As the room around me explodes, I curse long and hard into the darkness. Not because I get rocked out of my chair, nearly eviscerating myself with my own katana as I bruise my ass hitting the ground, but because naturally the one conversation I've had since waking up in the fog world to make one iota of sense has been interrupted.
Seriously. Fuck you, Silent Hill.
The siren grows in volume as glass shatters and metal squeals all around me, but all I can think of is that I finally found an ally, someone who actually was trying to help me all this time, and I lost him. For just a few precious moments I could imagine that I wasn't alone in this. But is Mordecai going to be here when the wailing stops and the floor settles down?
No, of course not.
The most damnable part of it is that he was right. The whole time. Sure, he may have given me confusing answers. Sure he may have been roundabout, told me things from a certain point of view, and even blatantly lied to me on a couple of things, but he was still right.
This place isn't real, and it's been showing me things, parts of myself. The monsters are strange and twisted, but I can feel some sort of connection with them. They're almost familiar in a way, even if I can't say exactly how. The school, on the other hand, is far easier to place. Of course I would end up at a school considering I've just left one and I'm heading to another. The police station represents my inherent distrust of authority, of course, and the asylum . . . well, let's just say that other people aren't the only ones who think I might be a little crazy.
And Mordecai was definitely right about my suffering. I can feel it now. No longer nebulous, it's hard and it's sharp and it hurts. Casting back in my mind it seems like it started coming into focus right after I watched the DVD of Quinn. Ever since then it's been building up, I just haven't really had the time to stop and quantify it yet. But even though I know it's there without a doubt, I still can't quite understand where it's coming from. It's still sourceless, directionless, sitting in my chest and waiting for me to get a fucking clue already.
The shaking finally stops, and I pull myself up to my knees. My katana scrapes noisily across the metal floor, but the sound doesn't end when I stop moving the weapon.
Did I think before that I was going to be alone on the other side of the veil?
I was wrong.
I can hear them. I can hear the tap tap scrape of a runner nearby. I hear the scrabbling claw clicks of demon squirrels in the distance. The snapping metal beaks of harpies, the whispering metal fingers of razors. There's even the steady thud, thud, thud of a bruiser echoing off the walls.
With trembling fingers, I reach up and snap off my flashlight. The noises seem to be coming mostly from my left, so I slowly begin to crawl to the right. After only a few feet, my forearm is already starting to ache from holding the katana blade up from the ground, but I don't dare set it down. My mind is screaming at me just to get up and run. I ignore it and keep going until I finally butt up against a wall.
tap tap scrape tap tap scrape
Oh shit shit shit. Please just be my imagination. Please don't say the runner followed me. I don't want to die in the dark. Please, please.
Strangely, the smacking mumbling noise of the thing's vertical mouth sounds even more disgusting when I can't actually see the moist lips writhing around. It's like it's trying to sense my presence by tasting the air for the slightest trace, but this turns out to not be the case at all.
The bottom drops out of my stomach when I see a thin, ragged line of light appear barely a yard from my position. I look up at the source, and as I watch in stunned horror, the runner's mouth opens up, leaving trails of gooey saliva across the car headlight mounted there. It swings its head back and forth until finally the beam is pointed directly at me, and I realize that the orifice is less a mouth and more an eye, a horrid eye that is pointing me out to every creature occupying the room.
As noisy as the room had been before, it was nothing compared to this. My eardrums feel like they are going to pop as a thousand screams of anger, hatred, and pure, dark evil fills the air, all of them directed at me. Red eyes turn my way and begin to lurch back and forth as the monsters they are attached to claw, scrabble, and tap tap scrape my way, intent on nothing else but burying me under their bulk and tearing me to pieces.
I crouch frozen for almost a second too long. As I launch myself to the right and stagger to my feet, I can hear the runner's blade clang noisily against the metal wall. Throwing caution completely to the wind, I fall into an all-out run, one hand against the wall to keep myself going in a straight line. It doesn't matter how much noise I make now. There's no way they can hear me over their own cacophony. But I have to get away from that damn light!
Naturally it can't be that easy, and just a short way ahead of me I can see the squiggling line of another runner's eye opening to fix directly on me. Without stopping to even think about what I'm doing, I move away from the wall, grasp the katana firmly in both hands, and swing the blade in a wide arc. The thin neck neatly bisects, sending the runner's head tumbling end over end. It hits the ground and bounces once, shattering the headlight and restoring the darkness around me.
I have to get out of here. More dots of yellow-white light are starting to appear, and the stampede is ongoing behind me as the monsters search tirelessly for me. I have to-
"UNF!"
Shit! Fuck!
I think I might have broken my nose. Or my glasses. Or both. The other wall came out of nowhere. Stupid of me to keep running without checking the area in front of me, but what am I supposed to do under the circumstances?
Whatever, self-recriminations can wait until later. I put my free hand out and start feeling along the wall, trying to get a sense of how it fits in relation with the wall I left just a few moments ago. I stop short when I find that the wall isn't uniform, but it doesn't feel like the normal plating that I'm used to. The cleft and grooves feel familiar somehow. If I only had a little time, I could figure it out.
One tap tap scrape later and I'm lit up from behind, both hurting and helping my cause immeasurably. My hand is resting on a door frame, but quickly moves to the doorknob in frantic terror as the screams and bellows of Silent Hill's denizens rise up behind me like a tidal wave once again.
The door stubbornly refuses to open. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha hahahahahahahaha!
"Open open open open OPEN OPEN OPEN!" I scream, suppressing the mad laughter welling in my throat. Sweat flies from my face and trickles down my back as I slam my shoulder into the door, forcing it to move bit by creaking bit while rust flies up into the air around me.
Just as I can feel the runner's blade swinging behind me, just as I can smell the carrion breath of the harpies, the door swings wide and I tumble through, unprepared. My shoulder brakes hard against a railing just a few feet away, which I clamp onto as I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing myself for the onslaught to come.
