"I don't need no arms around me,
And I don't need no drugs to calm me,
I have seen the writing on the wall…"
-Pink Floyd, "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 3)"
Chapter 3: Ghosts
The subway was freezing, and I barely recognized it as the same place I had walked through with Cynthia. Everything was crystalized, and I would have thought it was hauntingly beautiful if I wasn't panicking. Alone again, and I didn't even understand what had happened.
My footsteps echoed around the halls as I retraced our steps at a run. From time to time I slipped, but for the most part, the ice was just tractable enough that I could keep running. Once, I stopped to reach out and touch it. It felt like ice, but as I pulled my freezing fingers away, I couldn't help but think that there was something strange about it. As different as it was, it reminded me of the bloody room from my nightmares.
After that thought, I didn't stop again. I kept running, desperate to escape this place before something terrible happened. The sight of Cynthia freezing over and turning to ice kept replaying itself in my mind. I wouldn't let that happen to me. I reached the escalators I had ridden down after climbing through the hole. Frozen in motion, they sparkled with the ice that encased each step. Ice crystals broke off and floated around me in a strange shower as I ran up the escalator.
At the top, there was nothing. Only more ice greeted my journey. I cried out in dismay and looked around at the walls, the ceiling, even the floor, but there was nothing that even vaguely resembled the hole from my bathroom.
I got here, so there has to be a way back, I told myself, but I wasn't so sure. I had come from an apartment where the doors and windows no longer worked. Who was I to try to impose logic upon this world?
My initial panic had faded, and now I just felt incredibly lonely. I turned and sat on the topmost escalator step, hugging my arms around my knees. It had been so good to be with another person after being isolated in my apartment. I hadn't understood everything Cynthia had said to me, but she had spoken to me, touched me. She was a real, warm person. Or at least, she had been.
I thought about the frozen figure I had left behind and remembered the phone call I had received that morning. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that this subway was not a part of the outside world any more than my apartment was. A call that made it to my phone, when every other call failed and the cord was cut, could not have come from the outside world. Either it really had been Cynthia calling me, or someone else was here.
Whoever it was, she was in danger.
With the sudden conviction that if I started moving now, I could change things, I got to my feet and started back down the escalator. There had to be areas of the subway I hadn't seen yet. If I couldn't find anything, I would return to Cynthia. Maybe I could thaw her out or find a way to move her. It didn't seem right to leave her frozen there by the turnstiles.
Moving at an easy pace down the icy corridors, I had just begun to think that I could get used to seeing the world like this, when pain split my head again. I groaned, staggering around near the bathrooms. I leaned against the cold wall, closing my eyes and hoping it would pass soon.
"Aren't you a little young to be here?" a girl's voice snickered.
I opened my eyes, thinking I had found someone at last, but no one was around me. The voices continued, along with sounds that gave me the momentary illusion that the subway was active and bustling.
"What's going on?"
"Look, fresh meat!"
"Aww, is someone lost?"
The girls burst out laughing, and their voices slowly faded away.
My head stopped throbbing, and I stood up and looked around. Could these hallucinations actually be trying to tell me something? My gaze fell on the bathroom doors, and I opened the door to the men's room. It opened easily, despite the ice. Walking inside, I saw nothing out of the ordinary, so I tried the women's restroom next. Again, despite everything being covered in ice, it looked like a normal bathroom.
I frowned, thinking that maybe my guess had been wrong after all. Then I noticed something different about the far wall of the bathroom. I walked towards it and saw that beneath the ice, words had been scribbled in a red substance that reminded me disturbingly of blood.
By the Mystery of the 21 Sacraments,
The Mother shall be reborn
Something about the words made my skin crawl, but before I could figure out what they might mean, icy wind howled around me and cut into my skin, and the flickering lighting that had kept the subway lit died away. Left alone in the darkness, I felt around with my hands to try to find my way back to the door. My heart was pounding, and I thought I could hear a cracking sound behind me, as if the ice were shattering.
Pain stabbed through my head, and I stopped, prepared for another wave of the headache. This time, however, it spread, sending jolts throughout my body. I shuddered and nearly fell to the ground. I would have let myself collapse if the sense that I was being watched hadn't caused me to slowly turn around.
