Fortunate Son

Chapter 2: Follow the Leader (Going to Silent Hill)

"I am the way into the city of woe,

I am the way into eternal pain,

I am the way to go among the lost."

― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

Sometimes I think about the things that happened to me in Vietnam. Six bullet wounds in various locations on my torso, and I count myself lucky that I only managed six. Numerous cuts and abrasions, not to mention the burns. When I came back, I'd reason to say that at least twenty percent of my body was scar tissue.

I shot people. Watched them die. Sometimes I felt like they deserved it. Sometimes they shot first. Other times…not so much. When you watch the light in someone's eyes die, all their past, present, future, everything they were and will be turns to nothing. Soul leaves body. Nothing left of you but a husk filled with dead and dying parts.

I think about the things that happened in Vietnam, and it always brings me back to Isaac Curtis.

The first time I saw Isaac Curtis, he looked at me and smiled. It wasn't a smile that made me feel welcome. He was at least ten years older than me, with a firm, square jaw, buzz-cut hair that was going white in a few places set against its original blonde. He had a wrinkled brow, and he looked older than he was. I think he was at least in his thirties, but he looked much older, maybe forty or fifty.

His manner was friendly enough, but his smile told me that he could eat me for breakfast and not feel guilty about shitting me out later. "Don't fuck up," it said, " Or I'll fuck you up".

I'd seen the same smile on my father's face when I was younger. I hated that look.

"Welcome to paradise." he grinned at me, and those were his first words to me. I remember looking around at that jungle, seeing fires in the distance, and if it was quiet, I could hear gunfire far away. In our main camp, The Ink Spots were crooning about a shanty town on a nearby radio that sat atop an old, rusted barrel that might have held oil at some point. Some of the boys were shirtless, laughing and chugging back cheap beer. A few feet away, in a tent, a grown man wept as he looked down at his hand, which was missing two fingers. He looked badly burnt. Someone next to him was covered in bandages, and I could not see them breathing.

Paradise.

I looked at the photos of Vietnam on my wall one more time, and sighed. I didn't want to see Isaac Curtis again. But I had no choice. If I didn't go, if I simply ignored that letter, ignored the implication of it, and went on with what little of a life I had left, I would have spent that time wondering 'was it really him'. And if it wasn't, who would have known about him, and what happened?

I looked at my new backpack I'd bought from the local Sears earlier that day. I could have dragged my old time-worn one from Vietnam along, for nostalgia's sake, but I didn't. The thing probably couldn't have held a loaf of bread without falling to pieces.

The new one was olive green, like its ancestor, though. More pockets, but at the same time, more civilian. I wasn't outfitting myself for combat,

Then why are you bringing the pistol

So I didn't see the point of raising suspicion.

Inside the pack were a few health drinks, flavored like chocolate milk, with a vague hint of chalky taste to them. I hated the taste initially, but over time grew a strange addiction to them. Better than what I used to drink, anyway, and besides, they were part of the reason I was still as fit as I was. Which, granted, wasn't anywhere near boot-camp level anymore, but still, I could hold my own if I needed to throw down.

Also inside was the map of Silent Hill, a portable radio-MP3 Players may be coming into fashion, but I still prefer the old ways-and a clip-on flashlight, in case I ran into any trouble on the road at night, and plenty of batteries for both, along with a first-aid kit. Hey, you never know.

Tucked beneath all this, however, was a holster, attachable to just about any belt, and inside of that was my M1911A1 Pistol. The first pistol I was given, and the last I'd ever use. At least I hoped so. Along with that were two boxes of ammunition. I don't know what spurred me to take so much, but looking back on things, I would feel grateful to myself.

It was almost like fate was telling me things were about to get FUBAR.

I made one stop before I left, and that was to "Father" Russell Compton's house. He had phoned earlier today, saying he wanted to see me before I left. I didn't know why, myself, though part of me expected him to tell me not to do anything stupid because it'd look bad in the eyes of the Lord, but he was still my best friend. I couldn't refuse him.

