— Echoes of the Departed —
I hated Joey Bartlett when he first got to my unit. I joined the Army to get away from Shepherd's Glen, but there he was, reminding me of it. It was staggering to think about the odds of us ending up in the same platoon, particularly when we didn't even enlist at the same time. It's kind of funny too, because he's the only the reason I ended up coming back to my hometown.
I don't know why he joined the Army. Maybe he felt like he lived too much of a privileged life. I never knew Joey personally growing up. He was just one of those familiar faces in the crowd. All I knew about him was that his father was the mayor and he was Elle's boyfriend for about eight days in the fifth grade.
I'm not sure when we became friends. I know it was gradual, but my memories make it seem like it just all of a sudden happened. We worked well together, which is probably why they kept us in the same fire team for so long. We had what they call "implicit communication", almost to the point it was like we could read each other's mind.
We were those two guys you always associated with one another, those two friends you thought of as a single person. I wasn't Shepherd and he wasn't Bartlett. We were always just "Shepherd and Bartlett".
I came back to Shepherd's Glen to give Mr. Bartlett some of Joey's things. I've thought about telling him what happened to Joey over there, because I'm sure the Army sugar coated it or just outright lied. It seems like the right thing to do, but sometimes "right" just isn't all that simple. Sometimes it's better to just accept the lie.
— — — — —
"There was a road here – it's gone now." It was like the world just ended.
"No – this isn't real – it isn't possible." He was standing at the edge of reality.
"It's not real – you're just seeing things." But no matter what Alex said to himself aloud, he couldn't convince his eyes. Everything just stopped at that abrupt edge of the road. It almost seemed like there was never anything there. The Earth just disappeared into gray nothingness, as if the fog had consumed everything that was once there.
But his mind refused to believe what his eyes were telling him. He reasoned and rationalized stubbornly, arguing with the image he was seeing before him. It was just a construction site. Maybe they were digging up the road to replace some pipes. That wasn't an endless cavern before his feet, but a trench he simply couldn't see the bottom of because of the fog.
Alex forced his eyes away and repeated that reasoning through his mind, hoping he'd believe it. He stepped off Craven Avenue and onto Scott Boulevard to bypass the hole in the road and continue on to Mr. Bartlett's house.
He didn't pay attention to the empty lawns or desolate homes he passed on Scott Boulevard, but rehearsed in his mind what he was going to tell Mr. Bartlett.
He doesn't want to hear that about Joey, Alex thought, but he has a right to know. He has the right to know what happened to his son. After that, he can believe whatever truth he wants.
But the speech Alex had been practicing ever since he got back stateside suddenly vanished beneath the image from his eyes. The road caved in to an endless cavern, sinking forever in a gapping mouth of fog. A telephone pole slumped over the hole at a severe angle, desperately trying to keep from being swallowed into it and almost looking like a fishing pole with its severed telephone lines dangling into cavern.
Alex sidestepped the hole onto the adjoining road of Barker Street, which ran right past the backyard of his childhood home. He remembered that street led right into the Rose Heights Cemetery, which he used to cut through as a short cut to Elle's house. From what he could recall, you could reach the Bartlett home from there as well.
Alex continued down Barker Street, trying to remember the path that ran past the Bartlett home so as to distract his thoughts from more obvious concerns he was still unwilling to admit. The street was not so much a road but an alleyway. His eyes glanced at the rickety wooden gate that led into his parents' backyard as his feet carried him past it.
He approached a short wall made of brick with an open rod-iron gate that led into the cemetery, briefly looking over the yellow sign that read "NO TRESPASSING". Alex passed through the open gate, down a short twisting corridor, and wandered into the cemetery.
Even as he stepped out of that small corridor, the smothering feeling of claustrophobia still remained within him. The cemetery was not a traditional open field of grave stones, but a tight maze of above-ground catacombs settled between tall, imposing brick walls. It gave its visitors a feeling that they were buried there as well.
Alex found himself in an enclosed yard with a mausoleum on his left and some stray grave stones on his right. The grave stones were nestled behind a short length of rod-iron fence and joined by two large trees that seemed to grasp for Alex with their bare limbs. But Alex's eyes were more curious with the mausoleum to his left, which looked like some primitive set of morgue drawers made of stone. A few of those drawers were missing some bricks and ribbons of mist were seeping from the empty spaces. Alex almost expected a hand to crawl out.