The ice had indeed shattered along that back wall. Coming forth from it was the ghost from my nightmares, bleached white skin, glaring eyes, mouth opening in a howl that chilled me to my bones. One hand reached out to grab me, and that was enough for me to ignore the pain and get to my feet. I burst through the door and charged through the subway station, heart pounding so hard I thought I was going to die.
The pain in my body receded the further I got from the ghost, which further motivated me to speed up. This has to be a nightmare! I thought desperately, but I had no intention of letting the ghost catch me to see what would happen. The hallway seemed as though it had somehow gotten longer, but that seemed no less impossible than anything else that had happened. Even knowing that I was closed in and would eventually reach a dead end, I kept running. There had to be an exit somewhere.
The ice of the wall to my right cracked as I approached it, and another ghostly hand forced its way out. I had just enough time to see a dark face follow, and then I was past it, not slowing down for anything. More spirits joined the chase as I careened down the halls, and my panic grew. They were howling and snarling, and I knew they wanted nothing more than to catch and murder me. Every time I started to slow, spasms of pain reminded me that I had to keep going.
I risked a glance back. There were too many of them, and they were gaining. No, no, no! I forced more speed into my burning legs, managing to stagger forward until I reached the turnstiles. There, I fell against Cynthia's frozen form, wishing I had gotten to talk to her more. Now I would die without ever finding out why I knew this woman or how we had gotten trapped in this world together.
Please don't find me, I whimpered silently, shuffling behind the ice sculpture like a frightened child. I couldn't run any further. They were going to get me. I could see their faces, hate-filled and bloodthirsty, as too many hands stretched out. I clutched Cynthia's frozen hand, wanting to at least pretend I had company other than the dead, and something shifted against my fingers.
I looked and saw a coin, marked as being for the Lynch Street Line. I plucked it from her frozen fingers, vaguely remembering that she had been planning on going somewhere with me. Racked with pain, I searched the turnstiles until I found the Lynch Street Line exit.
Clammy hands caught and tore at me, and a red haze filled my vision. I somehow managed to use the coin, because then I was tumbling through the turnstile and the ghosts were pulled away from me.
How long I lay there panting, I wasn't sure. When I finally came to my senses and sat up, I was mercifully alone. Stairs descended in front of me, covered in ice, and I took a deep breath before starting down them.
The air seemed to be crystalizing around me, and my steps slowed as I descended. It was strangely beautiful, but so lonely. I had never felt so cut off from the rest of the world; even in my apartment, I had had signs that there were other people around. We couldn't communicate, but I could see them and hear them. Here it was all too easy to believe that the real world didn't exist. Nothing existed but this world of translucent ice that would become my tomb.
I shivered, the thought of death shaking me from my reverie. I started running down the steps again, convinced that if I stood still for too long, I would become encased in ice, like Cynthia.
Cynthia…
My head started to hurt as I started down another set of stairs, and I made myself move even faster in case the ghosts were returning. However, sounds and voices filled my ears as they had before, as if the station was filled with people.
"Not again," I muttered, stumbling forward down the steps in the hopes that I could escape the hallucination. The previous ones had told me nothing of use. Trying to follow the last one as a guide had only resulted in this terrible ice world. Some of the voices were clearer than others, but I tried to ignore them. Whatever the station wanted me to know about these taunting girls and whoever they were addressing, I didn't care about it. I just wanted to escape.
"Room 302…"
I froze as the number of my apartment caught my ear. This couldn't have anything to do with me. It could be a different Room 302 entirely. Even telling myself these things, I didn't believe them. My apartment and this world were connected. What would this hallucination—this memory of the subway station—be about if not this world?
"Well, you're handsome," a voice I recognized as at least similar to Cynthia's said. "Where are you from?"
"I came from Silent Hill," a man responded, in the same voice that had mentioned my apartment, but now it chilled me to the bone for reasons I couldn't explain.
"Don't talk to him!" a different girl shouted, disbelief ringing in her tone.
"Come on, let's get out of here!" another agreed.
"Wait! Cynthia!"
"Hey, you misunderstood," Cynthia said, the pity in her voice not able to entirely mask the derision beneath it. "I know I said you're handsome, but you're also filthy. Not the sort of thing a girl like me is into. How do you know my name, anyway?"
