Heather worked for hours and hours, tidying up every last remaining lacerations she could find. At first, Michael and Lisa stayed nearby to watch over her. But as time drew on and Heather remained steadfastly focused on the task, Kaufmann eventually took Ms. Garland by the hand and pulled her into an adjacent room.

"We're leaving her in there with it alone?" his nurse and receptionist asked him once they were alone, face drawn.

Kaufmann nodded. "Something terrible happened. Those frantic stitches aren't a coincidence. She needs to heal something, because someone has taken away her ability to heal him."

Alex is dead," Lisa noted sadly. "You're sure of it."

Kaufmann was silent.

Lisa looked towards the door. "It's not going to hurt her," she realized. "But I don't understand why. Even Ican tell what that is, Michael. That's no protector. That's hate in there."

As an ex-cultist, Kaufmann had been considering the same question. The Red and Yellow deities were often confused in cult theology. It was never clear where one began and the other ended; sometimes they switched places entirely or merged into one. Granted. But there was no mistaking the Pyramid Head represented the demon half, and that demon could not be prayed to, did not help mortals, and dealt only in death; the best defense against it was aglaophotis.

After a moment he realized he heard the sound of a car engine. Perplexed, he moved to push open a the lighthouse window and stare curiously out into the distant fog. When he thought he saw a bit of movement, he went to grab a pair of binoculars and returned to give himself a better look. A sinking feeling entered his gut as he saw first one humanoid figure, then another, another, and another.

"What is it?" Lisa asked.

"The cultists," Kaufmann told her, "They've found the lighthouse!"

A fear shot up the nurse's spine. For a moment she was paralyzed. The Pyramid monster was still injured. Heather had lost everything when the cult had kidnapped her. They had only a single gun and the lighthouse was not easily fortified. Then something dawned on her.

"They're not leaving the fog?" she asked.

Kaufmann looked up at his receptionist and shook his head. "This is Alessa's place."

When Heather finished the stitches, she fetched a pail of water. The Pyramid Monster shifted slightly, dragging the tip of his helm across the ground to 'watch' her. When she returned, she found that he was trying to rise. She quickly knelt back beside him and began scrubbing filth from his side, and he settled back against the floor. The task was grotesque. Each wipe of the cloth pulled gore and bits of flesh from around his massive lacerations. It took ten refills and half a dozen towels, but she scrubbed every inch of grime and filth from his skin.

As the job neared completion, jaundiced and purple-veined flesh no longer caked with liters of grime, Heather abruptly dropped her wash cloth. She pressed her bare hands into his shoulder blade, her fingers digging onto what scarce undamaged skin they could find as spasms shook through her frame. A wave of exhaustion overcame her suddenly, with pain boiling up her gut and tears slipping anew down her cheeks.

What now?

"Alex..." she whispered to herself. The monster seemed to take notice of her and shifted slightly, dragging the tip of his helmet a few inches in her direction. The arm coiled about where she sat moved, the fingertips touching her and accessing her condition. His gestures seemed strange and out of place. She wiped her nose and took a harder look at him, trying to understand what she had done.

Was this Alex Shepherd's Bogeyman?

That would have made a certain sickening amount of sense, as the Bogeyman in question had just lost his 'owner' and Silent Hill liked to pull shit of that nature. A wave of nauseous familiarity rushed over her.

This monster dressed in a skirt of flesh, and was unrealistically fit, big, tall and heavy. He would have towered over her while standing. He did not wear gloves. The helmet was triangular in the front instead of flat. In fact, overall, the monster looked very much like Alex Shepherd's monster. But Heather had been up close and personal with the Bogeyman (too personal) and been permitted to observe it to a very fine degree of detail. After a momentary panic, she realized there was one glaring difference between the two monsters that was immediately obvious: This Pyramid's helmet was blood red instead of black.

Heather loosed a long and shaky breath she didn't know she had been holding, as her fingers traced uncertainly down the slope of the helmet. It seemed her monster was slightly shorter than Alex's Bogeyman as well. But the similarities were still uncanny. Where had this Pyramid Thing had come from? Was it specific to her? Unlikely... It took an inordinate amount of hate to make a Pyramid Monster, and Heather had been dead inside rather than enraged. Also, her monsters tended to have fused fingers and burns. Given the circumstances, she wagered he had merely been re-purposed as she had called him to her.

After a moment, a long black tongue slithered out from under the helmet. Heather grimaced but then frowned when the slimy appendage touched her cheek. It wasn't slimy. It wasn't oily, or dripping in black sebaceous ooze. In fact, it felt like snakeskin.

