Chapter 34

Revelation

"Use your time to memorize the lullaby of the day

Process the data and throw it away

And each little question doesn't get me thinkin'

And the lies of my life still buzz around my brain."

"Sad State Of Affairs," Descendents

(Rock Against Bush Vol. 1)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The great machine wasn't anywhere near as intimidating as it had seemed from a distance. This might have had something to do with the fact that Douglas had just seen James obliterated by it, but probably not; if anything, that would probably have affected him in the converse. No, he thought it was more because of the atmosphere; over here, some of the evil feeling in the air was thinner, somehow--as if it were concentrated back there, at the center of the room. That might subsequently have something to do with Harry's departure...or it might not.

The machine rose up before him, peaking at several hundred feet and spanning off to the left and right, out of sight. The darkness didn't seem to be thinning out at all; it was heavy here, heavier than in any place he'd been thus far.

And he had a feeling it was only going to get heavier.

Sighing, he glanced around, still trying to figure out where Walter had gone during their squabble earlier. He wasn't in the room anymore, and he certainly hadn't taken the same route through which Douglas and co. had come--unless, of course, he'd weaved through the piles of mulch-like debris and sneaked back that way when they'd been talking. He supposed it was possible...though a bit unlikely. Walter was almost certainly chasing after Harry. He wouldn't have his guns, of course, but that wouldn't stop him.

"But where did you go?" he whispered, trying to spot any inconsistency in the pattern of the strange engine-like machine that might give away the location of a secret door, or something...but there was nothing. He took a step forward...and felt his foot smack something, heard a faint clack. The clattering of metal sliding across metal.

Apparently, he'd just kicked Walter's revolver a ways off to the right. Feeling suddenly hopeful--though he didn't know why, as he'd seen how useless the thing was against the only enemies on which he would presumably be using it--he picked up the gun and put it into his shoulder holster, in place of his old pistol. Who knew? It might come in handy, even if he didn't actually shoot anybody with it. Besides, its weight was comforting; the feel of it as it slid it into the holster was like coming home again.

Off to the right, Douglas noticed something odd; some kind of large concavity in the engine-like machine, mostly obscured by a large six-foot-high pile of mulch directly in front of him. His brow furrowed...and his heart began to race. Circling around the huge mound, the concavity came into full view--it was a sort of service area, a platform set just into the concavity, which was probably twenty feet wide and ten or so high. Most of the way up the left-hand wall, not too far from the obstructive mulch, was a wooden key-board from which several sets of keys, each bound by an unmarked ring, hung on hooks. There looked to be about seven sets in all.

For what, I wonder?

It didn't matter; he didn't think he would need them. Not now, not ever.

Against the right-hand wall was a small podium which rose barely up to Douglas' waist, as if it had been designed for either children, midgets, or something else altogether; he had to bend over to get a good look at its forward-canted surface.

On it were two conspicuously-labelled buttons, one red and one green.

The green one, Up.

The red one, Down.

It was only then that he realized what the concavity was.

Not a service area at all, he thought.

The area where the floor beneath him separated from the rest of the room was plated and lined with red-and-black hazard paint, not grated, as the rest of the room was--this was an elevator. But not just any elevator...it looked like a military elevator, like the kind one might find in a base.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, hesitant...it wasn't so much that he didn't want to go down, as it was that he was afraid of what he might find. He wanted to go ahead and take a moment, a moment he knew he didn't have but felt inclined to take nonetheless, to let his imagination run wild and predict any possible threat that might be waiting for him down below. He thought he knew...but it was better to be safe. He would be able to help nobody if he wound up dead right at the foot of the elevator shaft.

Don't think, a voice in his head whispered--surely his heart, speaking to him in this moment of hesitation--just act. There's no time for thinking; you're either in, or you're out.

"I hate that," Douglas mumbled, but he knew it was right. There was a time for diplomacy and thought, and there was a time for action. Diplomacy was a thing for presidents, for people behind desks, people who made big decisions. Action was for the people who upheld those decisions. Right now, he played the role of the latter.