I knocked a few times on his door, and heard a few heavy footfalls from inside. That would be him. I heard him speaking with a woman-his wife, if I had to guess from this side of the door, before he opened the door, seeing me. He looked taken aback at first, almost like he hadn't actually expected me to show up. I offered a smile, and he responded in kind. "C'mon in, Joseph. Marian was just heading up to take a nap; her headaches are coming back."

Russell's wife of ten years, Marian, waved at me with a smile. " Hello Joe, haven't seen you in an age. You really need to come by for dinner once you get back from your vacation."

"I'll surely try." I smiled back at the kindly woman. She merely nodded-she'd always been a bit soft spoken, before rising up from the couch in the living room and beginning to go upstairs.

"Take a seat, Joe." Russ said, gently, but with a tone of concern behind it, once he was sure Marian was out of earshot. I lost my smile once I detected that tone, but sat down all the same.

Russell sat down next to me, lifting a small stack of paper, apparently printed out from his computer, from his coffee table. He personally wrote all of the Sunday bulletins for his church, and it surprised me to see that he had printed out so much, especially when it appeared that none of the papers had nothing to do with his church.

" How much do you know about Silent Hill?" He asked me. I was taken aback a little by the bluntness of the question.

" Well I asked my daughter about it last night. She said it was a vacation town. A generally peaceful place, not a lot of news coming out of it, but there'd been a few-"

"Disappearances." he nodded, looking down at the papers in his hands, cutting me off.

" Uh…yeah." I nodded. "Look, is something the matter?"

" You're dam-" he started, almost raising his voice in a shout, but biting the inside of his lip. Even with the few syllables of rage he managed, I was still surprised. These days, Russ never raised his voice, and swearing was almost beyond him now that he helped run the church. He took a deep breath, muttering something that sounded like a quick prayer under his breath, before looking back at me.

For the first time in years, I saw frustration, directed at me. " Yes, Joseph, there's something very much the matter. Silent Hill is…strange. Wrong. Forgive me for saying so but I've done a bit more research than your daughter, I think. The town is not normal."

" Care to explain, Russ? I haven't seen you like this in years."

He nodded with reluctance and pursed lips, a sigh whispering through his nostrils as he handed me the stack of papers, and sat down on his couch. By his manner, he was ready to tell a story, and he'd piqued my interest with his behavior. I sat down in the easy chair across from him.

" It isn't without cause that my tone's a bit dark here, Joe." He began. "The town is old. Very, very old. Older than colonial America. And old towns have stories…secrets. It had a different name back then, but it was still the same land.

" Native Americans were settled here around the sixteenth century. Evidence that's been dug up in the last few years suggests that they had Gods here, local to this area. They prayed to them, made animal sacrifices. Their totems and artifacts are regarded as strange, among historians, because the animals depicted didn't match any descriptions of wildlife local to the area. They were so strange that they initially didn't believe that they were authentic. The place had a name that translated to 'The Place of the Silenced Spirits'.

" The name, like so much else, changed when settlers began to appear around the early sixteen-hundreds. The natives lost their land and their rights, and the English began to set up shop. Things went as things do, until there was an outbreak in the early 1700s. No one knows exactly what happened, but it was enough for the town to become abandoned for almost a century. Around the time of the War of 1812, the town was resettled, this time as a penal colony.

"This meant that the town was filled with prisoners of war, or Native Americans that resisted the treatment they were getting, and consequently, a lot of people died there. This was when the town got it's name, which was a loose translation of the original Native's name for it: Silent Hill."

" Spooky story." I replied, and I wasn't lying. It made me shift in my seat a little to hear about how the town came to be. " But I'm still-" I began, before he cut me off with a lift of his hand.

" I'm not done." he responded. His tone was gentle but something in his eyes said 'Shut up and listen'. I closed my mouth and nodded for him to go on.

" In the late 1800s, they built a hospital. The reason was, the townspeople were beginning to grow ill once again. The sickness, the plague from almost a century before was coming back. This was at the same time the Natives that had returned long ago were being forcibly removed, not only from the area around the town but the state.

