Chapter Seven.
They had started off at a brisk pace, but Olivia's legs were growing sore from keeping up with Peter's long strides. But, before long, as more and more ash continued to flutter and fall around them, they had slowed, caution dulling and minds clearing. It already felt like they had been walking up and down the dull, grey streets for hours, pausing every now and again to listen for a sound that would pique their alarm, before continuing on, weapons on shoulder.
There was still no sign of Walter.
Steam wafted up from a split manhole cover in the middle of the street, and Olivia watched it for a few moments as they passed, her brows furrowing, and she held out a hand to touch Peter's hand, stilling him, "Peter."
He glanced at her, then back at the manhole cover, "What's up?"
"There. Tracks." Olivia motioned to the scuffed ash, the markings looking as if they had been made no more than a few hours before. They returned to the manhole, and Peter stooped to poke his finger into the ash, measuring the depth of the track.
"This might be him," Peter reasoned brightly, rising, "I guess now all we do is follow them. And hope he hasn't gotten himself into too much trouble," Peter smiled, a hint of relief in his face, and nodded for Olivia to follow him.
They paced across the street, intend on the faded marks, leading them up onto the sidewalk and around the corner of the street, avoiding a collapsed piece of shop roofing. Olivia stilled in step as dread seized her, "Peter, those aren't Walter's tracks."
"What?"
"They're our tracks. Yours and mine- we've been going in circles," Olivia delved into her pocket, drawing out the map, "We're lost."
"What? Impossible!" Peter took one side of the map from her, squinting at it in the gloom, "That's impossible, we can't..." he looked up, around them at the empty street and vacant shop windows, "how...?"
Olivia muttered a curse under her breath as she pulled the map closer, peering at the pen-line streets in the rapidly fading light, before a sound began to register in her ears.
"Do you hear that?" Peter questioned in a whisper. He released the map to grab the flashlight from his belt, but Olivia stilled him, before he could click it on.
The sound grew louder, what Olivia thought at first to be a distant cry becoming a loud, artificial wailing around them, much like an old, air-raid siren. They peered about wildly, eyes wide with fear in the plunging dark, before she felt Peter seize her wrist, tugging her in a direction. She stumbled after him, up what felt to be stairs, and she heard him call, over the noise, "In here!"
Olivia hit the dusty rug as complete darkness fell.
She lay still for a few moments, her breath forced back on her in the still air as if she were in an enclosed place. She blinked a few times, as she pushed herself up, her eyes straining for any sort of light and finding none. "Peter?" she called at last, and there was no echo.
Shakily she reached her hand out before her, expecting a wall of some kind and finding only open space, as her fingers scraped through the air to find the floor again, feeling littered with bits of glass and plaster. Carefully she shifted forward, stretching her hand out again, and still finding nothing. The closeness nagged about her ears, making her sweat.
"Peter?" Olivia called again.
"Aunt Liv?"
The small voice in the dark shocked her, and Olivia retracted into herself, her breath catching in her chest, and she gave a small cry as something near her shifted, and a match suddenly flared, pushing back the dark, "Aunt Liv!"
Olivia blinked at her niece before her, smiling brightly as she held the match aloof, "Ella...?"
"I knew it was you! I'm so glad I found you!"
"What are you doing here?" Olivia crawled forward, taking the matchbook from Ella and smoothing her hair back from her eyes, "don't you know it's dangerous? Where's your mom?"
"Mom and I wanted to see who would find you first. We knew you were lost, so we came looking for you..." The match began to flicker, and Olivia waved it out before she lit another, staying back the needles of dark pushing in on them, and a twisted, sideways face gasped before her, lips pulling back from underdeveloped teeth, "I'm so glad it was me."
Olivia scrambled back, the match jumping from her hand to hit the floor, sputtering to blue as the creature, a grey mass of mottled, twisted flesh, Ella's size, ambled toward her.
