"Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"
-Edgar Allan Poe, "A Dream Within a Dream"

Chapter 4: The Forest

I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the bed in my apartment, staring up at the ceiling. For a moment, I was confused and disoriented, and a series of strange thoughts flew through my head before I remembered what had happened. I sat up and stared around at the room in bewilderment. How had I gotten here? I had been in the subway with Cynthia…I didn't remember leaving her side, and I certainly hadn't found the other end of the tunnel to crawl through.

Was it all just a dream?

I lay back down very slowly, feeling troubled. I wasn't sure which possibility was worse. If it hadn't been a dream, then the world my apartment was ensnared in was larger than I had thought, I was suffering from recurring hallucinations and amnesia, a mob of ghosts was out for my blood, and a woman I couldn't remember had died in my arms. On the other hand if it had been a dream, I was still trapped within the walls of my apartment.

Shouts pulled me from my uncomfortable thoughts.

"Get her into the ambulance!"

"Hurry!"

"Look, she's got numbers carved into her chest…"

I sat bolt upright and stared in the direction of the window, heart pounding. Then I leaped to my feet and ran over to look out. The entrance to the subway was visible from my apartment, and an ambulance was currently parked in front of it. I couldn't see the figure being lifted into the back of it, but I didn't need to. There was no way another person had been killed in the subway at the same time, marked in the same disturbing way.

"Cynthia," I whispered, not leaving the window until the ambulance had driven away.

A part of me hoped they could save her, but I knew it was impossible. The woman had died there, in that strange world with me, and now she was dead in the real world.

What's going on? I wondered to myself, getting up and pacing back and forth in front of my bed. The subway had not been in the real world. Too many strange things had happened there. It was in whatever world my apartment was trapped in. Yet somehow, Cynthia had died and been found in the real subway. Did that mean that if I died, I would be found in the apartment? It depressed me to think that the only way to return to the real world might be to die.

I left the window and walked through the rest of my apartment, on the lookout for anything strange. I wasn't entirely convinced that the ghosts weren't going to follow me out of the subway and make my nightmare come true. Thinking about that, it occurred to me that we could have been in some sort of dream world, except that when I woke up, I was still in it.

A dream within a dream?

With a grim smile on my lips at the thought, I walked over to the door to see if there was any change. It was still locked and bolted, resisting all of my attempts to open it. I heard a sound from outside and looked through the peephole, although I knew that shouting out would do me no good.

An older man was sweeping just outside my door. Dressed in a sweat suit, he had white hair. His eyes turned towards the wall across from me, and I stiffened as my own gaze was drawn to the rows of bloody handprints. He had no reaction, however, and I remembered that no one out there seemed capable of seeing them.

Who is he? I wondered, suddenly panicked. This couldn't be happening again. After an agonizing moment, however, I realized that I did know who he was. That was Frank Sunderland, the superintendent. I wondered dismally if he remembered me. I hoped he would at least try to do something once the rent came due. Would he be able to open the door, and if he did, what would happen?

"Let me out of here!" I shouted, although I wasn't entirely certain who I was addressing. Certainly the superintendent couldn't hear me.

I stepped back, frustrated, and something caught my eye. Another note was sticking out beneath my door. I crouched and pulled it out, unfolding the red paper with an odd thrill of excitement. While I didn't expect this note would give me instructions on how to escape the room, it still meant that someone was trying to contact me.

Although the cult itself is gone,
I'm sure the spirit of it is still alive.
There are too many strange things happening in that town.
I'm investigating two people. Or maybe I should say just one.
I've just about discovered what's going on.
April 8

Part of me hoped desperately that the writer of this note would send another message explaining what was going on. I didn't know who he—or she—was, or why the notes were appearing under my door, but I could only assume that someone else was trapped in this mysterious world, apparently investigating things. What town did he mean? Ashfield? Somehow, I didn't think so.

"I came from Silent Hill."

The voice from my hallucination echoed again in my mind, and a chill ran down my spine. Yes, there were strange rumors about Silent Hill…and that town had had a cult. It fit with what the note said.

"Well, whoever you are," I said to the mysterious writer as I took the note to put it in my scrapbook with the others, "I'm going to find you."