" So many people had died by then that the prison they'd built closed, and the town's main distinguishing building became Brookhaven Hospital. But things began to turn once more, after the disease had run its course and new settlers began appearing. A major coal deposit was discovered, and the Gillespie and Wiltse coal mines opened. This revitalized the town, and steadily-but-quickly, other buildings cropped up. A town hall, a school, a park, doctor's offices, saloons, so many others. It was a boom town. Roads were formed. People farmed here, and things grew. All the blood from before was soaked back into the soil, dried into the dirt, and now these people were thriving on top of them.

" When the Civil War came, though, they reopened the Toluca Prison Camp for POWs. History repeated, but thankfully not for as long this time. Once the war ended, the prison camp was converted into just Toluca Prison. It's gone now. A Historical Society sits on top of where it used to be.

" We're coming up to the early 1900s now, and around this time, the Natives were basically non-present in the town, organized resistance all across the country had dissolved. This was around the time people started going missing."

" Okay, you can stop, I get it, the town's spooky, Russ. I know you don't want me to go but you don't have to make up stories about-"

Once more I was cut off. Russ reached forward and pulled the papers out of my hands with an aggression I hadn't seen in a long time, flipping through them until he pulled out a scanned and printed article from an old newspaper from the early 1900s, the Silent Hill Centennial.

" Fifteenth Missing: Silent Hill Mayor Says 'Do Not Be Alarmed'."

I scanned the article, best as I could read it. It talked about how fifteen people had gone missing in the last two months, but the Mayor and police did not believe murder or foul play was involved, saying that 'people have come and gone in this town for a long time.'"

I looked back up at Russ. He must have seen something in my expression, because he took this as enough for him to go on.

" The prison closed soon after this. The town became a tourist attraction in 1910 or roundabouts. The disappearances never stopped, though. Did you know that in 1918, an entire ship went missing on Toluca Lake? The Little Baroness, it was called. It just sailed away one foggy morning and no one could ever find it. Not even a plank, splinter, or a floatation device. They actually looked, this time. The families demanded answers that never came, and people worried, but not enough to where they let it disrupt their daily lives. Not even in '38, when lights started appearing at night on the lake, and shadows began treading the water like it were solid ground, according to night watchmen and fishermen."

By this time Russ was beginning to perspire, even though it was chilly in the house. Or maybe it was just me.

" They built churches there, but the churches didn't have crosses. The big ones didn't, anyway. They had others that did, but nobody ever went there. Just the preachers and pastors and a few followers in each one. The town was religious, but nobody outside knew, for a long time, what kind of religion it was.

"Accidents started happening on the water. Boats would stall and stop, oars would get pulled underwater as if they were being dragged out of the boatmen's hands, stranding them on the water until someone else came along, or fog would roll in and disguise rocks or other dangers. Wiltse Coal Mine closed, while the Gillespie Mine thrived for several years afterward. You can imagine that around this time, the area had a poor reputation for sightseeing. And yet it thrived, by all accounts a financial success.

" In 1963, something else happened. The Mayor died, suddenly, of something completely unexplainable. The coroner's report noted nothing wrong with him. No cancer, no risk for heart attacks, no palpitations or anything, no history of excessive drinking and by the man's family's admission, he never touched any illegal substances in his life. He was a healthy, middle aged man, and he simply expired at his desk.

" This wasn't the only strange death that year. One after the other, the staff of a developmental group for a town began dying. One fell down a flight of stairs, the other committed suicide by leaping from the roof of a hotel. Another man committed suicide by removing his genitals and slitting his wrists after wrapping a plastic bag around his head. Someone even managed to doze off and drown themselves in a bowl of soup. You find this incredibly hard to believe but I assure you, each one is listed in the packet I've given you."

I didn't deny a word that he was saying. Something wouldn't let me properly voice all the doubts swirling around inside my head. " This is all incredibly hard to swallow, yeah. I don't entirely see the relevance to my situation though, Russell."

My old friend went on anyway, ignoring my last statement. " The town's new Mayor was reclusive. He seemed to have dealings with members of the Nameless Church that had appeared in the town years before. The Mayor after him as well. The Christian church was all but nonexistent by this point. By this point it should be becoming clear to you that what was controlling this town was no mere church, but a Cult."

