Author's Note: Well, hello everyone. It's been over a year since I updated this story. I was sure that I lost all my readers by now, but it seems like there are still people who are reading and are kind enough to leave an encouraging review. Thank you so much. Following is a quick summary of events and the long-overdue Chapter Eight.

Previously on Silent Hill: The Bat - Bruce Wayne receives a letter from his childhood friend and deepest love, Rachel Dawes. There's just one problem: Rachel Dawes has been dead for six months.

In her letter, Rachel says she's waiting for Bruce in a small town called Silent Hill. Suspecting foul play, Batman goes in Bruce's stead. At the entrance of Silent Hill, he meets Allen, a sarcastic teenager who's an excellent shot with the revolver, who was making his way out of the small town and who warns Batman of the dangers within. Soon clues gather together: A map from a tourist kiosk with the local motel marked. A missing key at the motel desk. And subsequently the key itself inside the ladies room. All along the way, a woman who looks like Rachel appears to be guiding him, often appearing only for an instant and disappearing as soon as Batman sees her. He also glimpses the array of monstrous and dangerous creatures to which the town of Silent Hill appears to be an accepting host. Inside the motel office, Batman meets Ronald, a frightened middle-aged man who tries to kill Batman with a shotgun and accuses him of being sent by an unnamed and mysterious female.

The last time Batman sees Rachel is on the landing of the stairwell leading to the basement. Just as he is about to call her name, the room begins to spin. An air raid siren begins to wail and Batman falls unconscious.

Eight

I awaken slowly, as if I have been drugged. All around me there is darkness, the wet scent of rusted metal, which also coincidentally resembles the stench of freshly spilled blood.

I look to the left, searching for Rachel where I had last seen her. Her shadowy legs are not visible anymore.

As the air undulates with distant shrieks, metal scraping, chains rattling, I stare up at the darkness above me. I cannot see. Activating my night vision, I wait for the high-pitched hum. It never comes.

Puzzled, but not particular surprised, I wonder why my devices are not functioning reliably. Even my Tumbler faltered at the town limits, leading me to crash the vehicle and walk the remaining distance into the town.

I rise to my feet, noticing that the concrete staircase upon which I fell unconscious is now made of a metal grate. Below I see the spiraling stairs, all made of rusty metal. I pull out my flashlight. Flick it on. It works. Rachel is nowhere to be seen. At least, the woman Bruce believes is Rachel. I am, however, an unimpressed skeptic. She's never shown me her face. She's never said a word. And so far, she has not once behaved like Rachel. She's been fleeting, mysterious, and now she is beginning to anger me. This impostor is not Rachel. It cannot be. Since the beginning, since I received the letter, I have suspected this was just a trick, a trap. And now, perhaps there is more confirmation of that theory than the one Bruce holds—that it is Rachel, alive and well, but afraid and in danger from the demons lurking in the streets of Silent Hill and the darkened corridors of Riverside Motel. But still. Bruce holds a little hope, a desperate thing that refuses to die and see logic, a thing that fights ferociously for life, an intangible but powerful thing that, if possible, by its sheer will would bring Rachel back into existence. She's dead, Bruce, I tell him reasonably. But he refuses to listen.

I hear the chains rattling again. The sound is coming from above me.

I raise the beam of light overhead, to the abyssal black ceiling. The chains rattle. For a moment I cannot make out the shape. The chains rattle gently like wind chimes on a country porch. Then my eyes widen as I recognizes what is making that sound.

A warm black drop falls on my cowl. Another on my shoulder. The chains rattle again. Louder, more insistent.

I back away from the dripping fluid. There are bodies suspended above me, upside down, wrapped in decomposing gray bandages and bound with chains. Suddenly the liquid that dripped begins to hiss. The acid is rotting its way through my cape.

I take a stumbling step back, down the stairs. I shine the flashlight up, searching for more bodies. Sure enough, as the chains continue their rattling, the darkness bursts forth with more horrors, bodies upon bodies, suspended from above, all of them squirming, jerking, flinging drops of acid in a corrosive, deadly rain.

I shine the light down the stairwell shaft. As the radio in my belt compartment begins to crackle to life, I see a seething sea of heads below. Under the beam of my flashlight, the heads seize and toss back and forth. Like uncontrollable, mad psychiatric patients, their bodies wrapped in a strait-jacket of their own skin, eyes and lips sewed shut with sackcloth, their shoulders jerk spasmodically side to side, up and down. Every now and then they arch their back with a gagging, retching noise and spew acid over each other, the liquid hissing through the gray bandages and slimy flesh.

