Disclaimer: I do not own Silent Hill. Silent Hill© belongs to, and will forever belong to, Konami. This is non-profit only. I only own the characters in this story.
Author's Notes: Well guys, this is it. The very last chapter before the epilogue. Hope you enjoy it.
The Truth That Lies
Chapter Thirteen: Room of Angels
She was traversing in the new "area" without a flashlight, her hands being the only thing guiding her. An odd luminescence provided just enough low level light to vaguely see a foot or so in front of her. Dirt and debris made her floor and made it hard for her to walk at more than a slow amble without stumbling and falling.
Kyla was determined to follow it. It seemed as though it was a one-way street with no ending. Having given up trying to judge time, the brunette didn't know how long she had been traveling.
The lighter she had acquired at the gas station on the outskirts of town was gripped tightly in one hand, but she had held off lighting it. The tunnel was bone dry and lonely, smelling strangely of wine left open to the air too long. It was the kind of smell that told you to leave well enough alone, the kind of smell that reminded you of spilt gasoline.
Debating for a moment, Kyla flicked open the top of the lighter, a dancing orange flame dancing to life above the flint casting harsh light and shadows across the rough walls around her.
The tunnel suddenly felt a great deal more alive, rippling and shifting uneasily in response to this unwelcome brightness.
And Kyla could hear something scratching and scrambling inside the dirt that encased her.
Rats, she hoped.
She gulped loudly, the saliva cleansing her through of the dryness that had pilled up in the last few hours, or was it days? She didn't know – she couldn't remember…
Kyla always had a fear of the dark, fear of feeling closed in; however, she knew that she had to get out of there and showing that she was a brave woman – the only brave soul left in Silent Hill, most likely.
It was a comforting thought, only slightly undermined by the persistent shivers she couldn't seem to shake.
Ahead, something new appeared, a rough-cut doorway of old wood. The plaque on the door read: "WISH HOUSE".
Gripping the knob and taking a deep breath she turned it, causing it to make a loud squeal that echoed throughout the tunnel. The lights inside this new place turned on without warning and she walked in.
"Hello…?" Her voice cracked, the sound barely coming out. "Anyone here?"
She forced herself to turn back around into the darkness, to close the door… but what she saw before her… amazed her.
She wasn't looking at the dark tunnel. She was looking out at Silent Hill's streets. The fog was getting worse… as if something bad was going to roll in. There was a slight rain, signifying something being… She shook her head, shaking everything off. It was then that she realized that…
Anything… can happen… in Silent Hill.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
She'd known.
Known the moment she stepped through that door that she would arrive here, and yet still a part of her, part that clung to it's sense of normality, was surprised when beyond the door that had been simply marked "Wish House: Admissions", it found itself standing with her on a long and lonely street.
It was foggy, that was merely an observation at this point, noted the same way one would notice that the sky was still there.
She glanced up at the icy black veil that hung, brooding, overhead. It seemed to gaze back with bored indifference rather than glaring with the twisted malice that had seemed to want to suffocate her when it had first appeared.
After her first trip to the Hospital… no, after her return. Kyla's last trip there had convinced her that she had been there before, and that she had left something behind, something that had scared the patients there, making them wish she had taken it with her.
The artic sting of the air barely registered as she strode toward her goal, toward the house that lurked at the end of the street, rose bush path too perfectly trimmed illuminated by the only street lamp that seemed to work, blinking on and off like a coded message.
Everything here was familiar, the feel of the rough wood beneath her fingers as she opened the gate, that faint squeal of hinges her father had wasted many hours trying to oil to no avail. They had always begun to squeak a few days later. The price of living in a town with so much fog, everything was bound to rust...
Her boots clapped up the red brick paving, sounding like a cheerful friend she hadn't seen for some time, chattering away.
One hand slid over the polished paintwork surrounding the doorframe, up to the top and along, a half smile forming as she remembered watching this but never being tall enough to do it.
Her fingers closed over the key she knew was going to be there, a single sliver of metal, no key-ring, no etchings, tucked under the edge of a raised splinter the length and width of her fingertip.
Kyla paused, waiting to see if Chris would speak up as he had the last time she'd been here; almost hoping to find one dead eye gazing out at her from a crack in the blinds, to let her know if she was doing what she was supposed to or not.
Nothing, she was on her own.
Click, the lock opened unobtrusively and the door opened ponderously, but without the ominous creak she had half expected, wanted, after a fashion.
Taking a deep breath, Kyla's head swam as the scent of charred timbers and stale smoke wafted out like a beckoning finger, swaying in place her inner ear screaming at her to step forward or back before ending up on her face. But which way should she go?