He walked down a stone path with weeds sprouting between the cracks, stepping out of the small yard and into an enclosed space housing large, stone coffins on each side. He didn't bother to read the tarnished plaques upon the stone graves, but rather forced his vision to focus forward.
The enclosures led him into another outside area, which was flanked on both sides by crumbling mausoleums. Alex noticed one structure which stood out from the rest. It was an arched entrance that had been hastily sealed shut with bricks by someone who wasn't experienced in masonry. A stone plaque next to the sealed archway displayed a family coat-of-arms depicting a foot crushing a snake, whose fangs were embedded in the foot's heel. A motto read beneath the engraved image, "Nemo me impune lacessit".
Alex placed his palm across the rough surface of the sealed entrance, feeling soft vibrations running into his bones. He pressed his ear to the wall, sure that there was something behind it, and could just barely hear the subtle cries of some lost soul sealed deep within the tomb. It was as quiet as a whisper, not even loud enough to determine for sure that it was real, but Alex could make out a distant voice laughing with desperate mania in a voice that refused to recognize its own sorrow, "A very good joke indeed – an excellent jest! We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo – over our wine!"
Alex stepped away from the sealed entrance, dunking his thoughts into a cloud of doubt, and hastily stepped through the hall of mausoleums. A tree reached its long, thick, barren limbs over the brick walls. A gust of wind became trapped between those flanking mausoleums and desperately bounced between them for an escape, shaking the tree limbs and giving Alex the idea that the tree was reaching for him.
He passed through another enclosure housing stone tombs and wandered into a large open area. The stone path before him suddenly fell into a steep pit, as though an earthquake had opened the ground. Alex looked over the edge and was relieved to find he could see the bottom of the pit only a few feet down. But then his attention was diverted from the abrupt depression in pathway when his ears caught the sound of digging.
He looked to the left side of the pathway and found a tall rod-iron fence separating him from a small plot of tombstones. Those tombstones stood before open graves, recently dug, and Alex spotted a man in the depths of one of these open graves frantically slinging dirt with his shovel as he muttered to himself in a trance.
A small lantern glowed at the edge of the open grave, casting grim shadows across the man's face that looked as though dark fingers were closing around his head.
"Hello?" Alex asked as he approached the iron bars. But the man didn't reply, deeply immersed in the task before him. Then Alex's eyes suddenly began to recognize the image before him.
"Mr. Bartlett?" he asked doubtfully. The man still didn't respond, but Alex knew it was him.
"Mr. Bartlett! It's Alex – Alex Shepherd. My father's the sheriff." He waited for Mr. Bartlett to awake from his mindless digging, but Alex could only hear him muttering beneath a breath of warm alcohol, "A boy should be with his father."
Alex looked up to the spiked peaks of the rod-iron fence, intent on climbing over, but quickly gave up on the idea when he saw how high those bars reached. It would've been a difficult climb even with two arms.
His eyes settled back on Mr. Bartlett and he tried once again to reach him through words.
"I went to school with your son. We served together in the war. Joey was a good friend of mine." At the mention of his son's name, Mr. Bartlett suddenly stopped his frantic digging and looked up towards Alex as if he'd known Alex was there the whole time. His eyes were shrouded beneath those shadowy fingers reaching from the dim, flickering light of the lantern, but Alex could feel his gaze reaching deep within his soul.
"They told me it was an accident. But – I can't find him," Mr. Bartlett spoke from a despair that cut deep into his heart. His eyes drifted away from Alex and seemed to become lost in the twisting ribbons of mist drifting through the night.
"I just want my son to come home," he spoke again, mostly to himself. Mr. Bartlett dropped the shovel and started to crawl out of the open grave, muttering to himself and ignoring Alex.
"Mr. Bartlett, I have some of Joey's things. I thought you might want them." But Mr. Bartlett couldn't hear Alex anymore. He pulled himself out of the grave and wandered off, speaking under his breath, "Where's my boy?"
