1.

I woke up with my head in my arms and a serious crick in my neck. Groggy, I picked my head up and winced as sharp pains shot through my neck and into my head. Trying to rub away the ache, I couldn't help grinning a little; I didn't think I'd be falling asleep on barstools until after I got to college.

The light in the bar had changed. I could see through some of the chinks between the boxes in front of the windows that the fog had turned from a thick, inky charcoal soup into a pearly, dove-gray cloud. Another morning in Silent Hill, probably early, from the weak, hesitant quality of the light.

I slipped off the barstool, and my back joined my neck in complaining about their rough treatment. If I was feeling this crappy, I could only imagine how Dad and J.D., over thirty years older than me, would feel when they woke up.

Dad.

God, Dad. We'd stayed up late into the night, talking quietly, reminiscing, sharing stories from the past. Or at least, we'd tried to, until Dad ran out of things to talk about and had quietly withdrawn from the conversation, letting me do all the talking. I didn't even realize he'd been doing it until my throat was dry from so much speaking, and I noticed that he was listening so ardently, almost hungrily, to my stories, like he was trying to take them into himself and make them a part of him. Which was absurd, since he featured in most of them, but that didn't change the feverish, desperate way he listened, or the way he gripped my hand as I talked, tight and almost panicked, like he was trying to save himself from drowning.

I limped to the pool table, my legs cramped and tingling with half-asleep nerves. Finally, last night, when my mouth was parched from talking and my eyes burned with exhaustion, I'd pushed Dad to the pool table, told him to get some sleep. He'd protested, told me that I should be the one to lie down, but then J.D., still asleep, had thrown an arm over him as soon as he climbed onto the table, and he was a lost cause.

They were curled together on the green felt like a pair of kittens, still sleeping, their legs intertwined and J.D.'s head tucked into Dad's shoulder. It should have made me feel weird, seeing them like that, their affection for each other open and on display—the way Dad had an arm looped around J.D.'s waist, the way J.D. had pulled Dad in close to his chest—but it didn't. It made me sad for some reason I couldn't describe, like I was witnessing something that I would never understand, some ancient, protected secret that was beyond my comprehension.

I reached out to shake J.D.'s shoulder, to wake him up first because he'd be less embarrassed about being caught like this, but something made me pause, my hand a few inches above him. As I watched, he shivered in his sleep, the tremors wracking his entire body. I noticed that his face was ghastly pale, completely bleached of blood, and his lips had a bluish tint to them, like he'd been eating blueberries all night long, a tint that matched the blue tone under his fingernails. He looked like someone fighting off encroaching hypothermia, but it wasn't cold in the bar. Cool, yes, but nowhere near cold enough to create that awful, bluish-purple hue.

Dad, though… Dad was worse. His skin had a waxy, monotone quality to it, and it looked like all the pores and lines on his face had disappeared overnight, creating a blank, doll-like appearance. Something about the colors of his body was off, almost like he was a photo that had spent years hanging on a sunny wall until all the colors were pale and washed-out. His borders were wrong too, and that was what scared me the most; when I looked at him closely, they would solidify and turn into ordinary, rigidly real lines, but then the parts of him I wasn't looking at would waver, like I was seeing him underwater.

"J.D.!" I hissed, and started shaking his shoulder, probably a little more violently than was entirely necessary. "J.D., wake up!"

He swatted at me at first, trying to shoo me away, an impulse I remembered from all the other times I'd had to wake him up for something. "Dammit, J.D., wake up!" I moaned through clenched teeth, and shook him harder.

"Wha fu… Heather, stop it!" he finally muttered, swimming up from the depths of sleep. "I'm awake, I'm awake!" His eyes, blood-shot and rimmed with gummy sleep-seeds, fluttered open and he looked up at me irritably. "What's wrong?"

I grabbed his arm, holding on tight, and he winced as my fingers dug into his skin. "Look at Dad!" I whispered, nearly frantic now. "Something's wrong with Dad!"

He gaped at me for a moment, then propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Dad, and that was when I saw it. Seeing the two of them together like that… J.D. stood out, the muted colors of his skin, his hair, his clothing, bright and vivid compared to Dad, his body humming with life and vitality and reality. Dad looked even more faded, more dreamlike, next to him, and I realized that while J.D. looked normal, almost aggressively normal in comparison, Dad looked like something that was fading away and becoming part of this place. Dad looked like a specter that belonged in Silent Hill.

