The three young men followed Cammy as she tried to find her way to Old Silent Hill. They ran into several dead ends before having to take a detour through an alley between some houses and other buildings. As they went further down the alley, they walked closer together, the large puddles and splatters of blood on the walls and on the ground and piles of ravaged remains of whatever creatures sent chills up their spines and set them on edge. When they neared the end of the alley, their communicators began to emit static. They huddled in a defensive group, back-to-back, and waited for the unknown monstrosity to appear.

They didn't have to wait very long before they saw a strange looking cat walk out from behind a set of trash cans. It jumped up on the nearest one and just looked at them. They could tell it was a tabby by the black markings on its tan skin, though it was nearly furless and the markings looked more like tribal tattoos than something nature had graced the cat with. It was so thin you could count the number of vertebrae in its neck and the number of bones in its bushy, fur-tipped tail. It had huge paws with deadly looking claws flexing in and out as if anticipating an attack. It also had a huge head that, as they continued to stare at it, seemed to grow bigger as the cat began to grin. The cat's teeth were stained yellow with age, though bits of red, and what looked like small strings of whatever its last meal was stuck in between its teeth. Its eyes were bright yellow and gleamed almost as much as the gold ring it wore in its right ear. As they continued to stare at the cat as if in a trance, the sound of a radio whining began to pierce the air. Turning just in time, Virgil saw the shadow swoop down from the fog towards them.

"Get down!" Virgil yelled and knocked everyone forward, getting down just as the giant skinless vulture passed over head, grazing his right arm with the tip of its wing.

From their now prone position, they looked up and watched as the thing turned around and began heading back in their direction. Gordon, without even thinking, grabbed Cammy's piece of pipe right out of her hands and stood up like a baseball player up to bat. He waited and carefully measured the distance as the thing flew closer, then took a mighty swing, knocking the bird into a nearby wall with a horrifying crunch. As it slid down the wall, its wings continued to twitch its back broken but not yet dead. Gordon walked over to the fallen creature and began to beat it, making it an unrecognizable pile of goo, skin, and bones before Virgil had gone over and stopped him. Everyone had forgotten about the cat who had hopped over to the trash can closest to the group.

"Your kills from your anger shall feed me well this day," a strange male voice said.

Turning, everyone noticed the cat again, who was now staring at the mess and licking its lips.

"Did you say something?" Cammy asked, taking a step closer to the cat.

"Don't be silly. Cats can't talk," Virgil said.

"And the dead do not walk, yet there is proof of both," the cat replied, its grin getting wider.

Everyone just stared, not sure of what to say or do.

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" the strange feline asked, chuckling hoarsely at its own bad joke.

"You're like, a Cheshire Cat, aren't you?" Cammy asked.

"What's a Cheshire Cat?" Gordon asked, clearly confused.

"You know, Alice in Wonderland. The Cheshire was Alice's guide, though he only spoke in riddles and at times was a real annoyance," Scott said. Virgil just looked at him, impressed that Scott had actually read such a story.

"If that is what you choose to call me, though you are no Alice, nor are there any white rabbits to chase," the cat purred.

"Well, Mr. Cheshire, if there are no rabbits to chase, then what brings you here?" Virgil asked. This was getting very interesting.

"All nightmares need some glimmer of hope, no?" the Cheshire twitched his tail and his eyes twinkled mischievously.

"So what we're experiencing now is nothing but a bad dream? You mean we could wake up at any point and find ourselves in our own beds at home?" Scott asked in disbelief.

The cat chuckled again. "If only it were that simple."

"Well, Chez, it was nice meeting you, but we must be going," Gordon stated and began walking off.

"Take me and I can show you the way to your brother."

Everyone stopped and stared at the cat, who was now licking his paw and rubbing it over the back of his ears, cleaning himself and acting like what he had said wasn't odd in anyway.

"What do you know of our brother?" Scott whispered.

"That he is alive, but barely. Lost in a hell, wandering alone..."

