1.
He was in that place again, that dark tomb of a building. The walls dripped with rust and grime, and an industrial fan near the end of the hallway whirred and turned slowly, barely stirring the stale air. A thick, sticky coat of blood trailed off towards where the hallway turned, as if something had dragged a body through here recently.
He tried to catch his breath, tried to keep his rising panic under control. He knew what to do, he remembered this; if only he could keep the yammering, shrieking panic under control, he could solve this, he could fix it, make it right. Concentrate! Focus! Stop acting like a goddamn little girl!
Biting his lower lip hard enough to make it bleed, he forced the panic away to a dark corner of his mind, where it screamed and beat at the barrier he created to contain it. He closed his eyes, shutting out the grim hallway, and focused as hard as he could.
There! There it was! He heard it now—a light, feminine laugh floated to his ears. But where? Where was she? God, she must be so scared, so alone in this awful place… if only he could get to her…
He curled his hand into a fist and punched himself in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Focus, goddammit! Stop dwelling on it and fucking focus! Where was the laughter coming from?
He opened his eyes and saw it; he saw it, just for moment, the little flip of pink fabric, like a woman in a long skirt had turned the corner of the hallway just before he opened his eyes.
He took off after her, running with all his might. The hallway wasn't that long, he could catch up to her, find her, save her. He turned the corner, expecting to find her there, waiting for him…
And nothing. Another long, deserted hallway, filthy and stinking, long-abandoned. God, who did this, who just abandoned an entire town and left it to rot? But there! That tantalizing flip of fabric again, that faint hint of laughter… he was running again, chasing after the sound, but this time he didn't stop when he reached the corner, he simply turned it and pounded off after her.
Because it had to be her, it had to be! Who else would be waiting for him here? Who else even knew about this place but the two of them?
He ran and ran, his heart thundering in his chest and his lungs rasping from the effort, and that made him sure that this wasn't a dream, you didn't get tired in dreams, you could run forever. If this wasn't a dream, that meant she was so close, and why did she keep teasing him, keep slipping away? A lance of anger stabbed through him; why wouldn't she slow down, why wouldn't she wait?
He heard something else now, another sound rising above the cacophony of his footsteps and the faint sounds of laughter. Coming from behind him, a slow, dragging sound, like someone scraping a heavy, metallic point across concrete… he glanced over his shoulder, the panic suddenly awake again and fighting to break free.
Nothing. The hallway was empty behind him, the hallway was empty in front of him, he was alone with these sounds, with these ghosts.
No! She was real, she was here, if he just ran a little harder, a little faster, and stayed ahead of whatever was making that dragging sound, he would find her! He would find her and they could find their way out together! And this time, at the end of the hallway, was that a hand? A slim, white hand, flitting at him in a wave half-remembered?
He kept running, desperate to catch up, desperate to stay ahead of the dragging noise. He ran until his legs trembled with exhaustion and his lungs heaved almost uselessly on the heavy, stagnant air. The laughter, the pink fabric, never got any closer, no matter how hard he tried. If anything, it got fainter and further away the more he ran.
Finally, he stopped, bent-double and gasping, unable to run anymore. "Wait," he panted, bracing himself on the wall with one hand. "Wait for me…" but the laughter was gone, the pink skirt was moving away from him, ever farther away.
He fell to his knees, trying to get his breathing under control, trying to will himself to get up, to keep following her, and this time he wouldn't stop, he wouldn't let the weakness overtake him again, he'd master the coward within, he'd catch up…
He froze, suddenly unable to move. The dragging noise was louder now, closer, and now he could hear footsteps, the footsteps of whatever thing made that sound.
He scrambled awkwardly to his feet and forced himself forward, not daring to look behind him and see whatever monstrosity moved and lurked in the shadows. But he was tired now, exhausted, and he couldn't move as fast as he had before, and the dragging, shuffling noises behind him were gaining.
The panic broke free in his mind, filling him with frantic, desperate terror. The terror was so great, so overpowering, that he lost all coordination and caught his ankle with his other foot. He crashed, full-length, prone, onto the hallway's filthy floor.
He tried to get up, tried to pull himself forward on his elbows, his legs gone weak and useless in the extremity of his terror. The dragging was so close now, right behind him…
Something grabbed his ankles and started pulling him backwards. He scrabbled on the floor, trying to find purchase, finding nothing to hold onto. Moaning deep in his throat, his mind shrieking with panic like a siren, he glanced over his shoulder and saw a pair of hands in grimy white gloves holding his ankles and pulling him into the darkness.