My course determined, I went over to the closet to get my coat, remembering how cold the subway had become. It was missing. I frowned at the empty closet for a moment and then shook my head. By this point, a missing coat was hardly worth thinking about. I returned to the bathroom, prepared to take the tunnel to the subway station again. As soon as I opened the door, I stopped. The hole was bigger. Now the surrounding wall was destroyed in places, and it was with a great deal of trepidation that I hoisted myself up into the darkness beyond.

xXx

As before, I had no recollection of what happened between when I was crawling through the tunnel and when I regained awareness. I found myself sitting in a forest glade, and I looked around in confusion. What I remembered of the tunnel was certainly different from the previous trip. There had been twists and turns along the way. Apparently, it had twisted until it led to a different location.

There was no forest like this in Ashfield, and I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around how the tunnel had changed. There obviously was something mysterious—and, I feared, sinister—at work here. The rules of this world did not match those of the real world, and I would have to learn to accept that. For now, there was nothing I could do but get to my feet and hope I could find someone to help me.

It was quiet, although I could hear insects somewhere in the trees. I looked up at the night sky and felt a twinge of discomfort. It wasn't just that the time did not match what I could see out my apartment windows. Overall, I couldn't shake my unease about the place I was in.

I walked down the forest path, listening to the gravel crunching beneath my feet. When I reached a gate, I opened it and found myself in a very different place.

This seemed to be some sort of industrial area. I looked around, curious, but there was no sign as to what it had been used for in the past. A squeak came from above me, and I ducked, covering my head with my hands as the most terrible image came into my mind. Strange flying creatures, not fully mammal or insect, but like the two had fused together. Bat-like wings with clawed tips stretched away from a repulsive body, and insect-like eyes stared down past a vicious, hooked proboscis. I looked around desperately for something I could use to get the creature away from me, and then the image faded and I watched the bat fly away. There was nothing strange about it at all.

Still, I hoped it wouldn't come anywhere near me. My enthusiasm for this area left me entirely, and I ran past boxes and machinery without a backwards look. The squeaking of the bats and the chirruping of insects made my skin crawl. When I reached a gate that led me back into the forest, the trees felt oppressive and I considered turning around.

But there was nowhere to go but forward.

The path here was still visible, but I could see the forest extending deeper on either side of me. I was tempted to deviate from my course and just keep running. There had to be an end to the forest, and then I would be free. In my heart, though, I knew that it would be like the subway world had been. I would not be able to escape, no matter what I did. My best chance was to find someone who knew what was going on.

Bats darted around me from time to time, and I ignored them with difficulty, praying they weren't gearing up to attack. Occasionally a small, buzzing creature would fly out from the trees, and I would stumble backwards, futilely swatting at it until it bit me and left. Even if they weren't the mothbat creatures from my vision, the insect life of the forest seemed to have a vendetta against me. Before very long, my arms were dotted with bites, and I was feeling thoroughly miserable.

A car was parked up ahead.

I stared at it for a moment, and then I ran towards it. Despite being off from the path, nothing had grown up around its wheels. The body of the vehicle was slightly beat up, but I didn't think it was the sort of damage that would be caused by abandonment in a forest. It had been parked here recently, and the driver's seat door was open. I walked around to look inside and saw items scattered across the seat, including a scrap of paper. I picked it up.

It's been a while since I came here to Silent Hill.
Maybe I'll meet the Devil this time.
But whenever I come to a cool place like Silent Hill,
I always get real thirsty.
Jasper Gein

"Am I in Silent Hill?" I asked out loud. I set the paper back where I had found it and took a look at the memo pad lying beside it.

I'm not sure what that nosy guy meant when he said:
"His home is the orphanage in the middle.
The lake is northwest. So the opposite is southeast.
The nosy guy said one other thing I didn't understand:
"If you bring the dug-up key,
you can't go back.
Put it away somewhere before you return there."

It didn't make any more sense to me than it had to whoever had written it down. My arm stung as something else bit it, and I swatted it away irritably. Then I returned to the path, feeling slightly better nevertheless. Now I knew there was someone else here with me. The path wound through the trees until it reached another gate. I pushed it opened and stepped through.