Scott picked up the cat, making him tense, before relaxing comfortably into his arms. "We're taking him."

Virgil and Gordon stammered and stuttered trying to think of reasons why not to take the cat with them, but in the end only sighed and nodded. They started off for the hospital again, the two boys and Cammy making a loose triangle around Scott as if to protect him and the cat. The Cheshire smiled and purred as Scott scratched it behind its ears, his gold eyes sparkling with mischief.

-------

"Hello? Is anyone here?" a male voice asked. His question echoed off the empty halls of the darkened hospital, which made him shudder at the thought of such solitude.

Finding an elevator during his fruitless search of the first floor, and crossing his fingers, John pressed the button marked with an arrow pointing up. To his relief, the doors opened, and he cautiously walked into the grimy, blood stained car. Hitting the 2nd floor button, John hummed to himself to keep the gloomy atmosphere from getting him down. He was in a hospital. Surely there would be someone here to help him with his wounds and maybe even with some spare clothes on hand. With that thought, he looked down at his uniform.

His sash had been ripped off back at the school, and blood stained most of the rest of the blue uniform. There were many rips in it as well where he had been injured. As the elevator came to a jarring halt on the 2nd floor, he winced as a fresh bolt of pain shot through his body. Grabbing his side, John made his way out of the elevator and to the double doors leading to the main hallway for the floor. He groaned out of frustration as he found the doors locked. Leaning against the door, John yelled for someone to open them. He could have sworn he heard a shuffling noise, but as he continued to call out, it stopped. Beginning to feel very tired from his efforts and from his wounds, John decided to head back to the elevator and try the next floor.

The 3rd floor offered the same barrier as the 2nd, and John began to feel hopelessness creep in. He sat down in a chair in the elevator lobby to rest, his body starting to throb with pain, dulling his senses and creating a ringing in his ears. As he sat there, he allowed himself to drift off to sleep. That's when he thought he heard something coming from upstairs.

'That's impossible... There's only three floors in this hospital...' he thought as the ringing in his ears died down, allowing him to hear the sounds of things being dropped from above. Taking a couple of deep breaths, John got himself up and went back to the elevator. He looked at the button panel, and did a double take. There, above the 3rd floor button was a button for the 4th floor. It was glowing in a reddish light that almost seemed to be pulsing. Thinking he had nothing to lose, John pressed the button.

The elevator made a nerve shattering screech and lurched twice, sending John into a panic, before it started moving up again. Closing his eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths to calm down from the fright, John didn't notice the elevator slowly changing in décor, getting darker and older looking, as it got to the fourth floor. When the car finally stopped, John nearly ran out, glad the ride was finally over. He instantly regretted it as the wound on his side and on one of his legs sent him to the floor, clutching them in pain. He laughed quietly at himself for being such an idiot and took the time to take a short nap and rest up while he was lying on the floor. A loud crash woke him from his much needed rest, and knowing he needed medical attention, he got himself up, groaning in pain as he struggled to a standing position.

Looking around, John noticed it was quickly getting very dark. Feeling his pockets for the small flashlight, he found his pockets empty. He then remember he had dropped it when it stopped working somewhere back at the school. Starting to feel helpless again, John looked around the room. It wasn't until he glanced back at the vending machines again that he noticed a small red marquee on a dispensable camera vending machine with the message, "Pictures last longer than you will. Take them while you can."

Using the pocket knife he kept in his boot, John quickly unlocked the door to the vending machine, and using the last bits of light to find a bag, grabbed as many of the cameras as he could. He opened them all and made sure each was ready for taking pictures. As the darkness finally enveloped him, he took out the first of the cameras and turned on the flash. 'If nothing else, I'll have pictures of some cute nurses,' John thought to himself as he walked back in the direction of the doors. Running into them, he prepared himself, camera and bag in one hand, gun in the other. Taking a deep breath, he opened the doors and pressed the shutter button on the camera. The image the flash illuminated was enough to send chills all through John.