He emphasized the last word with a hiss through his teeth, like he were uttering a forbidden word, whispering it to keep it from someone's ears. It gave me pause to hear this, along with all the rest. I had never heard of an entire town being controlled by a cult before. Maybe a few settlements, but not a full town.

" The cult, which was called The Order, had been guiding the town's development for years. Nothing extraordinary was out of place while they ran it. The United States Government didn't pay much attention to the town outside of census figures and the like. The Order ran the town from behind the scenes, comfortably, controlling nearly everything. Newspaper circulation, politics, religion especially, even the drug trade. A drug named PTV became prevalent, circulating among tourists, corroding the soul of the town even further. A criminal investigator attempted to trace this to its source. He died. The latest mayor at the time attempted to crack down on the trade, but he was in a terrible car accident the day before he would sign a bill putting his efforts into action. The newly appointed mayor turned a blind eye to the trade, and everything went on as it used to, until 1983."

" What happened in '83?" I asked. I didn't recall anything out of the ordinary happening in Silent Hill at the time, but then again it was a town I'd never cared to notice until just the day before, and the eighties were rough for me anyway.

" I don't know, precisely, only that the Order's activity seems to have halted for the most part. Things trickle out every now and then about news from that time-a man affiliated with a local police officer helped bring down the Order. Or at least slowed it down substantially."

" I'm guessing this is around the time the disappearances stopped and the town went back to normal?"

" No." Russell said, bluntly. He looked pained-sad and anxious. He actually checked over his shoulder as he spoke. "No, they didn't stop. And they still haven't." he said, pulling out another sheet from the stack, passing it over to me. There was a picture of a man and wife, both blonde, smiling and hugging each other in a romantic pose on a boardwalk in front of a gorgeous looking lake.

" James Sunderland and his wife, Mary. Mary was sick with a rare, aggressive terminal illness, going by her family. And James was growing more and more visibly distressed. One day, close to what should have been the end for her, both just…vanished. Local police noted that a diner had served Sunderland lunch the day he went missing. The waitress said he was heading to Silent Hill to 'find somebody special to him'."

" Jesus. You think he killed her, or…"

" I can't say. No one can. There's been no trace of the vehicle, no sign that Sunderland ever even entered the town, by any record. Short of searching Toluca Lake, everyone seems to think the guy just disappeared off the face of the earth. But he wasn't the only one. Just one of the ones that the news picked up on."

" How many others?"

" That are on record of having entered or known to be headed toward Silent Hill, or the ones I had to find scraping around on internet forums?"

" Either."

He looked at the papers again, and swallowed. " Fifty. Fifty that I know of, since 1970."

" You're shitting me." I said in a near whisper, my throat dry, feeling my brow draw in. " There's no way that many people go missing without government getting involved."

" If they have, extensively, it's been kept well guarded. That many people have gone missing, and the majority of them-this is the most important part, the one takeaway I want you to get out of this damned campfire story-almost all of them had something psychological wrong with them. Post-partum depression, anxiety, anorexia, bulimia, bullied kids, and war veterans…people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Almost all of the missing were damaged in some way."

I thought about this for a long time. Part of me wanted to argue. Part of me knew that this was stupid. That Russ had probably just cooked all this up the night before to keep me from hurting myself, or anyone around me, but then there was Russ' tone. It was the same conviction, the same importance that he used when he was at the pulpit. He believed what he was saying, and that, in turn, made me believe too, if only enough to know that a lot of damaged people had gone there.

" You think they went there to die?"

" It wouldn't be out of the question. There are places with a sort of dark importance, places that call the damaged, looking to end their lives. There's a forest in Japan, Aokigahara: the sea of trees. There was a news report about it a while ago on television. At least a hundred suicides occur there almost every year. Even with suicide patrols, even with warnings, and this stigma, people go there and they manage to kill themselves. People have attributed an almost paranormal aspect to the place for its ability to draw the suicidal there."

" You think Silent Hill is a place like that?"

