1.
The fog was heavier on the hill, and a few times he almost lost his footing and tumbled down into the lake. Glad that James wasn't there to see him, Harry knelt down and used his hands for leverage on some of the steepest areas. The earth was cold and moist under his hands.
When he finally crested the hill and caught site of the parking lot, his heart sank. His own Jeep sat parked on the railing, looking abandoned and forlorn, and Heather's little Yaris was next to it, parked so close it appeared to be leaning into the larger vehicle.
"Why?" he whispered, walking towards the two cars. "Why are you here?"
He touched the car's hoods, first the Jeep and then the Yaris; they were both cold, the engines beneath them having been turned off long ago. Condensation had beaded water droplets all over them, and as he watched, the droplets ran downwards, off the metal, chasing after each other like gravity's ghosts.
They drove separately. Why hadn't they come together? Why had they come at all? How did Heather know how to get here, unless… unless this place had called her too?
Harry moaned deep in his throat, and anyone who might have been listening would have thought they were hearing a lost animal, one that is far away from home and afraid.
He had no idea how long he stood there, leaning against the Jeep and missing them, missing his family so badly that it was a physical pain, a longing so powerful that he lost control of his limbs and couldn't move. Eventually, though, he got control of himself again as his mind, always so nimble and quick, began processing through the grief and trying to figure out the next move.
Leaving the vehicles behind (trying unsuccessfully to ignore the lump that had risen in his throat when he noticed a college sweatshirt, crumpled and casually forgotten, in the Yaris's backseat), Harry started walking again, this time out of the parking lot and towards the highway.
The fog immediately got heavier, wrapping him in a thick blanket of whiteness, completely obscuring his vision. He walked slowly, feeling out ahead of him with his hands and dragging his feet across the ground; he hadn't forgotten the vast pits that opened up along the roads out of town when this place didn't want you to leave. The fog coiled around him, tugging at him with white fingers and weighing him down as his clothing grew heavy with moisture, and he suddenly had the oddest sensation that he was becoming part of it. He felt like he was dissipating, his body's atoms drifting apart from each other and joining the swirling, sound-dampening fog. It wasn't a bad feeling, exactly, not painful or traumatic, and for a moment he wondered what it would be like to just drift apart and be gone, lost forever in the thick, timeless emptiness. Harry stopped walking and closed his eyes, feeling the pull towards nothingness, a pull that felt right somehow, and he felt only a touch of sadness that he would never see Heather again, Heather whose face was already sliding away from him with the mist.
Or James. James's face flashed across his mind's eye; not the present James, but James as he had first met him, abandoned and alone, physically younger but aged with grief, wanting a way out but unable to find one on his own. James, who had needed someone so badly without even realizing it; James, who had saved him and given him his life back; James, who had made him remember what life could be instead of dwelling on what it wasn't.
He remembered. He remembered everything, and in remembering, Harry was pulled back into himself with a jolt so powerful it felt almost physical, nearly painful.
He put his hands to his face, grinding his teeth together, and whispered in a mantra, "My name is Harry Mason, my daughter is Heather Mason and I love James Sunderland. My name is Harry Mason, my daughter is Heather Mason and I love James Sunderland. My name is Harry Mason…"
When he opened his eyes again, the fog had pulled back and was swirling slowly around his feet again, and he was standing next to the tall stone angel he had nearly collided with earlier. He looked around, blinking, and the graveyard slowly came into focus.
"It won't let you leave."
He jumped; the young woman in the white sweater was standing nearby, watching him with her dark, fathomless eyes.
"The borders are farther away now," she said conversationally, when he didn't immediately respond. "They're drifting, only it's more like reaching. It's calling, calling… others…" Her voice tapered off, and she gazed off into the distance, at a point somewhere behind his shoulder.
"This place… it's getting stronger?" he asked her.
She nodded, her eyes out of focus. "Stronger all the time."
"How… how long have you been here?" Harry didn't want to know the answer, but felt like he had to ask.
She shrugged and said simply, "A long time."
They stood in silence for a few moments as Harry tried to process what she was telling him. "Are… are you dead?" he finally asked her.
Her eyes narrowed, and she glared at him, suddenly lucid. "Of course not! Why would you ask that?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean…"
"I will be soon, though," she continued, talking smoothly over his apology, her eyes blank once again. "As soon as it catches me again, I'll be dead. And then I won't be. And then it will chase me some more." She shuddered, crossing her arms over her abdomen and clutching her elbows, trying to make herself look smaller. "It always catches me eventually…"
"What catches you?" he asked, knowing he was needling her now but desperate to know the answer.
"The Butcher."
2.
James stopped and listened, swearing he could hear someone calling his name. The voice was tiny and faraway, so distant that it barely sounded human anymore, but he was certain he had heard it. Moreover, he was almost sure that he recognized the voice, that he knew the speaker…
Suddenly frantic, he yanked his pack around on his back and pulled out the radio he had torn from the Jeep's dashboard. The radio trailed wires and bits of chipped plastic, it wasn't connected to any power supply, it didn't even have any speakers—there was no way on earth it should be working, but he nearly shouted for joy when he saw its tiny amber light blinking.
With hands trembling like an old man's, he brought the radio to his ear, hoping against hope that he would hear the voice again.
Coming from the radio, like a tiny echo from the past, he heard Harry's voice, faint and distant, "…my name is Harry Mason, my daughter is Heather Mason and I love James Sunderland…"
James clung to the radio like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver, and pressed it to his ear so hard that it hurt, but Harry's voice faded away and the message wasn't repeated. He waited, feeling the radio's jagged plastic edges dig into his face, but the radio was a cold, lifeless lump again. He slowly lowered it, not surprised that the little amber light was dark.
Harry had said that he loved him.
James heaved a deep, shuddering sigh as he put the radio back into his pack. Ten years together, and he didn't think he'd told Harry how he felt about him more than a handful of times. Maybe even a handful was an overestimate. He had tried to show him, tried to prove to him how he felt, but it had always been hard, so fucking hard, for him to say the three words he knew Harry wanted to hear. He could blame his father, blame Silent Hill, blame whoever and whatever he wanted, but the simple truth was that he was afraid. The only two people he'd ever said those words to more than a few times had died, died young and horribly, and he didn't want his love to curse Harry the same way. James Sunderland's love was a burden, and he'd thought that if he kept Harry free from it, they'd have a lifetime together for him to prove it instead.
Only now, too late, was he realizing what a mistake that had been.