Who had made this creature? In a way he felt tailored to her and familiar; in another she was sure she had only called him. She hesitantly lifted a hand and touched the waxy black tongue. It curled slowly around her fingertips. Maybe it really was Alex Shepherd's Bogeyman, and calling on it/him had simply changed a few attributes. Didn't Kaufmann say that Heather had had an 'effect' on Valtiel? Well that 'effect' hadn't been permanent, but it had certainly been noticeable. That would explainthis familiarity...

Heather Mason hung her head as a wave of emotion coursed over her. Too many memories hit all at once, and she couldn't come up with a puzzle to push them back fast enough. She needed something to do, something to fix, someone to heal, something to figure out, something to kill, a mystery to solve, a-.

Alex is Dead. Valtiel is Lost.

Then the tongue smeared up against her cheek, wiping salty tears from her face, and Heather nearly jumped out of her skin. Her eyes opened wide and she looked down at the monster before her. A dread built up in her, a dread and a hope that she was worried might consume her if she were not careful. She found herself shaking slightly. Then more hot tears coursed down her cheeks.

"Please," she whispered, knowing that she sacrificed her sanity to the winds in doing so. "Please. Don't leave me." It was quite fair to say that no incarnation of Xuchibara the Red God had ever before heard such profane words. The Pyramid Thing kept licking salt from her face. Heather trembled. A long moment passed in silence. She fingered over the helmet.

Could it be removed? What was underneath it? She suspected he might resemble Valtiel.

Then suddenly the Red Pyramid twitched. He tried to lift his head in one direction, failed, and surrendered back to the forces of gravity. Heather frowned and looked in the direction he seemed interested in. For a moment, she was nothing out of the ordinary, just the boring and slightly gray insides of the Otherworld lighthouse. Then she noticed the mirror.

When Travis Grady entered the lighthouse, everyone moved to the door to greet him. He took of his cap and gave a polite nod to Eileen and Lauren, before staring pointedly at James and Henry. "Where is she?" he asked.

Henry shook his head unknowingly. "We lost track of her yesterday morning. I tried to send her a letter but... even if she got it, she has no way of answering us."

The truck driver swore, lowering his head and rubbing his neck as he thought about the gravity of the situation. "You're sure the boy's dead?" he asked bitterly, and glanced at the lighthouse doorway beside him.

"Heather seemed to think so," James answered quietly. There were soft footsteps on the lighthouse stairs, and then a new face was standing hesitantly in the doorway, peering nervously at the crowd of survivors within. Travis glanced at him and then waved him through.

"This is Murphy," he told the group, and then gestured to each of the survivors in turn to introduce them. "Eileen, Lauren, James, Henry."

The newcomer entered and nodded quietly to them, avoiding eye contact. It wasn't exactly that he looked frightened or like he desperately wanted to escape the town; more it seemed that he was a quiet man and had no idea where to even begin. The befriended survivors were equally awkward. Simultaneously they wanted to get straight to talking about Heather Mason, but at the same time they had been interested in meeting the latest 'addition' to their family since Travis had first mentioned Murphy Pendleton. Without Heather there to break the ice, the welcoming party to Silent Hill Survivors Anonymous seemed incomplete.

After a moment they realized they had to sort of ignore Murphy and quickly turned to the topic of where and how Heather had last shown up on the radar. The last they'd made contact, James had seen her captured by the cult, hysterical with grief, and only ten meters away from a raging Pyramid Monster. Mr. Sunderland then had to firmly defend his position that it felt like Heather was still very much alive, and perhaps even safe at the moment.

Lauren lifted her brows, first at the adults and then at the quiet man they'd been forced to shelve till later. She knew she had already expended her flirtatious luck on an undead serial murderer and ought not tempt fate any further that week. But old habits died hard and after a moment she gave up and smiled at the older man. "Yo, sorry about the cold reception," she began, taking a few steps closer to him and gesturing to where the other four were arguing. "They're just busy worrying their hair gray over Heather at the moment."

Murphy looked uncertainly at her for a moment. The first thing he said was: "I'm married."

Lauren paused, blinked several times in confusion, and then tilted her head to the side. "Do I really come off that strong?" she asked. "I was so sure I was just trying to be friendly..."

"Lauren!" her father interrupted crossly, apparently possessed of the same hypersensitive awareness that permitted all parents to know what their children were doing, even if such awareness tended to interrupt other important life-or-death meetings (like how the hell were they going to save Heather Mason?).

Eileen couldn't help but giggle, even though the situation with Heather was tense. "Your daughter's 'friendly' is synonymous with 'tigress stalking prey.' " James made a fast as Mrs. Townshend, but couldn't shake the mental image of Lauren conversationally chatting up Walter Sullivan from his mind.