Washing these thoughts from his mind, Doulgas released his deep breath with a sigh...and firmly pressed the red button, marked Down.

For a moment, nothing happened. Doulgas was beginning to fear that perhaps the lift was broken...and then it whined into life, gears whirring and tracks moving, and he was going down.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The shaft was long and dark, and canted at a slight downard angle; at first Douglas' field of vision was sifted through with a red tint--most likely thanks to the strange red bulbs, presumably emergency lights of some kind, lit within carefully-carved cavities in the wall to either side of the platform, humming with incessant, insectoid life. Only moments later, red became a faded gray, and gray became a darker gray...and then gray became black.

Douglas fished helplessly in his coat pocket for his flashlight, suddenly worried that it might not function. He found it and enjoyed a sigh of relief when it clicked on. The sigh diminished, however, once he laid eyes on his new surroundings.

The walls of the shaft were no longer that somewhat-rusted metal color; now, they were hopelessly brownish-red, the color of blood-drenched rust. He knew just by looking that it wasn't even dried blood--the telltale reflection of light off of the walls indicated that the blood coating them was, indeed, fresh. And he knew it was blood--of course it was, what else could it be?

But whose is it? he wondered. Or is it anyone's at all? Is this just here to try to scare me?

None of that mattered, he supposed; all that mattered now was reaching the bottom of this shaft, getting to Heather, stopping Harry and Walter, somehow. It seemed impossible now...but didn't it always, in the movies, right before the hero miraculously pulled through? Like the line from that U2 song: There's always pain before the child is born.

Well, there wasn't going to be any childbirth in this case; most likely, there would only be death. This thought filled Douglas with a nameless fear--irrational, too, or so he felt, as he knew that he was doing the right thing...but all the same, he couldn't help but feel that he'd forgotten something very, very important, something vital to his success. He had always loved that feeling when he'd gotten it from a movie--in a movie, you were always wondering how the hero (or heroine) would make it out, you would wonder what they forgot, and if they would remember it in time; you would wonder, if they didn't, how they would compensate for it. In a movie, all you had to do was watch...watch, and wait.

But not in real life. In real life, you had to think, and you had to think fast. There was no mystery to it; you had to know what you were going to do long before you did it. In real life, guessing games were fatal.

I'll figure it out, Douglas said, taking long, slow breaths to try and quiet his pounding heart. I have to...I just have to. For Henry, for Eileen. But most of all, for Heather.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eileen put a hand on Henry's shoulder, stopping him.

"What?" He turned around, met the sorrowful look on her face.

They were in the main exhibit area of the museum--the room lined with paintings and highlighted by that spooky interpretation of Traffic Cone Man--and Henry stood with one hand on the handle of the door, preparing to enter the lobby. His hand laxed, relinquishing its grip as he turned.

"This isn't right," she said, and Henry was unnerved to see that she was crying. "We should be back there with him!"

"We can't," Henry said, and he knew it was true.

"But why not?" Eileen shouted. "This is our fight, too! Walter's down there...he doesn't stand a chance, especially unarmed! We have to go back!"

Henry wished he could say something deep, something heartfelt--something like, He'll do whatever needs to be done, or, He can do it, he's Detective Cartland--but he could find no words to offer her that wouldn't enforce a flat-out lie; because the truth was, he really didn't believe that the detective was going to just pull through. He wanted to, because he honestly liked the guy, in spite of all the red tape they'd gone through to get him to see the truth...but he just couldn't. It was sort of like getting to the final boss in a really difficult video game and only having ten percent health and ammunition; you knew it was possible, and that your character was probably good enough to pull it off...but there was still that large seventy-two-to-one ratio of success. It was disheartening, and depressing. If Douglas came out on top, and somehow managed to stop both Harry and Walter, then there might exist the potential for a happy ending--Henry imagined that, were they up here in the town itself when that happened, this misty blackness would simply cease to be and the "real" world would settle back into its rightful place. He imagined that the lower realms--such as the hideous room in which dwelled that malicious machine--would simply cease to be, no longer in possession of the support necessary to hold themselves up, the support offered by a vessel like Heather, or James...or Walter.

