A/N: At long last, here's the latest installment! I made sure to make this one a decent length, to make up for the short chapter last time. :P And stuff gets accomplished here, so yay!
Thanks for all the awesome reviews! I hope you enjoy the new chapter~
Disclaimer: I don't own Silent Hill!
When I came to, I was no longer in the same place. I knew this because the floor below me felt like wood rather than tile, and because I couldn't feel any walls in my immediate vicinity.
My first feeling was one of extreme, suffocating panic. I hadn't even realized that I had fallen unconscious in the first place; the last thing I remembered was sobbing uncontrollably as the siren wailed in the background. I had been on the first floor, near the front doors. The doors that had sealed me into this hell.
It was pitch black. I couldn't even see my own hand in front of my face. It took everything I had to stop myself from hyperventilating, especially when my eyes just couldn't adjust to the darkness.
Shaking, I reached over to my hip and found the reassuring weight of the gun. There were still bullets in my pockets, but I wouldn't be able to see enough to reload the weapon if I needed to.
I felt along the floor, and found the rectangular form of my cell phone sitting on the ground between my legs. My thumb found one of the buttons on the front of the device and I pressed it, expecting the screen to light up. It didn't. I realized with growing horror that the battery must have died; in other words, I was stuck in this darkness.
Although I was somehow managing not to hyperventilate, my breathing seemed far too loud. I pressed my heels against the floor, pushing myself backwards and running my hands along the wood as I moved. My entire body was quaking with fear; I wanted to cry. It was dead silent in this place, wherever it was, but that didn't help at all.
I nearly jumped when my back met a wall, and my spine stiffened. I reached backwards to feel the wall, and noted that it was made of what felt like brick. Wood floors and brick walls…where the hell was I? Was I even in the hospital anymore? Oh, God…I couldn't see anything…!
Somehow, I managed to stumble to my feet. Sliding my feet over the floor so that I wouldn't trip on anything, I slowly made my way along the wall in search of a door out of here.
And if I found an exit? What then? If it was just as dark outside as it was in here…
I wanted to scream, but I was afraid it would attract attention. I wanted to leave, but I didn't know where I would go. But if I stayed in one spot, what would happen to me? What if something was in here with me? I couldn't see…I couldn't see…did I want to see? No…
A grinding noise coming from up above caused me to freeze up. My eyes opened wide as I fought to adjust to the darkness, but nothing worked. Grinding. Anything could be making that scraping, grinding noise. The image of Pyramid Head formed in my mind, and I flattened myself against the brick wall, paralyzed.
The noise stopped, and I heard the sound of a light metal clanging. Then, from the end of the room opposite me, I saw something…a brightening light. The light revealed a metal ladder on the wall, and then a pair of shoes climbing down, and then a man had dropped into the room. Oh, thank God, it was him!
James seemed to sense the presence of someone else in the room, and he looked over in my direction, though he couldn't see me because his flashlight wasn't shining in my direction. It looked like he saw my figure in the darkness, though, because I saw his eyes widen. I stepped forth, trying to bury my fear as I opened my mouth to speak to him.
He beat me to it, immediately moving forward. "Mary?"
Then he faltered when I drew into the light, realizing his mistake. His face fell. "Oh…it's just you. Sorry…"
I just stared at him with my mouth partially open as he shifted awkwardly. My fearful trembles were just beginning to fade, and I was able to think rationally again; I realized where I was and what had happened. I had failed in my attempt to leave the hospital for good, which meant I was going to be present for the chase scene…
Then I remembered that I had spent the past ten minutes in a pitch black room, completely vulnerable, and hanging on to my sanity by a thread…only to have James come down and act put out at the very sight of me.
"Anyway," James said, finally meeting my gaze. "I'm glad you're alive."
"'Anyway'?" I clenched my fists, finally understanding why Maria was so pissed off at this point in the game. "Yeah, let's just move on, why don't we? You just abandoned me, and now you're acting disappointed to see me again? No, it's cool. It's not like I was scared out of my fucking mind or anything. Fuck you, James."
"No, that's not what I meant—" He started to speak, but I shook my head.
"I get it, okay? If I'm such a burden, just say so. You don't have to pretend to give a shit if you don't want to," I said. My voice trembled a little, and I inwardly cursed myself, feeling pathetic and small and incredibly helpless.
The room fell quiet for a few moments, as I just stared at my feet. I couldn't even look at him. It surprised me how much his little slip had hurt; I hadn't even known the guy for a day yet, but the knowledge that he might not care as much as I hoped he did was agonizing. My excitement and relief at seeing his face again was now mixed with a bitter feeling of resentment.
"…I'm sorry," he said after the silence had stretched on for too long.
