Chapter 2 In Silent Hill
Patrick clung to the reminder of the street that had not fallen underneath him, like a frightened cat clinging to the tall curtains of a person's home, refusing to let go or look down as he tried to get his footing so he could climb up.
"Son of a…" he muttered as he tried to keep himself able, slowly he managed to move up, grasping the earth that threatened to crumble underneath his weight. His hand grasped on to the concrete road, hoping that he wouldn't lose his grip from it.
As he looked up he was greeted by an African American man dressed in a uniform. "Hello there Patrick, you seem to need a hand."
Patrick looked at the man, his brow creasing into a frown, just how in the world did he know his name?
"Are you offering?" Patrick asked with slight sarcasm. "Giving me a hand, I mean."
"Son, if I wasn't I wouldn't be here." He knelt down and offered a hand, Patrick was slightly sceptical, he had no idea who this man was, and didn't know how he knew his name, but seeing as this man was offering to help, though if he pushed him off he'd try to grab on and take the man with him.
After a few seconds Patrick took the man's hand, the man then pulled Patrick up on to the road, Patrick sat on the ground and just tried to breathe normally, he felt like his adrenalin was pumping through his body. "Thanks…" he breathed, after another moment Patrick stood up and asked him. "Who are you?"
"I'm Howard Blackwood." The man said.
Patrick would have said his name in return but held back wondering how the man knew it to begin with. "Why are you here Howard?"
"Why am I here?" he repeated before laughing slightly. "Why I'm working Patrick, I'm the postman of this town."
"Postman?" Patrick repeated in shock. "But this town's been abandoned for years, how could you even be living here, let alone working in a place like this."
"This town holds many secrets, and what I do is just one of them, and this town isn't abandoned. In fact many still live here and thrive as a community."
"You're joking right? If what you say is true and there are indeed people still living here than what the hell happened to the damn road?" he said while pointing to the large almost seemingly bottomless caesium that used to be the road. "Things like this don't happen in real life."
"They do here Patrick," Howard said calmly. "After all, this is Silent Hill, strange and unexplainable things happen. But they happen for a reason."
"And what reason would that be?"
"I don't know, but whatever the reason is it brought you here didn't it? Something brought you to this town, now all you have to do is find out why. But it won't be easy."
I've heard that one before. "Okay, fine, say I believe you, would you happen to know the way out of this place?"
The man shook his head. "Sorry, I can't help you there. I have to get back to work."
"You've got to be…" Patrick shook his head in frustration before calling out to the man as he began to walk away. "Hold on a second!" the man stopped and looked back at him. "Since you can't help me, then you at least know someone that can right?"
The man thought about it for a moment. "There is, but I wouldn't really recommend you turning to them for help after what Marissa…"
"Marissa?" Patrick said, and Howard trailed off not finishing his sentence. "You know Marissa?"
"Yes, I know her. Sweet girl, though she doesn't trust many people and with good reason after what happened. If you'd like to know where the girl is I can tell you, but she might not help you so you know."
"Where would she be?"
Howard walked over to him and handed Patrick a map of the whole town. "Here this might help you find your way around this place. Now what I am about to say you need to keep under wraps, many people of the town here that remain, have done terrible and unspeakable things. No matter what you cannot let them know where she stays."
Patrick looked at the man, something in his words held a hidden meaning; these people that Howard had said must have done or tried to do something to that girl. "Okay…" he said cautiously. "I won't."
Howard looked at him, eyeing him as if making sure he was telling the truth, after a long pause the man sighed. "Alright I'll tell you, but I can't know for certain if she's there. Marissa tends to go from place to place while trying to go unnoticed. Last I remember the girl was staying in the Blue Creek Apartments, or the Wood Side Apartments. The two are side by side so if she isn't in one she might be in the other."
"Are you sure that she'll be there?"
"Yes, but if not then she might be at one of the two hospitals that are in the town."
"Well do you know which one she'd go to?"
"No, sorry, the girl doesn't tell me much, thinking I might sell her out to someone."
Patrick arched a brow at this. "Isn't that what you're doing right now?"
Again he thought about it for a moment. "I suppose I am, though you aren't one of them so I can trust that you won't hurt her."
"I work with the police; I wouldn't hurt another living person."
The man looked at Patrick with skepticism. "Are you sure about that Patrick? We've all done things we regret, big or small it'll always come back to haunt us." he turned to leave, but then paused once more to look back and add. "And if I may say one more thing, if you begin to hear a strange sound, and the world you see starts to change, hide. You'll be safer that way."
"Safe from what?" he called out to the man.
Without looking back Howard said. "One of your worst nightmares…"
Patrick didn't respond to the man as he walked off heading down the street before fading away in the fog. Once Howard was gone Patrick looked down at his map, green eyes scanning for where those two apartments might be, once he located them he headed in the direction, but finding that his whole body was on edge with every step he took.
It was like something from a distance was watching him, and no matter when he turned his head when he felt it was coming from one direction he saw no one there. It was unsettling, like there was an invisible person following him.
