Meet him.
Great.
She wanted to meet him.
Well, Trish had asked, but God she had so hoped her friend wouldn't have chosen to do that. That she would have chosen to let her and the good ol' Ashfield authorities handle it properly.
Too late now.
"...Okay. ...Do you need time to get ready, then? Or... do you want to just go now?" Oh how against this she was, but it was now that she was so grateful she did bring her gun with her, and while she waited for her friend to reply, she moved into the very next room, leaving the door open and started to change, not wanting to wear something actually meant for summer while meeting a crazy stalker, needing a place to hold her gun in secret and, oh, yeh, the temperature was dropping, which didn't make a good deal of sense.
Wasn't fog started from humidity?
Monika turned on her side, so she was looking out the doorway Trish had just left through, and propped herself up.
"Now, I guess... I mean... the sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can begin relaxing, right?" She gave herself a quick look over, debating over whether or not she should change into something else before they left.
Sure. Cotton shorts and an A-shirt were comfortable. But they might give certain 'lovestruck' (if it turned out that this Ian was in fact, head over heels for her) stalkers the wrong idea. Besides, it's getting a little cold around here anyway... Monika stiffly got up.
"It'll be really easy. We just go to Brookhaven, ask to visit Mr. Ian Scarlet, and calmly ask him to stop sending letters. I bet once it's clear I'm not going to return his...feelings...he'll just stop. Right?"
How far from the truth she was...
"Right. I mean, your aunt works there. How hard could it be to get around the system?" of course let alone the fact that she's a cop, but thankfully Trish wasn't one to make allusion's to her occupation every few minutes or so. Walking back out of the room in her hoody, blue jeans and sneakers, hair freshly taken down and a bit frizzier than usual from the heat before (which had been the reason for her putting it up in the first place), Trish meandered over to Monika, shaking her head to get some hair out of her eyes.
"So you're ready, right?" she patted one area of her waist, to show where she was keeping the gun, though it was perfectly hidden beneath the hoody, "We should probably hurry... that fog's coming in fast and I don't want to be lost in streets I don't know," she frowned, nodding her head towards the front door before collecting the map and rolling it up, as well as picking up one of the donuts she had gotten for herself and putting one end of it in her mouth, just to hold until she managed to fold the map decently enough to stick it into one of her pockets.
"It'll be fine."
Monika went to retrieve the dark blue sweater she'd thrown onto the sitting room's armchair, listening to Trish and giving little nods of agreement here and there. She decided against swapping her shorts for jeans; they went down almost to her knees, and Trish seemed just a little impatient.
"Mhm." she gave Trish a smile. "We'll get back as quick as possible and relax before we go visit Aunt Margaret."
Monika began toward the door. "Let's go, then."
The more direct, and closer route, to the hospital was cut off, according to the map, and so they had a choice of going one of two ways; Go up Munson to Nathan Avenue and then change course to Carroll Street, or they could go down Munson, switch to Rendell, and then make it to Carroll that way. Considering their placement, the latter option seemed to be further, making Trish opt for the first, going over Nathan to Carroll.
Trish zipped up her hoody upon stepping outside, pocketing the key to their room. It was getting colder out, and darker, despite the time her watch said; three o'clock, PM.
"Keep warm," she mumbled absentmindedly to Monika while picturing the map in her head, not wanting to roll it back out just to fold it up again right after. Jack's Inn was at the very top of Munson, close to Rosewater Park, so they would have to walk quite a while, but it seemed better than going that long a way down Munson with how quickly the temperature and visibility was dropping. Now and again, while walking, never when she stopped, she thought she heard shuffling aside from Monika and her, and it was an awkward noise, like a sort of slurping, crawling...
Not natural, that was for sure.
But it stopped just as soon as she and Monika did, and thus she disregarded it, deeming it just in her imagination, or perhaps the pavement was just a bit odd and that could have been the cause, as well.
By the time the two of them finally reached their sought location, it was ridiculously dark out, and visibility outside was down to almost zero because of the fog. Trish had been having problems seeing even three feet in front of her and so she had grabbed Monika's wrist to make sure she wouldn't loose sight of her, to which the blond had yelped because the motion had been quick and unexpected, but otherwise she gave no response, just kept close and followed obediently.
"Alright, Monika... we're here no, so until it gets light out again and this fog clears out, there's no going back to the Inn. We may even have to spend the night here... But you're sure about this? Wanting to meet him?" She had to be sure, didn't she? Sure, she would be a little peeved that they would have walked all this way for nothing if Monika had changed her mind, but she might have felt better in the long run if she did decide on that instead.