An enormous amount of nothing starts to happen. It takes me a few moments to realize that I can't even hear the disgusting sounds of my pursuers anymore. I slowly open one eye, flip on my flashlight, and look around to find that I am completely alone and that the door I just passed through has - like so much else lately - mysteriously ceased to exist.
In its place is a section of wall covered in greyish padding, like that found in an insane asylum. Or my old bedroom. Except in this case, it looks like the padding has been shredded and then abandoned to the elements. I see patches of green mold - or, at least, what I hope is merely mold - covering large swaths of what padding is still left intact. Swinging the beam of my flashlight around, I find that I am standing on a catwalk running along the wall. The walk is made up of interlocking metal grates and lined by a railing that looks as if it is made of window bars.
I lean slightly over the side to see nothing but more catwalks above, below, and stretching off into the distance. It's like some quasi-neo-gothic version of Escher's Labyrinth. Or maybe Donkey Kong. Metal ladders interconnect the walks, but thankfully I can see no monsters wandering around or giant apes trying to throw barrels at me.
Except for the wall sitting next to me, I have no real point of reference to work from. I can't just stay here, however. That won't get me anywhere. I need to pick a direction. And after several seconds of careful deliberation . . . I choose down.
The catwalk clanks against itself as I clomp across it. As I walk, I carefully sheathe my katana. With things changing so often and without warning, it seems a little foolish to think I can put away any of my weapons even with a current total absence of monsters, but I'm going to need both hands free to use the ladders anyway. And with things changing so fast there's little guarantee that I'd be able to use it in time even if I had it out and in hand.
Even more than before, I seem to be at the mercy of my environment. Not that it actually has any.
The ruined padding on the wall sits on my left as I look for the first available way down. If I'd had any lingering doubts that the "hospital" I had been dragged to was actually an insane asylum, they're completely gone now. Wafting over to me from the exposed cushioning, I can smell vague hints of the rot and decay, a combination of sweat, mold, blood, urine, and several other, much less pleasant substances.
An image comes unbidden to my mind, a snapshot of my own room degraded into a nightmare like this. The middle of my bed sunk in, the hole black and wet. Green rot extending from the empty closet. The windows cracked and broken, the bars made intact but rusted. And me, sitting in the center, a filthy straitjacket wrapped around my emaciated frame.
I shake my head to clear it. This place might finally be getting to me. Maybe it's these specific surroundings. I don't want them to remind me of home. My room was somewhere I could hide from the world, where I could be safe. This is a perversion of that. And perhaps a reminder that sometimes, just sometimes . . . I would stay in my room to protect the rest of the world from me.
Hey look, a ladder. Let's see where it goes.
I check the frame to make sure everything's securely attached before I entrust my life to it. I haven't made it this far just to get flung out into space because Silent Hill's safety inspector didn't properly check all the screws. Once I'm reasonably sure that my weight will be bearable, I spin around and set my feet to the rungs. The trip down is easy, and I find myself on yet another catwalk, similar to the first except for its perpendicular positioning and the lack of a wall on one side.
For what feels like an hour, perhaps two, I descend through the maze catwalk by catwalk, ladder by ladder. No strange twists reveal themselves, no slavering beasts appear, and nothing at all seems to change as my journey continues. Though I expected them to, my muscles suffer no fatigue from all the exercise. It is almost as if I'm locked in a sort of cyclical stasis, forever moving across the same few walks over and over again, time-jumping back to the beginning each time with complete memory of my previous trips. It would almost be annoying if it weren't for my complete and total apathy toward the situation.
A horrid realization steals over me as I set foot on another set of grates. This is my life now. This. An endless, mindless repetition simply because I don't know what else to do. And just like my current situation, I'm not exactly sure how long the overall situation has been this way.
Since the accident? Yes no maybe. Longer?
. . . perhaps.
By the time my family moved to Lawndale, I was pretty set in my ways. I hated idiots, I liked books, and honestly all that hasn't changed much. But there were still things that started popping up to challenge the rigid rulesets that I had become all too comfortable with. I had thought I would never have any friends, let alone a significant other of any kind. I had thought that there were absolute measures of right and wrong and that - in my arrogance - I was the sole arbiter of what those measures were. I had thought my parents were negligent and oblivious while my sister would never be anything more than a bratty debutante.
But after I learned all of these were flawed premises at best and outright fallacies at worst, I began to dig myself into a new hole, setting these new ideals as the status quo. My perceptions might have changed, but my fundamental nature remained the same. Change is bad. Same is good. Looking back over my daily ritual for the past several months, I can see no variations. Always the same old, same old.
This raises a big, burning question, however. If I'm such a slut for being in a rut, why would I be so eager to leave all of that for a new city, a new school, and an uncertain future? v Change.
Something changed in Lawndale. Something big. I can't quite wrap my head around it, but even with my wake-coffee-paper-computer-lunch-TV-dinner-read-bed routine, I simply didn't have the stability I should have had anymore. The huge black hole in the center of my being, sucking everything into it, the thing whose edges are only just starting to become clear to me. The accident but not the accident.
And whatever it was, it was enough to get even sedentary ol' me to pick herself up and get the hell outta Dodge. It made me leave my friends, my family, my home, and everything I had become familiar with.
I don't know about you, little voice, but that sure as hell scares the shit out of me.
Something's different. I look around and see that the darkness around me has a slightly different flavor to it than before. Lighter, oranger. I orient myself on the source of this change and find that it's coming from the other end of the walk I'm currently on. Pulling out my pistol and giving the clip a quick check, I proceed forward cautiously and hope I'm ready for yet another surprise.
