1.
"Why are you back here?"
Her voice trailed through the fog to his ears, cutting through the dense atmosphere like a blade. James hunched his shoulders against it and started walking faster, nearly running, anything to get away from that harping, accusing voice. His pack swung from one hand; he had the half-formed thought that if he had to, he could swipe at her with it to make her go away.
"You're a coward, you know that? You run away from your problems instead of facing them like a man."
That one hurt, but he wasn't about to let her know that she had gotten to him. He kept walking, hoping she would get left behind or would give up following him, but when she spoke again, she sounded closer, like she'd somehow managed to creep up directly behind him.
"You're not here looking for someone you love again, are you? Who would ever be stupid enough to love someone like you?"
He stopped so abruptly that she collided with his back. Instead of moving away from him, Maria wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed herself up against him, writhing her body against his and letting her hands roam across his front. "I always knew you'd come back for me, James," she panted in his ear, wrapping one of her legs over his hip, sounding and acting exactly like a woman in heat. "I always knew that you really loved me."
James shuddered in disgust; her hands felt like spiders crawling up his chest. He shook her off and turned around, his hands held up in a warding off gesture. "What do you want?" he asked.
Maria turned her lower lip out, pouting like a small child, and crossed her arms across her chest again. "I want you to love me," she told him, like it was the easiest thing in the world and he was just being unreasonable by not indulging her.
"I can't. I won't." Why was that so hard for her to understand?
"Why not?" she demanded, her eyes narrowed and her voice rising again. "You loved Mary, you can love me."
"I can't." He was getting desperate now; the more time he wasted dealing with her, the less time he had to look for Harry.
She glared at him, and in her anger, she bore more resemblance to Mary than she ever had before, although he didn't think she was aware of it. She looked like Mary had near the end, when the pain was too much, when the cancer had transformed her into a monster. "Who is she?" she hissed. "Who is she that you love so much that you can't love me anymore?"
"I'm done with this," James said, suddenly, hopelessly tired of this same circular argument, and turned his back on her. He started to move away, to leave her and her questions and accusations behind, but her hand shot out and latched onto one of the pockets of his jacket.
"Why are you wearing that jacket, James?" she snarled. "If it's really been ten years, why would you wear that exact same jacket?"
He jerked to a halt, held in place by her clawed hand. "What are you talking about?" he asked.
"That jacket," she whispered, leaning up against his back to speak directly into his ear. There was nothing sexy about her motions now—now every movement she made was full of menace and implied violence, and for the first time, James was afraid of her. "Do you remember when you got it?"
"Yes," he answered, frozen in place by a sudden rush of pure, unadulterated terror. Something about the way she was speaking, the way she held on to him… it reminded him of things best left forgotten. He shivered as she ran her tongue up the side of his face; it felt like getting touched with a cold, dead fish.
"Tell me about the day you got that jacket," she commanded, her other hand dancing up his arm before digging into his bicep with sharp, icy fingers.
He shivered again, hating the feel of her touching him, hating having her this close to him, but helpless to disobey. "It… it was the day I left the Army…"
2.
The young woman sat on a bench outside the barrack's office, swinging her legs and humming quietly to herself. Young men and women, both enlisted and officers, trotted back and forth in front of her on the sidewalk, and the woman found herself deliberately ignoring the appraising looks from some of the younger men. She kept her eyes trained on the office's doors, and when a young man with shorn blond hair and a scar on his forehead exited the building, her face broke into a wide smile and she got up and rushed towards him.
"Mary!" the man said, surprised but obviously happy to see her. "What are you doing here?"
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, right there in front of the officers and everybody. She heard a whistle from the sidewalk, followed by a smattering of laughter, but she didn't care. "How did it go?" she asked inquisitively, looking up into the man's green eyes.
James smiled down at her, his arms around her waist. "Honorable discharge. I'm not their property anymore."
She squealed and kissed him again. "That's great news, baby!" she exclaimed. "You're a free man now!"
"Yeah," he said, grinning foolishly. "I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of my life."
"You can start by growing your hair out, covering this," she told him, and brushed her fingers lightly across the scar on his forehead. He recoiled a little at her touch and she frowned up at him for a second before smiling again. "Someday you're going to tell me how you got that scar."
"Maybe someday," he promised.
They walked down the steps arm-in-arm, and sat down on the bench she'd just vacated. "I have something for you," she told him, and reached under the bench for a shopping bag she'd stashed there. She pulled out a carefully wrapped gift and presented it to him with a flourish.
"You just left that bag here when you came to get me?" James asked, taking the box from her.
She shrugged. "It's Fayetteville, not New York City."
"You don't know some of these guys," he informed her seriously, plucking at the ribbon on top of the box with nervous fingers. "The barracks are full of thieves and assholes."
"In that order?" she asked mischievously.
He laughed in spite of himself. "No, I got the order wrong. More assholes than thieves."
"Open your present," she commanded, and he obediently, clumsily ripped off the wrapping paper and opened the box beneath it.
"It's a jacket," she bubbled as he lifted the dark green garment from the box, speechless. "I know it looks kind of, you know, military, but sometimes guys have a hard time adjusting to civvie life, and I thought if you still looked a little bit like an Army guy, it might be easier…" her voice trailed off as she realized he was staring at her. "You like it, right?" she asked, doubt creeping into her voice.
He pulled her up against him, crushing the crisp jacket between them, and kissed her. "It's great," he said when she pulled away, panting and flushed. "I'll wear it all the time."
"Good," she said, satisfied, and put her head on his shoulder.
They sat together on the bench for a few minutes, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, watching the world move on around them. James kept the jacket on his lap, fingering the patches on its shoulders and breast pocket.