To say the very least, their trip to Brookhaven was an eerie one. Monika's hopes of getting their situation over with in the unambiguous, earthly hours of daylight were smothered with mist. The fog literally dominated the premises, rendering their visibility radius just peaking a yard. Darkened patches or silhouettes occasionally broke up the infinite white; unhelpful to two newly-arrived tourists without knowledge of Silent Hill's physical landmarks.
The strange squelching noise made it almost unbearable.
It's just your imagination. It's just your imagination. It's just your imagination. Over and over Monika repeated this in her mind, nonstop, until they had finally reached Brookhaven.
Spending a night in a mental hospital was the last thing she had planned to have happened as a result. Still...
"Yes." Monika nodded, with only slight uncertainty. "I'm sure...it has to be me...I...think...We should go find a nurse."
It was, after all, pure luck that they managed to find their way there in the first place. Fortune might not smile so brightly upon them a second time...
That settled that.
Trish gave a curt nod and, still holding onto Monika's wrist, though looser now that they had reached their destination, opened up one of the double doors and stepped on through. Into darkness.
It was as though night had over taken the hospital, and it seemed well past lights out on the inside, and at the moment, there wasn't a soul to be seen. Had everyone gone to sleep already? It was still the early afternoon, but you couldn't tell either from outside and especially not from in here; there were little to no windows, and the ones that were immediately present were on the doors that had just closed softly behind them, which the blinds were turned down on.
The structure was made from grey (or so it currently appeared) wood, and looked quite old, which Trish didn't doubt considering the actual age of the town itself.
"It looks like the Reception Area's just ahead," she motioned for Monika to follow, walking slowly and trying to be quiet, but the wood was quite creaky beneath their feet. Hadn't anyone tried to fix that? And a better question still, didn't most hospitals have tile, not wood? Easier to clean and disinfect? Or was she thinking to much of a hospital hospital, and not a mental hospital? Either way it was plain weird.
The door to the Reception was unlocked, and Trish turned it, thanking the door silently for the very quiet noise that came from it, only to curse under her breath at the next sight.
Devoid.
There, again, was not a soul to be seen, which didn't make a lick of sense at all considering the amount of people that were actually supposed to be in this building to begin with, staff and patients alike. She sighed, "What the hell..." and continued inside, not moving too quickly so that Monika could keep close. There were two tall bookshelves in the room, as well as another door that was locked, and a desk with some files and things scattered about on them, probably about patients but she couldn't help but wonder what all of it was doing in such disarray.
Wasn't this Ian person a patient here? And hell, Monika's aunt worked here, why wasn't she making sure things were tidy and running according to regulations.
Lucky for them there was a desk lamp, and Trish walked over to it immediately to cast some light in the dismal room that was, indeed, made of grey wood. "What the hell's going on?"
Monika dully glanced around at what might have once been an acceptable and proper hospital reception area. Gray. It was all gray and dismal and awful, excluding the faint glow of a desk lamp Trish was fortunate enough to find working. There was no garish hospital fluorescent lighting. No hard, uncomfortable waiting room seats or magazine piles. No creaks of floorboards, other than their own. Just bookshelves and a front desk that was as cluttered and disorganized as the rest of the room was bare.
"There isn't anybody here..." Monika gave the room another look over, as if to double check and confirm this. "Shouldn't there at least be a receptionist?"
One would assume so. Hospitals, even mental hospitals, were not the kinds of places that everyone could just leave. Everything just...faded. The walls and floors were faded. The papers scattered across the desk's top were faded or fading. Everything around them was faded. Did people fade? Could movement and noises and life just wither away into nothing?
It was something Monika preferred to push to the corner or her mind, than dwell upon.
She squinted through the gray. "If we could just find a nurse's station, or some sort of administrator's office..."
No wonder Ian hates it here...
To find such a thing as a Station or Office, one would need a map.
With a bit of looking there might be some hope of finding one, but it could have been anywhere.
"What the hell!" Trish shouted, and quite loudly at that. After she had turned just a tiny bit she saw a piece of paper pinned to the wall behind them and when she faced it properly, low and behold, a bloody map! At least that solved that problem. She let out a sigh and removed it from its holding, which was yet another thumbtack pushed seemingly strategically into the square labeled Day Room, now with a small hole inside of it.
She wasn't sure whether to be thankful or creeped out at how it was just there so easily for them.
A sigh of relief to calm.
Well... there didn't appear to be any Nurse Station or Administrator's Office, but there was a Doctor's Lounge, and that might just work if there was anyone at all off duty which, at that moment, seemed to be everyone. "There's the lounge right there," Trish tapped the room with the tip of her thumb, bitting the corner of her lip lightly.
"At least that room's pretty much right next to us..." Trish mumbled a few small curses under her breath before picking the map up and folding a little roughly, giving a wince when she heard it tear the tiniest bit. Hopefully it wasn't on anywhere important, just a corner or something. "Let's go."
