( Disclaimer, I don't own Silent Hill or some of the characters used in this story. Konami does.)
Chapter 7
The boat
She could see it in her head as she sat in the cold dark lobby of the burnt out Hotel. She and Blair were soaking wet from the swim to shore. Neither of them had anticipated that anything would go the way it did, but somehow things got bad, worse than anyone could expect. Death to both of them would have been the only thing worse than what had happened.
Nick...
Cheryl tried her hardest to find the right words to say to Blair, something that would make her feel better. But she knew anything she said would have been meaningless. She also knew that it was still possible that he was alive somewhere. That that arm could have been someone else's arm. She wanted to believe that but then again, she didn't really believe it at all.
"I think we should find some different clothes." She finally managed to say.
Blair sat in silence on a chair that had survived the fire. She was wrapped up in a curtain that she picked up off the ground. Her eyes were nearly glazed over from shock, Cheryl didn't like that look. She knew that the woman was losing her mind.
"Blair, I'm going to leave you here. I'll find your daughter and then come back to you. I promise." She said.
She walked into the hallway and then went to the door that led outside. She saw an empty parking lot. She could feel water rush up between her toes as she walked past the lot. It was annoying her, but she decided that she didn't want any clothes from this town. It would be disgusting, wearing something from here.
She began to jog until the streets started to look familiar. Bachman road and Graig St. were just ahead of her. She kept her jog up until she saw Bradbury St. She stopped on the corner and took a quick breather. She wondered how she was going to get past the large gap in the road. It separated her from her destination. She let out an exasperated sigh and started to walk in a different direction.
She ran to Bloch St. and Bachman Rd. and stood on the corner of the street staring in disbelief. Another gap. She felt a chill run up her spine and saw that right behind her was the old Balkan Church. Her mother used that church for her evil purposes.
She decided to try one more road and to her surprise, it was still there. She let out a sigh of relief and began to jog down that street. She could feel the wind rush past her, could hear it as it rushed by her ears. She closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them she was standing in front of a house that had no significance to her. She checked the door and found that it was locked. A surge of panic swept through her. She didn't know why she felt this way, maybe it had something to do with the past. Did Harry take this path to get to the elementary school all those years ago?
She wondered what happened to the key when the door knob turned. She grabbed the gun Douglas had given her and pointed it at the door. Just then Nick Carroll opened the door.
"Don't shoot! It's me Nick!" He said.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Cheryl asked as she pushed him aside and walked into the house examining it.
"I was looking into something and well things started to change. I think I might be losing my mind. This isn't rational, none of it should be, but it is. Maybe it's an illusion?" He mumbled more to himself than to her.
"Trust me, it isn't an illusion. You're in the darkness of this town." She said.
"Harry told me that it was here, just underneath like a veil. An entirely different reality. The Holy mother sect talked about it as well. I scoffed inside, but part of me wanted to see it. Is this real?" He asked her.
"Yes." She replied.
"How can it be? I mean, this can't exist at the same time as the real town can it?" He asked her.
"I don't think this is the real town at all. I think it's someones idea of how the town once was. Twisting it and distorting to their own liking. Notice that we're cut off from the outside world by huge cliffs and dead ends? It has to be someone that thought a lot like Alessa." She said.
"Who? The girl that housed the God?" Nick asked.
"Yes, she's gone now, somehow this doesn't make any sense. It seems just like it did all those years before. Not the newer district, but this area." She said thoughtfully.
She began to walk away leaving Nick behind. He stumbled over a shelf trying to follow her. He had a look of fear on his face and she knew that he really wasn't a bad person, just one that got caught up in the mess of things.
"Don't...leave me here please." He begged her.
She couldn't help but crack a smile at this as she continued to walk out the back door and into the back yard. She saw a shovel and grabbed it testing it's weight. She handed it to Nick and then the two of them walked off into the alley. She looked south and began to walk in that direction.
"The school is this way." She said.
"Why are we going to the school?" He asked.