"No, you're not," I replied in a weak voice. I heard him sigh.
"Don't say that. I really am. I do care about you, and I don't think you're a burden. I…I just…"
"You're just here for your wife," I finished for him, still staring down at the ground. "And I'm just some random girl. I know." No…I wasn't going to let myself cry again.
"That's not what I was about to say," he murmured. I clenched my fists, blinking back tears, before closing the distance between us and wrapping my arms tightly around him.
"Promise me you won't ever leave me like that again," I said, feeling immensely comforted by the human contact. "I thought I was going to die, you asshole."
He stiffened a little, but returned the embrace with minimal hesitation. In other circumstances, we would be complete strangers to each other…but here, in this place, it felt like we had known each other for years. The fear left me so emotionally charged that I was willing to do a lot of things that I would never normally do. Embracing a man I just met hours ago, who was also covered in blood and grime, wasn't all that unusual.
"I promise," he said. "I won't leave you alone again. I'm sorry."
Hearing him say that calmed me down a great deal, and after a few seconds, I pulled away and wiped my eyes. I finally started to feel like I had a little more control over the situation.
"…I'm sorry, too," I finally said. "I shouldn't have yelled at you like that…I was just really upset. I was down here in the dark for too long…"
"It's all right," he assured me. "…Are you okay?"
"Yeah…" I shrugged, still feeling a little shaken up. Then I noted something else about him—now that my eyes had adjusted to the light, I saw that he was covered in some places with a thin white dust. His clothes were also torn up a lot more than I remembered, and he was bleeding, too.
"What happened to you?" I asked, already suspecting what his answer might be.
He hesitated, and then let out a small sigh. "I…fell off the roof."
Though I wasn't surprised, my eyebrows flew up at how bluntly he put it. I walked in a circle around him, brushing the plaster dust off of him and attempting to assess his injuries. Thank God…it was nothing too bad. I was shocked that he hadn't broken anything—he had been near death at that point in the game.
"Christ," I muttered. "How did you manage that?"
"Something…pushed me off," James explained. "I got lucky; I fell into something soft."
"Good," I replied. "You look like hell, though."
"I know."
I finally paused in my examination, satisfied that he wasn't too badly hurt. He was only bleeding from a few minor cuts, which would probably close up in a little while. I looked up at him, crossing my arms.
"Well, what happened while we were separated? Did you see Laura?"
He nodded. "She got away, though. I don't know where she could be now…"
"Oh…" I murmured, and then somehow managed to gather my resolve. "…Okay. I guess we'd better go look for her…where the hell are we, anyway? When that siren went off, I blacked out and woke up here."
James pulled out the map, moving closer to show me. He frowned, before taking out a pencil and erasing a few things. I leaned over, watching him; that was right, everything had changed, so he probably had to adjust all of the marks he had made. I hadn't even realized he had been marking things off. He probably hadn't started until after he left me behind.
It struck me as funny for a moment when I realized that he used the exact same marks that had been used on the maps in the game. He scribbled out jammed doors, and used a bold line over ones that were locked. He signified open doors by drawing a line through them with an arrow on either side. I also noticed that there was a rectangle drawn with a line through it in the day room—the refrigerator? James couldn't open it in real life, either?
"We're right here." James broke me out of my reverie, pointing to a little room in the basement. Yeah, that looked familiar.
"Where do we go next?" I asked tentatively, frowning. Now that I was down here with James, away from all the monsters, part of me just wanted to hole up in this room. I knew it wouldn't work and we'd probably just die down here, but still…nothing would find us all the way down here…
James wasn't looking at me; he had faltered, distracted by something. I watched now as he bent over, picking up a small ring from a puddle of blood on the floor. Did everything around here have to be covered in blood? I watched as he examined it for a moment, before pocketing it.
"We might need it later," he said to me abruptly, as if I was about to question his actions. I just shrugged in reply. The copper ring…that was one of the rings we needed to unlock that weird door with the woman's hands sticking out of it.
I didn't want to think about that door.
He seemed to remember my question, and looked at me once more. "…Let's head up to the second floor. There's something I need your help with."
If I hadn't been so scared, I would've smiled at that. I couldn't believe James actually needed a girl to help him open that stupid fridge.
"Okay," I said, nodding, and followed him to the ladder leading out of the room.
It was too far up for me to reach, so James grabbed me by the hips and hoisted me up. I reluctantly climbed up the metal ladder, emerging out into the dark storeroom. The room grew brighter as James climbed up behind me, and soon it was illuminated enough for me to examine it more thoroughly. The shelf that had once blocked the entrance to that underground room, I noticed uneasily, had the same bloody handprints on it that I remembered from the game.