Since he entered from Sagan Street all the way to Katz Street, and it was going to be one hell of a walk to get there. But he knew it could have been worse, though he had prayed to god that the ground wouldn't open up like before.
Glancing back at the large hole that he had originally run from, Patrick then turned and began to jog down the street.
Only to soon find problems soon thereafter.
"What the hell?" he said to himself as he stopped; there in front of him was a gaping hole. Guess I can't go this way… he thought to himself as he looked back down at the map looking for another way, but soon he found that were a number of them in the streets impeding his progress from getting to the apartments, it was really something Patrick could have done without. "Why the hell is there so many large holes in the middle of the street?" he asked out loud knowing no one could hear him. "Was this one of the strange things that Howard guy meant? How could people still be living here in a place like this?"
Still, Patrick kept going, marking the map every so often if he came across one of those large holes in the ground. Closer and closer he reached the two apartment buildings but then paused when he saw a trail of blood going into a place called Neely's Bar.
"That is a lot of blood." he eyed the entrance contemplating on not going in, but his moral sense of being on the police force got the better of him, drawing his gun Patrick headed into the bar, but finding that it was too dark to really see much other than what light was let in from the front door. His eyes spied something on the floor going closer he picked it up. In his hands was now a flashlight. This should be useful. He thought as he turned it on.
Only when he did so the light shined on the torn up corpse came into his line of sight causing him to yell out a cry of fright. Jumping back Patrick brought the light back on to the body as he caught his breath from the sudden scare. Once he calmed down he took a closer look at the slashed up body.
It was originally a man, the body was bloody and sliced almost to ribbons; one of the man's arm and leg were gone and seemed to have spun off into other directions.
"Jesus…" he muttered as he then began to examine the body. He had dealt with gruesome death's in murders but this was horribly gruesome than anything else he had ever seen before. Crouching down he used the flashlight to examine the body. Damn, what the hell happened to him? He thought as he looked at the large gaping gashes that looked to be something of a number of blades used at once. It also seemed to be gnawed on, like whatever did this also tried to eat him but failed. What's more the parts that looked eaten also looked slightly charred, as if the flesh had been burning while trying to be eaten.
"Was it some kind of animal that did this…?" his eyes glanced to a note that the body grasped slightly in his cold dead hand. Patrick took it; the note was one page and looked to be a hastily written memo.
It's coming, the monster that the townspeople calls Knives, it's looking for something, something in one of the rooms of the apartments. I was told by Mathias to keep it and if someone or something tried to get I should swallow the key. Hopefully it won't see me, and I can return to the church soon. Also if I do get back Mathias did say to keep an eye out for that girl. If possible I should try to get her.
That girl, we need to try again, the ritual for-
The note ended there abruptly, coated in blood gore and even torn slightly at the end.
"A monster," Patrick said when looking over the note. "He really thinks there are monsters here in this town? Must have been on some type of hallucination drug of some kind, but then again…" he looked back at the body. "I could be wrong." After examining the body again Patrick noticed a flicker of light coming from inside of the body. The note did say he swallowed a key in case something happened. He sucked up his pride and stuck his hand in, trying his best not to gage at the sudden revolting smell that came from the corpse or the feeling of reaching inside someone's torn out stomach.
Once he grabbed hold of the object he pulled his hand out and groaned. Shaking the remainder of blood and whatever else was stuck to his skin he looked to the key that he now had in his hand. It was the key to the Wood Side Apartments.
Which was a lot closer now than before, but he couldn't help wondering why the dead man and someone named Mathias was after Marissa, and what did they in tend to use her for as well was another question entirely, one that did not make him feel good. Seeing the torn dead body made his worry rise slightly, if he was thinking what they intended to do then he needed to not only find the way out of this place, but to get the girl out as well.
That guy Howard, he did say that Marissa might be in ether apartment, I might as well start off with the closest one and work my way up from there.
But before he left he did scour the place for of anything that could be useful, the things he found were handgun bullets, a metal pipe with scissors attached to one end with tape, and a health kit. At first he didn't intend to take it, but seeing as what happened to one guy it might have not been a bad idea to do so.
Leaving the bar he made the remainder of the way to the apartments.
"Finally." He breathed with a sigh of relief. "Kid I really hope you're in this building somewhere, the sooner you and I leave the better."
Using the key he entered the building, the place was completely dark so he had to use the flashlight to see anything properly. The first thing above finding the girl was locating the building's map, Patrick had no intention of wandering around aimlessly with no idea where he was going, one wrong move in a town like this and he could wind up dead or something worse.
A mental image of seeing Eliana on the ground beaten, bloody and unmoving, as the faint sound of crying could be heard, Patrick shook his head getting that thought out of his mind.
He couldn't think of that right now, he needed to just keep moving forward, to get the hell out of this place. Using the key that he found, the doors to the apartment building became unlocked and he stepped inside.
The building was incredibly dark, so dark to the point that he wouldn't have been able to see three feet ahead of himself without the flashlight, making Patrick even more grateful that he took it with him.