As his silhouette started to sink into the depths of the fog, Alex called out desperately, "Mayor Bartlett! I wanna tell you what happened to Joey!" But Mr. Bartlett was gone.
Alex pounded his prosthetic arm against the rod-iron bars, the metal claw emitting a lingering clang against the fence as Alex's lips hissed, "Shit!" His eyes searched for an entrance to the area Mr. Bartlett was in, desperately wanting to be rid of his excuse for staying in this town. Mr. Bartlett must've been in the Bartlett family plot, which was a private area sealed off from the rest of the cemetery. As Alex looked for a way in, he concluded the only way to find the entrance was to voyage through that pit that cut through the stone path.
Alex dropped down into the pit, noticing the circular earthen walls surrounding him. It almost looked like a bomb crater. As he walked to the opposite end of the crater, towards the other half of the stone path that led through the rest of the cemetery, his nose was suddenly struck by a thick stench of methane. That distinct odor that resembled rotten eggs brought an image of decaying flesh in Alex's mind.
As a gust of wind blew across his face, he expected it to bring a breath of fresh air, but that choking odor of methane only grew thicker in lungs. His eyes noticed several broken and bent pipes jutting from the steep walls of the crater and his mind reasoned that one of them must've been a natural gas line. Alex reached the lip of the crater on the opposite side and used the pipes to pull himself out.
When he stood up on his feet and looked around for an entrance to the Bartlett family mausoleum, his hand swatted at a buzz vibrating through his ear, like a lone fly zipping by his head. His gaze locked on a rod-iron gate settled between the tall brick walls and he knew it led into the Bartlett mausoleum. But when he reached the gate, he found it bound shut by a thick chain with a padlock.
His hand pulled at the lock, hoping it may be unlocked, but it wasn't. He tugged violently at the chain, hoping the lock would give in to his will, and even tried to force it open with his knife, but it refused to budge. Alex cursed aloud to himself, wishing he had a bullet to shoot through the padlock, then finally walked away from the gate in search of another way in.
But as he stepped away from the entrance to the locked mausoleum, that cloud of methane poured down his throat in a gust of wind and sent his lungs into a gagging panic of coughs. Alex hunched over his knees and desperately gasped for fresh air as the sound of buzzing flies started to fill his ears.
A black cloud of eager flies swarmed around him and he swatted them away as his lungs pulled in as much clean air as they could amongst the thick stench of death. Alex pulled the collar of his t-shirt over his nose, but it did little to keep that awful stench from tainting the top of his tongue. He could taste it running all the way down his throat and his mouth desperately wanted to cleanse itself with bile, but he held back his stomach's urge to vomit.
As he stumbled down the stone path, the clouds of methane and flies only grew thicker. The tremors of their rapid wings rumbled through his ear drums and their vile legs crawled across his flesh. He swatted at them in frantic motions from his hand, then zipped up his jacket until the collar was covering his face up to the base of his eyes. The stench had grown so thick that even his eyes began to water from its sickening caress.
Through the perpetually drifting black cloud of flies, Alex spotted something laying upon the stone path. It was at first unrecognizable to him, looking like some distorted charred black shape. But as he came closer, he began to recognize the disfigured shape of a human in the fetal position.
A memory briefly flashed into his mind, the aftermath of an air strike he witnessed. He remembered the shriveled, burnt bodies they'd seen. Someone had named them "Crispy Critters" in some attempt to lighten the mood and avoid facing the reality of those remains.
The focus of Alex's eyes on that burnt body was barely enough to suppress his stomach's urge to heave. The air around the body was rich with the taste of death. Its flesh had been scorched to the point that there were no distinguishable features left on it. It was just a vague shape now, like a silhouette or a shadow. The arms were crossed over its chest and fused to its methane bloated flesh. The flies crawled eagerly across it like a second skin. It almost looked as though its charred flesh was rippling with life.
Alex's lungs started to burn for fresh air and he backed away from the immolated body. He didn't pay attention to where he was walking and stumbled almost drunkenly with the frantic motions of a man immersed in water that was clawing for the surface. But Alex suddenly ignored the pleas of his lungs and stopped, staring at the shape. It was nearly unrecognizable within the fog and swarms of flies, but it almost looked as though the body was moving. His denial tried to explain to him that it was just an illusion brought on by the thick swarm of constantly moving flies. But as the shape started to lift itself up on its feet, he knew he was seeing reality.