"…"
Taking a half step forward, the green-eyed girl shivered as icy fingers stroked her spine in an almost welcoming gesture and the Dread purred at her from the shadows, a kind of muted warning, half felt.
"… I'm home"
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The scene around her shifted – distorted before her eyes. The blurry scene fell before her in the utmost clarity.
A three-year-old Kyla was sitting next to her parents. It was her third birthday. Chris was sitting on the other side of the room. His face was slightly distorted. There was a cake burning on the other side of the room by Chris. One more present and she could blow out the candles…
When she opened it – it was from her mom – she squealed in happiness. It was the locket her mother gave her years ago… They were speaking but she didn't know what they were saying – it was as though she was deaf. They got up and her father picked her up, taking her to the cake. She closed her eyes and made a wish… With that, they walked upstairs, laughing and giggling as Kyla did a couple of childish things…
Kyla looked at Chris; his grainy face staring back at her, distorted beyond recognition. She saw the brown hair, the somewhat masculine face… She knew he was staring at her. She felt his green eyes on her. His mouth opened and closed, as if speaking her to.
"Lies…" He whispered, gagging like he was choking on something, gesturing vaguely at the stairway she was about to ascend, "All lies…"
Written across the bottom stair, in copperplate neat crayon handwriting so small she had to kneel to read it as the ghost of Kyla past continued without her;
…it started in the attic, so they had no idea it was too late until the walls came burning down around them… who would do something like that… this wasn't an accident.
She closed her eyes and walked up the stairs, leaving behind the abandoned, smoke clogged living room and it's phantoms.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It was raining.
The houses' ashes came down like snowflakes on her cheek. A gentle flurry falling from the coal black timbers above.
Ash, fire, heat, burning bodies… Kyla took a deep breath and walked through the dead halls of her former home; the sound of the rain outside mixing with the crunch of her boots on the soot covered floor and the steady drip of mildewed water down heat blistered walls. This tomb gurgled at her, bloated and suffocating and full of so much unspoken rage…
The house was still smoldering slightly, as if the firemen had just recently put the blaze that lasted almost five hours out.
There were footprints – small, bare footprints – leading up to the end of a hallway. She looked around, seeing her old house burnt beyond recognition. The yellow wallpaper was now black, tearing itself away from the wood after years of decay. She saw the hatch above her – the attic…
When she was younger, Kyla had always feared the attic… Why? Kyla did not know. She was so young… She reached up and pulled the small latch revealing a rusted ladder. It creaked with every movement, filling the silence within the house. She closed her eyes and climbed… She had a feeling that she was near the end of something. What? She had no clue…
As she reached the top, she noticed there was light, natural light. She stood up, closing the attic behind her. The roof was half gone, burned into nothing but ash and soot. The rain drizzled its way onto the hard wood floor. The attic was empty… she remembered the officers helping clean the attic out, carrying boxes down in large, clear plastic bags.
Kyla looked towards the farthest corner of the room, toward a shape she had mistake for one of the remaining support posts at first. A man was talking to something etched away in the corner, something that growled at him in a mix of fear and hatred. A monster and a knight, squaring off.
But why could she not shake the feeling that the roles were not as they appeared.
The man turned around. He greeted her with a smile of pure white teeth.
"Hello Ky Bird. Good to see you again," he said, placing his hands on his hips.
"Chris… is this… you've been waiting here the whole time?" she asked, stomach rolling at the sight of that too white smile.
"The scene of the crime," he smiled disarmingly and somehow that only made her feel sicker.
"You… you've seen what's happening here… that … thing," she couldn't quite bring herself to gaze at the snarling non-presence of the Dread, "But you're not scared… It's scared… Why? Why would you come to a place with so many monsters?"
"Aren't you confused Ky bird?", Chris quizzed her, clasping his hands behind his back like a teacher giving a particularly dense student a lesson.
"Confused?"
"There are no monsters here… well, maybe one", she shrunk back as he laughed, a shrill disconcerting peel of bitter mirth mixed with something she'd never heard in his voice before… anger.
"You aren't Chris," whatever the being before her might have been, it wasn't the same entity she'd seen last time, and it sure as hell wasn't her brother.
He grinned again, so wide she was sure she heard the sound of his facial muscles tearing. The rain came pouring down harder than before, his body steaming as if the rain was putting out a fire. As the steam went away, a new person was there… Herself.
The Other walked towards her. She was wearing the same white vest, the same white windbreaker hoodie that clung to her skin with a white tank top… blue hip hugger cargo jeans and black sketchers.