God, he hoped Douglas was going to be okay. There was no looking back, now--he knew they couldn't go back, even if they wanted to, because that was the way things always ended, wasn't it? There seemed to be no logic in it at all...and yet, there was. The detective had slapped them with it just before proceeding down in to Harry's "lair."

If you die here, Walter wins.

Simple as that. If they went back, and Douglas did succeed, somehow...they would both likely die. And then Walter would win. He wouldn't even need the power of Heather's treasure...because the 21 Sacraments would be complete, at long last.

Henry shivered.

"We still have a chance," Eileen whispered, her voice choked. "We can go back. We can save him!"

"No," Henry said.

"But why no--"
"Because we just can't," Henry hissed, turning his furrowed brow on her.

Eileen did not respond; she only regarded Henry with wide-eyed surprise.

"He doesn't realize it," Henry said, trying to calm himself down. "But I don't think he did it for us--that was just the rationale he offered."

"What do you mean?"
"He did it for himself," Henry said, sighing. "That, and maybe for Heather. I don't know him well enough to say which. But he's doing it because he promised to protect her. He doesn't want our help, because he doesn't believe he'd be living up to his promise if we got involved." He turned to Eileen. "I'm almost certain of that."

"How can you know?"
"Call it a feeling," Henry said, stealing a Walter-ism from the man he now knew to be his worst enemy. "No matter what metaphor is driving him...if we went down there to help him--even if we won, and we killed Walter and stopped Harry--Walter would still win. He came back before because he still had a chance. If we beat him here, but then we die...then he'll win in the long run."

"But--"

"But if Douglas wins," Henry continued, ignoring her, "then we all win. Harry goes down, Walter goes down, and we're safe."

"This place will fall apart," Eileen said. With him in it."

Henry shook his head. "We can't know that for sure."

"This is crazy," Eileen said, and Henry was alarmed by the doubt he heard in her voice. Perhaps she was coming loose?

Or maybe, he thought, just maybe...I'm the one coming loose? Maybe that's why I believe it?

No. It was better not to think such thoughts. Self-doubt had allowed him to keep his emotions in check through much of his life--true--but there were times when doubt only served to complicate matters. Self-doubt, it seemed, only mattered in situations where one had some way of influencing the outcome.

"Just roll with it," Henry said, taking another morsel from the box of Walter-isms in his head. He found that each one he used made him feel a little dirty, like wearing someone else's underwear...but at the same time, he liked the dry wit of them. The flavor of cold-hearted confidence.

It was a taste he thought he might be able to get used to.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After about four minutes of paced downward travel, the platform on which Douglas stood suddenly, instantly became encased in a thin glass-like bubble, reminiscent of a space helmet. The detective was alarmed at first, but when he realized that this new development posed no real threat to him, he felt a little better.

Looking ahead of the platform, Douglas realized that it was rolling on two automated tracks, one just beneath each end on either side. Sort of like a roller-coaster, but much slower. He couldn't see the apparatus being used to move the platform, however--the platform itself was perfectly level, and yet the track was descending at a slight downward angle, which suggested further mechanical function somewhere out of sight. But none of that was what caught his attention; what caused his heart to leap into his throat was that the way seemed to abruptly cease down there. He could see only the wavy edges of the tracks--which seemed to have been twisted apart at some point in history--and past that, nothing.

Nothing at all.

He turned, eagerly searching for some way to turn the platform around, only now realizing that there was no visible way to operate it from inside the bubble--the pint-sized podium with the clearly-marked Up and Down buttons, it seemed, had been part not of the platform but of the station above.

If he died down here, Henry and Eileen would have no way of knowing. They might just sit up there, waiting, expecting, until either Harry or Walter showed up to do them in. He had to think fast. But just as he turned around, he realized that there was not just a grand drop: far below, Douglas thought he could see strange shapes squiggling just at the very edge of his line of sight. He wasn't quite close enough to tell what they were from here, but as the cart drew nearer to the edge of the tracks, the meaning of the shapes became clear: rain droplets, pattering down onto water.