Suddenly, roughly, whatever was holding his ankles flipped him over. He landed hard, his breath knocked out of him again in a brief gasp. His eyes, frantic and rolling, caught sight of something gleaming in the shadows, something bright and metal, and a pair of dark, heavy-looking boots planted near his own feet. He was dimly aware of the sound of heavy, deep breathing that was not his own, and of the smell of blood and rust blending together. He tried to see the terror, see whatever it was that had grabbed him, aware that knowing would be horrible, but that not knowing would drive him stark raving mad.
Two hands, wearing dirty gloves and attached to arms the color of a corpse, shot out from the shadows and closed around his throat. As he was lifted, struggling and choking, into the air, the thing that held him started to step out of the darkness.
2.
Harry woke up to a fist hitting him in the chest.
Jolted out of sleep, he realized that James was thrashing around on the other side of the bed like he was being tortured, his arms flailing in front of him in defensive gestures and his legs jerking like he was trying to run. Harry fumbled for the bedside light, which seemed to have shifted stealthily to another position from the time he turned it off last night. Finally catching its cord and bathing the room in dim, warm light, he sat up and turned to James.
James was still caught in his dreams, his face a frozen rictus of terror and his limbs moving in disjointed, uncoordinated swipes. One of his fists flailed outward and nearly caught Harry in the face; instinctively, Harry grabbed James's wrist and held the arm still.
"James!" he yelled, completely forgetting about Cheryl across the hallway. "James, wake up!"
James jerked his wrist out of Harry's grasp; his skin was slick with cold sweat and he was too slippery to hold onto. However, Harry's hold had changed the path of his fist, and he punched himself in the collarbone. He sat up with a gasp like someone electrocuted, his forehead passing a fraction of an inch from Harry's nose. Harry felt James's sweat-dampened hair slap him across the face, and was dimly grateful that he'd been spared a broken nose.
James turned to Harry, and Harry recognized the stark terror in his partner's eyes (partner, now there was a funny word choice, his mind chided him). "James, James, it's okay," he cried, reaching out and catching hold of James's upper arms. "It's okay, you were dreaming, everything's okay!"
James snapped himself backwards, away from Harry's hands. "Don't!" he gasped out, his eyes rolling in his head. "Don't! Stay away!"
"Okay, okay!" Harry held up his hands, fingers spread, palms facing towards James. "It's okay, James, it's okay, it's just me! It's just Harry!"
For some reason, the sound of Harry's name seemed to calm James down a little bit. His eyes stopped rolling and he tried to focus them, squinting into the lamplight that must have seemed dazzling after the darkness of his dreams. "Ha… Harry?" he asked, his voice calmer but still stretched as tight as a rubber band.
"Yeah, yeah, it's me, it's Harry, it's okay James, God, you scared the life out of me," Harry babbled, trying to keep James focused on the sound of his voice and not on the nightmare he'd been having. "You're awake now, you're okay, nothing's wrong…"
James stared at him, and Harry saw the recognition in his eyes. James suddenly pulled his knees up and leaned forward over them. His face in his hands, shaking like a leaf in the wind, he whispered, "Fuck."
Harry reached out a hand, figuring it was probably safe to touch James now.
"Daddy?" Cheryl's voice was frightened and on the verge of tears.
Harry swiveled his head towards the door so fast that he almost gave himself whiplash. Cheryl stood in the doorway, clutching a stuffed animal, her small face scrunched up and nearly weeping. Her long white t-shirt, one of Harry's old ones, glowed in the dim light. "Is everything okay, Daddy?" she asked.
"Yeah, sweetie, everything's okay," he told her, forcing himself to smile reassuringly. "James just had a nightmare, that's all."
Cheryl peered into the room, scrutinizing them, and Harry was suddenly aware that both he and James were shirtless. Cheryl had seen them both shirtless before (Harry many times, in fact, during last summer's swimming lessons), but never shirtless together and sharing a bed. Harry silently prayed that she was too young to make the obvious connection; he didn't think he was up to explaining what was going on to her and comforting James at the same time (What connection? his mind teased him. Is there a connection between you and James? And that word 'partner' that you used earlier; was that a Freudian slip or did you mean something else by it? Come on, Harry, you're the author, explain yourself in five hundred words or less and in the kind of language a seven year old can understand).