He started to back away, not minding what was behind him, and his feet suddenly found themselves grasping for footing in mid-air as he stepped off the lip of the crater and fell in. When he hit the bottom, the breath he'd been holding in his lungs for what seemed an eternity spewed from his lips and he quickly gasped for air. His hand clawed at the collars of his jacket and shirt, freeing his lungs for a direct line to the foul air surrounding him. It still tasted awful, but the smog was thin enough to satisfy his famished gasps.
Alex laid at the bottom of that pit, his body motionless except for the heaving of his ravenous lungs, and his eyes stared up at the edge of the crater. It seemed as though he had reached some final conclusion that was going to determine reality for him. He waited for that shape to linger back into his sight, or to simply fade into his memories as another hallucination.
The fog was still, but he could feel an energy humming beneath the surface. It was a clawing hiss of whispers forever lost in the wind, barely distinguishable to his ears. He imagined it was the faint echoes of the departed souls that wandered through that cemetery, doomed to wail for all eternity without an ear to hear their cries.
Alex began to gag as the methane grew thicker and that unwelcome buzz of flies began to quake in his ears. He lifted himself on his feet and backed away from the edge of the crater, his eyes still locked on that lip for the final conclusion to reveal itself to him. And then it appeared, as if materializing from the fog itself, wobbling on a pair of unsteady legs.
Alex quickly un-slung his duffel and dove his arm into its depths, pulling out the moist towel he had wrapped Josh's doll in. He hastily folded it into a thick rectangle and muffled his mouth and nose, then zipped up the collar of his jacket to hold it in place. His lungs had to work hard to pull in air, but the towel served surprisingly well as a filter.
His hand moved indecisively between his pistol and his knife, realizing that the gun still had no ammunition and the knife required him to get close to the creature. The charred body stood at the lip of the crater and Alex saw its elbows lift into the air as its lungs sucked in breath. The flies swarmed around Alex, dodging the angry swats of his hand, until he could barely see the shape perched on the edge of the crater.
A violent wind struck him, carrying a cloud of methane so thick that Alex could feel its residue clinging across his flesh. The poisonous stench flooded into his eyes and he fell to the ground, squirming and moaning as his eyes felt as though they'd been doused with acid. Even the towel couldn't filter out that blast of smog and it clung to the walls of his lungs, burning as though he had inhaled fire.
Alex started to scream from the pain and clawed at his collar, ripping the towel out and gasping for air. But those unfiltered breaths only made the pain more intense. His back jutted into the air as his torso collapsed on itself and heaved bile from his lips. He tried to force his eyes open, but they stubbornly kept shut as tears drizzled from the slits of his sealed eyelids.
He started to crawl on the ground, away from the creature, and lifted his head up. Alex managed to open one eye just long enough to see a broken pipe jutting from the earthen wall of the crater. He crawled towards the pipe blindly until his head bumped in the edge of the crater, then his hand flailed through the air above him until he felt the coarse, rusty surface of that loose pipe.
He used his grip on the pipe to pull himself to his feet, then brutally pulled and twisted the pipe until it finally came loose from the earth. Alex gripped it in his hand and turned in the direction of the charred creature, opening one of his eyes just wide enough to see it. It was still perched on the edge of the crater, its lungs sucking in another breath of air. With a swing of his arm that felt as though it nearly dislocated his shoulder, Alex threw the pipe, which spun through the air wildly and struck the creature in the chest, knocking it off balance. But it didn't fall.
As the shape struggled to keep its balance on its unstable legs, Alex rushed towards his duffel. He picked it up by the shoulder strap, swung it once around his head, and hurled it towards the creature. The bag struck the burnt beast in the knees and it fell on the ground. Alex then ran to the edge of the crater towards the creature, forcing his gagging lungs deeper into that poisonous cloud of methane.
He jumped onto the ledge and rolled onto the stone path. Alex quickly forced himself on his feet and saw the creature writhing on the ground, struggling to lift itself up without a pair of arms to aid it. His hand grasped the metal pipe he'd thrown, lifted it into the air, and drove it down into the creature's chest like a spear.
