Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome
by Egglesplork
Chapter 3
…
1.
…
Heather rode a nearly empty bus to the mall, a bus because it was actually faster than calling for cab. Actually, it was faster than calling a cab…then waiting for the cab dispatcher to have a cab ready…and then waiting for the damned thing to show up…to finally get to where one was going. In all the movies and television shows with cities, all a character has to do is wave a hand on the sidewalk to get one of those yellow things to pull over—inevitably driven by somebody with a New-York or Boston accent…even if they're not in New York or Boston. Where ya headed, toots? Nuh-uh. Not in this no-name city. There was just one tiny little cab company in this whole no-name city. The one time Heather did call a cab from her place took centuries to show up. And even then, the fat lady driving the thing kept calling her honey and sweetie, like Heather was somebody's child. (Could've been worse. It could've been a fat man who had his eyeballs all over her before letting her into the cab. That's why the lady only got two bucks for a tip instead of the local customary five percent, hah-hah.)
Or maybe it wasn't that cab driver's fault for treating Heather like a child. Nobody sees a grown-up in somebody the size of someone's kid sister…like Heather.
Whatever. Heather still thought the cab driver to be a jerk, treating her like a kid. It'd probably be great fun to become nine feet tall and built like a comic-book super-heroine. Then Heather could go around calling everyone else kid or shorty.
About the bus-ride to the mall, this jaunt wasn't for kicks and giggles. The interview was slated to take place there, in a bookstore where Heather worked for a little bit. That was back when Dad was alive and telling her to earn her own spending money. Said Dad, You are becoming an adult, and I expect you to learn some responsibility. Dad would maybe frown on the thought of Heather lounging around and not doing much nowadays, though—just mooching off book royalties.
Heather left her job as soon as enough money came in because one of her co-workers was a real bitch who wouldn't let up on the short jokes for one thing and the lesbo jokes for another. Heather didn't tell her anything about her own personal life. It was just that word gets around… That's okay. Heather got back at the bitch in a big way before quitting. After that, the obnoxious co-worker was said to be seeing a psychiatrist. Let it be known, despite her physical stature, Heather Mason is not someone to be trifled with.
…
The bus stopped right at the side entrance of the huge place. Inside, the marble-tiled luxury of the mall, not a lot of hustling and bustling was going on at this time of day. It was still before noon, and most everybody in town was still working. For the really heavy crowds, a person would have to wait until around Thursday evenings and into the rest of the weekend—which was ironic since the mall closed early on weekends. (One of these days, the idiots in business suits would figure out that if they ran their malls late on weekends, they would have more customers and make more money. That would be the smart thing to do, but the people in business suits are not hired based on brain power. It's not what you know but who you know.)
Right now, having almost nobody in the mall was convenient because Heather didn't have to weave her way between clusters and hoards of people bigger than her. An all-too-familiar escalator ride up to the second floor, and the bookstore was somewhere along the right side.
The reporter would probably already be there even if the interview wasn't supposed to happen for another half-hour. But Heather wanted this interview over with. As one really important author once wrote, Soonest begun is soonest done. Or was it, Soonest done is soonest begun?
One of those things. Heather pulled opened one of the familiar glass-and-steel doors to let herself in. Doors keep the noise out, good for customers who like things quiet. Unlike most places of the mall, the bookstore has doors because it kept the noise out, serving those customers who like things being really quiet. This way, customers can browse the bookstore aisles, buy what they want, and sit down with something to read in peace—maybe with an espresso or some other kind of ridiculously overpriced coffee-like product. (Hey, just because Heather has freakin' shiploads of cash in the bank doesn't give her an excuse to be a dumb idiot about spending habits. A person would take one look at her trailer-trash outfit of tight jeans-and-tank top to see that…complete with her dollar-store sneakers.)
