"Stay away from them," Pyramid ordered in his deep voice. The scars that covered his body (which I don't think I've ever mentioned before, but yes, his body is covered with by scars) glowed an intense, bright red. He illuminated the entire room and I knew that he was mad. He only glowed red when he was mad. And, judging by the brightness of the light, he was furious.

I didn't know why he was mad. He wasn't mad at me, that was for sure. I had told him about the police officers that came to my house and acted strangely. When I had asked him about them, he only got angrier and angrier. It seemed as if he wanted to tell me about them, but something held him back from doing so. It was if he was being restrained by something invisible that wasn't allowing him to speak of the subject.

Either way, he told me to stay away from them, and I would do that to the best that I could. He also told me to stay away from the church and its people, but that was a problem for me. My father was very religious and I went to church every Sunday. I was forced to, even though my views on religion were very different from all of those people and my father. If I stayed behind, my father would probably beat me.

Then again, a year ago, he attempted to hit me but I caught his fist and punched him in the face. He hadn't laid a finger on me since.

"What wrong with the church people? What about the priest? I mean, I don't like them, but what's wrong with them?" I asked.

Pyramid made a mumbled grumbling noise. He tried to say something, but he couldn't. He started to glow brighter and apparently got frustrated.

To save him from his frustration, I said, "You know what, Pyramid? It's alright, I'll stay away from them. But what about tomorrow? It'll be Sunday. You know I need to go to church."

Pyramid shook his head and said, "Don't go. Don't go."

A moment passed before I said, "Are you able to tell me why?"

He shook his head.

I would listen to him. I'd play sick. Maybe I'd pretend to have the flu or something. My father wouldn't want me to "despoil the altar with a contagious sickness."

I locked the bathroom door and looked at the clock. It was ten-thirty and my father would leave for church in about ten minutes.

"Tetsu!" he yelled. "Hurry up! You'll be late for church."

"I can't go," I said loudly and lifted the lid to the toilet. "I feel sick."

"Take a medicine and get yer butt out here. You're going to church."

I filled a cup of water and splashed it into the toilet while making gagging, choking noises to mimic somebody throwing up. Apparently it worked.

After a couple moments, he said, "Alright, but yer gonna go to church tomorrow and speak with the priest. Can't miss a day, ya know."

I stopped and heard him walk out of the house.

"Crap," I said and stood up. I looked outside of the bathroom window and watched my dad drive away. "Now what?" I said. I then began to talk to myself. "That just defeated the purpose. I'll be forced to go there tomorrow anyways." I walked out the bathroom and looked up at the ceiling while I leaned my back against the wall. "Pyramid Head, what do I do? I know that you don't want me to go near them…and I don't know why…but I'm going to have to, anyways. Did you not know that? What do you want me to do?"

My attempt obviously failed and I found myself standing in front of the church. I had a nervous feeling settle in my stomach and it felt like it was weighing me down. I didn't know why, but I didn't want to be in the church. At least I tried to get out of it, but I was afraid at what my father might have done to me. Every step that I took towards the stone building made me want to turn around. I could have sworn that I heard things telling me to stay out of the church, but I went inside anyways.

The entire time, I was apologizing to Pyramid. I couldn't think of anything else to do. I knew that he could hear me. He could hear my thoughts sometimes, or feel my emotions, so he knew that I was sorry.

I stepped inside and the little whispers of voices that I thought I heard had disappeared. I looked around the familiar, quiet building and decided that I must have just been hearing things.

Near the altar were the priest and the chief police officer, which I thought to be strange. There was also a woman there with long locks of orange hair that spilled over her shoulders. She was as tall as me and wore a tight-fitting blue dress.

Now me, as an artist, made a mental note to myself that she apparently knew something about colors, because blue and orange are opposite colors. Either she wanted people to notice her hair or her dress, but I decided that I didn't really care. I had never seen her before, but maybe I could establish a good relationship with her if she were a fellow artist.

My father, who appeared to be excessively grave lately, walked me up to them. In fact, when the three of them turned to me, they were all very serious-looking. I wondered what was wrong.

"You must be Tetsu Morris, are you not?" the orange-haired lady asked.

I smiled and we shook hands together. "Yeah, I'm Tetsu. Who're you?"

"My name is Eva, and I'm sure that you've met these two before."

"Yeah, sure I have. Is something wrong? You all look upset."

The priest stepped up to me and glanced at the ground before he clasped his hands together and said, "We need to speak to you in private, Tetsu. Your father has already been informed of this and we have reached an agreement."

"An agreement of what?"

"Come with us, child," Eva said. "You shall see."

We walked away from my father and passed through a set of doors in the back of the church. The stairs lead downward to the basement to a room that I never even knew existed.

I heard something; a mere wisp of wind with incomprehensible words, and that time I was certain that I had heard it with my own ears. My mind didn't make me think of a noise. Before I could speculate on it further, the priest began to speak.