"Because I have to find someone there." She replied.
They jogged the rest of the way and only stopped when they saw the building looming over them like some unforeseen omen. The shadow of the building swallowed them and it seemed as if the building was inviting them to their deaths. The only thing that was moving outside of the building were a few dead leaves that rustled and drifted across the cracked cement that once served as a sidewalk.
They crossed it and walked up the steps and entered the school. The doors creaked as they pushed them open and then a memory flashed briefly in Cheryl's mind. WITCH! She jumped almost as if the sound were real and not just part of her memories.
"What is it?!" Nick asked in a panicky voice.
"Nothing, just a memory from a past life." She mumbled and went into the main hall.
They walked into the hall and began to look around for clues as to where the little girl might be.
Cheryl grabbed the flashlight she had in her pocket and began to shine it down the hallway. Just beyond the light there was a movement, slight but there. She walked over to where it was and found a piece of the notebook. She picked it up and read it.
Room 203.
She began to walk towards the stairs when Nick stopped her.
"Cheryl, we have to hide!" He said.
"What?" She started but he grabbed her and pulled her into a room. They moved to the back of it and hid behind a desk. She listened to the tiny foot falls just outside the door, it sounded like a whole bunch of children were just outside of the room. She could hear their giggles. The doorknob began to shake and then turn. It opened slowly.
Blair
"Nick...Oh Nick..." Blair moaned.
She stood up and dropped the curtain despite her damp clothes and began to walk towards the door she saw Cheryl exit. She walked out into the parking lot and looked around, more of the same. Nothing but emptiness and fog. She wondered if maybe they didn't deserve this. Her especially, considering what she did.
"I am willing to bet you didn't know you had a very special daughter did you. She can bring about a paradise that this world has never seen before and all you have to do is give her to us. We'll be in a small town called Silent Hill. All you have to do is bring her there." The man told her.
She fought with her morales but after she seen first hand what her daughter could do she became a believer. It was the rain, it came down one evening for no reason at all. A very unseasonable December rain. She knew it was Jessica that caused it, she was crying that day over a dead cat and the rain was salty and warm, more like tears. At first she thought she was losing her mind, then she realized with some shock that it was raining in just that one area.
Her daughter was special indeed, but how did she come into such power and who were her real parents? She wondered this quite often during the last four or five months. Then there was Nick, who insisted that she was no more special than any other girl her age. Even when he came home and saw the rain, watched it melt the snow around their house, he refused to believe it was caused by Jessie.
"Come on, how can a little girl make rain? It's just global warming stuff babe. You really do have some weird ideas sometimes." He said.
She felt a surge of anger at his disbelief. But then she wondered who the people were that knew about Jessica and how on earth did they find her? Holy Mother. They worked for some priestess or something, that's what she figured.
"What is that!?"
She shuddered as she walked past an amusement park that was chain shut. Nick had shouted that as the boat began to tip. There was something in the water and it swam fast, none of them really had a chance to see what it was. The boat was flipped and she and Cheryl had tried to swim to shore as fast as they could. They somehow made it to the dock before either of them realized that Nick wasn't with them.
There was just that arm. It looked like his arm, his coat, even his watch. She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes blurring her vision. She wiped them and was promptly thrown to the ground by the huge monster that had been pursuing them since their arrival. She felt one of her nails being ripped from her finger as she landed on the ground.
It advanced on her swinging it's large jagged blade down at her full force. She rolled out of the way as it slammed into the road sending up chunks of pavement and dirt. It looked at her with it's hideous black eye and screamed. She never in her life heard such a scream before and she screamed back in terror.
It moved towards her again raising it's arm, getting ready to strike her down, this time it would succeed. She could see it in it's cold black eye. She closed her eye's and prayed for a quick death. Hoping that it would crush her skull and instantly kill her. She heard it growl, had enough time to think that she was sorry for not loving her child more, for even thinking of coming to this town and then she heard something else.
A gunshot.