"Olivia!" A flashlight beam glanced off the walls, and Olivia's eyes widened at the dozen other forms in the lobby, bumping and nudging one another to get to her, and she searched about wildly for her axe, "get outta there!" Peter motioned to her from the hallway, and she stumbled to her feet, backing away from the swarming mass around her, raising the axe over her head.
"If you're going to do it, do it!" there was a messy splattering noise, followed by the raspy sound of a sick baby keening, as the mass shifted away from Walter, whom continued to bash his way through the crowd, "It's not Ella, now kill it!"
"Walter!" Peter exclaimed, "where the hell have you been?"
"Peter, daddy's busy!" Walter replied, and kicked, sending a grey child stumbling aside.
Olivia barred her teeth, swinging the axe down, hacking until the blade tore the rug and dinged off of the marble floor. Snatching up the map and stuffing it into her pocket, she darted toward the doorway, Walter close at her heels.
Peter stepped aside as they rushed through, and hauled the rotting double doors closed, twisting shut the lock. There were sounds of heavy hitting and more crying, as Peter set his shoulder to a nearby oak display table, grunting with effort as he pushed it in front of the doors, barring them. They were panting as the thudding subsided, and Peter angled his flashlight at the ceiling, "is everyone all right?" he questioned, looking to them.
Olivia wiped black blood spatter from high on her cheek with her sleeve, "Yeah."
"Walter?"
He gave himself a quick pat-down, giving extra care to his crotch, "Yes," he reported at last.
"Where were you? Olivia and I have been looking everywhere, in this damn place... and what the hell is going on here, anyways?"
"It's nice to see you, too," Walter replied grumpily, rubbing his cheek on his shoulder, and he nodded off down the hall, "Come on, let's see if we can't find a way out of this god-forsaken place."
"We're going to have to find a new road out," Olivia said, "The one we came in on... at least, I think it was the one we came in on... it's gone."
"Oh, I knew that," Walter said, waving off her comment dismissively, "currently I'm only interested in finding a way out of this hotel, I've been... I've been lost in here for some time." He looked sheepish, and continued on down the dark hall, Peter's flashlight beam glancing off the torn wallpaper and rotting velvet drapes, "all the windows are bricked up."
"All of them?" Peter asked.
"All of the ones I've found. I would very much like to be proven wrong, if you're up to the task," Walter paused, and looked back over his shoulder in the direction of the sealed doors, "What's that way, what did we just leave?"
"The lobby," Olivia answered, shaking her head to clear her thoughts, and she plucked a strand of hair from her eyes, "Peter and I just came in, it was getting dark and there was this wailing, I don't know-"
"Olivia," Peter said, his brows furrowing with concern, "I've been looking for you for over an hour. When we came through the front door, I lost my grip on you, and you were gone."
"What does it matter, this place is intolerable!" Walter grumped, twisting the metal pipe in his fingers, "While I admit that at first I was curious, after an examination of these creatures, I find myself disappointed and highly irritated."
"How do you mean?" Peter questioned, exchanging glances with Olivia.
"It's teasing me. All of it. It seems fitting that the one thing that I could manage to do, with my infinite imagination, was annoy the hell out of myself."
"You think this is a dream?" Peter translated, sounding exasperated, "A delusion?"
"Yes. It seems to be completely logical- I've overdosed on something, and this is the reaction. The Greychildren, the Needlers, the Smokers, the whole damn thing. Something to pique my curiosity, then dash it," Walter's face grew bitter, "a riddle I can't solve, even if I've created it myself."
"Walter, this isn't a dream," Olivia said, as Peter shook his head in disbelief, "Whatever this is, however crazy it seems, Peter and I are here, and it's all real."
"Of course you would say that," Walter replied flatly.
"But what if I'm right?" Olivia demanded, "what other explanation could there be?"
"Well..." Walter continued, concentrating a moment in contemplation, "there are always the chemicals being released into the air by whatever is causing the smoke and ash. Whatever is burning must be highly toxic, and we could all be experiencing the hallucinatory effects, something like sulfur dioxide or coal..." He looked up at her, frowning, "but that seems a bit over-the-top, don't you think?"
