Chapter Two: Dark
Natalie opened her eyes, staring at the candle's single flame on her bedside table. It was a moment before she realised something had awoken her. She sat up and looked around her room, darkened aside from the faint glow of the candle, the wick deep in a valley of wax walls.
She drew her blankets up to her chest and reached for her phone underneath her pillow. She turned on the screen to see the time: two in the morning.
Sighing, she cast another look around her room. Her sleep had been unusually dreamless, something that happened once in a blue moon lately, and she wished that she could have finished this restful sleep cycle.
Or was she really awake...?
Her eyes were locked on her closet. Her heart skipped a beat as she realised why it looked off: the door was ajar. What made it worse was that the closet door opened inwards.
The flame sputtered in the candle. Natalie paid no mind to it. She knew she had to shut the closet door. Opened doors in the dark made her...uneasy. Yet...how had it gotten that way in the first place?
Natalie slowly turned and, eyes never leaving the open door, got up from her bed. She started towards the closet, then hesitated. She tore her eyes away from the door and searched for something to protect herself with. She spotted a heavy vase containing a bouquet of dried flowers. She armed herself with this, removing the dead roses.
She continued her painstakingly slow and silent path towards her closet.
She held her breath. Three feet away now.
Raising the vase over her head, she extended a hand, reaching for the doorknob, immersed in the dark maw of the closet.
She was very close now. She was almost touching the knob.
The candle flame sputtered, and her only source of light extinguished.
Natalie cried out in horror and reflexively withdrew her hand, and not a moment too soon. As soon as it had left the arch of the doorway, the door itself had slammed shut so hard it knocked a picture from the wall.
Something moved behind her.
Natalie sprinted back towards her bed, grabbed her lighter, and franticly flicked at the spur. She could hear something moving closer to her, grumbling in low tones.
Click
Click
The light flared, illuminating a skinless, sinewy creature with no eyes and a gaping, lipless mouth filled with oversized human teeth inches from her hand.
Natalie screamed, recoiling backwards. She kicked out at the creature, and it shrieked, not from pain, but hunger, as it lunged for the girl.
She fell off of her bed, taking some of the sheet with her. It tangled around her feet and tripped her, sending the lighter cascading out of her hand as she was brought to her knees. The flame from the lighter disappeared.
"No!" she shouted, kicking her feet from the sheet. As she pulled herself forward, she instantly knew something was wrong.
Her room suddenly smelled strongly of decay. The floor felt of industrial metal, as it had in the forest and in countless other nightmares.
The thing shrieked again and leaped off of the bed, landing with a bang several feet to her left.
This brought Natalie back to her senses. She scrambled to her feet and ran in the direction of the door that led to the living room.
She didn't bother to slow down, but slammed into it. Out of sheer habit, her hand flew to the light switch and flicked it on.
She blinked.
Her room was exactly the way it looked before she had gotten out of bed to close her closet door. Still carpeted and smelling not of rot but of vanilla, the scent of her candle. The only things out of place were the sheets trailing from the bed to the floor and the lighter resting near her dresser.
Natalie exhaled deeply, gripping fistfuls of her shoulder-length brown hair. But she didn't dare close her eyes.
"Why," she moaned quietly. "Why the hell is this happening to me!"
She couldn't help but scream the last few words.
When she felt ready, she trudged back to her bed. She examined her candle. It was spent; the wick was no longer usable.
She had not turned off her lights when she had decided to lay back down. It felt safer this way. She had not had a waking nightmare in her apartment before. They usually consisted of herself running through a fog-filled town, only to come face-to-face with a variety of monsters. Recently, the 'deer' had joined the queue, but the teeth-thing was by far the most common to give chase.
Her overhead lamp gave a strained buzzing. Natalie looked up at it, hands clasped tightly.
"Oh, please no," she whispered, eyes filling with tears of desperation.
They flickered, but only casting the room in darkness for half a second before coming back on without complaint.
The girl stared at the mirror directly across from her. The message scrawled across it in red was something familiar to her, but one she had not received right in front of her eyes before.
She read it slowly, mouthing the words as though she had never seen these four words grouped together before.
Go to Silent Hill.
Natalie reached out for her bedside table and lifted the candle. From under it she took out the map of the aforementioned town. She examined it once more.
She looked up at the mirror, at the red message. Natalie gritted her teeth.
She would do it. In the morning, she would pack a bag and go to Silent Hill.