" It may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, Joseph, you know that. My faith may call for me to believe in Holy Spirits but I believe there is room for other spirits-the ones who died young, or violently, or were so attached to the world that they couldn't let go even in death. Silent Hill may very well be a town of such things, where the spirits are not placid due to the town's violent history. Or there could be other things, worse things at work-this is a town where an Order was built that worshipped dark Gods-things we would call Devils, and demons. Or it could simply be reputation and freak coincidence that brings these people."

Russell's words swirled around in my mind. I didn't believe in ghosts or ghoulies or spooky things, and I wanted to laugh, just wanted to laugh it all off. But there again, was his belief in his words. And if the word of a Pastor isn't convincing enough, then the word of my best friend surely had weight.

I came back to something he said earlier. "I'm not going there to die, Russell. I'm going there-"

" To find a dead man." he cut me off. " Or a man that should be dead." he said, replacing the papers on the coffee table that separated us. " Are you sure of your own words?" he asked.

I should have known the answer. I should have spoken it immediately, but my tongue dried up when I tried to make it move. I could only stare. And sweat, even though I was cold. My bag was heavy. The gun inside my bag was heavy. Why did I need that much ammunition? Why did I tell myself I needed five cartridges of pistol ammunition?

" I'm not going there to die." I repeated, finally, rising to my feet. " I'm not suicidal, Russ. I haven't been in years, and I don't intend to start up again."

" I certainly hope not." Russ sighed, sadly as he rose to his feet. " God be with you,

He shook my hand and walked me back outside. The morning air was cold, and the sky was gray. In the distance I could see a few rays of sun trying to pierce the veil of gray and white, but it wasn't any use. The day had decided, it seemed, to be gray, and Mr. Sunshine could go kiss his ass.

A car sped down the road, the engine revving spectacularly, clearly, sounding like a missile in flight and it might as fucking well have been, the way it made me twitch.

I exchanged a few last pleasantries with Russell, and made him a promise, before getting back into my car and setting off for Silent Hill once more.

" If you do find Isaac, Joseph…do what you need to do, to be at peace. And come back."

The drive was nearly three hours, counting traffic. It was nearly nightfall, going by both my car's digital clock and the darkening sky. On the classic rock station, Hendrix was singing about the Joker and the Thief trapped in their cell, and my car's heater had just kicked back on after five miserable minutes.

Outside the car, the chill of night would be settling in. My best bet would be trying to find a hotel or motel to stay the night in, once I got to the town itself. Going by the directions I'd written down, I wasn't far from the place, and traffic was practically nonexistent. The drive was rather peaceful, to put it plainly, and yet it felt like the calm before a storm; the quiet before a tornado.

As the song got to the part about the two riders approaching, and the wind howling, I passed a large, green sign with four words written in giant, fancy looking font:

'Welcome to Silent Hill.'

I chilled a little. Something about the way it was written didn't seem welcoming, to me. Something about the font, maybe? The way it was painted? I had no idea. And I didn't have time to concentrate on the thought. I was mainly concerned about driving to my destination. I had passed the welcome sign but I couldn't see any sign of the town.

Then again, I couldn't have seen Jack Shit if it was waving a neon sign two feet in front of me, truth be told. The thickest fog I'd ever seen had started to roll in, and this, combined with the nightfall, had severely limited my field of view. This part was strange, I registered that much. It had been clear five minutes ago, and the weather had called for no fog, only cloudy skies and a chance of rain.

My attention was almost exclusively devoted to the road, which was becoming less and less visible. Hendrix's guitar faded out, into static. This admittedly puzzled me too since, being familiar with the station, dead air immediately after a song was unusual, but I chalked it up to me being out of its regular range.

I took my eyes off the road for a moment to check the time and turn the radio off. In that moment I registered two things, one after the other. One, the clock was screwed up. It was a jumble of green bars, trying desperately to make numbers, and two, the static was picking up even though I hadn't even touched the volume dial.