The young woman working behind the counter recognized Heather (the writer's daughter) and nodded towards the tables out near the back of the store. You know, the back—where people sit down to read while drinking that overpriced coffee—spending ten bucks on something that they can probably drink in ten minutes. They could also probably buy nine pounds of the mix for whatever price they paid for just one serving. (Suckers…)
Lo and behold, that was exactly what the reporter-lady was doing right now—sitting at the back, drinking an overpriced cup of something expensive while reading a book. And Heather just knew it was the reporter—not because of some mystical powers but because the pretty lady was just too professionally dressed to be a mall-walker. Even business-office types loosened collars and what-not before dropping by here on their lunch-breaks or after work in general. Women replace their shoes with sneakers, and men ditch their ties.
No, that nice-looking lady looked dressed to impress—a pair of mute-red slacks with a matching dark-red blouse. It offset the sunny brightness of her short-cut straight blonde hair. Maybe the lady had too much makeup on a face that was probably very pretty without it. A slender purse-strap looped her left shoulder. The seat opposite the reporter-lady was available—as were all of seats.
Showtime, thought Heather in pulling out a seat and sitting herself down. "You wanted the interview, right?"
Oh! The reporter-lady's startled blue eyes looked surprised up from her book, her lips still in mid-sip from the overpriced coffee. Her eyes popping open all wide like that, it made her look exactly like one of those plastic dolls. Professional experience kept her from spilling that stuff in the cup. (What the heck was it? It smelled really sweet, and suddenly Heather wanted some. Not bought from here. They must sell the mix somewhere around here, though.)
"Just give me one moment." Down went the drink, placed onto the table next to the book, which was closed. Then the reporter-lady reached into that slim purse of hers for a notebook and one of those small tape recorders, those things called dictation machines by the professionals. "You're early, Heather."
On a first-name basis already, huh? That's Miss Heather Mason to you, slut. Heather thought that yet didn't say it. Oh, what fun it would be if it was said. Wouldn't go over too well with Dad's literary agents, yet they'd probably get over it. What were they going to do? Cut her allowance and ground her for a week? I hate these interviews. What's keeping me from throwing a total bitch-fit right now and walking away? Well, just because Heather had to be at this interview didn't mean that there wasn't a little fun to be had. The girl's eyes went to the reporter-lady's small hand-held tape recorder. Party time…
The pretty reporter-lady sitting opposite her suddenly seemed to have problems with that small electronic device. Its little red power light winked out. "Hmm. That's not right. Suddenly, this thing isn't working."
"It's the batteries," said Heather matter-of-factly. A not-so-nice kind of smile came to her lips, coming into her voice. "Maybe you should have checked them before showing up to do your job."
"But these batteries were brand-new," went the reporter-lady, nevertheless doing that fumble-thing with her purse. "I just…" Delicate fingers dove into the purse once more and came out with a quadruple pack of slim triple-A batteries—taking out two fresh ones. A dictation machine, spare batteries, along with cash enough for overpriced coffee. It made Heather wonder what the heck else was piled into that slim purse. If the reporter-lady had something in that thing which unfolds to make a jumbo-jet complete with flight attendants (pushing carts of damned good coffee), Heather wouldn't be surprised.
Turning over the tiny tape recorder and putting it onto the table, the reporter-lady snapped open the case and quickly removed the allegedly drained batteries, replacing them with fresh ones. The little cassette recorder was working again.
Heh-heh. Working, but not for long… As Heather expected (and planned), the tape recorder stopped working after all of six seconds. Like the glowing eye of a killer robot in that science fiction book, the red light just faded out.
Systems shutdown, Miss Reporter-Lady, thought Heather as her smile went even wider. This aspect of the interview was going as planned. And if anyone asked if Heather had anything to do with it, they'd just get a sweet smile and some innocent words. Well, gosh! I don't know how some reporters just keep having trouble with their electronic stuff whenever they're around me, was what Heather once told the book-publishing people. Who knows. Maybe their stuff is jinxed.
"Two sets of batteries dying at once. This has never happened to me before. I just don't know how or why…!" All flustered and bothered, the reporter-lady put the malfunctioning little tape-recorder back into her slim purse. "Just never mind. We'll do this with pen and paper. That can't go wrong."