"I…" The man sounded almost frightened; I would have felt bad for him if not for the pounding insistence in the back of my mind that I needed to get away. "I first heard your name ten years ago…"
"Ten years?! You've been watching me for ten years?"
"N-no, I—"
"Get away from me! You're disgusting!"
When the voices faded and I was left alone in the subway station again, I continued down the stairs, feeling disappointed and shaken. Why had my apartment been mentioned at all in that conversation? More importantly, why was I hearing it now? Cynthia had sounded like a kid. If she had talked to a stalker when she was young, what did it have to do with me now?
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I looked out at the subway cars. They were frozen in place, held to the frosty tracks by the ice that encased them both. I walked towards them slowly, but I didn't know what I would do when I reached them. These cars would never move. I couldn't use them to escape.
Even if I could, I worried that I would only be taken to another part of this unearthly world.
Movement caught my eye, and I looked over sharply. Someone was inside one of the subway cars. I ran towards it, keeping my eye on the figure I had glimpsed walking past the windows. When I reached the car, I had just enough time to see that it was Cynthia before she opened a door and disappeared inside the adjacent car.
"Wait!" I shouted. "Cynthia, it's me!"
She was gone, vanished from my sight as easily as if she had been a ghost—a prospect not entirely out of the realm of possibility. I had seen her turn to ice. I had left her frozen body at the turnstiles while fleeing the ghosts. Now, she had somehow gotten ahead of me.
The ice isn't fatal. The thought gave me hope, as cold as I was.
I tentatively tried the slick doors of the subway car, and to my surprise, they opened. Inside, I could see what the transformation had done to the cars. The metal was buckled beneath its icy coating, bent inward and outward at various spots. The seats were askew, pillars of ice having forced their way between them. The door at the head of the car was completely frosted over, a solid sheet preventing me from even going near it. The door I had seen Cynthia enter was clear of ice, but stubbornly resisted my attempts to open it.
After trying to open it for some time, I kicked it. All that accomplished was hurting my foot. Hopping around, I considered the situation. There had to be a way through that door. Cynthia had gone through it, probably trying to find the exit. For all I knew, she had seen me turn to ice by the turnstile. If she could get through the door, I could get through the door. It must have been open already, automatically locking when she closed it behind her.
Or maybe I imagined her, a voice in the back of my mind whispered, but I ignored it. She had been there, and I would find her.
I left the car and began to look around the rest of the area. There wasn't much to see, except for a map which confirmed my suspicion—I had to get to the other side of the tracks to make it to the exit. I checked each car, but only encountered locked doors. Just as I was starting to get frustrated and considering finding a way to climb on top of the cars, I found a door that would open.
Triumphant, I entered the car and discovered that the only other door in it was also locked. There was no way to get into the rest of the cars from this one, either. However, there was a display against the wall that showed the layout of the cars, with doors outlined and lit up green and red. After comparing the map to what I had seen outside, I realized that the green doors were the unlocked ones, none of which connected to one another's cars, and the red doors were locked ones. There were several buttons beneath the display.
Pressing one cautiously, I heard squeaks and clanks from around me, and I braced myself against the sides of the car, afraid I had started up the subway. Then the noise stopped, and the display changed. The doors that had been green were now red, while some of the previously red ones were green. Trying the other buttons with more confidence, I got similar results, affecting different doors. All I would have to do was press the right buttons in the right combination so that I could make it through from one side to the other.
That was easier said than done. After an initial burst of confidence, I found myself hitting buttons at random in the hope that I would get lucky, finally kicking the machine and hurting my foot again, belatedly reminding myself that as angry as I was at it, I did not want to damage this console.
"Focus," I said to myself out loud. It would be a relief to reunite with Cynthia so I could talk to someone other than myself. She had seemed at ease in the abandoned subway; maybe she knew more about what was going on here than I did.
I stared at the device and tried each button multiple times, fixing in my mind which doors each controlled. Then I studied the map closely, determining all the possible routes I could take to make it through the subway cars from one side to the other. Once my concentration was fixed on the project, I felt it coming together in my mind. Twice I started, only to realize that it wasn't going to work, and the third time I tried, I knew I had it. Pressing the buttons quickly, before I could lose the solution that had taken form in my mind, I smiled triumphantly at the display. There now was an open path through.