This place was an insane asylum, wasn't it? What had that room been used for? That person, the one who had been locked inside the "basement's basement"…what had they done to deserve it?
Even the normal Silent Hill showed some clear evidence of strange activity going on behind the scenes…and that wasn't even considering the whole thing with Alessa and The Order. This town was just messed up in general. All the history I remembered reading on this place involved weird epidemics, Indian rituals, and mysterious deaths. It was starting to get all jumbled together in my mind…
There was an overturned shelf in front of me, with a variety of objects scattered across the floor. It was a mess in here, and the dust nearly caused me to start coughing. James moved past me and gestured for me to follow, and I let him lead me out of the room.
After a few seconds, we had moved through the door and into the stairwell. I noticed that it was a lot darker here than it had been before—it was the walls. The walls were covered in a strange grime that hadn't been present before the change. James walked up the stairs, and I followed closely behind, not wanting to get caught up in the heavy darkness that surrounded us.
"All of these doors are jammed now," the blond explained in a low voice as we passed the door marked '2F'. We continued onward to the third floor, walking out into the hallway.
It was the same general layout, but everything had a distinct sort of…deteriorated look. The walls were covered in the same grime from the stairwell, and some of the doors were covered with what looked like cloth. I didn't understand the purpose of it, but then again, I also didn't understand the purpose of the cemented over doors in the apartment buildings. Sometimes it was better not to question certain things.
James didn't bother looking around the area, so I assumed he'd already examined it. Instead, he headed straight for the double doors that led to the patient wing hallway. I followed him through, not wanting to wait around for any nurses.
The next hall we entered was about as interesting as the one before; the grime was still there, though now I could see specks of blood on the tile floor. We stepped over the body of a nurse, and I made sure to give it a wide berth. James paused for a moment, looking down at it with a frown, and I had a moment of panic where I thought it might still be alive. When he moved on, though, I realized that I had been mistaken. Why had he stopped like that, then?
I couldn't shake my curiosity. We passed by another nurse, and this time I made sure to move slowly, examining the body as I passed.
It looked mangled in general, which wasn't a surprise; hitting something with a pipe would do that. But…something seemed wrong about it. The lower half of the nurse's uniform was drenched in blood. It was lying on its side, so I stopped to reach a foot out and flip it over on to its back. I instantly regretted it.
"Oh, God!" I exclaimed before I could stop myself, gasping in horror. Now I knew. James hadn't killed those nurses.
"What?" James called from up ahead, instantly turning around and lifting the pipe in case I needed help. "What, what is it—" Then he cut himself off, falling silent as he saw the same thing I did.
The nurse that I had flipped over now laid flat on the floor, its legs splayed to reveal nothing but blood and destroyed flesh between them. Splinters of bone poked through the skirt of the nurse's blood drenched uniform, showing that the pelvis had probably been completely shattered. Something had raped this nurse to death.
I couldn't wrap my head around how violently this nurse must have been taken…and how impossibly strong the creature that had done this had to be. It occurred to me that this kill was relatively fresh, since the hospital hadn't been in this changed state for very long. He had been here not too long ago. He had been standing here, in this very spot.
As if to prove this fact, I now noticed a line of broken tiles on the floor, leading all the way down the hall; something heavy and sharp had clearly been dragged across the floor. I also noticed a trail of blood alongside the broken tiles…it looked like Pyramid Head had taken another nurse for later.
I tried to think of all the jokes people had cracked about Pyramid Head, all of the hilarious web comics and internet memes I had seen. Unfortunately, telling myself that it was Rape O' Clock didn't exactly make me feel any better at this point. It had been funnier when I was holding a controller in my hand and James was the only one in danger. Because when people made jokes about Pyramid Head…it was only a defensive mechanism to make him seem less scary. There was nothing funny about him at all. There was nothing funny about one monster brutalizing another.
There was nothing funny about the fact that I could end up like that, lying broken and mutilated and dead on the floor.
Hands gripped my shoulders, and I almost screamed. James had approached me while I had been staring at the corpse in a kind of paralyzed horror; now he eased me past the nurse, further on down the hallway. I didn't resist; the image of the completely destroyed area between the nurse's legs persisted in my mind. I felt the need to throw up, but I had nothing left in my stomach. My throat already burned with bile.
"Don't think about it," James warned me in a murmur. "The thing that did it is gone. I'm here to protect you. It's going to be okay."
"No, it's not," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. He didn't hear me; instead he continued to lead me down the hallway, until we arrived at the elevator.