J.D. studied him, and I saw his shoulders lift and then fall, almost like he was shrugging unconsciously. He put one hand on the side of Dad's face, touching him in a lover's caress that normally would have left me mortified with its intimacy but today barely even registered—I was so afraid—and J.D. leaned down, close to Dad's ear, and whispered, "Harry. Harry, wake up. It's James and Heather, and we love you."

Dad's eyes twitched under his eyelids, and when he finally opened them I nearly ran out of the bar screaming; they were so empty, so vacant, so completely void of the man I loved more than I loved myself, that it was like staring into eternity and seeing nothing on the other side.

Then he blinked, slow and sleepy, and his eyes, his awful, fathomless eyes, flitted across J.D.'s face and settled there. He lifted one hand, the motions jerky, marionette-like, like someone who has never moved by himself before, and settled it across J.D.'s hand, which still cupped the side of his face.

"Jay… Jaaay…" he rasped, his voice arid and hoarse, sounding like the wind through a deserted street.

"James," J.D. told him calmly, still staring down into his eyes. "James and Heather. And you're Harry. You're Harry Mason, and you love us."

Dad blinked again, and then his hand tightened around J.D.'s, and as I watched, the color and life flowed back into his eyes, into his body, and he was there again, called back into himself by J.D.'s words.

I burst into tears and flung myself across both of them, clinging to their necks and shaking so hard I felt like I would tremble into a thousand little pieces.

2.

The drifting had gotten worse.

Harry could feel it actively tugging at him now; whatever force animated the drift, it had grown tired of waiting, had dispensed with the pleasantries, was through screwing around, and now it felt like every step he took, every motion he made, a tiny piece of him was left behind. His memories were falling away again, slipping loose from their moorings in his head and sinking into the drift. It had been worrisome before; now it bordered on terrifying.

For whatever reason, when he was close to James, or touching him, it was a little better. The drift lost strength then, and he could focus well enough to resist it, he could concentrate on holding his memories where they belonged and keeping his sense of self intact. Fortunately, although James's ankle was less swollen and painful today, he could only hobble a few steps on his own, and he was too heavy for Heather to support by herself. It gave Harry an excuse to stay close to him, to tuck himself up underneath James's arm and support him as they made their way towards the parking lot and away from this place.

They made a rag-tag band, Harry knew. Heather roamed out in front of he and James, armed with her mini-crowbar and a heavy Maglite, while the two of them staggered after her. James wasn't saying much, focusing on his stride and trying to conserve energy, and Harry found that the less he spoke, the better he was able to concentrate, to resist the insidious, cloying drift.

"We're almost there!" Heather shouted back to them, her voice light and joyful, sounding, for just a moment, like a typical teenaged girl. "We'll be to the cemetery soon!"

Harry looked around them, pausing to give James a chance to catch his breath. They were in the outskirts now, that strange area small towns develop where the homes are few and far apart, a mixture of old farmhouses and cookie-cutter transplant houses, an area that will most likely become the suburbs, given enough time, but is currently somewhere in-between suburbia and countryside.

James leaned on him, his head hanging low and his hair swinging in his eyes, breathing deeply through clenched teeth. His ankle was definitely better, but it was a long way from healed, and Harry could only imagine how torturous this slow, painstaking flight must be for him.

"Do you need to take a rest?" he asked, low and quiet, so that Heather wouldn't hear.

James shook his head. "I need to get you out of here, is what I need," he muttered.

Harry squeezed him gently, pulling him in closer against his side. "We all need to get out of here." He hadn't told James or Heather about the drift, hadn't wanted to worry them, but he could feel their urgency, their frantic desire to climb away from Silent Hill and leave it behind them.

James turned his head a little and brushed his lips across Harry's forehead. "We'll be…" he started, and then his voice trailed off, and he suddenly grew stiff and tense, his arm tightening protectively around Harry's shoulders.

"What? What is it?" Harry craned his neck to look in the same direction as James.

"I thought… in the fog…" James said indecisively, his eyes narrowed and alert, scanning the billowing, blanketing fog. "I thought I saw something," he finished lamely.

Harry peered into the mist with him. The fog was heavier here, some of the thickest Harry had ever seen, nearly as thick as when he'd tried to walk out of… out of… out of somewhere, but damned if he could remember where. "I don't see anything," he said finally.

"Must be my imagination." James turned back towards Heather and hitched the arm he had across Harry's shoulders. "Let's get out of here."