A strange sight met my eyes. The path gave way to a field, but dozens of candles sat burning along the top of a railing that continued along. At first glance, they appeared to be there just to light the way, but somehow I couldn't stop thinking that they were set in a ritualistic fashion. No normal person would use candles to light the path in a forest. It was not the sort of thing one expected to see, and I felt a chill as I remembered the Silent Hill cult. I had to be in Silent Hill's forest.

Across from the candle-lit railing was a massive rock. It was enormous, sticking up from the landscape and unlike anything else that I had seen there. I imagined that it had been deposited by a glacier in the distant past, but something about it seemed off. Like the rest of the forest, the boulder had a sinister aura about it.

Leaning against it was a young man with a partially-shaved head, and I wondered if it was his car back there. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with some sort of demon on the front, but I was so glad to see another person that I ran right up to him before reassessing the situation and realizing that he might be a cultist. By then, it was too late.

"They used to call it Nahkeehona."

I jumped as he leaned towards me. "Sorry?"

He waved his hand at the rock behind him. "They believed it had the power to communicate with the dead. But now they're gone, and Nahkeehona is on the Order's land. This close to the orphanage, it's used in their ceremonies now. They call it the mother stone, right?"

I stared at him, wondering what was going on. "I don't know…"

He nodded as if I hadn't said a word and he was simply having a conversation with himself. "That guy was here again, Joseph Schreiber. I think he's investigating the Order."

The name struck a chord in my mind, but I couldn't place it. I wondered if he was the person who had written the note I found that morning, as the writer had been investigating someone and knew about the cult. "The Order is the Silent Hill cult?" I asked, wanting to confirm my suspicion.

The man looked surprised. "Of course! You know that!"

"I've had some trouble remembering things lately," I muttered, feeling more paranoid by my amnesia with every new thing I learned. "Can you tell me where I am? Oh, and I'm Henry Townshend." I held out my hand.

Instead of shaking it, he looked at me like I was out of my mind. "What are you doing, man?"

"I was just introducing myself…"

"Knock it off, man; we've got to go find Bobby and Sein."

Oh no, not again… Realizing I was supposed to know this man, I swallowed hard and wondered how to explain these strange gaps in my memory to him. "We…do?"

"They said they'd meet us by Nahkeehona, but they must have gotten lost."

"Oh, well… we don't want the Order to find them. We better go see where they got to. Come on, Bobby," I said, hoping that he would correct my "mistake" so I could learn if he was the one whose car I had seen or not.

"I'm Jasper, remember?" he asked in a dry tone.

"Of course," I said, faking a laugh. "I always get you two confused."

He gave me a look that was quite disbelieving and then turned and started to walk deeper into the forest. He barely gave the candles a second glance, walking purposefully forward as if we did this all the time. He was Jasper, then. I wondered if that meant Joseph Schreiber was the "nosy guy" he had written about.

"So," I began, catching up with him. Even if I didn't understand what was happening, I wasn't about to lose another person in this world. "How long has it been, Jasper?"

There was a long silence, and then he finally said, "Last week, in class."

I decided it was best if I didn't pursue that line of discussion. He would think I was completely insane if I admitted that I couldn't remember taking any classes. As we passed through a gate and started walking on the path through the forest again, I fought off insects and tried to think of a safe question to ask.

"So, refresh my memory," I tried, as he continued to lead the way purposefully through the forest; personally I thought we should be covering ground away from the path if we were looking for his friends. "Once we find Bobby and Sein, what are we going to do then?"

He stopped in front of a fence. The sign beside the door told me that we were almost at the Wish House Orphanage, a name that sent a shiver down my spine. An orphanage here, in Silent Hill, in a forest where Jasper had already said the cult was operating? That couldn't be good. Despite the sign proclaiming it the work of the Silent Hill Smile Society, I couldn't imagine that there were many smiles coming from this orphanage.

"After we find them," he said, pushing the door open and leading the way inside, "we'll go into the orphanage building itself, and meet the Devil!"

I turned around and walked back out the door.

Jasper grabbed my arm before I could get too far away and started pulling me through. "Don't tell me you're a chicken."

"I am very much a chicken," I said flatly, not caring about my reputation in light of what he had just told me. There was no way I was going to go along with a plan to "meet the Devil." A part of me wanted to say it was superstitious nonsense, but given where we were, I really had a terrible feeling it would work. "What are you, a cultist? Are you a member of the Order?"

He stared at me and then started laughing. "You're funny sometimes."