Why…? How???
The Other looked at her and smiled with heat cracked teeth. The bandages covered her arms and hands and she carried herself as though nursing an injury that should have left her bedridden.
"Who…who are you?" Kyla managed to choke out when the shock receded her stomach lurching sickly as the thing in front of her smiled with her mouth, once more showcasing double rows of yellowed, shatter teeth.
"Who do you think I am bitch?" it spat at her, tone completely at ends with the otherwise pleasant expression on its face.
"Where's Chris?" Kyla's fist clenched as the other 'girl' rolled sharp green eyes at her and spun lazily on the spot, finger wagging, "What did you do with him?"
"Chris, Chris, Chris," the Other taunted in a whining nasal voice, one that sounded far too like her own as a child, calling out for her brother, "Do you have any idea how fucking irritating it is to hear that day, after day, after fucking day?"
"Wha-"
"I mean for fuck's sake it's bad enough that I have to put up with your whiny, wishy washy existence, without hearing your delusions rattling around like a broken record."
That struck a cold, hollow cord in Kyla's being.
"You're pathetic! Even now you idolize him, don't you little girl?"
"… I don't…" she tried to say but the thing's stare would brook no lies, and Kyla found herself babbling before her brain could catch up.
"That man was born in hate, in tragedy… in a fire that consumed our parents."
Each word seemed dragged from her lips by the fierce jade eyes opposite her, "He… he killed them?"
She was not sure what reaction she expected the Other to have to that shameful admission, but it was not the peel of bitter hate disguised poorly as laughter that came out.
"You fucking idiot! You really can't see it yet, can you?"
"S-see? I don't-"
"Of course you don't, it never even once entered that pretty little head to question why he's not anywhere to be found?" the thing took a menacing step closer, shooting a glare over her shoulder that quelled rumblings of Dread, forcing it back into it's shadowed retreat.
"He… he was taken…taken…away?" Kyla hated the question that crept into her voice, hated the look of triumph on the Other's face.
"Away where? By who? Where?" the nightmare reflection fired out each question like a bullet, shredding the illusion of knowing that had fallen over Kyla's perceptions since she'd come to Silent Hill.
"I… I don't…"
"'D-don't', of course you don't, you know nothing, nothing at all, just a poor lost little girl, so sweet, but hopelessly over her head… Just what I intended," a hideous grin echoed the roar of anguish the Dread let loose and everything wavered, a rippling caused by the heat, and there was suddenly so much heat. The rain sizzled and popped wherever it struck, dull timbers glowing faintly with new life.
"Shut up."
"Why? Is poor little Ky bird scared? Does she want Chrisy to come save her?"
"Shut your fucking mouth!" Kyla snapped, the venom she meant to inject into those words drowned out by a kind of simpering fear she couldn't explain.
"We both know that isn't going to happen, just like we both know who really dropped that match, who they found outside in the garden afterwards, lying back in that cool cool green grass and listening to the rain silence the screams of the fire," the abomination that wore her countenance effected a dreamy expression, almost as if in the grip of a powerful wave of pleasure and Kyla shifted, revolted.
The embers grew brighter, the seductive warmth making it hard to think, to fight back against this monsters words.
"It was so… nice, wasn't it? Not as nice as the other screams, the sight of the eyes popping… that really did it, didn't it?" a hand was held up as if Kyla had been about to speak.
"We both know you liked it… well I did, and since I came first so did you. That's why we did it, why we spent so many nights lying there, looking at the matches, thinking about what it would be like to see them burn," that finally got the other girl's attention, her voice breaking back through to the surface in a hoarse but steady croak as the Dread wept silently around the edges of the room.
"I would never think anything like that, I wouldn't hurt anyone… and you don't… exist, so you can't know what I was thinking back then," the brunette asserted, sighing, as the temperature seemed to drop a little.
The rain was picking up.
"Know what you think?" her doppelganger smirked, delighting in the terror wavering in Kyla's voice, their voice.
"I AM what you think!" she bellowed, amusement turning to anger in the blink of an eye, "Whose head do you think that is, really?"
That one sentence finally felled the last bastion of denial that had been keeping her adrift. For a moment the world went quiet, silent, the kind of absence one often evokes with the phrase 'you could have heard a pin drop'. And hear it she did, a crystalline jangle echoed over and over in her mind, the sound she had been waiting for ever since she had found the inn mysteriously burned to the ground what seemed like a lifetime ago now.