"Good idea!" went Heather too cheerfully, thinking about all the kinds of trouble that could be caused with even that. But…no. The reporter-lady was kind of cute in a weekday-morning young secretary sort of way and probably didn't deserve too much trouble. Okay. I'll behave. But not yet. "Before we start, though, I want to know your name. Aren't you supposed to introduce yourself or something first?"
This made the reporter lady give pause, going blank-faced for a moment—the kind of face which matches the word, duh. "I'm sorry!" The reporter lady quickly put out her right hand above the table. "Alexia Ashfield. Blue Journal literary magazine."
Heather clasped hands with the reporter-lady and thought about giving a mighty squeeze, as what one would do on meeting male company. That's what happens when a girl is brought up by a father. That, and Heather is stronger than physical appearances would lead one to believe. "Heather Mason, as you already know."
Introduction done, letting go of each other's hands, the reporter-lady once again readied herself with pen and notepad. "I'm going to start with the usual set of questions. First, when you think of your father's works, what's probably the most important direction his work was going? What do you think he was aiming for?"
Depends on what kinda weapon he's aiming. Of course, as with other things, that's not what Heather said out loud. Since the reporter was starting with the usual set of questions, it was time to dig out the standard answers to that sort of question. "I think my dad's work is about good people going against the forces of darkness. If you read all of his works, you will always find at least one person who is trying to do the right thing and win. It doesn't matter how much evil that one person is facing. All it takes is just one person."
The reporter-lady was quickly scribbling down Heather's words even while the words were still coming. A person would wonder if such words were even readable afterward unless they came to know of what the secretary-types call shorthand. If the art of writing was revised by someone who had gone maybe a few decades without sleep and having consumed a few hundred gallons of coffee, shorthand would be the result. Another result would be a trip to the emergency room before one's heart just about exploded from having consumed so much caffeine. Or they'd call in the bomb squad.
"Yes…" went the reporter lady, having finished the hyper-caffeinated scribble-writing (shorthand). "I've read some of your father's books. In fact, a lot of people throughout the world have. We know that he wrote horror. But allegedly, some people insist that a certain book he wrote almost two decades ago was based on reality. I'm talking about the book about…"
"The one about Silent Hill?" finished Heather. He-e-e-ere we go… "Yeah. I'd say it's real enough. It depends on what you think of what reality is, though."
For a moment, the reporter-lady's right hand paused in that jittering rapid-fire writing before starting back up again. Then her eyes looked up from the notepad. Pretty eyes. "So, when your father wrote about the fog, the monsters… Of course, he didn't say that they were just monsters. He wrote that they were something about them being delusions brought to life. All of that really happened? People who don't understand would think that it all sounds just a little bit…off the wall?"
Heather thought, When they hired you, did they do it for your brains or your butt? Because it sounds like you're missing the first one while it looks like you've got a decent version of the second one. Trying her best to not sound like someone explaining something to a very foolish child, Heather said, "Remember, I said that it depends on what you think reality is. We live in what we think of as being this reality. And in some places of this great big-wide world of ours, reality can get to be pretty thin stuff sometimes."
…
2.
…
Heather left the mall with more than just a satisfied feeling of having shaken the emotional stability of a reporter. (Bet the lady'll think twice about ghost stories from now on, went a thought.) The girl's book-supply needed replenishing, and then there were some CDs in the music store from a local group that got a record deal, so some shopping was done. Some paperback books, some music and a bag of sweet-coffee mix, that was enough. It was dark outside by the time the cab got her back to the apartment building in the city. Yeah, that's right—plenty of cabs ready to pick people up from the mall in seconds. Maybe that's why they took so damned long to reach her place across town.
Daisy Villa Apartments was the name of where Heather lived, having been there with her father for a pretty long time. They named it Daisy Villa Apartments even if it wasn't a villa and there were absolutely no daisies in sight. (If there were daisies planted, somebody would probably dig 'em up and sell 'em.) Despite being shady about its name, this place wasn't ghetto, but it wasn't luxury either.