I noticed the door to the stairwell…that door with the woman on the front. Her two arms really did stand out from the door; they looked plastic, and yet fleshy at the same time…like the Mannequin monsters. On the ring finger of each hand was a slight indent, which was a pretty clear indication of what should be placed there. I saw James staring at those hands, hesitating, before he turned and pressed the button to open the elevator doors.
Ah. The blood trail that I had noticed earlier led to the stairwell door and vanished beneath it. Now I knew why James was putting off trying to open it until we were out of options.
"Come on," he said, and I followed him all too willingly. The elevator doors shut behind us, closing us in, and I slumped against one of the walls. I saw James press the button for the second floor, and braced myself in case there would be something on the other side of the doors when they opened.
I heard the sound of operating machinery, and felt the elevator start moving downward. We didn't say anything, just preparing ourselves for when the elevator would stop.
Then James' radio started emitting static, and we both froze. Oh…oh, shit! Nothing was supposed to happen in the elevator, right?
I remembered, with sudden relief, that this was the point where that weird game show would play. Some creepy voice would ask us a couple of questions, invite us to collect our prize, and then cackle at the prospect of our failure to answer correctly. As I stared at James' radio and waited for the cheering to start, the elevator lurched to a halt.
James and I stared at each other, wide-eyed. This wasn't supposed to happen. This was not supposed to happen!
The static on the radio grew louder and louder as the elevator car trembled. I looked around wildly, frantically trying to figure out what was causing it. James was already reaching up and clawing at a small maintenance hatch on the top of the elevator car, trying to open it so that we could escape into the shaft. Then the car shuddered once more, something let out a wail from the outside, and I saw blood seeping through the cracks around the hatch. The small trapdoor shook, and there was a screeching noise as something clawed at the top of the elevator car.
"Don't open it!" I cried, horrified. "Don't let it in, James!"
Now James was attempting to hold the hatch shut, as I panicked and fumbled for the handgun. The elevator car lurched and dropped a few feet before halting again, causing James to fall to the floor as I let out a scream. An ominous groan came from up above, followed by a loud snap; the car lurched again as James and I fought to stay upright. He was pounding at the 'open door' button as the car jerked downward again, and all I could hear was labored breathing that didn't belong to either of us. Something howled loudly outside of the car, and the howling was soon mixed in with my own terrified screams.
The elevator fell downward another few feet and stopped again, and I heard that horrible groaning noise. This time there were two more loud snaps, followed by another jerk. The elevator doors opened just a crack. James dove at them, instantly placing his hands in the crack. I ran forward as well, helping him pry the doors open at a painfully slow pace. The elevator car was shaking precariously.
Then the doors were open just enough, and we were halfway between floors. James immediately hoisted me up through the small opening we had, before climbing through himself. We rolled out on to a dirty floor, getting to our knees just in time to see the shadow perched on top of the car we had just been inside of. I reached up with the gun and immediately fired off three rounds, and the figure let out a screech. There was another snap, and the elevator plummeted out of sight.
James and I exchanged glances, staring into the darkness of the elevator shaft until we heard the inevitable crash. I felt the floor rumble a little from the impact, and could barely hold on to the gun anymore. My entire body was drenched in a cold sweat, and I felt nauseous.
Those snapping noises we had heard in the elevator car…had been the sounds of that monster severing the cables. We had gotten out just in time.
Dead silence. No monsters came to confront us in our moment of vulnerability, as we attempted to gather our bearings. I was shaking uncontrollably, fighting to control the volume of my breathing. Even James looked visibly shaken. He stumbled to his feet, helping me up as well. We both leaned against the wall and stared in the direction of the elevator shaft for what felt like a very long time.
That hadn't happened in the game.
What else was going to happen? Were safe areas really safe? Could any monster appear at any time at all? What the hell had just attacked us?
The silence was too much. We couldn't stand here forever…
"Th-That was…" I attempted to speak, but my voice cracked and I choked on a sob. James placed a clammy hand on my shoulder and squeezed. He was attempting to comfort me, but he himself was white as a ghost. We had almost died just then.
"Let's get out of here," he suggested, managing to keep his voice steady. I readily agreed.
And so, I followed closely behind as he led me in the direction of the day room, though I wasn't sure I'd have enough physical strength to do much of anything after that particular ordeal. I just wanted to sit down somewhere and cry.
A/N: ...because answering game show questions obviously isn't as fun as almost plummeting to your death! XD
I just thought I'd switch that part up, because I didn't see the point of making James answer some trivia questions. :P He'll have to live without those extra shotgun shells. Also, no more elevator! Looks like they'll have to break down a few jammed doors instead.
Yes, I totally referenced the rape clock. I'm sure most of you have seen that picture at some point or another..."Good heavens, just look at the time!" XD
Review, you awesome people~
Next time: Pyramid Head.