The first surprise is a candle sitting on a candlestick welded to the railing on my right. A few yards past it, I can see another situated on the left railing. These are the source of the glow, and they gradually become closer together as I was between them. Since it's no longer needed at the moment, I switch off my flashlight and continue on until I find myself standing before another rotted padded wall on the opposite side of the room from where I began. The catwalk I'm on continues on into this wall through a tunnel lit by more candles hung like torches in a medieval castle.
I walk into the mouth of the padded cave without hesitation. It's cramped and claustrophobic compared to the openness of the catwalks outside, but still wide enough for three or four people to walk through abreast. And strangely enough, even with everything being relatively more cozy here, I'm no longer reminded of my old room. There's a different quality to the atmosphere here, something subtle enough that I can't put my finger on it.
The only way I can think to put it is that this is a cell, but it's not my cell.
Padded walls and ceiling over metal grated floor stretches on for several minutes before the first new feature appears. I come across a small alcove that appears to have been forcibly dug out of the wall, revealing that behind the padding is solid rock. A strange altar sits in this alcove, carved directly out of the rock itself and festooned with two candles on either edge. I recognize the candelabras as the ones that were on the altar in the curio shop back in the fog world, and it's a bit of a shock to see them here.
There are no helpful items or keys sitting on this altar, however. The only other feature besides the candles is a set of two indentations in the stone, two half circles with their flat faces turned toward each other. It looks like something is supposed to be placed in them, either the bases of two statuettes or perhaps two emblems. Some kind of ridiculous items, anyway. I search the immediate area for a few minutes, but I don't find anything of the kind sitting around. I know I don't have anything on me that would fit either, and there doesn't seem to be any doors or anything nearby to open with a puzzle, so I simply shrug my shoulders and decide to move on.
More tunnel passes by. I can feel sweat bead on the back of my neck and start to slide down the collar of my jacket as the air around me begins to press down even more oppressively than usual for the otherworld. I'm getting the feeling that not only is this not my cell, it's someplace I'm not supposed to be at all. But I continue pushing forward, one step at a time. I'm nearing my goal, I can sense it, and I'm not going to let any obstacle stand in my way. Whatever it is I'm walking into, I'm-
It's David.
I stop immediately, hoping against hope that he doesn't hear the sudden squelch that the toe of my forward boot makes on the floor. The corridor opens out into a room around twenty yards ahead, and he is crouched down in the middle of the floor, his back turned to me. To either side of him, I can see spindly limbs sprawled out, one of them capped by an ivory white peg, the other consisting almost entirely of a thin metal blade. A pool of black ichor has spread around his feet from the runner's corpse, and it looks like he's holding something, his head bobbing up and down jerkily.
My gut begins to churn when I realize exactly what he's doing. When I think back to the slab of meat he offered me and understand with terribly clarity exactly where he'd gotten it. When I replay the memory of the first time I saw him, brutally tenderizing his next meal at the apartments.
I frantically begin to rate my chances of quietly slipping back to the labyrinth when his head jerks up and around. It's almost as if he can sense my presence, and indeed he turns around, oh God, he turns around and looks directly back at me. A wide grin spreads across his face as he reaches up to wipe away the juices running down his chin. His teeth are stained brown from his grisly supper, his eyes wild with no human emotion I can recognize.
"Melody!" he calls out to me, throwing his arms wide. In one hand he holds a runner bone, a bit of flesh still clinging to one end and dripping blood on the concrete floor. His tone is one of seeing a past acquaintance for the first time in years at a picnic social. "'Bout time you showed up!"
Run. I can still run. I can turn around and leave him behind. I'm no Jane, but I'm no slouch. Surely I can get away.
I can't get away. There is no other way. The maze doesn't lead anywhere but here. Silent Hill isn't going to let me off the hook that easily. If I go back, I'll just find a dead end, or the maze will be filled with monsters, or I'll just end up right back here again just as if I were running along a madman's Moebius strip.
You're finally starting to learn.
"Well don't just stand there, come on in!" David calls out, the epitome of neighborly manners. "Plenty to eat, plenty of room! And I think we need to continue our little conversation from earlier, now don't we?"
Words balk in my throat. The only sound I can make is a small wheezing as air tries to force itself through the passage. My teeth clench against each other, and I force myself to start putting one foot in front of the other again. This is my only path, so I have to walk it. I keep my pistol out and pointed directly at David's chest, however. I'm limited in my options, not parboiled stupid.
Of course, there still runs that nagging question in the back of my head about whether or not I could actually shoot him if I had to. Unfortunately, this time I might have to find out.
He ignores the gun completely as I step through the threshold. Once inside, I can see that though the floor is concrete, the walls continue their rotted, padded motif. Pipes have been added to the arrangement, however, sprouting out here and there at random and occasionally spitting out jets of steam that make the already oppressive atmosphere even worse. The decently large area is lit by more candles lining the walls, with some of them sitting in sconces bolted to the pipes that run from ceiling to floor like small metal pillars. If I had to sum up the whole thing in three words, they would be "insane factory jungle".
On the far side of the room, I see the corridor continues for just a short way before ending at a ladder that ascends to . . . somewhere. Wherever I need to be. Away from here. That's all that matters.
David gnaws a small hunk of meat off the bone in his hand and chews it thoughtfully for a second. "You," he says, waggling his finger at me, "led me on one merry little chase earlier, Mel. You're a clever little thing, that's for damn sure. I don't think I've ever met one as clever as you."
My propensity for backtalk finally loosens my tongue. "Being chased by a raving psychopath is pretty good incentive for quick getaway," I tell him with a snarl. My voice only cracks a little with fear.
"Oh!" he cries, putting his free hand over his heart. "Oh, dear! Is that what you think I am? Some kind of lunatic?" His features darken, and for a second I see the quiet, calm David that I saw back in the hospital. I see that icy core before it's replaced by anger, affront. "I help you out, I keep trying to help you out, no matter how bad you treat me, and you gotta go and call me a psychopath! Dammit, Mel!"