He didn't have to go far to find the map of the building's layout. At least having a map would be of use rather than just blindly wandering around the place until he found the girl. His intention, if you could call it that, was to ask Marissa for help in getting out of this town, and if she wanted, he could get her out and take her to a police department that he knew well and trusted so that she would be taken care of and wouldn't have to worry about the so-called people of the town that would for some strange reason stay here, only if she wanted to do so.
He was worried about her, yes, but he had his wife and daughter to worry about too, if something happened to him, who knows what Susan would do. Their daughter was already having chronic nightmares and his death, and or disappearance, would only make it so much worse than how she already was now.
That was one thing he wouldn't allow, he needed to keep living, even if it was just for his families sake.
Taking the map of the building Patrick began to look for the girl checking doors only to find that many of them were locked and even parts of the hallways seemed to have been blocked off by metal bars. As if telling Patrick that he wouldn't be able to get through no matter what he did, hindering his progression of the building, which made him feel rather agitated.
Something wasn't right as he continued his way, one of the biggest indicators was the corpse stuffed inside a fridge in room 101. Patrick had read old articles about people that kill and leave the body in a freezer or a fridge so not to attract attention but this just seemed like the person tried to get the body in there but then just decided to leave it not caring who found it.
He felt incredibly disturbed by this, the eerie silence of the building, of the town, everything was so quite like the dead.
This town really was a ghost town, even if not in the literal sense, he had only seen that man Howard, and was told that Marissa was somewhere in this building.
The first floor was uneventful, other than finding more bullets and an old newspaper column written by Joseph Schreiber about a place called Hope House, there wasn't anything truly of importance.
That was until he reached the second floor.
Patrick paused by one of the apartment doors, room 205 which the door was partly open with a strange static sound coming from inside. "Static? Does that mean someone is in there?" opening the door further Patrick entered the room the stench of decay was foul as many cobwebs clung to the walls and furniture.
Seeing webbing made his skin crawl, Patrick never liked spider webs ever since he was a kid. Looking around the room he didn't see any signs of a person living in this apartment, the sound of the static was getting louder with each step he took.
The sound was coming from an armchair that was facing away from him. Reaching out Patrick turned the chair towards him. And soon after let out a gasp of fright.
In the chair was another dead body, only this one was much older than the first, the eyes and cheeks were sunken, lips peeling away to reveal yellow stained teeth, tightly clenched in a terrified grimace. The hair, or what was left, was in wire strands and clumps, hunks of the scalp had fallen off landing on the stained torn pants and the old wooden floor, along with a heavy amount of blood staining the body, chair and floor.
The body was extremely close to skeletal, the ashen skin withered and brittle like old burned paper. There was one thing that Patrick noticed; there were large holes in the body's neck, like two big incisors punctured the throat before draining the life out of him.
"And here I thought the first body was bad, this one is somehow ten times worse. What the hell happened to this town?" his eyes then looked down to the small hand held radio that was lying in the deceased's lap. The strong sound of static emanating from it, as he picked it up he wondered why it was doing that, or why it was even on when the sound the door closing drew his attention away from the body, he thought that maybe it was the wind but when he turned back around the dead body was suddenly gone.
His adrenalin pumping through his veins, everything told him to leave the room, he heard the sound of skittering across the ceiling, using his flashlight he looked around the ceiling trying to find whatever it was that was in the room with him. But wherever he turned he kept missing the being, the sounds of hissing and scrapping reached his ears.
When it stopped suddenly the hair on the back of his neck stood up, whatever it was that he couldn't see was now right behind him. He was sure of it.
Slowly he turned towards it, heart rate racing at an uncontrollable rate, if he were an unfit man Patrick was sure he would have keeled over from a heart attack not too long ago. When he faced what was there and what he saw made every fiber in his body turn to stone.
The creature looked to be a horrid mix of human and arachnid, with the lower half of the torso being a spider and the upper half the woman, the whole body covered in flesh, almost stretched to the point of seeing the bones through the long thin spider legs it had no hair or eyes, and almost slits for nose holes and ears, the mouth was large dislocating the jaw to open revealing large sharp deadly teeth. The fingers of the hands were sharp like claws that could pierce flesh, coated with blood.
"Oh fuck me…" he muttered before quickly taking out his gun when the strange atrocity let out a piercing scream before rushing him, Patrick moved out of the way before the strange creature had the chance to hit him. He shot the thing three times thinking that when he did that it would go down. It didn't, instead it climbed up the walls hissing and snarling before it spit out a webbing like texture that hit the floor, the wood bubbled away, the webbing was made out of some type of acid that burned away things on contact.
Patrick continued to shoot the thing until it finally fell off the ceiling and curled up into a ball with its legs in the air.
"You so better be dead or so help me…" he said giving a breath of relief before inching his way over to the body. He tapped it with his foot and when it made no move to attack it was then that Patrick was finally able to calm down. "What the hell is this thing? Is it a… spider or a woman… shit." His eyes then glanced around the room. "Why do I get the feeling it's not going to be the last one I see ether?"