Cheryl sighed. "I heard yelling. You scared me."
"I'm sorry we scared you, sweetie. You know what it's like to have nightmares, right?"
She nodded, and then abruptly turned around and flounced back to her bedroom.
Harry sighed deeply, then turned back to James.
James still had his face covered with his hands, but he had stopped shaking and was breathing at a more normal rate. Harry realized with surprise that, in the sudden stillness left by Cheryl's departure, he could hear James's heartbeat, which was pounding as hard as if he'd just run a marathon.
"Are you okay?" he asked, speaking in a low voice, aware that Cheryl might still be listening.
James shook his head, and his whole body shivered. "Most godawful dream…" he said, his voice muffled by his hands. "That place… back in that place…"
Harry started, realizing what James was talking about. He always thought of it as that place too, as if calling it by name gave it a certain dark power. He shivered himself, as if the mere mention of it caused a draught to ripple through the room.
The bed sank to one side and then shook; Harry turned to see that Cheryl was back and had climbed onto the bed. She crawled over him nonchalantly and planted herself between them, right next to James. She put her little hand out and started gently shaking James's shoulder.
"James… James, it's me, Cheryl…"
"Sweetie, now might not be the best time," Harry said, reaching for her to pull her back, but then James looked up from his hands and met Cheryl's gaze. His eyes were red-rimmed and haunted, but he obviously recognized the little girl and tried to smile at her.
"What's up, Little Bit?" he asked, using the nickname he'd given Cheryl about a week ago.
"Here." She handed him a ragged stuffed bunny. James took it, mystified. "It's Mr. Hopper," Cheryl explained. "He keeps nightmares away. He told me that you need him more than I do tonight." She paused, and Harry thought that maybe she was doubting Mr. Hopper's wisdom; Cheryl had enough trouble of her own with nightmares. "If you hold Mr. Hopper all night, you won't have any more bad dreams," she instructed. "You understand?"
James nodded, looking down at the bunny that was dwarfed in his big hands.
"Good." Cheryl got up on her knees and kissed James on the cheek. James jerked his head to one side, looking at her in surprise, but she didn't notice because she had turned to Harry and was kissing him on the cheek as well. Then she clambered out of the bed (managing to knee Harry in the thigh on the way), said "Goodnight, Daddy, goodnight, James," and left the room, closing the door behind her.
James stared at Harry for a moment, then stared at the bunny in his hands. Harry cautiously put a hand on his shoulder. "You should feel honored," he said quietly. "She doesn't give Mr. Hopper to just anyone."
James's shoulder trembled under his hand, and then James was weeping, deep, heart-felt sobs that sounded like they came from the pit of his soul. Harry put his arms around him, and James buried his face in Harry's chest, still holding Mr. Hopper, and wept for a long, long time.
3.
God, he was an idiot.
James felt the old self-loathing surge up in him, overwhelming everything else. He had woken up Harry, taken a little girl's security toy, and kept everyone up in the middle of the night because of some bad dream that he could barely remember now. He had the feeling that he didn't want to remember, but he pushed that thought away; the bad dream didn't matter, it didn't change the fact that he was a selfish asshole and he was amazed that Harry and Cheryl still put up with him.
Harry was asleep again. He had held James while he cried, talked to him quietly and comfortingly, and had then curled up beside him when James said that he thought he could get back to sleep. The idea of getting back to sleep was a lie; James knew he'd be up all night, watching the dawn cast its early morning light across the walls. He was afraid to fall back asleep, and that was the damnable truth. But he'd already taken too much from Harry, he didn't need to steal a night's sleep as well. So he'd lied, something he was very good at, and Harry had drifted back to sleep almost immediately.
Harry's face was smooth and untroubled in repose, his skin remarkably unlined for a man rapidly approaching middle-age. He had his head on James's chest, which was unusual in itself, and his head rose and fell gently with James's breathing. Mr. Hopper rested across James's stomach, seeming to observe them both with his black, shoe-button eyes.
James watched the pearly gray light grow on the wall, seething inwardly, furious at himself. What kind of man has nightmares that make him wake everyone up and then cries about it? Why was he so weak? Harry was able to put it all behind him, Harry had moved on, Harry didn't dream about that place anymore… did he?
James frowned, his ranting thoughts stopped short. Did Harry dream about it? If he did, he never said anything, never woke up screaming and thrashing. Harry slept like the dead every night, falling asleep in front of his computer so often that James carrying him to bed was fast becoming a nightly ritual. How did he do it? How did he get free from that place's grasp?