There was water down there.

Just as the realization dawned on him, he heard an obnoxious skreeek! that stopped his heart with surprise for just one second: the platform had reached the end of the tracks. In the field that spanned across his mind he could see the suspension system on the bottom of the platform giving way, preparing to tumble it and its lone passenger down into the liquid below.

Skreeek!...thunk.

There it went.

He barely had time to mumble a scrambled version of Oh, hell, before the platform was completely submerged. If not for the glass shielding, Douglas would certainly have drowned right here, all these thousands of feet beneath one of the worst possible places to die, for there was no visible safe-haven in the vicinity...only water, God knew how deep.

Douglas closed his eyes and swallowed, preparing for the worst...and before he knew it, he was in the aquatic realm, and there were sounds. He didn't want to look--all of the things he'd seen in Silent Hill above-water were bad enough, and when squared with the kinds of strange things seen under the ocean in the normal world, he didn't even want to think about what kinds of things might exist under here, what kind of things that could make those weird sounds--but somehow, he felt compelled. He knew that what he might see would probably haunt him for long years after...but at the same time, he was possessed of an irresistable, almost scientific interest, driven by the thought that he would probably be the only living human to ever see such things--a thought both horrifying and terribly fascinating.

But all of those fears were driven away when he opened his eyes...and saw nothing. Nothing at all. Just a great, piercing blackness in all directions. Turning behind him, he could see a towering mechanical structure--not too unlike a radio tower--and the shaft leading into it, the shaft from which he had just fallen...but all around it, and in every other direction, there was only emptiness.

But those sounds...they were like some otherworldly fusion of sucking, blowing, and paced breathing, all at once. Difficult just to hear, much less identify--not that he had any trouble realizing that he had never heard anything like it before.

He could only fight the urge to look away from the eternal nothingness into which he was sinking...and continue to sink.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"But what if he can't?"

Henry jerked, startled out of his daze, and turned back to Eileen.

She was leaning on the edge of the display case, but her arms were fidgeting by her sides, ready to take action. "What if he can't stop Harry? Or what if Walter gets him?"

Henry only shrugged. He hated how apathetic the gesture seemed once he'd performed it.

"Don't act like you don't care," Eileen spat. "I may not have known you for very long, Henry, but I certainly know you better than that. You're not heartless." Then, after a brief hesitation: "And if you really are, then maybe sleeping with you was a mistake." She regretted the words before they even left her mouth.

"What do you want to do?" Henry said without hesitation, startling Eileen. She opened her mouth, an apology at the ready, but what escaped her instead was a sound more akin to a mixture of confusion and satisfaction, something that managed to sound strangely sensuous in spite of its context.

"What do you want to do?" Henry repeated, flashing her a distracted expression.

"What are you thinking?" Eileen said, hopeful.

"You first," he said.

"I want..." she began, and trailed off.

"You don't know, I'll bet," Henry said. He then placed a hand on her shoulder.

After a long hesitation, Eileen turned her head away. "Yeah...I guess...but it's still not good. Not good at all."

"I know," Henry said. "But remember, we don't know the rules to this place. We don't know what will happen to him, if he succeeds. Remember that place below Room 302?"

"Yes," Eileen conceded. "But that place...it had an analogue in the 'real' world. That place we saw down there...that couldn't have been a real place, not anywhere."
"We can't say that for sure," Henry said. "There could be a whole establishment beneath the Historical Society, for all we know. Maybe a cellar or a vault, or something."

Eileen shuffled her feet. "I just don't believe that. I mean, yeah, I want to, but...it's like my mind won't let me." She paused, then shook her head. "This is just too much...I want it to be over, already."

Henry sighed, half-nodding.

Douglas...wherever you are...