"Here you go," said Heather, grabbing the cloth-bags of mall-bought goods and giving the cab driver a twenty-dollar tip—a fresh bill of that sort unfolded from cash in a jeans-pocket.
"Hey, thanks!" went the female cab driver, a young lady in her mid-twenties. As Heather found out in the long cab-ride home, the cab driver was a college student earning some cash on the side to pay for expenses like, oh say…food and medical care. Heather had too much money and the grad student almost never has any. So why not the big tip?
Standing on the sidewalk outside the cab, cloth bags in her hands, Heather closed the cab door with a bump of her hips. "See you around!" was her shout to the driver.
Illuminated by the taxi-cab's interior lights, the cab driver gave a big smile and little wave of her fingertips before driving off into the city night.
Now was time to go in and put the CDs in the player—maybe play it really loud while in the shower. It was time to hear how good that local band was, if they were able to get a record deal from a big-name corporate outfit.
…
Inside the apartment building, past the thick wooden doors of the front entrance, Heather walked the tiled floor of the hall. This was the ground floor, yet the girl always thought it looked like a hallway that belonged in a basement—the floor looking worn and pitted as if heavy machinery was being run over it, the ceiling with its exposed pipe-work and snaking electrical cables, long florescent light-fixtures for illumination. To the sides were the doors of apartments belonging to neighbors who knew her more than her knowing them.
Heather did know some neighbors pretty well. There was this one lady who had this really cute little kid, that little munchkin who was always putting her fingers in her mouth and was always very eager with hugs. The kid knew her as Miss Heather. Heather had once loaned the lady a few hundred dollars to get through a tight time, and the lady was really grateful.
Then there was that elderly couple, always dressing up exactly how you'd expect the elderly to dress—wearing big sweaters and loose pants with comfortable shoes all year round because getting old means feeling chilly. They once asked Heather over for tea, though tea is more of an English custom than an American one. Coffee is bad for their blood pressure, so tea it was. It was a real wonder how that couple could stayed married for fifty years when most folks these days can't even stay married for five. Then again, it was also a wonder why they hadn't both retired from their jobs—the wife working at a dry-cleaning place for rich people's clothing stores, the husband working at the supermarket.
Other people lived around here, just not a lot of them that Heather knew personally—like those neighbors who all piled out to see the leftovers of that creature in the parking lot the other day, more like some of them enjoying the spectacle of a girl in tight clothes staggering with a really head-screwing headache. Seeing people messed up is always fun. Anyway, at the least, Heather knew all of the faces of the people who were around here. So why was it that the guy standing to the right of her apartment door so damnably unfamiliar?
The girl stopped in mid-stride just long enough to consider the stranger's physical appearance to maybe tell the police or the detectives later. It sometimes had to be detectives on call because the police weren't always around, because there just weren't enough police…because the city couldn't afford much in the way of law enforcement. (Yup, everybody thank the politicians for two decades of tax cuts!)
Stalker was what Heather was thinking. The stranger over there wasn't carrying a big knife as far as Heather could tell (and it always seems to be a knife when it comes to stalkers), nor was the guy (stalker) wearing some kind of mask. Instead, he was a skinny sort of guy dressed in white-buttoned shirt and black slacks—dark shoes on his feet. His full head of dark hair was around a lean-jawed face that was shaded with facial hair. He was one of those guys who probably shaved every morning but just ended up with leftovers anyway, the face of a guy who couldn't be over the age of twenty. College-aged, just like the female cab driver. But the stranger definitely dressed like someone not at college classes at the moment, looking more like a business intern or something.
No matter how nicely he was dressed, he was probably still a stalker and a pervert, which were still closely related species of human freaks. Some pervie-stalker has some magazine pictures of me and can't get me out of his mind. Heather knew that not all men were pervs—just lots of them.
The young-man-who-could-be-a-stalker walked on over to where Heather was standing with her cloth bags of stuff from the mall. Heather wasn't scared. It was more like disgust which was being felt. If the guy tried to get physical, Heather had some friends of an invisible sort who would…persuade the stranger away. And since dealing with that thing in the parking lot yesterday afternoon, Heather's buddies were readily on call. Who ya gonna call, went a line from a classic movie's theme song.