He tosses the bone away and throws his arms up in the air. "Look around you! Look at where we are! Look at what's going on! I don't know if you've noticed, but this is some pretty serious shit!" he says. "I'm not crazy! The world has gone crazy! And I'm just trying to make some sort of sense out of it again! And what are you doing? Running around with a bunch of damn guns strapped to every part of you! Carrying a sword! Your clothes all torn to shreds! Who's the fucking nut here, Melody? 'Cause it sure ain't looking like it's me!"
I stare at him, jaw literally hanging open. I shouldn't have expected any different, but he apparently doesn't see anything wrong with the disgusting glop clinging to his face and hands from the monster he was eating. His clothes aren't torn up, true, but there is a filthy handprint from where he put his hand on his chest earlier, and from the looks of his shoes and pants cuffs, whatever he's been walking through lately wasn't exactly clean.
But I don't mention any of this, because it's obvious he won't listen. He's beyond any sort of reason. So what do I do?
"But look, sorry, I'm not wanting to attack you here or anything," he says, his mercurial mood switching to calm and conversational again. "I'm just pointing out what's in front of me. But hey, I'm willing to forgive and forget if you are. Just put down the gun, come over here, and let's talk about putting the world right again, okay?"
"You really don't know where we are?" I ask.
His eyes turn dangerous. His stance becomes tense. "What do you mean?" he asks flatly.
Apparently what I'm going to do is poke the bear. Good job, Daria.
"I mean," I tell him, soldiering forward, "that this isn't the real world. The real world is going on just fine without us, and this one doesn't need or want 'saving'. In fact, I'm pretty sure it reacts pretty violently to people trying to do so. What we've got to do, David, if there even is a 'we' here, is get out of this place as quickly as possible. Mordecai-"
"MORDECAI?" he suddenly explodes, and it occurs to me belatedly just how much of a mistake it was to bring that name into the discussion. "Mordecai?" he repeats, spitting it through his teeth. "That asshole? Don't tell me you've been talking to him!"
Well, shit. "Yes, I have," I say simply. "He's told me a little bit about this place, and-"
"Oh, sure, of course he has," David scoffs. "Yeah, he came up to me with his bullshit a while back, too. Tried to tell me a bunch of garbage about his religion or something. Buncha bullshit. He couldn't even remember if his god was a he or a she half the time! Mordecai doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Some strange shit has gone down, but this is still planet Earth, dammit, and we've gotta do something about it.
"But I can't do it alone! I need your help, Mel!" He reaches out to me beseechingly, his eyes pleading for me to understand. "We can figure out what happened here and put it right. We can rebuild the world, shape everything the way it ought to be. We can be the saviors, Melody! We can be the gods, and our children will be pharaohs! An entire world just for us!"
"No."
He blinks rapidly, his hands still outstretched. "What?"
"I said no, David." I somehow manage to infuse my voice with some authority that I don't really feel. I can't stand here and listen to him babble. I need to go, I need to find Quinn. "I need you to step aside and let me pass."
"Let you . . . let you . . . " he repeats almost as if he's tasting the words, as if they're completely unfamiliar to him. His face goes slack and his arms drop back to his sides. He looks at a point somewhere beyond me, his eyes unfocused. "You're just like the others," he says distantly. "I thought you might be different. But it's always the same. This is why I always try to be that guy at first. Everybody likes that guy. But when I talk to you like you're a real human being, this is what happens. Every time. You're one of them."
He looks at the gun as if he's seeing it for the first time. "So, are you gonna shoot me?" he asks. "Is that what this is?"
"I don't want to-" I start, but my chest is starting to tighten again.
That cold, calculating look is stealing over him once more, and this time it looks like it's here to stay. His eyes lock onto me with hatred, but it's not a burning, consuming hate like before. It's something reptilian and cold. It's the edge of a razor blade, pointed directly at me.
"And you won't," he says with absolute certainty. "You didn't shoot me before. You won't now. You don't have it in you. I've been shot at before. You don't even have half of what they had. You don't have the guts. You're not like me. You're not a killer."
He takes a step forward, and it requires all of my self-control not to piss my jeans. My hands feel like all of the nerves have been stripped out of them. Even though I can clearly see everything below my wrists shaking like crazy, I simply can't feel it. My fingers are numb blocks of wood on the ends of my arms. He takes another step. And another. Just a few more and he'll be within range to simply snatch my weapon away from me. Turn it against me. Or, perhaps worse, simply fling it in the corner and do something far, far worse.
I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't.
I-
Calm.
-reach down inside myself and grasp a solid core of strength I didn't even know was there. I close my eyes, take in a deep breath, and then open them again.
"You're right," I say, stopping David in his tracks. "I'm not a killer. But I can't have you standing in my way."
"Wha-?" he manages just before I pull my aim down, squeeze the trigger twice, and plant two bullets directly in his upper leg.
He collapses with a scream of surprise and pain, clutching his leg in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood pouring freely from the wounds. He writhes on the floor, grunting and seething through his clenched teeth as I carefully step around him, my gun still aimed at him the entire time just in case. Once I'm on the other side, I head straight for the opposite corridor and the ladder it contains. I get one hand on the first rung when David's strained voice belts out my fake name.
"Melody!" he screams pitifully. "You can't do this to me! You can't just leave me here! Please, Melody, you have to . . . you have to take me with you! Please! There's . . . there's these things down here! They look like the women I . . . they look . . . but they're these things, wrapped up in leather, and they'll find me! I can't walk, Melody! I can't get away! Please, Melody! Please please please, you have to help me! Help meeee!"
For a moment I hesitate. For just a moment I consider going back, helping him bind his wounds, maybe even binding his hands behind him. Then taking him somewhere relatively safe. Maybe even trying to take him with me on my own path.