"Olivia, forget it," Peter said, "Let's just get out of here. Whatever this is, I'm sure it makes a hell of a lot more sense from the outside."
xXx
They continued on down the hall, past the empty doorway of a wide, vacant ballroom, rubble and broken furniture dredging away from the background of darkness in the dim light of the flashlight glare.
"Hotels have dozens of entrances, I'm sure there's a back door we can go through. And after that... Silent Hill borders a lake, right? We can get a boat- hell, we'll swim out, if we have to."
"Peter!" Walter hissed and seized his arm, making him jump, and his lips trembled slightly as he whispered hoarsely, "What about Nessy?"
Peter shrugged him off, frowning bitterly, "I don' think we'll have to worry about it, Walter."
"We could try the kitchens," Olivia suggested, her eyes intent in the dark.
"No," Walter replied.
"Not for food, Walter," Peter explained with a smirk, before he stopped, "Walter?"
Walter was shaking his head, his face blanched of color and his eyes down turned, "Not the kitchen. He's in the kitchen."
"Who?"
"Don't make me talk about Him!" Walter snapped, his grip tightening on his bent lead pipe as he stepped back from them, looking frightened.
"Walter, calm down," Olivia said cautiously, lowering her voice, "It's okay. Who is in the kitchen? Is it another person?"
Walter shook his head and shut his eyes, refusing to speak further, and Peter sighed, "Fine, never mind the kitchens. What about a garage, some thing like that? What about the doorways in the outer ballrooms?"
"What about a map?"
"Of a hotel?"
She pointed to a plastic-covered placard mounted on the wall, and stepped forward, wedging the axe into the yellow, clouded cover to pry it loose of the wall, and Peter stooped to retrieve it, tugging the paper free of the plastic and plaster, and he smiled up at her, "Nice."
"The elevators won't have power," Peter reasoned, motioning to the three locations of them on the map, "But we should be able to follow the maintenance stairs just beside them into the basement, and from there, there should be an exit to get to the main power room, it's separate from the rest of the hotel. The main basement stairs are in the lobby, but forget those-" he paused to stomp a large bug that skittered by on the floor, wiping his shoe before he continued, "so our other two options are still open. The elevator by the veranda, and the service elevator- " he waved away another of the large bugs that flew toward the flashlight beam, and Olivia batted one away from her neck, then another from the air beside Peter's ear, "what the hell...?"
The air had begun to grow increasingly hot, the smell of burning cloth permeating the air around them, when Walter gave a squeak of alarm, pointing off toward another empty ballroom entrance. Bugs skittered toward them on the floor and walls, and Olivia and Peter stepped back in alarm as a red glow shown distantly from the entryway.
Olivia blinked in confusion as a thread of fabric rose from the rug on the floor at her feet, drifting upward in on the hot air, before crumbling into ash and disappearing. She turned around wildly, the wallpaper peeling away from the walls to reveal iron framing and mesh beneath, glowing like a furnace. The bugs skittering and jumping away from the hot metal floor were uttering small shrieks, flooding past them, away from the ballroom. Olivia raised her hand to shield her face from the heat, her heart pounding in her chest.
"Don't just stand there, run!" Walter cried, grabbing Peter by the elbow, "It's Him!"
The sound of steel scratching steel pierced the boiling air, and Walter shoved them from their dumbfounded stances, "GO!" and they began to sprint back down the hall, now alight with the amber-filled walls bleeding a deep red light.
"This way!" Peter said, motioning down another corridor, "The service elevator should be down there!" The metallic screeching continued, seeming to grow alarmingly closer at every bend. "There!" Peter motioned at last to the open, empty elevator, dark and seeming unaffected by the inferno of twisted metal around them.
"it's too late," Walter stammered, his eyes wide with fear as he stared in the direction they had come, "He's here."
xXx