James sighed and closed his eyes. He would ask Harry in the morning. The faster he got himself under control, the faster he could go away, leave Harry and Cheryl in peace and stop disturbing their perfect lives with his fucked-up presence. He was like an acid, eating away and destroying everything around him. They'd be better off without him, he was sure of that.
Thinking self-destructive thoughts, James slipped into sleep again.
James woke up to shaking from small hands. "Wake up, James, wake up!" Cheryl sang, her voice bright and cheerful. "Daddy says it's time for breakfast!"
"I said it's time for your breakfast, I told you to leave James alone!" Harry's voice floated in from the kitchen.
Cheryl leaned in and whispered in James's ear. "I wanted to make sure you were feeling better," she informed him. "Did Mr. Hopper help?"
James smiled at her, certain she could see right through him. "He sure did, Little Bit," he said, and handed her the toy. "Thank you for letting me borrow him."
Cheryl beamed at him, then scrambled off the bed and towards the kitchen. "Daddy, James is awake now, he can have breakfast with us!" he heard her shout.
Groaning, James sat up and put his head in his hands. He felt scratchy, out-of-sorts, and he was still disgusted with himself. In other words, a typical morning. He scrounged around in the hamper that was serving as his dresser, found a shirt, pulled it on and then slouched out to the kitchen. If he stayed in here much longer (actually, what he wanted to do was pull the pillow over his head and die of embarrassment and shame), he knew that Cheryl would come looking for him again.
Cheryl grinned at him from the kitchen table, already looking neat and crisp in her school uniform, halfway through a stack of pancakes. Harry stood at the stove, expertly flipping a new stack; he was already dressed, freshly shaven, his hair combed into its usual sleekness. James felt a fresh wave of anger at himself; they were both ready to face the day, and he had the audacity to join them while still looking like a bum in his pajama bottoms and t-shirt. He flopped onto a chair and kept his head down, far too mortified to meet either of their eyes.
Harry set a plate of pancakes and a cup of coffee in front of him. "I told her to let you sleep, but she insisted that breakfast wouldn't be the same without you," he told James.
"It wouldn't!" Cheryl piped up.
"Probably not," James muttered. "It would be better."
Cheryl gasped, stricken. "James, that's not true! I like having you eat breakfast with us," she assured him.
James looked at her out of the corner of his eye. The look on her face seemed genuine; besides, how good were little girls at lying? He wasn't sure, but he didn't think they were criminal masterminds who could lie so convincingly. "Thank you," he said grunted, and then attacked his pancakes in an attempt to mask the confusing and contradictory feelings that were rolling around in his gut.
He knew Harry was looking at him with concern. He ignored him.
4.
At first, Harry wasn't sure he'd heard him correctly. "I'm sorry?"
"How do you get free from it?" James repeated, staring into his coffee cup. Cheryl was gone, packaged off to school, and the two men were alone in the kitchen. "How did you make it let you go?"
Somehow, Harry knew exactly what he was talking about. "What makes you think it did?"
James looked up sharply, his eyes narrowed and angry. "Of course it did! Look at the beautiful, normal life you and Cheryl have! You don't have nightmares, you don't feel bad all the time, you don't hate yourself…"
"Sometimes I do," Harry said quietly, bringing James up short.
"What?" he blurted. "No, you don't! You're so… so… normal!"
Harry sighed and sat down across from James. He was vividly reminded of their first morning together; somehow, they always ended up at the kitchen table when it came time to discuss that place. "Do you have any idea how lonely I was before I fished you out of the lake?" he asked. "No, of course you don't," he continued, raising a hand to silence James's protests. "James, before you showed up, I'd drive out to the lake at least three times a week. I'd park there, and wonder. I'd wonder what would happen if I drove across the bridge and just… just let Silent Hill take me. Sometimes… some days… that seemed like a pretty good option."
James shook his head. "No. No, I don't believe you."
"It's true," Harry assured him. "And James… I think if you keep beating yourself up, if you keep punishing yourself… someday you'll want to let it take you too."
James laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. "Maybe that would be a good thing."
"Dammit, James!" Harry slapped the table with frustration, making their coffee cups jump. "Don't you get it? Don't you know how good you've been for Cheryl and me?"
James wouldn't meet his eyes. "I'm not good for anybody. I never have been."