Aged walls covered in splatters of black and red. Metal grid and concrete floors covered in who knows what, and as John listened, there was the sound of shuffling again.

"Hello? Is there anyone here? My name's John and I need medical help," he called out, carefully taking a couple of steps forward. The shuffling stopped briefly as if the person was listening then started up again. John wound the camera and used it again to light the hallway up and walked a few more steps forward. He noticed the shuffling was slowly getting closer. John suddenly felt like a ghost had just passed through him and shuddered. He took a quick look behind him, noticing that the ten or so steps he had taken was enough to hide the door in darkness. Shuddering again, he took a deep breath and was about to take a couple more steps forward when he heard the sound of metal scraping against metal. Taking the echoing of the empty hall into affect, John aimed his gun where he thought the origin of the noise was.

Silence and the echoing of the scraping metal began to get John as he stood there in the middle of the hall. Closing his eyes and mouthing a quick prayer, he clicked the shutter button on the camera to see what was making the noise. The flash illuminated a nurse slumped over and dragging what looked like a fireman's axe coming around a corner near the end of the hall. Getting an odd feeling about the nurse, John used the camera's flash again to light up what was in front of him. The figure stopped as the flash faded and John saw what made him feel uneasy. The nurse's dress was splattered with red and the axe head seemed to be as well. As John took another picture, the nurse looked up at him and hissed. As the flash died this time, John could hear her run towards him. Aiming blindly into the darkness, John fired his handgun in the direction he last saw her. He counted his rounds carefully and after the fifth, he pulled up the camera and took another picture only to find the nurse standing no more than a couple of feet in front of him. John quickly fired a shot point blank and stood there panting as he heard the dull thud of the nurse as she dropped to the floor.

Though the image was brief, John saw enough to know that picture would stay in his mind forever. The nurse's face was a pale yellow, splattered with blood. Her teeth were like metallic fangs that glistened as saliva dripped off them in the light of the flash. Her eyes were a dark red and looked like they were still bleeding, her hair in disarray. There was anger and hunger in that look that almost completely froze John.

Recovering from what he saw, John suddenly remembered what looked like an outline of a door at the end of the hall just past the nurse. Carefully making his way to the door he went in. To his surprise, the room was filled with a red light that illuminated a gurney with broken straps, a bird cage, and a broken window. John walked over to the window, passing the bird cage and accidentally bumping it. There was a flutter of wings from inside the cage that made John jump. Moving in closer to check and make sure the bird was all right, John found nothing but a couple of feathers and some dried blood on the floor of the cage. Thinking it his imagination, John turned back towards the window and took another step forward, the sound of wings fluttering coming from the empty cage again. Doing his best to ignore it, he walked to the window and looked out, sighing and shaking his head. There was nothing but darkness outside the window. No lights or anything to suggest that the building wasn't floating in some weird and twisted dimension. Or dream.

John walked back to the door, carefully skirting the apparently haunted cage, and put his ear to the door. He listened for any sort of movement while losing himself deep in the thought of all this being a bad dream. He was brought suddenly out of his thinking by the sound of glass breaking in the window behind him. Quickly turning, gun at the ready, John made a quick scan of the room to see if anything had come in. After seeing nothing new in the room, John checked the window and noticed that it hadn't changed. Not even one of the loose hanging fangs of glass had fallen. Curling up in the corner nearest the door, John closed his eyes, rocking slowly and holding his head, muttering, "It's all a bad dream. It's not real. It's just a bad dream."

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Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to the Cheshire Cat. Those belong to Louis Carrol, American McGee, and EA Games.

Note: Yes I know it's taken a while for me to get back into righting. Sorry about that. Real life takes priority. With winter swiftly approaching and the death of the season bringing new ideas and twists, I shall try and get a couple more chapters written up and posted. And remember, read and review. The more reviews I get, the more inspired I am to write. - Duette