He wished like hell that he could add something hopeful to that statement...but he was dismayed to find that he could think of nothing. Even such simple catechisms as "good luck" seemed miles away.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An indeterminable amount of time later, Douglas finally found the strength to peel his eyes from the abyss which yawned away from him in all directions and point them towards the floor. It wasn't so much that he was scared of what he was seeing; no, it was more because of that feeling of grandiosity, that sensation of being dwarfed by the environment itself. It was a feeling he remembered from his first and only visit to the Grand Canyon in Arizona as a child all those years ago, the feeling that he was seeing only a small fragment of something much larger, the feeling that this place had been evolving, growing, carving itself into existence for hundreds of thousands of years before this moment, and would continue to do so for as many (if not more) years after. It was the feeling of vulnerability, as if the place threatened to swallow him whole should he stare into its maw long enough.

Not to the detective's surprise, the floor of the elevator car still looked like it had only moments before, and was still made of the same sturdy metal.

What is this? he asked nobody, trying to resist the ever-present urge to succumb to the gravity of the environment around him; it was so huge! It just seemed to go on, and on, and on...and just when you thought it was going to stop, it went.

Douglas chuckled, recalling this little bit of comedy from some old TV show--which, for some strange reason, reminded him of the Energizer Bunny. He couldn't remember from which show that had been, just that it had been cancelled several years ago, and that he missed it dearly.

This thought conjured images of other things he missed dearly.

"Oh, no," he whispered, but the memories were already coming back.

You never said it would be like this.

I'm sorry, but--

You're always working--you're never at home--your son barely knows you, and--

You knew it was going to be like this when you married me--

I didn't know that you--

--I made that perfectly clear--

--were going to marry your job instead of your wife, how--

--Why don't you just leave, then, if it's such a problem?

I'm...hon, I'm sorry--

No, don't be sorry. Maybe...maybe you're right.

Douglas continued to stare down at the steel floor, comforting himself with the idea that he wasn't hanging his head in shame, that he was just trying to avoid looking into that grand abyss which threatened to overwhelm his sanity, even when confronted with the knowledge that an even bigger abyss threatened to do just that--if not worse--right here underneath his skull.

"This isn't right," he said out loud. "This has to be...it has to be this place. It's messing with my head." He'd hoped that speaking his thoughts aloud would give them more power than they had as inarticulate matter between his ears, but his hopes were quickly dashed.

It's not this place at all, a voice spoke from the center of his brain. Sure, maybe this place has helped a little here and there--after all, part of its nature is to ruin the complex designs of the human mind, both those we humans can comprehend and those we can't--but this battle has been going on inside you for years.

"Yeah," Douglas mumbled. "Well, my mind has a hell of a sense of timing."

If it's not now, it's later, the voice spoke up.

"I choose later."

To this, his conscience had nothing to say. And he knew he would pay the price for that later--for there was always a price to be paid when one squelched one's innermost desires, whether one knew he or she wanted them or not.

At long last, Douglas brought his head and his flashlight up, having forgotten all about the endless terrain around him...and what he saw caused his heart to skip a beat, and his mind to cease its hassling.

And then...there was a splash.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What if only one of us went back?"

"What?" Henry said, disbelieving.

"If only one of us went back to help him," Eileen said, "then Walter wouldn't be able to win. He'd only get one of us, if even that."

"Eileen..."

"I mean it," she said. "I could go back and--"

"Eileen, no," Henry said. "We can't risk our lives--"

"But it's not just--"

"It is," Henry cut her off, feeling unusually aggressive. "What you're suggesting is to improve his chances of success by sacrificing one of us. Except you don't know if it will improve his chances at all. You're gambling on a gamble."

Eileen hesitated...and gave in, flustered. She threw her arms up in the air. "I don't know, I just hate this lazy feeling. I feel like we should be doing something."

"Well, that's..." Henry began...and stopped.

"What?" Eileen asked.

Maybe, he thought to himself, maybe it's because we should be doing something. Not about Douglas or Walter or Harry or Heather...but...

"Henry," Eileen said in a stern voice, as if reprimanding a stubborn child, "come on, talk to me!"

"It's..." he whispered, and glanced around the room. "It's nothing."

Eileen watched him with worry in her eyes.

"I'm sorry I snapped" Henry said.

Eileen figured she should have felt hopeful, but for reasons she couldn't identify, she wasn't.