"That's not fair," Lauren protested, "I didn't even say a single come on!"

Henry lowered his eyes. "It is more in the body language. The subtleties..."

Travis muttered something under his breath, reached absently for a cigarette he no longer carried, and then lowered his hand. "Does anyone have a dry erase marker?" he asked, looking around the atrium and prodding a pen holder.

Henry blinked at him."A pen won't work?"

"No, have to write on a slick surface," Travis muttered. "Needs to be a marker, or... hell I'd settle for a bar of wet soap."

That seemed to scramble the squadron. After a moment of checking the receptionist's desk and various pockets, Eileen pulled out a tube of lipstick and hurried up to hand it to the man. Travis took it and thanked her, and then walked up to the large atrium mirror.

As Heather watched the mirror, something began to change. Drawn in bright red lipstick, a handsome scrawl was appearing letter by letter across the polished surface.

'Heather?' it asked.

An electric thrill shot up her spine and she bolted over the Pyramid and up towards the mirror. For a moment she looked frantically around her for something to write with. Then she realized she still had blood on her, and she elected to use that. 'Travis!' she wrote back.

Pragmatically, the question mark disappeared from the lipstick sentence and transformed into an exclamation. "Heather!" the mirror now read. Choking back tears of relief, Heather similarly modified her own message to, 'Travis!'

A moment passed, and then she received the response, 'The hell are you writing with?'

Heather made a face, but then couldn't repress a snicker. 'I didn't know you wore lipstick,' she replied. She glanced behind her at where the Pyramid Thing was fidgeting and trying to rise. His wheezing breath made it clear how difficult the activity was. "Fuck!" she called and then hurried back to where it was struggling. "No, no! Lie down, lie down," she reassured it, touching it shoulder and back. "I'm fine. See? I'm not going anywhere."

The monster rumbled and protested for a moment, still trying to rise. Then abruptly it sagged back down into the floorboards with a metallic groan. Heather shuddered. She looked around and then, perhaps more like Travis Grady than she realized, picked up a nearby bar of wet soap and hurried back to the mirror.

'What happened?' the truck driver had written, this time in black felt marker. It seemed someone had finally given him a proper writing implement. The question sent a pang through Heather that rocked her back on her heels for a moment. She stared at the words for a long time, took a deep breath, and then, pressed the soap up against the surface.

'Alex is dead,' came the soapy response, a weight that settled heavily down on everyone else within the lighthouse. As everyone else tried to figure out what to tell her, how to reassure her, or what to do to help her, Travis B-Lined through unnecessary thinking and wrote immediately, 'I'm sorry.'

A response came quickly in progressively sloppy calligraphy as Heather rapidly etched out an explanation. 'Cult. Couldn't save him.'

And while the room around him protested that it wasn't her fault and there was nothing she could have done and that this was just Silent Hill's way, Travis answered her with, 'Are you safe?'

'For now.' The others died down and watched as the conversation play out.

'Good. He'd appreciate.'

A precipitation formed on the glass, including smudge marks. When droplets of water appeared and began to clear away lettering, Travis understood that she'd leaned her forehead into the glass and was crying. He cleared away some of the old writing to make room for something new. This time, he tried hesitated a moment before putting down words. When he at last started to write, Henry could perceive a shudder in the man's arm.

'Do you need me to come?' he asked her, and the asking itself was difficult. It had been so long- so many more years for him than for any of them- but the fear still lingered.

'NO.'

'Will you let me?' he clarified.

She circled the 'NO.'

'Will you break every mirror in the house if I try?'

'YES.'

'Will you make it through this alive?'

For a long moment, no answer came. The room held it's collective breath. Then Heather began erasing everything she'd written, no doubt using water to get the caked soap off the glass. The tension grew until the glass was again dry, and she wrote a single word upon it's surface: 'Yes.'

'Then what do you need to do next?'

"Heather!" Kaufmann called, entering the atrium with binoculars in hand. He'd gone up to the top of the beacon and followed the sweep of its light as it dusted fog from the surrounding areas. "The lighthouse is surrounded."

Heather blinked, looking up from where she was writing. "What?"

Kaufmann blinked. "Were you able to contact them?"

She nodded. "What do you mean the lighthouse is surrounded?"

"Come look," he told her, gesturing to the front window. Heather quickly followed him and then accepted the binoculars when he gave them to her. The two of them peered through the window for a long moment. Then Heather took in a sharp breath when the lighthouse beacon briefly revealed the entities hiding out in the fog. "It's not just here either," Kaufman warned. "They've three boats on the lake. We're surrounded."