No sooner had I stepped away from the console than a howling screech caused me to clap my hands over my ears. I looked around in bewilderment as my head started hurting, and then I saw the ethereal form of a ghost breaking through the frozen ceiling.
I ran out of the car into chaos. All around, the floor of the subway station was cracking, ice shattering, as hands reached up to grab me. I ran with difficulty, trying to avoid the clutching fingers. The ghosts were all shrieking wordlessly, their cries coming together in eerie harmony until it almost sounded like a song of despair, hate, and death. I could see the open door just feet away, and I prayed they couldn't follow me inside.
A hand caught my ankle like a cold vice, and I pulled away desperately, feeling strength leaching out into the specter that rose up from the ground to stare at me. For a moment I was paralyzed by the face of the dead woman, wondering who she was and how her ghost had come to haunt this place, and then I felt cold fingers on the back of my neck. Snapping to my senses, I shoved the ghost with all my might, hoping that if she could touch me, I could touch her as well.
It felt like I barely budged her, but it was just enough that I could get my foot free. I took off towards the cars again, narrowly evading the three ghosts who had snuck up behind me.
How many of them are there? I wondered desperately, darting inside the car and stopping to catch my breath.
The unearthly howling grew louder, and I saw figures at the door's entrance. Not waiting to see if they could enter or not, I ran towards the door I had unlocked. Once through it, I slammed it behind me and looked at the two doors in the car I was in now. Both were free of ice, but only one would be unlocked. On the seat beside the door, a box sat, as clean of ice as if it had been just placed there, or if the ice had overlooked it as it had me.
I stepped towards it, curious, but then pain stabbed through my head. I was starting to distinguish between pain from the hallucinations and pain from the ghosts, and this meant ghosts. I turned. The door I had come through was still shut, but one of the ghosts had come partially through it. His head glared at me, and I could tell the rest of his body was on its way.
Running towards one of the doors, I tried in vain to get it open. Cursing under my breath, I ran to the other door and flung it open. This time I didn't bother to close it, knowing that would present no difficult for the ghosts. Speed was what I needed now, as I could hear them screaming from all sides—I imagined they had no need for the doors at all. I called to mind the image of the display after my solution had been applied, trying to remember which doors I had opened.
Tentatively trying one door, I found my way into the next car, and that refreshed my memory. Not letting go of the mental map in my mind, I raced through the maze of cars, not daring to slow down. Ducking around pillars of ice and opening doors as quickly as I could, I made my way to the other side and stumbled out onto the platform.
Ahead of me, I saw Cynthia, clearly outlined against the ice, but then she walked through a doorway and disappeared.
"Cynthia!" I shouted, running after her. The room she had entered was tiny, so slick with ice that it almost appeared to glow blue. There was no other exit except for what looked like a maintenance ladder.
I took a deep breath and followed her down into a blood-red room.
The walls looked like they were alive. I had the sudden disturbing feeling that I had been consumed by some massive creature and was now trapped inside its body. I forced down my panic and reached out cautiously towards the wall. I almost didn't want to touch it and find out that it really was warm and living, but there was something compelling about it…
A cold, smooth surface met my questing fingers. This room was frozen, as all the others had been. My relief was not enough to mask my growing discomfort, as I walked through the room that was covered in red ice. It looked as though someone had been murdered in water or snow, the bloody liquid then allowed to freeze.
"Cynthia?" I called nervously.
I heard a door shut up ahead. That had to be her. Who else would be here?
This room clearly was used for maintenance of some kind. I could see pipes, stacked boxes, buckets, and tools when I looked closely. At a glance, however, the whole area took on the appearance of some ghastly ritual. Those tools—tools of a different sort. The boxes—a jagged altar. Pipes and buckets—all that remained of the victims, body parts strewn across a frozen landscape.
"You're imagining things," I told myself out loud, stopping pointedly by a bucket to confirm that it really was just a bucket, trapped in the strange ice. Not entirely comforted, I started walking faster. I didn't like imagining things like this. Being stuck in isolation any longer might cause me to lose my head entirely.