Meanwhile, Henry felt a chill run down his spine; things were so close as they were...and yet he felt, pulsing beneath all of this like a malignant tumor on a vital organ, something else, something different...as if this was not the end of the game but the beginning.

To put it as bluntly as his intuition insisted on being at the moment, something wasn't right.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Douglas was a bit late in realizing that something was happening, although he had registered a sudden shift in the environment. Visually, everything appeared to be the same...but his other senses screamed to him that something was wrong, or at least that something had changed. For one, the sound of rushing water had been replaced by that of air whizzing by, and he no longer felt the lightweight gravity afforded by aquatic suspension.

He was in free-fall, then. But...how? How could he be in free-fall, this far underwater?

Flashing his light all around in a panic, he saw that the beam was no longer refracted as it had been in the water up above. Further proof--should it be necessary--that he was falling, not floating.

Before he could further analyze the situation, he heard another loud plunk!, and realized that he had hit another body of water. He saw bubbles accumulate briefly along the outer rim of the platform's glass cover, and then he saw the water level down to the base.

He was...floating?

"That's it," Douglas said. "I want out of here. This is just--"
As if responding to his command, the glass cover retracted down into the platform, vanishing from sight.

Douglas jerked his head downward, seized with alarm; for just a moment, he expected to be assaulted by a flood of ebony liquid, carried away into the depths of this strange place...but seconds later, when the effect wore off, he realized that the platform was steadily coasting on the surface of the water.

And on top of that, there appeared to be a dock of some sort floating just before him in the water. Like the elevator platform, it didn't seem to be attached to anything, just floating in place on the eerily calm waters.

Flashing his light around, Douglas realized that he was not in the middle of an ocean, or a lake, or anything of the sort; he was floating on a pond (or similar tiny body of water) in the middle of a tall, pitch-black room. As with the previous areas, the only light came from Douglas' pocket MagLite.

He stepped out onto the dock, bracing himself in the event that it should sink under his weight, and was relieved to feel several inches of thick, sturdy wood beneath the soles of his shoes. The thing was floating just above water-level, its supports buried beneath the black fluid, and Douglas was glad when he reached the other end and stepped onto solid--albeit metallic--ground.

It was then, and only then, that he thought to flash his light directly above...and that was when he saw the ceiling, which was not really a ceiling at all but a body of water.

About twenty feet up into the air, the water simply ceased to be, forming a shifting, almost crystalline ceiling that reflected his light back at him. The water's surface shifted, as a normal body of water might; other than the fact that it was upside down and effectively violating basic laws of physics, it was behaving like a perfectly normal body of water.

"That's...odd," Douglas remarked, and turned the flashlight away...though he continued to watch the "ceiling" for a moment longer, as if expecting it to come crashing down on him at any moment.

That thought was enough to get him moving again.

The room was tall but quite narrow, and cylindrical in shape. Were it any higher--and had it only an ascending spiral staircase--Douglas might have thought it to be a lighthouse, but after a quick analysis he deduced that it must be some sort of plant. In the center of the room was the platform on which he'd entered; spanning outward from that was the body of water over which he'd just crossed, and the dock he'd used to do so. Past that point, metal grates proceeded across the floor all the way to the metallic walls of the room, which rose upward in segmented metal panels (strangely enough, Douglas noticed, there didn't seem to be anything holding the plates together).

On either side of the room, one behind Douglas and one across from him, was a series of five steps, each leading to a door. On the door across from him, Douglas could barely read the words Control Room written in black ink on a torn rectangular segment of notebook paper taped to the door's top panel.

Turning, Douglas read Watch Station Access on a piece of paper similarly attached to the door on this side of the room.

"Which way should I go?" Douglas asked in a sly voice, feeling eerily giddy; he didn't know why he should feel that way all of a sudden, though he had a feeling this place was somehow responsible--the line he'd spoken had suddenly occurred to him from an early stage of a computer game he'd once tried (without success) to complete, a game called The 7th Guest. He couldn't remember what part of the game from which the line had originated, just that it reminded him of spiders.