A geyser suddenly erupted from the punctured chest of the charred shape and doused Alex in its poisonous breath. He fell backwards onto the ground writhing, kicking, and screaming as his hand desperately tried to wipe the residue from his face. It felt as though he were wiping the flesh right off. He crawled blindly across the ground and suddenly felt his duffel. He desperately ran his face across its canvas surface until the friction singed his skin, then picked the bag up and lunged away. But he didn't get far before he collapsed in a fit of coughing as his lungs tried to expel that poison.
Alex forced himself onto his feet again and wandered blindly through the cemetery, stumbling over headstones and bumping into the brick walls, until he started to taste clean air. He let his body go limp and collapsed onto the ground, then felt through the contents of his duffel. His fingers wrapped around a plastic bottle with a small amount of water and pulled it from the bag. Alex forced his eyes to open as he poured the water over them, trying to flush out the residue of that smog.
His eyes were still in pain, but he could open them again. He gave his body a short moment to catch its breath, then stood up and continued through the cemetery before that creature could find him. He didn't know if it was alive or dead, but he didn't care. He just had to get away. He didn't care about Josh, he didn't care about his mother. He didn't even care about Mr. Bartlett. He just wanted to get out of this town.
As Alex started to breath normally, he found the exit from the cemetery and stumbled into gloomily lit parking lot. A decaying truck and rusting sedan sat unused and broken down. Between them was a large pot hole that carried a puddle of grimy brown water. Alex dropped down before the puddle and dunked his face in, washing the remaining residue with the filthy water. His mouth was dry and his throat felt as though he swallowed chlorine, so Alex didn't think twice about swallowing some of that puddle water.
After dousing his jacket in the water to try and get rid of the rotten smell, Alex slung his duffel and stepped out of the parking lot onto Main Street. He took a right, remembering the Sheriff's station was only a short walk away. His legs moved with shaky knees as the adrenaline in his blood departed and both exhaustion and reality weighed down on his mind.
"You're fucking crazy," he spoke aloud to himself. His words carried through the empty streets in hollow echoes that returned to him as though they were spoken by someone else. But as much as he wanted to believe those words, as much as he preferred to simply be insane rather than accept the alternative, Alex could no longer doubt what he'd seen. This was real. His body was in too much pain to dismiss it as anything but real.
As he looked over the dim, desolate streets lined haphazardly with empty vehicles, his thoughts struggled to understand what was happening until they simply spun around his head in circles like a tornado and his mind simply went blank. He limped down the empty streets as the fog drifted through the air like a ghost of the town that once thrived here.
When he saw the glare of the light grow brighter through the mist, Alex didn't feel hope. He felt nothing. He was simply numb as he approached the Sheriff's station.
Before the walkway that led to the front door of the station was a large billboard, usually posted with activities and current events in the town. But as he got closer to the board draped in the light of a single street lamp, Alex saw it was covered with nothing but Missing Persons posters.
There wasn't even enough space on the board to carry all those posters. Stacks of them were strewn out across the pavement, some of them carried away by the wind. His eyes noticed a large section of them had been torn off the board and only one poster stood in that empty space. As he looked upon the face printed on that lone Missing Persons poster, he suddenly felt a heavy weight sink into the pit of his stomach. Beneath the picture read the name, "ELLE HOLLOWAY." Someone had written across Elle's face with a black marker, "HAVE YOU SEEN ME?!?!"
"Alex?" The voice that carried his name brought a burning sensation that replaced the hollow weight in his stomach. Alex turned around and saw a lone figure standing amongst the fog like a ghost, staring at him as though he weren't real.
The light from the lamp post glistened across her blonde hair, which looked as though it hadn't been washed in ages. She had pulled it back into a pony tail, but she nervously swept her fingers across her temple as though she were pushing back invisible bangs. Neither of them said anything. Alex and Elle just stared at each other, neither of them willing to believe they were really seeing the other.
Author's Note: Just for clarification, the part where Alex hears a voice within a sealed tomb has nothing to do with the story. It's simply a reference to an Edgar Allen Poe story, "The Cask of Amontillado". Silent Hill is filled with random horror fiction references, so that's why I put it in there.