But then I put my hands and feet to the ladder and start hoisting myself up. I helped Eric how I could. I would have helped David, but it's pretty clear that Mordecai was right. At this point, he's beyond help. Any help I would be able to give, at any rate. Here in Silent Hill, we all have our own monsters. In the end, I think we have to deal with them on our own. David made his own hell. I have to concentrate on fixing mine.
I keep climbing until I can't hear him anymore.
I'm not a killer.
As a great wise man once said, this means something. This is important. But I can't for the life of me understand why yet.
I shot a man. I have to stop for a second and cling desperately to the rungs sticking out of the rotted padding so I can dry heave a few times at the memory of his jeans leg exploding in a small fountain of blood out the back, a hole drilled through flesh underneath denim slowly turning dark like an unfolding flower. I shot him twice, hurt him, caused him grievous physical injury. I've never done that before, to my recollection. I've kicked people before. Slapped a couple. Never anything like this.
But I didn't kill him.
I could have. I could have put the bullets in his chest, in his head. At that distance I couldn't have missed, even with my hands shaking like dry leaves in the wind. I could have collapsed a lung, busted his guts, popped his head like an overripe melon. There are a few more bullets left in the clip. I could have emptied them into him, one at a time. Reloaded. Thrown even more hot lead into his already ravaged body.
But I stopped at merely hobbling him.
My rage could have been satisfied. The terrible rage I felt back in the police station, threatening to consume me, rage at myself directed outward and poured into him like lava spewing out of a volcano and coming to a hissing, steaming rest in the nearby ocean. Where he obviously wanted to satisfy himself in me sexually, I would have satisfied myself in him with hate, anger, spite. Releasing even a fraction of the fear-driven self-loathing would have been cathartic, cleansing.
But I resisted satisfying that urge.
I am not a killer.
It's a big piece of the puzzle. Possibly the biggest. But I still don't have all the other pieces. The edges of the big picture are incomplete, hazy at best. I have the accident, I have Quinn, I have my expedious retreat from Lawndale, I have the fact that I'm not a killer . . . but what does all of that add up to? I'm not just missing pieces here, I'm missing the box the puzzle comes in as well, leaving me with no clue as to what pattern I'm supposed to arrange them in. And what if I've been given pieces but didn't recognize them as being part of the game?
"The Game," she says. Analogies to jigsaw puzzles. Like this is all supposed to be some big fun activity, a sport for all ages. Jesus. I resume my climb, almost imagining that I can actually feel the downward drag of all the equipment I'm hauling for the first time. I already feel like I've been in this vertical tunnel for ages now, no company but my own thoughts. Even little voice seems to have abandoned me for the moment.
With my attention turned outward again, however, I begin to notice small changes in my surroundings. The moldy padding and cracked concrete slowly give way to the depressing familiarity of rusted metal and exposed machinery. Slowly I drift up out of what I assume was David's otherworld and back into the confines of my own. Welcome back to your personal hell, Daria Morgendorffer. We haven't missed you.
The change of scenery is accompanied by a disappearance of the candles jammed into the walls. Darkness presses back around me, forcing me to stop and turn my flashlight back on just to make sure I'm not sticking my foot on a broken run or my hand on something even less pleasant.
Just as I'm starting to wonder to myself whether or not I should start pointlessly wondering in circles about my situation some more, I reach up to grab at nothing and feel the quality of the air around me change. Pointing my light upward reveals a ceiling a few yards above me, and in between there seems that my current confined space opens out into a larger area.
The short version is that I've found a new room.
After crawling out of the hole in this new room's floor, I turn to flop painfully over on my backpack and all of its contents. I don't really care at the moment what's digging into my back or how much permanent nerve damage it may be causing. I don't give a shit if a thousand mecha-harpies are waiting for me in the surrounding darkness. I'm tired. Minor discomfort and savage monstrosities can just piss off for a minute.
Once I feel up to it, I pick myself back up and take a look at my, frankly, rather boring surroundings. Besides the hole in the floor and the door in one wall, it's more of the same bland metal plating and chain link grating. To think I once thought of this decor as creepy. Hell, at this point I'm considering doing up my new apartment like this once I'm finally in Boston. It's kind of homey.
Maybe that's just the ongoing and ever-growing insanity talking.
Maybe I should just concentrate on getting through the door. Which I decide really is for the best. Fortunately the knob twists easily and I step through into the secret room off the holding cells in the police station.
Okaaaaaay.
The room is not how I left it at all. Instead, it's more or less how I found it in the first place. The small table behind the chair has a variety of useful items sitting atop it. The TV and DVD player are both sitting on their little cart, completely intact. The bare bulb shines firmly from its place hanging from the ceiling. If it weren't for the fact that I could turn around and see for certain that the holding cells are not behind me, I would think that I was somehow transported back in time.
But this . . . honestly, this works. It's like another little piece falling into place, another bread crumb along the trail that I've been following ever since I got here. I step into the room and run my fingers along the tops of the items on the table, taking quick stock before I settle down in the chair and swing my backpack around to my front.
The DVD player is just as musty and web-ridden as before, but it also just as easily takes the DVD that I've fished out of my pack. Back in the original secret room, I had decided to keep the disk with me on what had seemed like a whim, but now I know it was for this very moment. And it turns out that I've gotten so used to things not making sense around here that the fact that they are following some kind of plan is disturbing the shit out of me.
The television screen lights up to show the simple menu of PLAY and CHAPTERS. Last time PLAY didn't work, but I'm feeling lucky this time. For a certain value of "lucky". I press the enter button on the remote and watch as the screen jumps, fades out, and then fades in to an image of me on my bed, reading.
Pinpricks and cold shivers arc across my skin. Before the first scene I had been treated to had been one of me getting into the SUV out in front of the house. It would have been frightening enough but at least reasonable to think that someone might have been hiding in the bushes somewhere with a camera, filming me where I couldn't see them. But this . . . there's just no way. Not unless Claude Rains had been crouching down in the middle of my room with an invisible camcorder placed against his unseen eye.