Try the Control Room first, his inner voice spoke up.

He nodded. "Sure, why not?" he said dryly, the moment of giddiness past, and started towards the door so marked.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What do you think happened to her?"

Henry stirred, snapped out of the sleeping sense of discomfort by which he had been absorbed, though his eyes remained fixated on the museum's front entrance--rather, on the darkness visible beyond the twin glass panels. "Huh?"

"Heather," Eileen specified. "What do you think happened to her when...when Harry...when he did whatever he did?"

"Don't think about it too much," Henry warned. "Whatever it was, it's over now, for her and for us."

"But that's just it," Eileen said, her voice rising in pitch ever-so-slightly--Henry found himself wondering if she was as stable on the inside as she was letting on. He certainly hoped so. "What if it's not? What if she's like Joseph and the others--"

"She's not," Henry said.

"How do you know?" Eileen retorted.

"I don't," Henry said drearily. "It's a feeling, that's all."

"A feeling?"

"Yes," Henry repeated calmly, swallowing the mixture of borderline-frustration and confusion bubbling within him which seemed intent on bursting forth. "Joseph was gone, no question about it. We don't know if Heather's dead."

"But she--"

"You saw it," Henry said. "That thing, Harry. The way it sort of...well, took her in. It wasn't like it was trying to eat her alive, or anything...more like it was becoming her. Or she was becoming it."

"Or part of it," Eileen added, a chill racing down her spine. "So you think...maybe it's not over?"

But to that, Henry would not give a concrete answer. Either way, only dismal truth lay in wait.

"Henry?" Eileen prodded, taking his shoulder from behind. "Henry, don't do that."

"If she is dead," he said, turning to face her, reluctant to speak his mind but knowing that she would spot a lie a mile away, "then she'll probably stay here."

"Stay...here?" Eileen asked, her words drawn out, as if spoken in the haze of a dream...and then her eyes widened.

"In Silent Hill," Henry finished. "She'll stay here, just like those people in that place...the Hurting Ground, she called it. She'll be a part of this until God knows when. Maybe forever, unless Douglas saves her."

"But that's only if she's right," Eileen said. "She thought she was right about the ritual, too, and look what happened?"

"Exactly," Henry said, met with a perplexed stare from Eileen. "We should try our best to avoid making the same mistake--assuming the best."

"But..." Eileen started, but all of the words she'd had lined up on the tip of her tongue now slid back down her throat, devoid of fire. God, how she hated him when he was right! She wanted badly for him to say something, anything, that she could use to convince him to go back for Douglas--she knew the detective stood little chance of success, and she was sure Henry knew, as well. The trouble was, Henry wasn't willing to admit that.

Either that, or he really did have blind faith in the detective...a possibility that unnerved Eileen.

"But," Henry said, the inflection of his voice rising slightly--something that actually resonated with a part of Eileen that was either hope or its closest cousin--"If she's alive, Douglas might be able to save her."

"That's just what I've been saying, though," Eileen said, falling back into irritability. "If Douglas saves her, how will he get her out of there? What good will it do? They'll both die!"

Henry did not respond.

"Henry," she said, shaking him. "Tell me you aren't still--"

"There has to be a way," Henry mumbled.

"What?"

"There has to be a way," he repeated. "There has to be a way to do this without..."

"I don't understand..."

"Without putting everything at risk," Henry said. "Without going back there. There's got to be a way."

Eileen watched him with confusion and--she was ashamed to admit--the faintest sheen of hope. She didn't want to believe in him right now--to do so was to deny the red-hot emotion boiling just beneath her surface, the intution that screamed against everything Henry was saying--but her desire to do so was so powerful that she thought she might just learn to, even without good reason. Call it a habit.

No, she thought, de-railing that train of thought before it could travel any farther. No, no more of this. No more taking orders.

"Henry," she said, clenching her teeth together, trying to psyche herself up for the resistance she knew to be inevitable.

No answer. He had his back turned on her--and what timing!

"Henry, I'm going back," she said, and was appalled at the tremble she detected in her own voice.