When it shrieked something at me, I jerked my head up in time to see a tree growing in the road, my car coming on it far too fast. I planted my foot on the brake but it was too late. I slammed into the tree at forty miles per hour. The windshield shattered into a rain of glass that spilled into the car, tiny pieces the size of snowflakes bouncing across my face and leaving little cuts, as my head slammed into the steering wheel. The airbag deployed a second too late, shoving me back against my seat as the car spun wildly. I think I heard a tire popping through the ringing in my head, but I was too dizzy to register anything after the knock to my head.

The alarm started going off, the headlight that wasn't ruined blinking off and on in time with the annoying repetition of the horn.

Eee. Eee. Eee.

I tried moving my arms or legs, but there was no strength in them. I was slipping. I thought about a lot in the last minute I managed to keep myself conscious, fighting my brain wanting to shut itself down for that long.

I wondered if I was going to die.

Eee. Eee. Eee.

The airbag started to deflate. I sank with it against the steering wheel, my head slowly, shakily moving to look at the tree I'd hit. My neck wasn't broken, or I don't think it was, or else I wouldn't have been able to do that much.

Who leaves a tree in the middle of the road, I thought. I wanted to laugh at the genius who'd done that, and punch the guy who'd left it.

I thought about how I'd never see my daughter again or hear her voice if I didn't stay awake.

Eee. Eee. Eee.

The tree looked wrong. Not very tall as far as trees went.

Eee. Eee. Eee.

The branches were moving even though I couldn't feel any wind, but at the time I felt like that was partially due to my face numbing.

Eee. Eee. Eee.

Yes sir, this tree was very wrong. Too dark, too, or was that just the world going fuzzy and dim on me? How the hell was this thing not even damaged? Not even a branch in the road.

I moaned and tried to cough, but nothing came except a stupid-sounding wheeze.

Eee. Eee. Eee.

The world was going dark. There was no use fighting it now. I had to let it come. Had to hope some helpful bastard could come along and save my sorry old ass. There was no traffic coming in, so that wasn't very likely.

I could hear a siren somewhere in the distance though. Maybe it was an ambulance, but in my head it sounded wrong, just like the tree looked wrong. It sounded more like an air-raid siren than an emergency vehicle.

Just before it all went dark, the tree's legs moved. Legs. It was walking toward me, branches still swaying in the nonexistent breeze, and the arms that had been at its sides spread outward ever so slightly.

It wasn't a tree. God help me, it wasn't a tree and even though now I could see that the tall thing was shaped like a person, it was a poor imitation.

I saw its face, and I wanted to scream, but the world went dark. The horn went silent, and in the distance there were sirens and scraping footsteps against asphalt approaching. The siren got louder, and louder, until it was inside my head, and I hoped for an ambulance, I hoped for the police, I hoped for something to get me away from this wrong thing in the middle of the road.

Then there was nothing but silence and darkness.

Before me there were no created things

But those that last forever—as do I.

Abandon all hope you who enter here.

― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

Outside in the cold distance,

A wildcat did growl.

Two riders were approaching,

And the wind began to howl.

- "All along the Watchtower", by Jimi Hendrix/Bob Dylan.

Author's Note:

So after forever, here's a new Silent Hill story from me. My previous one, Return, has long since been abandoned. I just could not construct a story around it, and I hope that my new one fares better.

The base idea for this came from thinking about Homecoming. When I read a TV Tropes article, in one of the YMMV sections it talked about how some fans considered using a soldier, and all the baggage they carry, as a good idea for a story, but the game didn't run with it well enough.

So I decided to try out a story of my own with that basic concept, and throw a few other goodies in there. Inspiration for this story is heavily based on some of Steven King's short stories, and I've been watching others such as Jacob's Ladder and Apocalypse Now for further inspiration. I am also heavily researching PTSD to make sure that I capture the condition properly, or as well as one can in writing.

I hope you all enjoy this trip.

(Note that this story is also on AO3 under my Docjackal account there, and I'll probably be adding a few extra goodies to that one including pictures, map snippets showing where Joseph is in the town, that kind of thing. I'm going to do my best to make sure that both versions are perfectly readable without the extra content though, that site just offers more in the way of customization.)