"I haven't driven out to the bridge once since you got here. I haven't wanted to! I haven't… I haven't needed to! That power, that weird pull that place has, it's not as strong when you're here. You… you make me want to keep going." Harry sat back, spent, speechless, amazed at what he'd just said. James still wasn't looking at him, but Harry could see a slight flush on James's cheeks, as if he was pleased with what Harry had said about him.
"James," Harry asked, unsure if he wanted to talk about this but knowing that he had to ask. "Why were you in Silent Hill in the first place?"
James sighed, hunching his shoulders in a defensive posture Harry was beginning to know well. "Mary and I… we had our honeymoon there."
Harry couldn't help himself. "You had your honeymoon there?"
"It doesn't always look like that," James answered, a little sharply. "When you're happy, it's beautiful. We were happy there. We… we had a great time."
James sighed, and scrubbed his hand over his face and through his hair. Harry was momentarily distracted by the way James's hair flopped backed into his eyes; he wanted to reach across the table and brush it to one side, but he knew if he did James would never talk about this again. So he kept his hands on the table and listened.
"After our honeymoon, about six months later, Mary started getting sick," James continued. "The doctors said she had probably been getting sick for a long time, but it didn't… it didn't start to really affect her until we got married. Until we started… trying to start a family." He looked up at Harry, stricken. "She didn't get sick until she was with me."
Harry opened his mouth to protest, to tell James that that wasn't how cancer worked, but James held up a hand to stop him. "Don't interrupt me. Please, Harry, I… I only want to tell this story once."
"She went through three rounds of chemotherapy. That's all they let you have; if you go through chemo three times and the cancer doesn't go into remission, then…" James waved his hand to one side. "Then it's not going to. I… I couldn't afford a home nurse to take care of her. I had to put her in hospice care. The doctors told me that she had weeks left, at most." He looked up at Harry, his eyes bleak and hopeless. "She lived in that horrible place for six months."
James suddenly grabbed out, latched onto Harry's hands like a drowning man. "I couldn't afford any better!" he pleaded, his voice tearing with old sadness. "I was already working two jobs, picking up overtime whenever I could, and coming to see her whenever I had an hour or two free. She… she said she understood, but… the sicker she got, the more she wanted me there with her…"
"And I couldn't!" he cried, and Harry felt pinpricks of tears in his own eyes at the anguish in James's voice. "I could barely afford to keep her there as it was, if I wasn't working she would have gotten turned out, and then she wouldn't have had anyone to take care of her, or any pills to make the pain go away…"
"And in the end, the pills stopped working," James said, his voice soft again, but he was holding Harry's hands so tight that the muscles and bones ground together. Harry, caught up in James's story, barely noticed. "They stopped working, and she was always in pain, horrible pain, and… and the girl I married was gone. I'd go there to see her, and she'd be so… so angry, so hateful, just this rage-filled skeleton in a bed, and I'd wonder what happened to the girl I fell in love with, where did she go? And then… one night, I came to see her, and…"
James stopped, pausing for so long that Harry thought he had lost his train of thought. "And she was dead," he finished abruptly, with finality. "She was dead, and three years later I got a letter from her, a letter telling me to come to our special place in Silent Hill, and… and I couldn't find it."
James caught Harry's eyes again, and Harry almost had to turn away from the pain and anguish in James's stare. "I couldn't find our special place, I couldn't remember, all I could remember was the way she died, the way she didn't get well and the way the woman I loved disappeared, and then… and then the fog came, and the things, and… and…" he nearly choked on the words, "and then I was driving off the bridge, and you were pulling me out of my car."
Harry sat silent, nearly crying himself, after James was done telling his story. James's grip on his hands had lessened, and James was sitting numbly in front on him, his own eyes red but dry. Harry had a feeling that there was more to the story than James was telling him (like where that letter came from, for instance), but he knew better than to push the issue. James had told as much as he could, and it was enough. Maybe, maybe now that it was out in the open, he could start to heal from the old wounds he had been carrying for so long.
Harry gently squeezed James's fingers. "I'm so, so sorry," he said softly, and was surprised by the little catch in his voice. "I can't imagine what that must have been like. No wonder you're hurting so badly."
"You… you don't hate me?" James asked, his voice pleading.
"No, of course not," Harry answered, a bit surprised by the question.
James looked up and caught Harry's eyes, and staring into James's eyes was like staring into the abyss. "You will," he said.