Several seconds worth of nothing notable pass by. The me on the screen turns a page and I have to wonder if this is going to be my torment for whatever wrong I might have committed, to watch every single boring second of my life for an eternity.
I'm saved from this ignominious fate by Quinn's voice.
"Daaaaah-riaaaaa!"
The view swings over to the bedroom door where Quinn is leaning in, long red hair swinging freely as her head bobs around with that nervous bird energy she never seems to lack in large quantities. I can imagine the look on my own face at this point, a sour frown at the intrusion tempered by a desire to get along with my sister in at least some small capacity.
"Can I get a ride to the mall before it closes?" she asks.
"Why don't you drive yourself?" I ask from off-camera. "Surely it would be preferable to you driving me crazy while I chauffeured you at twenty under the speed limit."
She crosses her arms and does her best huff. "I sooooo would, but I'm still grounded for a couple of days, remember? Because of the thing? With the thing?"
"Right," I say with sigh of vague remembrance. "The Thingpocalypse. Fine. But you owe me."
"Big time!" she tells me with her exuberant assurance, a promise generally worth however long she bothers to remember having made. NASA scientists have estimated the longest shelf life of those memories being anywhere from ten to fifteen seconds.
Still, I had felt at the time that getting out of the house might actually do me some good. Not to mention getting behind the wheel again. I was still a bit shaky after the accident while heading up to the Cove to see Tom. Not the greatest driver in the first place, I had become even more reticent and painfully hyperaware of even the slightest dangers around me. Every stray piece of road trash was a flat waiting to happen, every pedestrian no matter how close or far the potential victim of vehicular manslaughter. I-
. . . I remember.
Oh God. Oh shit. I remember. And yet even as the memories begin to flood back into me like an acidic wash, somehow burning and freezing me at the same time, I don't stop the movie. I watch in horrid fascination as the events unfold, unable to reach out and silence the set, unable to quiet the player. I have to see. I have to hear.
I have to keep remembering.
This was nearly two months after the ill-fated trip to the Cove. I had just graduated and was planning on sitting back and resting on my laurels for a little while before I started the initial preparations for my move to Boston. Since the graduation took place in early April, I felt I could take that luxury, and I have to admit that the fact that I got to laze around while Quinn still had another month and a half of school to go before summer was sort of a mean-spirited bonus.
To be fair, she got her revenge. Asking me for rides all the time while she was grounded from using the car was part of it. I couldn't refuse, after all, since unless I wanted to actually get my butt in gear and start getting ready to go, I didn't have anything more important to do. My sister could be a tricky little thing when she put her mind to it.
The view swings back around and I'm shown grudgingly getting up from the bed and schlepping over to sit down and put on my boots. Quinn had disappeared by this time, undoubtedly to make whatever last second preparations she felt necessary before being seen in public. After my own tortuously complicated lace-tying ritual, I clumped out of the room and down the steps to wander through the living room and into the kitchen to grab the keys to the SUV.
My hand and Mom's came up at the same time, unintentionally blocking each other from their target. The same target, as it turns out.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Daria," Mom said as she shifted the cellphone in the crook of her shoulder to a more comfortable position. "I didn't see you there! Are you going out tonight?"
"The Princess of Pedestria requested my limo services for the evening," I explained. "But hey, if you need the keys more than I do . . . "
The hopeful tone in my voice must have gotten drowned out by whoever was on the other end of the phone call, because Mom just shook her head with a smile and a dismissive wave of her hand. "Oh, no, Daria, it's quite all right! Your father and I were just going down to the store to pick up a few things. You take the SUV and we'll take the car. Just remember to lock up if you leave after we do!"
"Oh," I said simply, disappointed. "Swell." My plan of staying home had been obliterated with one fell swoop of politeness. I always knew that crap was a bad idea.
Moments later, Quinn and Dad appeared at the threshold at almost the exact same time, almost as if they'd planned it. "We ready to go, honey?" Dad asked as Quinn whined, "Daaaaah-ria, we're going to miss the Eight O'Clock Madness Sale!"
"All set, Jakey," said Mom as she picked the car's keys from the pegboard and started to head out.
It was then that I made the decision and asked the question that ruined everything forever.
"Hey . . . why don't we all go together?"
I don't know what I was thinking. Which is a lie. I know exactly what I was thinking. There I was, Daria, that loner chick, the outsider even amongst members of her own family. The girl all grown up and getting ready to head out into the big wide world on her own. But for once, despite my earlier attitude, I didn't want to be on my own. In this last little while before I left everything behind . . . I wanted us to be a family, full and whole and together and happy.
Was that so wrong? Was that such a terrible thing to hope for that I deserved what happened next? That any of us deserved it?
In the year previous, I had been making some connection with Dad. Mom and I actually talked about important things from time to time. Even Quinn and I had been getting along more often than not, our insults and barbs lacking any real bite and feeling more like actual friendly interplay. Surely everything that had been happening had been leading up to this point, allowing us to part ways afterward on good terms.
I want to claw at the screen again, not in a vain attempt to get inside and save Quinn from the fate I know awaits her, but in an effort to stop time itself, to bring the entire proceeding to a halt, to live in that single moment where everything looked bright and held such beautiful promise. But I sit and force myself to watch even as tears build up and begin to blur the picture before me.
Mom, Dad, and Quinn all exchanged glances and looked at me just like I would look at myself from their perspective. "That's very sweet of you, honey," Mom said uncertainly, "but are you sure?"
"Yah, sure, why not," I replied, trying to keep up my best disaffected tone. "The store is on the way to the mall. We can save some gas. And, y'know. Because of the environment or something." Then, the clincher on the deal. I reached up and grabbed the SUV keyring. "I'll drive."
"Well I think that sounds great, Daria!" Dad cheered suddenly. "A big family outing! Man! It's been forever since we had one of those!"