"Wait," Henry said--apparently, he hadn't heard her--and then, quite suddenly, he turned around and shouted, "No!"

"Yes," she said. "You can stay here if you want. You said that Walter wins if he gets both of us? Well, if only I go, then he won't have both of us. Even if I lose--"

"No way," Henry said, and took her by the wrist. "You can't go back."

"Don't tell me what to do," she said, and shook her hand free.

Henry backed away from her, stunned. He'd never seen her this vicious before.

"Look," Eileen said, pausing for a deep breath--the next words she chose were probably going to be the most important ones of her life, so she could use every second to think them over that she could get--"All this time that we've been together, I've been putting all of my weight on you. And while I appreciate the way you've handled it, I don't think it's fair. Of me to you, or of you to me. It's not fair of me to expect you to take care of me like this--"
"Eileen--"

"No, let me finish," she said. Then, closing her eyes: "I realize I've also made a mistake in that I've made you expect that behavior of me. You expect me to just cower under you and allow you to 'protect' me, because you are probably stronger and smarter than me...you expect me to trust you, and it's probably really easy for you that way, because then you can think of me as an extention of yourself--you can think for yourself, and just apply whatever you feel to me, as well--but I'm going to have to stop you this time."

"Eileen, you don't know what you're saying," Henry said. "It's this--"

"I can't just stand by and let Douglas kill himself trying to save her," Eileen said, ignoring him...except, Henry realized, she wasn't ignoring him at all. She was hearing everything he was saying. She was fighting him, and it was tearing her apart from the inside. A crystal-clear tear slid down one of her perfect cheeks, and Henry felt his stomach turn, felt the strength run out of his legs at the sight of it.

"Please," Henry said, "just think about it for a minute."

"There's nothing to think about," she said, turning from him...and then she was running.

"Eileen, wait!"

She went through the door, and though he was only two or three steps behind her at first, by the time he'd entered the office to which the doorway of light had taken her earlier, she had disappeared into the darkness beyond the broken wall.

"Eileen!" Henry shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth, pushing himself to move even faster. "Come back!"

Though the response was simple--just three words--they were enough to freeze Henry all the way to the core: "Wish me luck."

"No way," Henry muttered under his breath. "This isn't..."

His side was cramping up already. Damn...and just a day or two ago, it had seemed like he was in perfect shape! What was happening to him? It was almost as if somebody didn't want him catching up to her, as if somebody wanted her to venture down into the deepest realm of Harry's strange other dimension.

Thoughts of higher powers struck a familiar chord in him, and he was reminded of Eileen's "Visitor." He took a brief moment to wonder if that "Visitor" was responsible for this current outburst.

Eileen would be so disappointed in you, a voice spoke to him from far beneath his conscious mind. If you'd said that to her face after that speech she gave you...that would be like ignoring everything she had to say and blaming it on PMS, or something.

He wondered if that was a bit of Walter taking seed in him; he doubted it, but decided that it would probably be wise to refrain from using any more Walter-isms, just in case.

As much as he hated to admit it, it seemed that all bets were officially off with respect to safety measures; nevermind that Walter's twisted ritual would be complete if Eileen and Henry died down here. It seemed that Eileen was intent on throwing herself in harm's way for Douglas' (and perhaps Heather's) sake...and he would have to dedicate the rest of his time here to convincing her to look past her emotions and see the truth--if she quit now, then the game was over, and she and Henry would win.

This time, the voice that spoke to him from beneath his consciousness sounded suspiciously like Eileen's: But is it worth it? Are you really willing to sacrifice the lives of Douglas and Heather, just for a chance to stop Walter from reaching what he believes to be God? Would you really relinquish two people to eternal damnation, just to be sure? Or will you take the chance, gamble on everything, to save them all?

That was just the bitch of it--he didn't know.

You've had your whole life to think this one over, the voice insisted. The answer is who you are. Now it's time to decide.

"I don't know," Henry said.

But the voice would not leave him alone: Decide anyway.

So he did.

END OF CHAPTER 34