At last, Trish had found some kind of guide. Not a living, breathing guide, who might explain how on earth a mental hospital could go unstaffed (at least as far as they could see), but a map. The top of the paper flopped forward just slightly, as the single pin that held it in place was nowhere near the top, but tactfully (or sloppily) pushed at the very center of the area labeled 'Day Room'.
Monika watched silently as Trish removed the tack releasing the map...and apparently something else. A piece of notepaper, obviously arranged to fall at the slightest movement of it's hiding place, that fluttered down onto the wood floor, just in front of her left foot.
Trish hadn't noticed it at all in her impatience.
"Hold on a second Trish..." Monika bent down to take a closer look.
Hold on a second?
"What?" she looked over her shoulder, raising an eyebrow, keeping the map outstretched in front of her for it to be easy to look over. Where was a pen when you needed one? Trish wanted to make notes on it, maybe even as they went a long. Some doors were bound to be locked, weren't they? And what if, on the ridiculous off chance, there actually was no staff? They would need a quick and easy way to tell which way was where... Ah, and salvation, a red pen, though it was nearly out of ink, on the floor just under the desk.
That little adventure over with, she turned back to give Monika her full attention with whatever she had found. A note? Maybe from one of the nurses or something. Wouldn't it be funny to find a love letter from the staff?
Horrifyingly.
She was half correct with her amusing thought.
A love letter indeed, though an awkward one. ...And from him.
"I never asked before, since that day.
Did you get the gift I gave you on Valentines Day?
It was a heart shaped box.
I made it myself in the 'crafts' portion of the day.
It gives us something to do with our hands, as well as occupies most of us so the orderlies don't need to pay as much attention.
Inside was something important.
Inside it's insides.
That's where it is.
I'm so glad you came, Monika.
Waiting to see you,
Ian"
The part where his last name would be, or so she guessed, was torn, probably in her own fit of impatience and, at the same time, relief of where she tore the thing off in a huff.
"Well... he certainly likes the word 'day', doesn't he?"
Wait a minute...
Day. Valentine's Day. The Day. ...And the thumbtack shoved into that one spot. The Day Room.
"Okay, this fucker's creeping me out... He's a patient here, right? And he got a map, some how... pinned it in here... with that letter. ...Did he just give us an ass-load of hints, or am I reading into this way much?" Trish gave Monika a pleading look. It was just too coincidental to not be a hint, right? Were they supposed to go to the Day room? And hell, should they even listen to it? He was a nut, after all, if he was here...
'Inside was something important.'
With some self-consciousness, Monika shifted her uncomfortable crouching position, suddenly very much aware of the delicate silver locket that swung below her neck. It's rhythmic tapping against her chest, something she'd hardly notice otherwise, now felt incessant and terribly obvious. Her Valentine's gift.
I should've thrown this thing out a long time ago... Monika hated herself for not having done so in the first place, and then deciding one day to put it on. The way it made the plain, boring girl in the mirror look just a little bit less plain and boring. Maybe even just a little pretty. The way it made Ian seem like less of an obsessive stalker from a mental hospital, and more like a lonely man that wanted nothing more than to love, and be loved...
Of course, Monika said none of this aloud.
All she could do was return her friend's confused look, and reply, quite unhelpfully: "I don't know, Trish...I...I...maybe it would be better to do what he says."
Monika stood up slowly. "The day room's not far from here. Maybe we should try that first...and...if nothing's there, we can try the Doctor's Lounge."
She really, really wanted to get this over with.
"Okay?"
"Do what he--" another heavy sigh from Trish, "Fine. It's not as though we have anything else we can do until this fog lets up anyway... might as well humor him..." Of course, she had her own ideas about this "Ian Scarlet" that Monika maybe didn't; perhaps he was truly very old and a creepy old man, perhaps he was psychotic enough to be violent, who knew?
Then again, not everyone could fit such descriptions... Maybe she was the one wrong. All that would let them find out now was to find Ian and confront him face to face.
Fine, then.
To the Day room for them.
"We're takin' this, though," she said with a bit of scorn for this man, but swallowed it and rolled the map up into a pocket size, depositing it in the back of her jeans. Another sigh and she checked her gun's placement, just to be safe, and proceeded to nod to Monika before lightly stepping around her and back out the door into the main lobby. Still as dark as before, as if she had expected a change. Pity no one had noticed, though, and turned on a light or two. Where was a damn switch, anyway?
Well, at least it was just around the corner and down the hallway, whichever way they went wouldn't matter so Trish turned to her immediate left and went by memory. The rooms would be labeled, anyway, wouldn't they? Or at least they should be, considering that was common place in most hospitals.
"I'm going to laugh so hard if he's just sitting in the Day room like a dumb ass..."