And as my beam of light scans over them, with remarkable uniformity and control, the demonic creatures turn their heads toward me. As the ones above me continues to rain acid, my suit hissing on my body like an armor of snakes, I watch in amazed horror as the creatures in the pit below adhere to the walls as effortlessly as spiders, streaking up with shocking speed, defying gravity. The ones above me shriek, muffled and anguished as they release acid down in front of me in a stream of stinking black bile. The creatures below, hundreds of them, begin to mount the stairs. They trip and trample over one another, dragging their bodies over the stairs like maggots, squirming, screaming, spraying acid.

I spin around and reach the upper landing, the radio static squealing its own terrible music, as if it is gripped with terror.

I stop dead at the stairwell exit when a pair of demons drop to the ground in front of me. They circumvented the stairs, climbed the walls and have closed me in. More are making their way, using legs to swing from dangling chain to chain, jumping with astonishing agility, even without the use of their arms. The ones mounting the stairs are just yards away behind me. The streams of acid they eject from the gaping holes in their chest spray over the calves of my boots, bathing the soles in black liquid.

The demons on the stair landing begin to trip and stumble closer, swaying wildly back and forth like they're about burst from their fleshy prison. They push against me, formless faces pressed against mine. I growl and shove them back against the door, watching in the swinging flashlight beam as they trip and totter like drunks. One of them begins to arch backwards, hocking up, rib cage pulsing, gagging, gurgling with filth. I can hear the ones behind me, inches away, the ones above, dancing closer on the chains. Acid rain drips down, black and glistening and hissing like it's alive.

As the one arching back lunges forward and spews a thick stream of black bile, I dodge to the left. The acid hits the ones at the stairs. They stumble over one another, trying to skirt around the acid, but falling over the banister of the stairs and thwacking down over the others.

As the second one on the landing begins to gag and release caustic bile, I push the one that spewed seconds ago into the other. A powerful kick sends them both careening over the banister and down into the pit, freeing my path into the corridor and out of this hellish stairwell.

When I stumble out into the corridor, the creatures lunge for me out of the darkness. I launch a rapport of blades from my gauntlet, slicing through one of the creature's heads, and lodging into the face of another. I drop the flashlight, reach down into my belt, and fling a miniature explosive into the fray. As the beeping red light vanishing into the siege, I shove the door closed. An explosion sounds, reverberating against the door, through my suit and into my body.

The gagging and retching fades. Bodies splatter to the stairwell floor, flesh hits the walls.

As I lean weight off the door, under the glow of the flashlight, black acid, steaming and stinking, pools into view. The floor is made of a slab of rusted, gritty metal. It begins to corrode rapidly under the caustic fluid.

I back away before the integrity of the floor is compromised. Soon the acid eats away a large hole, about two feet wide.

I pick up the flashlight, feeling my heart pounding rapidly. The radio has stopped screaming static.

As the creatures regroup behind the door, I check the integrity of my suit. Craters are burned into the shoulders, the back, the cowl. Holes are burned into my cape.

With a moment now, to collect my thoughts, I check my belt to see if anything has been stolen. I find the key to room 218 again, my only clue. Rachel's letter sits snugly in another compartment. The blood evidence I collected earlier is also there, still fresh.

I check the night vision again. It's not working. Beaming my flashlight forward, I walk, my footsteps clanging hollowly on the metal floor. The walls are made of solid metal, covers with a layer of rusty water marks which look like blood. Every wall, the ceiling, the floor, all of it seems to be groaning, creaking, alive. Above me squirm more creatures wrapped in chains, or enclosed in cages, tied with barbed wire, jerking, moaning, whining, high pitched and unhuman. It is a cacophony of hell.

As I walk down the corridor, observing the noises and odors coming from the walls and adjoining rooms, I wonder if someone perhaps moved me from the previous location. It could not have been Rachel—she's not strong enough. However, given this quasi-Rachel's abilities, the way she seems to appear and vanish as if she's an apparition, as if she's been trained by and inducted into the clandestine high circles of the League of Shadows, perhaps the idea of her moving me is not so far-fetched after all.

But Bruce snaps with anger at such thoughts. Rachel, endangered by the League, hated of it, would never forge an alliance with it. The thought sullies her image, her integrity. And as the theory becomes unpalatable, offensive, even to me, I realize a woman like Rachel is not open to compromises with her honor, not only as a human being, but also as a woman with a duty to the public. The Rachel I remember—the one Bruce loves—would not be initiated into the League. It lives outside the law. Not in light, but in darkness. Like me.

