Chapter 2: Where it Stops

Disclaimer: I do not own Silent Hill.

It couldn't be helped that he kept staring at her, his eyes were just rebelling against him and going right to where he didn't want them to go, right to Cheryl's face. James found the new girl interesting and was quite pleased that she was getting him out of the hell hole he was in with the other weirdos. Alliahs was pissing off the cashiers again by bringing in one of the bottles of orange cream that he kept in a cooler in his car just in case he was ever stranded, but James always figured he did that so he could get into the usual argument of bringing another drink into the fast food place. It was a wonder why Sam, the guy who ran the place, hadn't kicked him out of the place every time he pulled all the stunts he did. Lord knows that Sam had often thrown a spatula at Alliahs.

"You really do meet up with my expectations," laughed Cheryl as she looked at the immature psychologist and she went on her guard when he grinned at her.

"So, what expectations would that be," asked Alliahs as he moved his seat a bit closer to hers.

"Cybil always said you were the thin line between a kid and an adult," replied Cheryl as she sat back and took a sip of her drink with her own grin at Alliahs's apparent shock. "It seems that the times she arrested you left a negative effect on her, so much that when I told her that you were one of the psychologists I was working with she started getting the police record of you to show how many times you had to be removed from Victoria Secret. Especially that one incident when you actually went to one of the fitting rooms to try on something just so you could peek on the other woman in the changing room next to you and when they caught you, you tried to claim that you were just using the changing room, even going so far as to put on actual lingerie."

"Wow, you know what, you can have my burger now," said James with a mocking sick face. "I know Alliahs would do some perverted things but I never dared to think of what perverted things he would be doing. I went to high school with this guy and for a history project he did "Nudity in the Middle Ages: Demonic Possession or Freedom of Speech.'"

"You know I am right here, the both of you," said Alliahs, a bit annoyed by the fact that they weren't even concerned with keeping that stuff down because now the female cashiers were looking at him. "Maybe I should go and let you two elope."

"Hey, watch what you're saying you might say something people are going to take serious," warned Sunderland as he looked around at the people in the burger joint.

"Yeah whatever, I'm just wondering about how it's been for you," said Alliahs as he turned to Cheryl and gave her a surprisingly serious look for once. "The first thing that we need to know is what happened when you went to Silent Hill after your father was murdered."

"You went to Silent Hill," asked James with a bit of surprise that turned all eyes on him until he sat back into his chair and resumed eating his burger.

"Well I found that most of the place was abandoned except for those on the drugs that were still circulating," began Cheryl with a deep breath. "I chased after Claudia but found that most of the place was a maze as well as a creep show and I was only able to get help from a man named Vincent Wolf. He was a priest of the cult whose views were different from Claudia and because of that she stabbed him to death. To protect the already wounded Douglas, I shot Claudia and I did it out of anger, but also out of pity as I realized that she had mistaken me for someone else and was beaten by her father when she was young."

"So she was insane is what you're saying," asked James as he looked at her and she gave him a nod. "Do you ever have nightmares about that place or perhaps you might be plagued by nightmarish creatures from the legends of the town? I hear it gets everyone who goes there and I also sometimes have nightmares of it."

"Yeah I have nightmares, but I hate to say that I have too real an imagination," sighed Cheryl as she fingered her fries, a trait she had when she didn't want to tell someone something. James had noticed that during the conversation. "You must have nightmares as well from the way you talk about it."

"Yes I do have nightmares about it and we both have the same problem," said James and he knew that she was catching on to what he was saying, she was a smart girl.

"Well I guess you might need a ride to the apartment you share with Cybil," said Alliahs as he got up and walked to the bathroom. "Excuse me I have to unleash Niagara Falls right now."

"You'll get use to the way he says things like that, but you'll be mostly working for me so you might not see that much of him," said James before he added with a grin, "If you're lucky that is."

"What was your nightmare like," asked Cheryl as she looked at him and from the bit of terror in his eyes she could tell that he had been through the same hell that she had gone through. "What was it like walking through that creepy place when it was obscured by darkness?"

"Actually it was foggy when I went there, but maybe you had different monsters when you were there," replied James as he leaned back in his seat. "Mine was a guilt trip and every monster that I was running from was one of my guilt, from the biggest one to the small one. What did your monsters come from?"

"Well it didn't really come from me, but another me that was burnt by a fire," said Cheryl as the images of little Allessa Gillespie, her other half, flashed through her mind. "There was once a little girl named Allessa Gillespie. She had these strange abilities that made others fear her and call her a witch, even her own mother shunned her as she just wanted Allessa to give birth to her god. Her mother used her as a sacrifice for her god to be born, but she lived and in order to stop her mother from getting her wish, she split herself in two and the other half was adopted by a man named Harry Mason, my father. He and his wife loved the daughter and after her mother died, her father took her back to Silent Hill as her mother used a spell to call her back. Her mother finally had the two sides joined to form her god, but another man tossed a vial of something that would stop the process and so my father was able to save Allessa from her fate. Before the girl left she gave him something, a baby, that baby was me. I know you find that hard to believe and you might have me committed or prevent me from getting a job."

"Actually I don't find it so unbelievable when I look back at everything that happened to me while I was there," replied James and he got up as he saw Alliahs coming towards him. "If you ever want to talk about then maybe we can talk about it later, but apparently the nightmare is over because you stopped that other side of you. You don't have to live in a nightmare, but me…I don't have that luxury."

Cheryl lay there on her bed with her eyes partially shut and her headphones on with the volume cranked up to medium, her version of therapy. The music helped distract her from the various nightmares that plagued her most of the time and she knew that her thoughts were turning to the other man, the man who had gone to Silent Hill after her for some reason. She couldn't help but wonder how he had faced the nightmare if she wasn't there to influence the town. Maybe it was her other half that still lived there? She closed those thoughts out, not wanting to even think about what had been going on in that town or entertain the possibility of a nightmare still existing in Silent Hill. When she thought about those things she would hallucinate and start to see things out the corner of her eye. Things like a bloody burnt hand reaching out for her or some other monster walking towards her with outstretched arms. She didn't want to think of the approaching nightmare that threatened to surround her.