"Come with me," he said abruptly, and Mary lifted her head off his shoulder to look up at him.
"What?"
"Come with me," he repeated, suddenly full of determination. "Come with me away from here. Let's go somewhere new, somewhere far away, and start a new life together."
She smiled, and he realized that she thought he was kidding. "How far away are we going to go?" she asked, playing along.
"As far away as it takes. Somewhere up north, where it gets cold in the winter." He hugged her against him. "Come with me."
"Are you serious, James?" she asked, her eyes round and sparkling. "Do you really want me to come with you?"
"More than I've ever wanted anything else."
"That sounds a little like a marriage proposal," she teased.
"Maybe it is."
"What?" She sat back then, pulling away from him, one hand still on his chest. She examined his face closely, searching for a trick, waiting for him to smile and say he was joking. He met her gaze, suddenly more serious than he'd been in a long time.
"Come with me," he repeated, his voice solemn, his eyes filled with an unfathomable longing.
3.
"And?" Maria hissed in his ear, her voice sounding like dry, dead autumn leaves getting blown across a deserted parking lot. Her hand still dug into his upper arm, gripping him with a surprising, hideous strength, like she was trying to make her fingers meet through his flesh. She had let go of his pocket with her other hand, and had it resting on his hip, where it made his skin burn with cold even through his jeans.
"And she said yes," he told her miserably. "We… we got married at the courthouse three days later, then got in my car and didn't stop driving until we were in Silent Hill."
"And then what happened?"
"You know what happened," he retorted, feeling a little spark of anger deep in his chest. "You think you're her, you know exactly what happened."
"Tell me." She suddenly latched on to his hip, and he gasped as her fingers ripped through tough denim like blades and rested on his bare skin. The chill from them permeated his entire body, making him feel light-headed and helpless.
"Six months later she got sick," he spat out. "Three years after that she was dead."
"She was dead because you killed her," Maria breathed, and maybe he was imagining it, but she almost sounded like she was getting excited again, like the thought of violence and death flicked a switch inside her and let things bubble to the surface. "She was dead because of you, because you held a pillow over her face until her breath… just… stopped." Her hand snaked around to his belt buckle and hovered there, lightly brushing the skin of his stomach like dry, frost-covered twigs. She eased her grip on his arm and let that hand travel towards his face; he cringed away from her touch as she brushed his hair back behind his ear and then massaged the back of his neck with stony, freezing fingers.
"And then you came back here to find her, didn't you?" she purred, and he wasn't imagining it, she really was excited by all this. "You came all the way here to find the woman… you… murdered." Her hand clamped down on the back of his neck, making the tendons creak and the bones grind against each other. The tips of her fingers tore into the sides of his neck, and he felt some welcome, blessed heat as thin rivulets of blood started trickling down his skin.
"And when you couldn't find her, you decided to die yourself, didn't you? Drove your car into the lake, let it sink to the bottom." Her hand suddenly clenched on his stomach, and he felt the skin break underneath it. It felt like she was trying to claw her way straight through to his spine. "And you should have been back here after that, but you weren't, were you? You… got… away."
You got away. The same thing the monster, the pyramid thing in his dreams, had told him. "No," he moaned, forcing the word past his frozen vocal cords.
"Yes," she whispered, and he winced as her fingers dug deeper into his gut, horrified that they were slowly working their way south. "You got away. How did you do it, James? How did you escape?"
"I didn't… never got away…"
"You did!" she snapped, and he cried out at the sudden, bright flash of pain as she slashed deeper into his neck. Her hand instantly relaxed, and she started stroking the sides of his neck in a facsimile of compassion. "It's okay, it's okay," she soothed, her other hand creeping underneath his belt buckle, its passage eased by his blood smeared across it. "It's okay, you're here now, you can stay with me, love me… you're back where you belong."
He closed his eyes then, feeling helpless, knowing it was futile to try and fight the monsters here, knowing that they would always have the upper hand. For just a moment, he leaned back into her, and she made a noise that was probably supposed to be a purr but sounded more like something dying. She ran her frigid, dead tongue across his cheek and moved the hand on his neck to his chest, directly over his pounding heart, and caressed there in anticipation. His own hands, clenched into fists this whole time, went slack, and his pack fell to the ground.
Without warning, jarred by the sudden drop, the radio in his pack flared to life, and static blared out at them. Cutting through the static, his voice strident and loud, James heard Harry say "James!" before the radio cut off as abruptly as it had turned on.
James's eyes flew open, and it all came rushing back to him. Harry, Heather, their house, their lives together, the only real family he'd ever known… in the blaze of color that ran through his mind in half a heartbeat, he knew.
"No!" he shouted, and his muscles broke free of their strange paralysis with an enormous surge of adrenaline. He yanked himself away from her, leaving shreds of his jeans and jacket behind, and stumbled forward. Nearly falling over his pack, he awkwardly turned to face her, fully expecting to see her transformed into a monster, something with slathering teeth and dripping fangs, ready to tear him to pieces.
But it was only Maria standing before him, her eyes empty and hopelessly sad. He fumbled for the long wrench that was sticking out of his pack and brandished it at her, but she stayed where she was, making no move towards him.
"No," he told her, not shouting any longer but still breathing heavily as adrenaline coursed through his veins. "No, I don't belong here. I have a home now, a life outside of this place. I don't belong here, and I don't belong to you."
She looked up at him, watching him from under her long bangs, and a single tear slipped from her eye. Perhaps it was the uncertain light, perhaps it was her heavy mascara, but the tear looked black, like a tiny piece of space torn from the sky, as it slid down her cheek.
Turning her back on him, she started to walk away into the fog. As the grey shadows swirled around her, pulling her into their grasp, she looked back over her shoulder and spoke to him one last time.