Soon, the theory that someone moved me is becoming invalid. I recognize the layout of the Riverside Motel. Checking it mentally against the map from downstairs, I am quickly certain that this is the same place. Except—it has changed. As if centuries have passed but I have not aged or died. As if I lay there while the building around me changed shape, grew monsters in its midst, corroded into nothing more than rusted metal and rotten, death-filled air.

Since I cannot use this stairwell to go to the second floor, I must find another way. This time, the elevator will come in handy, even though it is not working. Though missing most of the wood siding and exposing faded blue and red wiring, the elevator appears to suddenly be in working condition. I will not have to use the hatch in the ceiling after all.

I ride it to the second floor.

When the elevator gives a warbling, weak ding and the doors graze open, there is total silence on this floor. It is a shock to my ears, the roaring silence permeated only by my ragged breathing, and, when I begin to walk, my hollow clanging footsteps.

As I enter the corridor, I check the other stairwell door, at the east end. The lock with the octagonal indentation is still there. I raise the lock up for a better look. It is a solid block of metal. It doesn't show any indication of containing a locking mechanism with one consisting of traditional pins and tumblers. It is also surprisingly heavy for something that size—it is about the size of my palm, but seems to weigh more than two pounds.

As I turn away, I hear some heavy footsteps around the bend in the corridor. I turn to look, recognizing the familiar gait as belonging to the one that was 'passing over' doors that were marked with blood on the first floor of Riverside Motel.

The last time I encountered the mammoth male, as he lumbered down the hallway with the steady, rhythmic thump-thump, thump, he did not see me. But now, as the pounding of two huge feet and walking staff come closer, I know instinctually that letting him see me will be a dangerous mistake.

Under the overhanging, wriggling bodies of bound demons, I double back, pulling out the key to room 218. The door unlocks with a firm click and I enter. As I pass under the doorway, I notice that the doorposts are clean and slightly faded white. They are not marked with blood. I falter slightly when I glimpse a woman inside the darkened room. She's slumped in a wooden chair, facing the corner, weeping. She's lost in shadow, her blurry figure shuddering now and then.

"Thank God!" Cries a frightened man from my left.

The woman continues to weep. I shine my light on her. Her wrists are tied back, bound with rope. She's naked, beaten badly, bleeding.

"Let me out!" The man cries, trying to push past me. I let the flashlight drop, the light bouncing wild around the room, illuminating circles of bright red blood on the walls, near the wooden floorboards by the bed. Then it comes to a rolling stop over a huge patch of blood, as if someone bled out there. I grab the man by the collar and slam him against the wall. "What did you do to her?" I demanded, recognizing the man's wide, fearful eyes, his unwashen stink. It's Ronald, the man who tried to kill me with a shotgun.

Ronald grapples with my grip with one hand, trying to reach the door with the other. It slowly begins to close.

"I didn't do anything!" He protests, straining. "Don't let the door close! There's no other way out!"

The woman quiets down. Ronald clutches at my arm, cutting his hands on the remaining batarangs spring-loaded into my gauntlet. He doesn't even feel it. As blood drains from the cuts on his palm, it drains from his face when he hears the approaching, lumbering male. I catch a glimpse of a tall, hulking shadow in the corridor. The door hangs open just a sliver, for a moment. "Get the door!" Ronald shouts. But it slams with finality. "No!" Ronald wails.

I let him go. He falls, scrambles to the door. Ronald tries to squeeze his fingers into the credit card-thick space to get the door open. "No, no, no, no," he mutters frantically. He starts to search, his eyes darting around the room in search of something thin enough to pry open the door.

The figure's footsteps make the floor shake steadily, harder and harder. The creature—it's unlikely that's a man—must weigh a ton. The heavy metallic pounding of his feet and staff pause at each door before 218, checking to see if blood marks the posts.

I move to the tied woman and cut through the ropes binding her to the chair. Meanwhile, The man manages to force a shard of metal from the cot resting askew in the room. The flat, threadbare mattress bleeds insulation and is stained with old blood. Ronald uses the metal to pry the door open as the giant lumbers over on the other side.

The woman slumps forward in my arms. I catch her before she hits the ground. She's unconscious. I need an ambulance for her, but I'm certain there's no way to summon one to Silent Hill. I brush her hair from her face. I recoil in horror. It's Rachel.

Suddenly the door pounds like it's being slammed by a battering ram. Ronald screams. The metal shard in his hand bends, cuts his hands. He looks to me for help, his eyes wide and desperate. "Don't let him take me."

The giant pounds the door again. This must be the Ah Puch Ronald mentioned earlier.