There was an instant of hopeless panic, followed by a burst of insight and at last a calm and brutal certainty. Heather set down the binoculars and looked up at Michael Kaufmann.

"What are you going to do?" he asked. He was the second person in a short time to ask the same question.

"I have to get out into the fog," Heather told him, but she was more answering Travis Grady about her travel plans than she was addressing the cultist threat. "I'm guessing if I head for the next Seal of the Metatron, Silent Hill will provide. I'll find a weapon, at least. And some clues. Perhaps I can figure out what to do next."

"But you can't leave," Kaufmann pointed out the obvious and drawing her back to the present. "Not with them watching on all sides."

"Let me think," was all she said. "I might have an idea." After a moment she turned around an walked past Kaufmann and up to the mirror, and it occurred to her that Travis's writing had gone missing. 'Travis?' she wrote. The word held together for a moment and then began to melt as if the soap were being heated. Her eyes narrowed.

She looked around the room and then seized hold of a towel saturated with the Pyramid Monster's blood, dropping the bar of soap on the mantlepiece. She carried it up to the mirror, wet her fingers in red gore, and then began to paint the Seal of the Metatron on it's surface. She etched in every tiny detail, ignoring the way the glass heated up under her fingertips. When the symbol was completed she dropped the towel with a wet thud and laid her bloody fingertips over the glass. High above her, nearly forgotten over the top of the lighthouse, an orange symbol burned softly and snow began to melt.

The glass seemed to crack and burn in places. Rust and ichor spread over it, and then receded. The monster's name had been Impotence. The cult had broken with all previous precedents and sacrificed her not over the Halo of the Sun but over the Seal of the Metatron. As always, something in Silent Hill refused to make sense.

There was a shudder, and then then mirror began to change colors. Soon it reflected not the gray interior of the Otherworld lighthouse, but the fully saturated light of the real world. Travis Grady, standing in the reflected room, blinked in surprise. Ha.

"What the?" he asked her.

"Long story," she told him with bitterness but also a little triumph. "Look, I lost most of my weapons fighting in some rust-world hell underneath the rear room alter, and the cult stripped me of everything else. Conventional nonsense suggests you'll find my katana for sale in the antique shop and I'd like to have it back, please. This might sound crazy, but can you stash it in the school janitorial closet before nightfall?"

"Kid," Travis muttered, looking at the Seal which had just appeared in the corner of the mirror, clearly drawn in blood, and then looking back at her, "what have you done?"

The Mason girl was quiet a moment, her bloody fingertips still hovering against the glass. She didn't look at anyone else in the room other than Travis Grady; not James nor Henry nor Eileen. She looked straight into the face of the man who freaked her out most in the world and yet seemed to get her best; whose presence she couldn't stand more than a few hours and yet whose judgement she trusted utterly.

In that moment she knew Travis Grady was the closest thing Alessa Gillespie had ever had to a father figure. He'd been called in by Dhalia to save her against her wishes. He'd been scorned by Alessa for his own carefully repressed internal violence, and used like an Executioner -like she'd later use Samael- to try and ensure her own murder. And in the end he had protected her, saved her. He must have served as the benchmark for the man Alessa would end up picking to father Cheryl Mason. Was Travis Grady one of the reasons Valtiel had once protected Heather? She reasoned he was one of many, just like Walter; nothing in Silent Hill was ever simple.

But thinking about her father and Valtiel brought back hard memories. "Look," she said at last, and tried hard not to tear up, "Look I... I can't talk about... I just lost..."

"Kid..."

Heather wiped her face with one arm and took a slow breath. "Please just let me focus on goals," she murmured. "I just figured out what I have to do."

He nodded. "Tell us what you need."

"As many door unlocked as you can manage," she told him, "and we'll see how many ripple all the way to where I am."

Travis studied her face for a long moment, then nodded. "Heather. You have to come back to us in one piece. We're waiting on ya."

She snorted and gave something of a mischievous smile. "If I don't, you're all fucked, so consider it a promise. I'm switching the channel. Take care of Elle for us."

"When are you headed out?" Travis asked her, carefully not pointing out her use of 'us.'

"Nightfall," she said, earning a startled jump from Kaufmann who overheard her.

When Heather released the mirror and the reflection turned a cloudy black, Travis turned around to look at the rest of the men assembled. For a moment they all just stared at the bloody Seal where it remained clear upon the mirror's edge.

"Well? You heard the woman!" he observed. "Let's move!"

Heather starts putting herself into drive again. Travis must by telepathically teaching her to drive stick or something. I hear that's beneficial when you're overcoming difficult terrain.