I had no response. Standing there by him and trying to figure out how I was going to stave off the impending disaster that this forest world was likely to bring, I looked around. Ahead of us was a building that I presumed was the orphanage, with the fence surrounding it and its immediate grounds. Besides the door we had come through, there were three others, each in a corner. On the wooden slats, pictures were painted. Flowers, the sun—these were ordinary images that any child might draw. Yet looking at them, I found myself thinking that they were sad, somehow. The orphanage looked like such a desolate place in comparison. Were these pictures drawn by children who longed for a happier life?

"Spooky, isn't it," Jasper commented. He looked around, as well. "This place… Gives me the chills just being here."

As dubious as I considered his judgment to be, I found it comforting that I wasn't the only one feeling disturbed.

"Let's split up and find them," he said. He pointed to the door to the left of the orphanage. "You go that way. I'll take one of the other paths."

He started off, but now it was my turn to catch his arm. "I don't know," I said, feeling uneasy. "Shouldn't we stick together?"

"We've wasted too much time already!" he protested. He pointed again. "You go that way. Don't worry, I won't get lost." He ran off before I could mention that I was not as confident that I wouldn't get lost.

Shaking my head, I decided there was nothing for it but to do what he said. Maybe one of his friends would be able to tell me what was going on. Looking at the orphanage made my skin crawl, and even returning to the forest felt like a better option. I walked to the door and opened it, stepping out onto another forest path.

My head started aching almost immediately. I looked around for ghosts, but I didn't see any. It wasn't that sort of pain, I realized after a moment. This was the pain that meant a hallucination was coming on. I walked forward slowly, wishing I knew what these meant. They had to be important—either that, or I was just going crazy.

As I walked past the trees, I found myself using the pain in my head as a sort of homing beacon. It grew more intense the closer I walked to the source, or so I believed. That gave me hope for my sanity. Normal hallucinations wouldn't need me to go to a particular spot to see them. Unfortunately, I could see gravestones in the distance. My headache was guiding me towards a cultist graveyard. With no other ideas, I reluctantly kept walking.

"Hey, little boy… what are you doing here?"

I looked around, looking for who had spoken, but then the pain in my head cleared and I realized that was it. That had been the hallucination. Considering I was at an orphanage, I really didn't understand what had just happened. I couldn't place the voice, either. It sounded familiar, really familiar, but I wasn't sure why.

"You're…"

I turned around, wondering if it was one of Jasper's friends. However, Jasper himself was standing there. I frowned at him. "Weren't you going to take the other—"

"Finally, the Third Revelation…"

"What?"

He spread out his arms, giving the sky a beatific look. "Something's gonna happen… Schreiber knows it; he knows the truth! Something big's gonna happen… Finally, it's gonna happen!" He started laughing hysterically and stumbled past me towards the graves.

"Jasper, what are you talking about?" I demanded, following him. "What's going to happen? Why did you come this way? Did you find your friends?"

He walked through the graves, weaving his way through the stones with me right behind him. Finally, he stopped and stared downwards.

"Jasper, what's going on?" Finally, I grabbed his shoulder and gave up the pretense of understanding. "Look, I don't know you. I don't know how you know me. All I know is that we're in some kind of weird alternate world, and you know more about what's going on than I do! So tell me!"

"The Holy Assumption," he whispered, still staring down.

Suddenly feeling cold, I stepped past him to see what he was looking at. It was a grave, but this one had been dug up to reveal the coffin buried there. Something was inscribed on it, and I crouched to get a better look. Jasper definitely knew more about what was going on, and he seemed to think this coffin was significant. I leaned towards the coffin and read the inscription.

11/21

Even as I re-read the numbers and connected them with the numbers carved into Cynthia's breast, the coffin turned pale and glassy as ice spread across its surface. It swept through the grave and then up onto the ground; I jumped to my feet in alarm. Jasper was gone, as if he had run off while I was looking at the coffin.

My head started to hurt, and I heard howling from all around me as ghosts started to rise up from the ground. I tried to turn to run, but the ice had spread throughout the graveyard, causing me to slip. I lost my balance and fell, arms windmilling as I tumbled towards the grave.

Well, this is a fitting way to end, I thought grimly, as I collapsed amidst the tombstones and my vision went black.