The door jumps, splintering in the middle.

I lift Rachel from the chair.

The door shatters from another hit as a mangled fist forces its way in. Ronald shrieks in pure terror and scurries from the arm's reach. The giant pounds against the door. Ronald resorts to pleading. "Look, I didn't do anything to her." His eyes shift anxiously to the door, where the Ah Puch is laboring to break open the door. He reaches in with a massive hand, tearing away chunks of the wooden door as if it's made out of cotton. Ronald backs away to the furthest corner of the room he can. "Look, I'll tell you everything. Just please take me to the cops. Turn me in. Please, you gotta help me get out of here." He is panting, almost hyperventilating. His eyes scan over my suit quickly. "You don't have a gun on you, do you?"

Rachel stirs in my arms, groggy, confused and in pain. I toss my cape over her shoulders, enveloping her in my arms. Looking at Ronald, I mutter, "I don't use guns."

In one fell swoop, the creature tears the door from the frame. Ronald screams and as wood flies. The creature steps inside, its great stomping feet sending cracks running through the floor. Another step and the crack splits wider, longer, cutting a line between my acid eaten boots.

The creature corners Ronald to the left of the room. It lumbers closer to him. Ronald squeezes himself against the wall, into the corner, as small as he can get. "Help me!"

I lower Rachel to the floor. She clutches my arm, piercing her palms on my batarangs. She looks up me with her eyes wide, bloodshot. "Don't go. I'll protect you."

"Help me!" Ronald screams as the creature leans down and lifts him up by the arm like a rag doll.

I narrow my eyes in confusion at Rachel. She is talking nonsense.

I pull myself away from Rachel. She grabs my cape. "I sent Ah Puch. He is the bane of sinners."

I release my cape from my shoulders with the press of a button near the collar and leap onto the shoulders of the beast. It doesn't flinch. It wears a ragged black executioner's mask. I notice that the staff is topped by a serrated, twelve point spear. From it hang human skulls. Using the tall staff as a pole, I vault around and bring a two-footed roundhousing kick into the creature's face. It stumbles back, drops Ronald. But it doesn't fall.

I use the force of my own kick to catapult me back and away. I slam into the wall and fall to my feet with a stagger. "Run," I tell Ronald, who appears only too happy to scramble away like a frightened rabbit. But his pant leg snags on a piece of wood protruding from the floor. Ronald begins to panic and starts to pull frantically.

The Ah Puch is marked and cut with tattoos and burns all over its body. Jewels of solid black metal bricks have stretched holes into its skin. They clink together weightily every time the creature moves. Its mask has no holes for its eyes or mouth, but there is a hole for something like a nose, two large flaring holes in red, diseased flesh. Its chest heaves, checking for a scent. It comes closer to me, tasting the air with a panting ragged breath like a huge dog. It scans over my body, catches the smell of blood on my batarangs. It snatches my arm with shocking speed and fluidity. Then it crushes my limb. I hear the muffled crack of bones. I release a scream of agony. My gauntlet crumbles like brittle pottery.

"No, it's not him!" Rachel shouts. She jumps up, using my cape for a cover. "Stop!"

But the creature pins me by my arm to the wall. I pull my legs to my chest and wait for it to come closer. I spring my coiled legs into its face again. It releases me, teeters back. The floor cracks again, the splits widen.

Rachel jumps back from a hole opening up in the middle of the floor like the chest of those skin strapped demons in the stairwell. The floor sinks down. The bed slides down to the hole, the chair to which Rachel was tied topples and slides slowly. Ronald slides down too. He cannot find anything to grab hold of before he shrieks and goes over the edge. He clutches the tearing floor, tries to pull himself up. But he's not strong enough and the floor is no longer flat but tilted at a steep angle.

The creature huffs in rage and grabs me by the throat. I groan and feel the electrical charges from my cowl ripple into the creature's palm and bones. But it doesn't feel it.

"Bruce!" Rachel shouts. She cannot reach me from the other side of the room.

It tilts its spear. Tosses it up, catches it. The creature lifts me above its head, pins me to the ceiling. Then it lets the spearhead come to rest under me.

"NO!" Rachel shouts.

Then the creature releases me. I fall on the spearhead as the creature thrusts upward. My acid-corroded armor shatters and falls apart like black shards of glass. The spear runs me through. My body is shocked into paralysis. The creature releases the spear.

I watch as the room spins, tilts out of view. I am falling into the hole. As Rachel and Ronald's screams fade, everything goes black. Then there is silence. Then there is nothing.