Chapter Three: Rain

Jeans.

Shirts.

Undergarments.

Toothbrush.

Hairbrush.

Natalie hesitated. What else? Her wallet, obviously. She tossed that inside the black pink-polka-dotted duffel bag as well.

Nobody knows you're going to this place, Nat.

She paused, hands poised over a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. This had only just occurred to her, and it was true: she had made this rash decision, as she made most other decisions, without thinking of the consequences first.

The difference this time is that it's not too late to pick up your phone, call mom, and let her know where you'll be.

And tell her what? Tell her that she's going to a town nobody has ever heard of because a message on her mirror told her to? After she hallucinated in the middle of the night, no less? Natalie's mother would think she was…

No, she told herself, throwing the matches and cigarettes into the bag vehemently, I'm not crazy. I am not crazy.

The bag was packed and ready to go. It rested to the right of the door, waiting patiently for Natalie to pick it up, deposit it in the front passenger seat, and begin the journey.

Natalie, however, was not quite ready to do her part for the bag. She sat in front of her low-budget computer, Google-searching Silent Hill. The first website she clicked on hailed a tourist-y site, advertising Lakeside Amusement Park and The Lakeview Hotel as their main attractions. The town, Natalie decided, was rustic and quite charming. She wouldn't mind spending a day or two at the town.

She clicked on a link to bring up a map. It matched her own to the T. Natalie clicked away from this, to see photos of the town. A neighborhood was nestled in the northern part of the town, as were a few shops and restaurants. This part seemed to be mostly residential, though the amusement park and the big hotel were located not far from the suburban housing. Across the lake was the hospital and two apartment buildings. The town wasn't huge, but she was glad that she had a car; having to walk around that town would be quite the workout.

And so, Natalie Map-Quested directions to the old town, and at last, picked up her bag, and went to her car.

It pattered down on her car's windshield, running down it in frantic streaks, only to be whisked to the left by rubber blades. The rain had started at noon, and eight hours later, it was still going in the steady, not quite hard but still consistent, rhythm it had taken on.

Natalie turned onto Riverside Drive, continued for a bit, and then pulled into the motel's parking lot. She pulled the key out of the ignition and stepped out into the rain to go rent a room.

A thin man with a receding hairline stared at a grainy baseball game on an old television set. He looked up, shocked, when Natalie opened the door to the lobby.

"I'd like a room," Natalie stated as she approached the front desk. The man blinked at her slowly.

"We don't often get visitors here no more," he replied. "Not no more, not no more."

"Uh, well…" The girl found the situation horribly awkward. "Do you, I mean…do you have any vacant rooms?

"Sure do," the man replied, unhelpfully.

He stared at her, eyes slightly squinted. Natalie shifted uncomfortably.

"Can I please rent one?"

"What?" A thin line of spittle crept out of the corner of the man's mouth. Then, quite suddenly, his eyes cleared and he straightened up, all creepiness abandoned within seconds.

"A room?" he repeated, voice unslurred and educated in dialect. "We have many available. A single bed, I assume?"

"You'd assume correctly," Natalie replied, unnerved. "What are your rates?"

"Sixty a night." He opened a large log book and picked up the pen resting next to it. "When will you be checking out?"

"What's today's date?"

"The seventh."

"The tenth, then," she decided. He scribbled this down in his log. She gave him the first night's payment, as well as her name and phone number, and he gave her a key to room 9.

Lying on the motel bed that night, Natalie found she couldn't sleep. She stared at the ceiling, the black-screened television, the mirror in the bathroom (just visible through the doorway), the large windows next to the front door. The alarm clock, drilled into the nightstand next to her, read out 4:12 a.m. in glaring green.

Not a sound was made in the motel room. She was alone with her thoughts.

Slowly, they drifted to her sister. Her dead, little sister.

The memories played back before her eyes.

It was bright outside. And warm. Almost hot, but not quite, because it was only April, it was springtime, and that is a time for warm. Natalie and her sister Casey were very young. Natalie's birthday had been yesterday, giving her another year to put under her belt. Casey was seven. Her older sister had just turned nine.

The two were playing in a field down the street from their house, heeding their mother's warning to be careful of snakes. They ran and ran and ran, and then they stopped near a tree to catch their breath.

"Race ya to the big tree!" challenged Natalie. Casey looked up and grinned and charged off. Natalie hung back, good-natured, to give her little sister a head start. She counted off five seconds and took off after her. She was gaining on her, then Casey had gasped and disappeared from sight.

Nine-year-old Natalie new instantly that something was not right. She yelled and sped up, stopping just to the left of where Casey had disappeared. Natalie could see straight away where she had gone. Opening just before her was a three-foot-wide hole, very deep and dark. Natalie got on her hands and knees and leaned into the hole.

"Casey!" she called.

No answer.

"Casey! Casey!"

Still, there was silence. Natalie got to her feet and dashed off towards home.

She burst into the kitchen, startling her mother.

"My goodness, Nattie, you almost gave me a heart attack! What happened to your knee? Where's Casey?"

'My knee?' thought Natalie absently. "Mama, Casey fell down a hole, she isn't answering me!"

"She fell down a hole? Where?"

"In the field we were in!"

"Did she trip, or—"

"No! Mommy, she fell inside, it's a deep hole, there are bricks in it! There's a word for it, I just can't remember—"

Natalie's mother had set down the aluminum bowl and whisk she had been holding and dropped to her knees, gripping Natalie's pudgy arms.

"Well, honey, the word is—is well. Did she fall down a well?"

The alarm in her mother's voice frightened the child even more than the event itself.

"Mommy—"

"FOR CHRIST SAKE, NATALIE, DID CASEY FALL DOWN A WELL!"

"Yes!" Natalie sobbed, frightened beyond anything she had felt before.

And before she knew it, Natalie's mother had let her go, and was on the phone with police. Natalie stood in the middle of the kitchen, sobbing loudly, as her mother hung up the phone.

"Natalie Grisham, you show mommy where the well is right now!"

And so the two ran down the gravel road towards the field. Natalie had no trouble at all finding the well again, and as her mother shrieked hoarsely down into the opening, she recalled dully that she had fallen somewhere along the way on her mad-dash back towards the house. A stinging sensation hit her knee as a thin stream of blood crept down her hairless shin.

"Casey! Casey, answer me right now!"

And police sirens were showing up, and then a helicopter, and then somehow her sister's limp form was pulled from the well, and her mother was screaming, and—

"NO!" shrieked Natalie, sitting bolt upright, a feverish sheen of sweat on her brow. She threw oppressing blankets off of her and stood. The room was cast in a peculiar grey light. Natalie stared at the windows, bemused.

Opaque white fog pressed up against the glass, swirling with the direction of the air currents.

Natalie pushed her sister from her mind. The clock read seven a.m. Whether she was ready or not, it was time for her to face the day.

She opened her duffel bag and sorted through it to find the map of the town. After a minute she located Silent Hill Historical Society, and circled it with a red felt-tipped pen she had brought along. Stowing the motel key in her pocket, she opened the door and stepped out into the fog.