Mom looked thoughtful for a moment, almost certainly considering the fact that I volunteered to drive and what it meant. She had been on me to get back in the saddle again regarding driving, and I was sure she saw my offer as a good step forward. "That does sound rather nice," she finally conceded. "Quinn?"
"Whatever gets me to Cashman's the fastest!" my sister predictably stated.
And with that we were out the door. At this point the movie caught up with where it had started the last time I'd tried to watch it, with the tight shot behind my back as I opened the SUV door and got inside. This time in continued on to show Quinn get in the passenger seat while our parents loaded up in the back. Dad buckled in right behind me while Mom settled down behind Quinn, smiling warmly at me from across the cab.
I returned the smile and found myself surprised at how genuine it felt.
The vehicle started effortlessly. Seat belts were all in place, lights were on, brake depressed, and gear put in reverse. I backed us out of the driveway slowly but with something akin to confidence. I pulled us to a gentle stop, switched to drive, and started down the road in more or less a straight line.
Light conversation filled the air as I threaded my way through the sleepy suburb of Lawndale. It was nice, actually, just hearing everyone actually talk about their day instead of the usual forced dinner conversation we usually had. Quinn wasn't trying to dominate the topic, Mom wasn't having to force words and sentences out of the rest of us, and Dad didn't have a newspaper to hide behind. It was so different from the norm that I have to wonder if maybe my memories of the event are rose-colored, shifted from the reality by a wish that things had actually been that way. It seems almost intolerably cruel that things might have actually gone this way before it all came to an end.
I had started off driving slowly, cautiously. My part in the conversation had been small as I'd been giving most of my attention to the road ahead and what little traffic was passing around us. But as things went along I felt myself start to loosen up. I was talking and laughing with everyone else, which led to a feeling of confidence and ease that allowed me to push down a little harder on the accelerator.
The gradual increase led to the SUV moving along at something approximating the legal speed limit as posted along the side of the road on signs glowing bright white under the headlights. My hands weren't quite on the ten-and-two position, and my elbows weren't locked in a rictus of overreacting fear. For the first time in ever, I was driving like a normal human being was supposed to drive, and that's when it all went horribly wrong.
The truck came out of nowhere. I was told later that it was an eighteen wheeler passing through an area of town it shouldn't have been in while traveling far faster than was ideal with a driver that had more alcohol in his system than was legally permissible given the situation. I have to take their word for it, because I don't remember what it was that hit us. I just remember a bright light, the massive bleating of a horn, and then the sickening crunch of metal and cracking of glass.
Outside the front windshield, the world was turning itself upside-down. The headlights caused shadows to jump and weave ahead of us, making the sense of gut-wrenching vertigo even worse. I turned my face away from the hypnotizing scene and looked over at Quinn. She continued to stare forward, her mouth open wide in a scream that I could just barely make out over the pumping of blood in my own ears. Her hair swung and dove around her head like a live thing as gravity and centrifugal force played havoc with our rapidly altering orientation.
The front left corner of the vehicle hit the ground first. Our momentum continued to carry the back end over, putting us into a maddening mid-air spin, like the SUV had suddenly decided to do some flying cartwheels. I closed my eyes at this point, but this was a mistake as it became even easier to feel the spin in my head and all the way down into my bowels. A thin stream of spit was leaking out of the side of my mouth, stringing its way toward the steering wheel and front dashboard.
We hit the ground again, but my attention was suddenly more concentrated on the something that smashed straight through the already spiderwebbed windshield and shot right by my cheek on its way toward the back seat. My eyes snapped open and I got a half-second glimpse of a road sign pole sticking into the cab with me, mere inches away from my head. Somehow I managed to reason in that brief moment of time that the sign itself must have been removed or it would have cut through my skull and I wouldn't be around anymore to make such insanely fast deductions.
The next spin was slower and lower, but no less frightening for all that. Night sky revealed itself to me in a parabolic arc, a pan and scan of Sagan's promised land, then fell to the side in favor of dirt and grass and cold, hard rocks. We hit, and this time we stayed as the front of the SUV buckled back in a way that would send any safety engineer scrambling back to the drawing board.
I had managed to stay silent for the entire vomitous trip, but a scream was finally torn from my chest as the front dash and steering wheel suddenly decided it was an excellent time to crush my thighs underneath them. If anyone else was still making any noise, I couldn't hear it over my own cries of pain and agony, but I could still hear the creaking sound of the vehicle as it slowly tipped over to land on its roof with a final THUD.
The pain in my legs continued, but after a few moments I was in a clear enough mental state to realize that the steering wheel was only squashing them. Nothing was broken, and I could still move my toes. I just couldn't move anything else because I was trapped, hanging upside-down.
"Mom?" I called out weakly. "Dad? Quinn?"
I turned my head around, wincing at the sudden burst of pain in my neck. Quinn was the first thing I saw, held to her seat by the safety belt, her arms dangling down and her face slack. Her legs were being held up by the buckled dash, but it didn't look like she was stuck there like I was. Moving my line of sight further, I saw Mom and nearly felt the lunch I had been holding onto for this long finally try to make its way up.
I choked it back down and forced myself to examine what I quickly knew had to be my mother's corpse.
It might have happened at any point during the crash. I found myself hoping that it was somewhere near the beginning. It would only be merciful to have taken her early so she wouldn't have had to live through all those horrible seconds just to die anyway. Blood dripped down from the massive crack in her skull, blood that matched the stain right next to the shattered window. I could only assume that her seat belt hadn't tightened quickly enough and allowed her to flop about until she'd gotten brained on the door.
Twisting until my spine popped, I forced myself around until I could see directly behind me where Dad was hanging, eyes wide in shock. I thought I saw a light in those eyes for just a moment, the ragged movement of a chest trying to pull one last breath into a collapsed lung, but it may have just been my imagination. The result was the same, death from the road sign pole that has passed me by to pierce my father and leave a bloody hole just half a foot south of his shoulder.