Harry obliged, walking slowly with him, supporting him like a human crutch, and wishing James had kept his mouth shut, because now he could feel it too; that feeling like they were all being watched, like something in the fog had marked them for its own and was tracking them, hunting them, waiting for exactly the right moment.

They'd hobbled for maybe another twenty yards, James limping gamely along and Harry cuddling up closer to him than he really had to, both for warmth and for the security of fighting the drift, when James abruptly froze where he stood. He stopped so suddenly that Harry was nearly pulled off his feet, and it was only the way James's arm had tightened, spastically, around him that kept him standing at all.

"What is it… now…?" Harry heard his own voice trail off, and he felt a vivid, electrifying bolt of terror rip through him. James was staring off into the fog, his eyes so wide that Harry could see the whites all the way around them, his muscles tense and vibrating as adrenaline coursed through him in a flood, his expression motionless in a rictus of horror. He looked so terrified, so much like a wild thing hypnotized by oncoming headlights, that his fear was contagious, and Harry could feel his own knees weaken in response, even before he turned his head and saw what James saw.

They were in the middle of an intersection, streets branching out around them in all four directions, and the street to their left quickly faded away into the thick, roiling fog. Just on the edge of the fog, where everything faded away into a uniform, pearly greyness, Harry saw it, and understood why it had riveted James's attention so thoroughly.

Whatever it was, it was huge. The fog rippled around it, obscuring its details, but even from far away, Harry could feel its menace, its strength, its awful reality. The drift would never trouble this creature; it had been made for one purpose only and would drive itself to the ends of time to succeed.

"What is it?" he asked quietly, irrationally afraid that the thing would be able to hear him, even from this distance.

"The… the thing from my dreams," James whispered hoarsely. "The pyramid thing."

Harry's feet felt like they'd grown roots, sealing him to the concrete. "Does it… does it see us?"

"Yeah." James shivered once, then got control over himself. "It's always watching."

"Hey!" Heather's voice, jarringly loud and irritated in all this stillness, drifted back to them. "What're you waiting for? Come on, we're almost out!"

Harry tore his eyes away from the creature and glanced up at James. James was still staring at it, but even as Harry watched, his jaw clenched in determination and his arm tightened, protectively, around Harry's body. There was something dancing in his eyes, something Harry had never seen there before; a fierce, proud resolve, a strength of will that James probably didn't even know he had, something that had gotten buried, years ago, under the weight of abuse and grief, surging to the surface and transforming him.

"Listen very closely," he whispered, his voice low but perfectly clear. "You can't take your eyes off it. It can only move quickly if you're not watching it, and it's your job to make sure that doesn't happen. I'll guide you, I won't let you fall, but you have to watch it at all times."

"Yes," Harry breathed, although the thought of watching that thing, seeing what it really looked like when it was no longer hidden by fog, made him feel queasy.

Heather's voice rang through the air, along with the sound of her footsteps as she made her way back to them. "Dammit, you geezers, what's the hold-up?"

"Heather!" James called, and while his voice still wasn't very loud, it carried a tone of command, and Harry heard Heather's footsteps falter and then stop. "Listen to me. We need to be very fast. There's a house up ahead that has purple light glowing out the window? Do you see it?"

Harry almost jerked his own head around to see this light, but James's hand closed on the back on his neck like a vise. "Don't look away!" he hissed into his ear.

"Yeah, I see it," Heather called, her voice rife with tension.

"When I say go, you run to that house. Get the door open. We'll be right behind you."

Harry heard Heather make a sound, deep in her throat, like she was getting ready to argue, then she swallowed whatever she'd been about to say and made a sound that was a combination between a jagged laugh and a sob. "What is that thing, J.D.?" She'd seen the thing on the edge of the fog.

"If you do what I say, you won't have to find out." James shifted himself, adjusting his grip on Harry and supporting his own weight. Harry heard a terrible creak and James's muttered oath when he settled his weight onto his injured ankle.

"Are you ready?" James called, and even though his voice was full of pain, it left no room for argument, or hesitation, or doubt.

Heather made that sobbing, laughing sound again. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm ready."

"Harry?"

Harry swallowed. He could feel it more strongly now, the drift, as it took advantage of his distraction, sucking away at what he had left. It idly crossed his mind that if he stumbled and fell during their flight, he might just dissolve away and evaporate into the mist before he hit the pavement. "Ready," he croaked through a throat full of sawdust and memories.

James's arm curled tight around his waist, and he thought he felt cool lips press against the top of his head, although the sensation was so light, so fleeting, that it could have easily been his imagination.

"Ready…" James called. "GO!"