"Did you not know what we judge angels? Did you not know that the angels will judge the world?"

I looked around the foreign room. It was lighted only by candles and was as large as the upstairs. There was an open area in the center of the room with a strange mark painted in red. It was a circle, and inside were three smaller circles. Outside were symbols of a language that I couldn't recognize. On the outskirts of the room were arrays of benches with fancy, red, expensive-looking carpets laid out in front of them.

"What is this place? I didn't know that the church had this." I sniffed the air. "And why does it smell like smoke?"

"Save your questions, child," Eva said. "Come, sit down." She gestured to a bench and I felt uneasy, but I sat down regardless and put my hands on my lap.

The priest sat across from me and the chief stood next to him. The priest said, "You have sinned, Tetsu."

"I'm sorry, but I was sick yesterday and I didn't want to-"

"No, Tetsu," he said. "You have sinned, therefore you must atone. This is not a matter of you skipping church yesterday. This is an…otherworldly matter."

My stomach twisted into knots and I knew that I appeared nervous to them. "What do you mean? I…okay, I admit it…I didn't want to go to church yesterday so I played sick. Would God really be upset about that? I wanted to paint instead."

"That's not it, Tetsu," the priest said. "You have consorted with the Devil and we cannot risk you bringing Hell into our already-unstable world."

My heart leapt into my throat. Was he talking about Pyramid? How did he know about that?

"But we can save you, child," Eva said, "for God loves even you. We can cleanse you of your sin. We can purify you. All what you must do is endure a few minutes of pain, and then you shall be reborn from the ashes of your eternal, cleansed soul. I am afraid that you cannot decide on this your own, child. It must be done. In the end, your rebirth will save you from eternal damnation."

The room smelt like smoke. It didn't take me very long to figure out what they were saying.

They wanted to burn me to death.

I stood up and said, "I'm sorry, but I really don't feel very comfortable being here in this room."

The policeman took out his nightstick and I rose my hands in the air so show that I wasn't going to fight back. "We saw your room yesterday, Tetsu," he said. "The things that you drew and painted…it will hurt only for a bit. You are still young and therefore innocent, and for that, we will cleanse your soul and rebirth you."

He swung his nightstick at me but I dodged it. In a panic, I grabbed onto his arm and roughly turned it around. I snapped his arm in half by twisting his humorous bone out of the elbow's socket. He yelped in pain and I kneed him between the knees before I punched him in the face with my knuckles.

I sprinted away and headed for the doors to the upstairs, but they were locked. I yelled for help, but the policeman got back up on his feet. I saw that he had a gun and I charged after him.

Quite frankly, I tackled him to grab onto the handgun he held. He stood up and grabbed me around my abdomen, picking me up off of the ground as he did so. I dug my nails into his neck and he let go. I managed to steal his handgun but he tried to punch me in the head. I dodged it again by ducking and grabbed onto his legs. I picked him up and body-slammed him headfirst onto the ground.

He went unconscious and I held the gun up to Eva and the priest. Without thinking, I turned around and headed for the doors again just as somebody opened them from the outside. It was a nun who had come to inspect what was happening in this strange room, but she quickly moved out of the way when she saw me burst through the doors.

I felt a surge of panic again and I sprinted up the stairs, through the church, and out of the front doors. In my haste, I dropped the gun (typical, no?) and ran away from the church.

As the sprinted down the road, I looked behind myself to see if anybody was following. The policeman, bloodied and beaten, ran to his car and started to chase after me.

I turned right into an alleyway and continued my escape down the narrow street. I searched the outsides of the empty buildings for anything to climb up on, such as a fire escape, but this was an old area of Silent Hill and nobody lived here anymore.

I ran into a dead end-alley where the walls of the two buildings were very close together. I put my feet on one wall and my hands on the other, then began to climb my way up to the roofs of the buildings. It was similar to what I did in Underground and my body was familiar to it, therefore I was quick to get to the top before the policeman entered the alleyway.

I grabbed the ledge and hauled myself onto the flat roof. I could hear my heart beat in my ears and my lungs kept a steady but quick rhythm of inhale-and-exhale. I stood up, looked over the edge, and saw the bamboozled policeman standing in the alleyway.

I walked away from the edge of the building and wiped the sweat from my brow. I looked up to the cloudy sky and saw that it started to rain. I couldn't stay up here forever, so I found a fire escape far away from the alleyway and jumped onto it. It rattled and clanged loudly but I steadied myself and climbed down to ground level on an opposite street. For now, I was safe from the policeman, but I had another problem on my hands.

I couldn't go the police over this. My father…he had agreed to let them kill me? This was bad…this was very bad. What's even worse is that Pyramid or the other monsters didn't come to help me. I had heard voices, but the moment I entered the church, they stopped.

What the hell was going on?