I wanted to rage at the unfairness, I wanted to grieve for the loss, I wanted to simply curl up and escape everything that had just happened, but it suddenly occurred to me that the situation might still be dangerous. Images of cars going up in flames and fireballs suddenly filled my mind, quickly followed by nearly blinding panic. I hastily unbuckled by seat belt and screeched in pain as all my weight was suddenly on my trapped legs.
Cursing and sweating and screaming bloody murder, I twisted and tugged and pulled as best I could, pushing and shifting and doing everything I could to extricate myself from my predicament. Back then, I wore a skirt normally insead of the jeans I favor now, and the second that skirt came out from underneath the steering wheel and flopped up, I felt the sharp edge of jagged plastic tear its way across my skin, accompanied by the feel of metal parts having their turn along the backsides of my legs.
It was like I had been caught by a set of massive jaws with uneven, tearing teeth. I felt the flesh pull away from itself, causing blood to run down my thighs and soak into the fabric of my underwear. But still I forced myself out of that space, ripping my skin to shreds all along the way.
Finally I pulled myself free and collapsed panting and weeping on the SUV's ceiling. I considered just staying there, certain that the pain of a fiery explosion couldn't possibly compare to what I was going through at that moment. But by chanced I happened to look back up and see Quinn's slightly swinging form just overhead. Unlike Mom and Dad, she didn't appear to have any immediately visible injuries. I couldn't tell if she was breathing, but it could have just been too shallow for me to notice in the dark.
The point was, maybe she was still alive. And if that was the case, I had more than just my own imminent demise to worry about. With a heavy grunt of effort and despair, I pushed myself up and dragged myself over to unclip Quinn's belt.
She fell unceremoniously to the ceiling, and I cursed myself for not being ready to catch her. It took what felt like forever to haul her legs over and get her positioned somewhat more comfortably before I started to crawl over her body. My door had been bent and twisted slightly, but it was still stuck in the door frame and the window had squeezed shut too far to get through. Absolutely useless. Quinn's door was the only way out.
Metal squealed against metal when I finally got the door unlocked and open. I crawled out, leaving smears of my own blood on Quinn's shirt as I dragged my torn legs across her, then turned back around and grabbed Quinn by the shoulders.
I don't remember much after that. I know that I did get her out of there and managed to pull her several yards away, because I do clearly remember looking up and seeing the wreckage some distance away, illuminated by faint starlight. I remember the wailing of sirens in the distance, slow and dreamlike as they filtered into my ears.
And then I remember nothing until I woke up in the hospital, legs bandaged from top to bottom and my entire body aching like I had been beaten all over repeatedly with a tire iron. The inner workings of my legs were just fine, it turned out, though I was still unsteady for a day or two. The only major damage I had sustained had been the cuts and tears in the skin, which I had been warned by the doctors would likely turn into a network of scars. But I had survived.
I had survived. My family was dead. And it was all my fault. If I hadn't suggested all of us going in the same vehicle. If I had just kept driving carefully. If I'd paid attention. If I hadn't been born. None of this would have happened. I killed my family.
At least, that's what I used to think.
But I'm not a killer.
I blink rapidly and wonder when exactly the DVD stopped. Wonder if it had actually ever been running at all. It had all been so clear, as if I'd been right there in the middle of the event again. And why not? It was the moment in time that I'd been living in for the past several months, wasn't it? The one that had kept me trapped in the past, never allowing me to see a present or future for myself, even as I tried so hard to repress it and pretend that it had never happened.
It's defined me since the moment it happened, and it's what's defining this place. It's what Silent Hill has been turning against me, using like a weapon to bludgeon me, to gnaw at me, to tear me apart like a wild beast.
No more.
I open the DVD player, pull out the disk, and put it back in its case in my backpack. Turning to the small table behind me, I start to pick up all the items left there for me and sort them into their respective places. Two Health Drinks, one of which I go ahead and drink down. Seven bullets for my pistol, just enough to refill my current clip. Four shotgun shells. A full clip of tommy gun bullets. And finally a palm-sized stone in the shape of a square and with a carving of a dragon on one side.
I look over at the door opposite the one I had come in through. Three square recesses in a circular pattern with three keyholes interspersed between them. A poem sits just underneath. Another puzzle. Another fucking puzzle.
I've had it with puzzles.
Without a second thought, I drop the stone tile on the floor and stomp on it with my heel until it cracks right down the middle. I then kick the pieces to separate sides of the room and step right up to the door.
"Open up," I say.
Nothing happens. I expected that.
"Little voice, I'm telling you to open up."
No response. I expected that too, but it still manages to raise my ire more than a little bit.
"You've been pretty quiet lately, little voice," I say sternly at the door. "Why is that, huh? You've been pretty helpful so far. Pretty gahdamn helpful. Now you don't have anything to say? No little hints, or clues? Why is that, little voice? Huh? Tell me why that is?"
I'm . . .
I'm scared.
"Tell me."
I'm scared of what's on the other side of that door. I'm scared of where I've led you. I'm scared of what we've learned. I'm scared of what we're capable of, where we're going, how this is going to change our life. I brought you here on purpose, drove you forward even and especially when you were at your most frightened, but now . . . now I just can't.
I stand silent for a few moments. Then, with a sense of finality, I proclaim in a strong, steady voice, "Then you're nothing."
The new me, the whole me, swings the tommy gun forward and aims it at the door, right above the knob. With a battle cry of defiance and righteous fury, I unleash the weapon on the door, splintering the wood and sending chunks flying in all directions. I empty the entire clip as I cut around the knob, then pull back and plant a foot on the torn material. It cracks, fragments, then pops out of its newly formed slot as the rest of the door swings open wide.
No more secrets.
No more repressed memories.
Silent Hill holds no more locked doors. Not for me.
With a confident stride, I step forward, ready to finish this once and for all.
