of him and splattered up the back of the garage that he had rounded was a pile of… blood and… something else that resembled guts. Intestines. The blood was dripping down the side of the garage and the flesh and insides lying on the asphalt reeked of… whatever intestines reek of.

The stench overwhelmed his nose, and he was forced to breathe through his mouth as he stared in horror, and even then it made him sick. His eyes were wide as he began to back pedal, until he ran into the gate. He put his hand out and stopped himself, then leaned against the garage to his left.

Something was very wrong here. It was no longer a feeling now – it was a fact. He finally gained the courage to move ahead, remembering Cheryl, and he carefully rounded the body parts missing their body, and continued on. As he stepped forward past the carnage, the first sound he had heard in the town met his ears. It was very far away, but there was no denying what it was – a siren. Like a tornado siren, an emergency siren. It had an eerie quality that sent chills down his spine. He had never truly felt fear before, but he was so full of it now that he didn't know what to do.

He stopped, and looked up and around, listening carefully to the chilling sound. It continued to whine, then fade, then whine, then fade, repeating over and over again.

He stepped forward, his heart thumping faster than it ever had. The alley narrowed, and as he ran down it his footsteps reverberated back and forth between the walls. It twisted and turned, down steps and past pipes with water frozen mid drip down the sides. Peoples icy and wet garbage bags were placed along the sides and icicles loomed above from power lines and pipes. There were barrels that looked liked they could have contained oil, and loose trash littered the alley.

As he rounded another corner, he was stopped by another gate. As he opened it, something changed – something drastic, something illogical that could never happen. When he stepped through with a ridiculously loud squeak, the day turned to night in a matter of seconds. It was impossible, it didn't make any sense to him – and it frightened him even further towards the breaking point.

The daylight, what little there had been on a typical, grey winter day, had instantly disappeared. It was as if someone had hit fast-forward on time-lapse photography of the sky. It was now night, and as he looked up he saw clouds floating by stars, and then uncovering them again.

The gate slammed behind him as he stepped completely through. He could no longer see at all, so he grew very still and attempted to think as blood rushed in his ears and all he could hear was his heart thumping – it was so loud he was sure that someone would hear it, that any moment someone would appear, tell him that nothing was wrong, that daylight would come back, that Cheryl would reappear and they would have their vacation.

But none of that happened.

The siren continued to wail in the distance, but it seemed to be louder now. He pulled his windproof lighter from his pocked, flicked the top open with a chink and with a scratching sound as he rolled his thumb over the lighting mechanism, he produced a nice, full plume of fire. The warm light lit the alley around him, and he continued on.

"Cheryl?"

Her name echoed down narrow stretch, but no one answered. Shakily, he strode forward. As he headed around another corner, he heard another strange sound – a wheel turning, a wheel that had not been oiled very well or at all for that matter. The snow turned to rain, and he was pelted with it. The light stretching in front of him from his lighter, clasped in his right hand, revealed the source of the strange noise.

It was a wheelchair. An old fashioned wheelchair, the vinyl seats painted red. It was leaning against the wall in front of him, (he was approaching a turn to the left) upside-down, but something even stranger was going on with it – the wheels were turning. As if self-propelled, they continued to turn, making the absurd squeaking noise with every revolution, without stopping. Another chill shook him from head to toe.

He stepped forward carefully, afraid, of what, he didn't know, but anything seemed possible at this point. He considered what he was doing, being afraid of a wheelchair, and laughed. He actually laughed. The entire situation suddenly became hilarious to him, and he doubled over in laughter. He realized this must be a dream, because none of this could ever happen. He had lost Cheryl, day had turned to night instantly, he had stumbled around a pile of blood and organs, and now a self-propelled wheelchair?

Peals of laughter echoed down the alley as he supported himself against one of the walls. When the laughter which wracked him finally dissipated, and he had composed himself, he approached the wheelchair without fear and reached his hand out to each of the wheels in turn, the friction stopping them and the squeaking finally stopping.

"Just a wheelchair," he chortled. He turned left, and had begun continuing on, when the squeaking began again. He stopped, turned his head to listen, then approached the wheelchair warily, taking slow steps toward it, and witnessed its wheels once again turning.

"…"

He briskly turned on his heel, and began moving ahead, deciding on the theory of 'out of sight, out of mind'. The alley opened up again, and he nearly walked directly into another horror.

In front of him was a hospital gurney, with a white sheet over it and stained with blood. Something was under the sheet – what he didn't know, and he didn't want to, either. Blood dripped down the gurney, and pooled on the ground. The sight was even scarier with the way the light from his lighter reflected off the metal parts of the stretcher, and then faded off into the darkness surrounding him.

He stepped back, pulled a cigarette from his pack, and shakily lit it. He leaned against the alley that he had backed into, taking drag after drag from his cigarette attempting to calm his nerves, which now seemed impossible. He was shaking so bad that he dropped his cigarette twice, and when he was finished with it he didn't feel much better than when he had started. He tossed it to the ground, the tip hitting the asphalt first, and red embers flew to all sides. He crushed it with his heel, and continued back into the open area, turning right around the gurney.

The siren was beginning to work on his nerves, and it was definitely louder now. It was giving him a headache, actually, and along with the knot in his stomach, his whole body shaking, and the adrenaline blasting through his veins, he wasn't feeling entirely too well.

The alley narrowed again, and under his feet was a trail of blood, which he began to follow. He turned another corner, shaking even worse now, the siren getting louder, and the alley became a tall wire fence. The blood spatter grew worse, staining the fence on both sides and the asphalt underneath his feet. He couldn't see anything beyond the fence because the oil barrels from before were stacked on either side.

He continued to follow the trail of blood, and stepped into another open area. What he saw in front of him chilled him even further than he already was, and at that moment he knew that there would be no getting out of this alive.

The fence formed the perimeter of this open area, and in the center, strung up on a section of fence, was a body. It was a skeleton; with a few organs remaining tangled in between the bones, and stained with blood. The arms were hanging from the fence above its head, suspended by barbed wire, and the skull peered down at him, its empty sockets instilling fear like Harry had never know.

"What the fuck is this…" he said, his voice shaking. "Oh my God, what the fuck is this!?"

He began to step away, still facing the body, unable to draw his eyes away from it. The siren's cry grew to an unimaginable level, and as he turned away from the cadaver, he saw two small creatures before his lighter died. The siren instantly stopped, and the air grew still.

He shook, and he began to stutter, "Oh my God… oh fuck, oh God…"

His mind finally accepted what had been festering in the back of it since he had arrived in this town – this was no longer Earth, it was Hell, and God could no longer save him.

He moaned in fear, and suddenly, he was struck down, pierced by what felt like a sharp blade, and it kept cutting him over and over again, stabbing him.

The last thought he had was of Cheryl, and then there was nothing.

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Author's Notes – 7.31.2007

Well, I am now working on this fic and my SH4 parody after finally completing High Charity. I will most likely not be updating regularly for a while, because marching band is in full swing and within weeks, school will start again. I will write whenever I get around to it and when inspiration strikes me, and we'll go from there. This project is still kind of a low priority for me, but for some reason it's the most interesting right now. But we'll see what happens with all that. Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I do not own Silent Hill or any of the contained characters. Everything (including the plot) belongs to Konami and all creators of the game. (I'm too lazy to name them all.)