What scared the brunette the most about this surreal nightmare was not the monsters she had seen, or the Dread she had felt since arriving in this fog shrouded town, or even the dancing madness that capered over the face of this twisted reflection of herself.
No the most horrifying part was that she found she had no answer for her dark half. She wasn't sure anymore which of them was real and who was fantasy.
Tinkle…Tinkle…Tinkle
Disjointed waves crashed together in the nothingness that had swallowed all other sound, enhancing and distorting one another, changing the pure noise into something sinister.
"Could have heard a pin… but not a match, not unless you were waiting for it," the Other whispered, somehow now behind the green eyed girl, her breath warm and silky on her cheek.
The world seemed to crawl and her muscles anchored in treacle as she tried with agonizing slowness to turn her head and follow this dangerous woman who had stolen her face and her brothe-
"He never existed you stupid bitch, can't you grasp that yet?" an irritated hiss that brought angry tears to her eyes.
"Stop it!"
"You made him up! To hide, just like I made you up," the voice of the Other was full of vicious cunning, "Can't convict a nutter even if you can find evidence, and who would push for it? Just a poor lost little girl, dreaming about a brother she never had to fill the hole left by her poor dead parents".
Mock sympathy oozed from her voice, their voice, like sap from a burning tree.
"But who would have thought, the lie would become stronger than the truth? You live one long enough why remember the other, it's no longer needed… That's what you did to me you ungrateful little bitch", Kyla screamed as red hot fingers gripped her hair and pulled on it, threatening to tear it from her head.
"Stop-"
"I made you and you left me there in that dank little hole, that pit for the unwell, thought I was gone but there was a door, a door I never knew was there until he opened it."
Images of bloody handprints filled her vision till Kyla felt she'd scream and she suddenly knew with a sickening certainty that she had done something awful. Without meaning to perhaps, but still, something terrible.
"Idiot, he thought that he could help you accept the truth… too bad for him he didn't know that I am your truth… he bled so much you know."
"That's a lie! There was no… no… blood!" Kyla recoiled as the thing smirked triumphantly.
"Oh? And how do you know that?"
With a mindless cry of fury, Kyla hurled herself at the twisted visage of herself, clawing blindly with tooth and nail.
With anger and hatred, Kyla kneed the darker half of her in the ribs. Making the visage scream in pain as the air was forced from her lungs in a spray of ash and blood. The Other pushed on Kyla's shoulders, scrambling for enough room to fight back, to aim a blow, anything. However, adversity and determination were two things Kyla had in plentiful supply right now and she rained down blow after blow as she straddled her foe till her knuckles split and her fingers broke against the unyielding bone of her Other's face… and still she continued. She couldn't stop, the sound of the other her's head striking the wood hard enough to split it, to spill blood and gore from her cracked skull, drove her on.
"DIE DIE JUST FUCKING DIE YOU lying CUNT!"
The dark reflection's frantic hands found purchase as Kyla raised her hand for another blow and with an animal yell flipped Kyla on her back, pinning her against the splintered wood.
"You little bitch… You think you can kill me?!" it screeched, fragments of bone and brain clinging to its hair unnoticed, "I'm you! If you kill me, you're dead too!"
Kyla's face streaked forward and all she saw was the Other's startled face before her head collided with its nose with a sickening crunch of cartilage. She reached for the pocketknife in her pocket, unsheathing it as her doppelganger recoiled, dazed but not thwarted for long.
The blade glinted, her Other spotted it as her vision began to clear, her hands racing to seize it before all was lost and Kyla drove it into her unprotected abdomen.
The knife thrust and everything lost perspective.
Warm... something warm was pooling out beneath her… beneath them, beneath where they lay in their first and final embrace. A sticky blanket that colored everything it touched, that clung everywhere. From the gapping hole above rain fell on the two of them serenely, a whispering blanket that quieted everything…even the ever slowing beating of her heart.
Thump-thump… thump-thump..thump-thump
Kyla found herself fascinated by the dying glow of the embers around the room, yeloow to orange…orange to red…
Thump-thump… …Thump-thump… …
"The fire… is almost…out…" in the distance, she could just make out the faint wail of a siren… drawing closer. They'd be here soon.
Thump-thump… … … thump…
The floor was so uncomfortable… the liquid had started to set and it tore at her skin if she moved.
Thump… thump…
Rain trickled over sore dry eyes, flowing from the corners like a stream of endless tears and the weight atop her was slowly crushing her, cutting of her precious air. The weight of her sin.
"Mommy… …Daddy… …Chris… I'm sorry… …I'm so…."
Thump… … … …
Sirens wailed and obliterating, obscuring white claimed her world.