"Heather," went the guy. "Got a second?" Wow, does everyone call the girl by her first name nowadays?
"Do I have a second? Sure I do," went Heather, putting down her cloth-bags of purchases and crossing lean arms. "I've got lots of seconds. Minutes and hours too. It's just that none of them are for strange guys who show up at my door at night. So if you don't get the Hell away from my door and out of my physical sight in about nine of those seconds, you're really gonna regret it." A smile. "Maybe regret it with your life…"
The young man nodded. "My life, huh? Alright, I'll leave you alone. But I must tell you something before I go… Something is happening again. Something is happening, and there is going to be more trouble. And we need your help to stop it. My name is Mel. Mel Horowitz. Just so you remember. Something is happening…"
"Something is happening, huh?" went Heather, uncrossing her arms. "Like… No duh! When isn't something happening!" Suddenly her voice kicked up a few notches. "That big-headed thing in the parking lot, what was that supposed to be! No, don't tell me. It was a monster from somewhere else, right? Don't tell me where because I know all about monsters and other worlds and all that crazy stuff." This was followed by an angry stomp of her right foot and a shout from her mouth. "Why does this always have to happen to me!"Her hazel eyes narrowed into angry slits. "Did you send that thing?" The apartment-hall lights flickered. Something invisible made an angry sound. "Did you?"
The young man looked genuinely sympathetic, not at all frightened by the odd flickering of the lights, or the sound of something unseen. "I'm sorry that you're getting upset. But I've got some good news. You'll be okay for tonight and probably tomorrow. It wasn't me. And I think you have a way of knowing if I did have something to do with it."
Heather did have a way of knowing that. The girl can't read people's minds to pick up on thoughts. Yet it wasn't hard for her to reach out and sort of…sense a person's intentions. The girl didn't do it too often because it sometimes led to little head-pains later—not as much as the misery brought about from summoning unseen things to do her bidding, but a pain in the head nevertheless. Again, her abilities have costs.
Being aware of potential head-pains to come from doing this, Heather nevertheless tried to sense if the guy was bad and if he had something to do with that problem. He didn't. In fact, Heather sensed the ambiance of someone who was trying to be good even with some bad aspects. There was also something else about him that was really hard to pick up, too. Something wasn't right about him. Then again, there were a lot of things not right about Heather, either.
Then there was how the guy knew how Heather could do things with her mind in the first place, like sensing intentions. "Wait a second… How do you know about me?" was the girl's question. Of course, a stalker would know everything about someone, everything from shoe size to real hair color. In Heather's case, knowing her real hair color would be quite an accomplishment of investigative antics—the girl having been a dyed blonde for so long. Don't make blonde jokes either because her real hair color is dark, maybe Goth dark.
"If I didn't know anything, I would not be terribly useful," said Mel. "In fact, if you let me, I can be one of the biggest helps you could have around. You'll probably need help too if you're going to help stop what's happening."
"Whatever," went Heather. "You've said what you had to say. I'm not gonna say yes to what you're talking about because it's just too much thrown at me at once. I'm gonna have dinner, listen to some music and go to sleep. Is that okay?" And since you look to be a young 'un yourself, isn't it past your bedtime?
"Okay," went Mel. "I'll be going. Just please remember what I said." He then turned to walk away and went around a right-side corner of this hall, leading to the rear entrance of this apartment building.
Heather didn't bother to listen for the familiar click-clop sound of the thick metal doors being opened which meant that a person left the building through the back. The girl just picked up her newly bought stuff and carried it over to her apartment door, got out her house-key and opened up. One had best believe that the girl triple-locked her door from there—the spring-bolt lock on the door handle, the dead-bolt lock which had to be turned, and even the sliding chain. Heather didn't want any more visits from weirdoes today, tonight, or maybe ever again. There would be more weirdoes, though.