Finally, I reached a door. Stepping through, I saw another platform, this one covered in blue ice, to my relief. Up ahead, I saw a woman running around a corner.
"Cynthia!" I shouted, taking a step forward.
Howling echoed all around, and the ice close to me started to crack. I broke into a run, dashing around frozen benches, garbage cans, posts, and similar things—some of which I would have sworn sprung up in my path just to try to halt my progress.
A scream rang out up ahead.
"Cynthia?" I called, dread settling in my stomach. Had the ghosts gone after her, as well?
"It's him!" she screamed. "He's coming!"
I didn't know who she meant, but I didn't have the time to find out. We made a ghastly procession through the frozen, ravaged subway station—Cynthia up ahead, barely in my sight; followed by me, panicked and running as fast as I could; and finally a band of screaming, snarling ghosts. Every time I started to slow, I could feel myself almost being drawn back towards them.
At last, I reached an escalator, stopped in time as the previous one had been. I took the steps two at a time, gasping for breath as I went.
A hand burst from the wall and grabbed me around the neck. I struggled, reaching up to grapple with the ghost that had caught me. Its face looked familiar, but I didn't know why. It wasn't the ghost from my nightmares.
I managed to get free, but I continued up the escalator with more caution, my throat hurting. Many of the ghosts had stopped chasing me and were choosing instead to come through the walls. The escalator seemed to go on forever, but finally, the end was in sight. I breathed a sigh of relief, and then a ghost burst through the wall to block my path.
With reaching hands on all sides, I leaped over to the other escalator with agility I didn't know I had. Bounding up those steps, I stumbled forward towards the exit. I remembered how the ones Cynthia and I had found before had been blocked, and I prayed that wouldn't be true this time.
In any case, I told myself, if it's blocked, Cynthia will be waiting up there, and then we can work together. I won't be alone anymore.
It was just a little further. I climbed the stairs, hearing the ghosts coming from behind. Nevertheless, I stopped dead in my tracks when I reached the top. Blood had pooled on top of the ice of the floor, alongside a pile of objects. Slowly approaching, I picked up one small brush and realized they were makeup items. Cynthia must have been carrying them.
I looked at the door in front of me, and the ice cracked. I took a step back, expecting more ghosts, but their wailing faded away. The ice melted, receding from the door and from the entire room until it was gone without a trace. Taking a deep breath, I approached the door. There was a plate on it, with Temptation written on it.
The word brought to mind the way Cynthia had acted towards me, and my feeling of dread increased. I took the plate, feeling somehow I had to, and then I took a deep breath and opened the door.
For a moment, I thought I had found another room covered in red ice. Then the smell hit me, and I realized this room had thawed like the other, and it was blood that drenched the walls and dripped onto the floor. In the center of the room, Cynthia lay motionless.
"No!" I ran towards her and fell to my knees amidst the blood. Her clothes were soaked, and I could see the wounds in her chest and stomach. I reached out, intending to staunch the flow with my hand and hope we could find help before she lost too much blood, but then I saw that she had been stabbed too many times. There was nothing I could do now.
My fingers hovering an inch above her skin, I realized there was something different about one of the cuts. Numbers were carved across her left breast. I took a closer look. 16/21. My mind recoiled, as if remembering a long-forgotten nightmare. Those numbers… This was more than just a murder… Just as quickly as it had come, the flash of recognition vanished.
"Hey…" Cynthia's voice was weak.
Looking down at the woman I knew I couldn't save, I put my hand beneath her head and lifted her up to rest her body against mine. Her blood was dripping onto my hands and clothes, but I didn't care.
"Cynthia," I whispered, looking down at her bloody face so close to mine and thinking about how she had claimed we knew each other, and more than that, that we were a couple. The more I looked, the more I convinced myself that she was right. She was familiar. "I'm here."
She struggled for breath. "You…remember…right?"
I hated lying to her, but I couldn't bring myself to disappoint her while she was dying. "Of course. How could I forget?"
The corner of her mouth turned up in a crooked smile. She lifted her head, and before I knew what she was doing, she had kissed me, her lips leaving a bloody imprint on my own. Her eyes met mine one final time, and then she went still.
I had never felt more alone in my life than I did then, cradling Cynthia's dead body and wondering what was happening to me.
