DURA MATER

CHAPTER 3:

HOMICHLOPHOBIA(1)

Strangelove woke up with a start, finding herself sprawled on a park bench. For a brief moment, she thought herself back in London in her youth. The fog was certainly thick enough. Thicker, even.

Nearby, also waking up, were her son, and the delinquent. Still lying on the ground was Alessa, groaning in pain, as her skin seemed to gradually change from a charred mess to healthy-looking skin. She was wearing a simple dress, which she seemed to have been dressed in after she had been immolated (something Strangelove didn't like the implications of). The strange lump of offal she had vomited up was still present, twitching and convulsing.

But they were no longer in front of the Gillespie home, Strangelove realised. They were in a street near one of the shopping districts(2). How the hell did we end up here? she wondered.

Shaking her head, she turned to face David, the delinquent boy shaking his head as if to rid it of some fog within. "Excuse me, David, was it? How did you come across my son?"

"He ran away from home, I was camping out in the woods. I did the same myself," the boy said. His eyes looked too old and too cold for a boy his age. He looked so much like a pre-teen Big Boss. "What's it to you?"

"No, I…I was wondering whether your parents would be worrying about you." Actually, she was lying. She had a nasty suspicion, born of discussions she once had with Big Boss and Zero, who he really was.

"Haven't got any. My mother died when I was born, and my father is, supposedly, a hero who hasn't got any time for me," David said. "I thought you were with social services with that getup."

"No, it's just a habit of mine," Strangelove said. "Did they ever tell you your father's name?"

"No…except I overheard my Uncle David talk about him being a 'Jack' or something."

Strangelove's eyes widened. Then, she began pacing the street, thinking, before she asked him, "Does the term Les Enfants Terrible mean anything to you?"

"I think I heard my uncle mention it once."

"And your uncle…did he have a scar over his eye? Was he British?"

David blinked. "You knew my uncle?"

"More than that," Strangelove said. "I think I know your father."

"What? You know who he is?!" David demanded. "Tell me!"

Hal frowned. As much as he didn't like his mother at the moment, he found himself caught up in the moment. "How do we know his father?"

"Remember Big Boss?" Strangelove said to her son.

"Yeah, that really legendary soldier you knew years ago? What about him?"

"This is Big Boss' son," Strangelove said. "I'm almost certain of it."

"Big Boss? My foster parents mentioned him. The legendary mercenary leader. They said he died."

"He's not dead. But he's not in a good way, either. The last I heard, he's still in a coma in a Cyprus hospital, and has been since 1975," Strangelove said.

In said Cyprus hospital, a simultaneous set of sneezes emerged from two men who had, until a few minutes prior, been comatose since 1975. A rather buxom nurse was startled by the noise, but kept an eye on the two, just in case they had contracted some sort of respiratory infection. Luckily, it turned out to be nothing of the sort…

"Did you know my mother?" David asked.

"I've never met her, but I believe she's still alive, or at least survived giving birth to you. However, she's a fairly busy spy. When Big Boss first met her, she called herself EVA."

"So, was she beautiful? A great spy?"

Strangelove smiled. "Yes on both counts."

On holiday in Japan, a blonde-haired woman with blue eyes sneezed, nearly ruining her sushi meal. The chef, noticing that, said, in fairly good English and with a grin upon his face, "Ah, it seems that someone is talking about you."

"As long as it doesn't ruin my meal, I don't mind," the woman once known as EVA said.

A moan from Alessa brought Strangelove out of her reverie, and she kneeled down next to her. Her skin had regrown, and her hair was almost back to its normal length. The girl stared up at Strangelove. "What…what did you do to me?" she asked.

"Saved your life, I hope," Strangelove said. "It's a parasite. Well, more correctly, this one is more like a symbiote. In other words, it will help you instead of just feeding off you and harming you. It regenerates and replaces damaged tissues and organs. It's a hybrid of two strains of the same symbiote. In exchange for water and sunlight, it will keep you alive. Your lungs are now made up of its tissue, I think."

Alessa looked down at herself. "How do I get rid of it?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I can feel it growing in me," Alessa murmured. Her eyes flickered over to the twitching lump of meat. "Like that thing."

Strangelove didn't want to look at whatever Alessa expelled. Instead, she said, "Alessa, I can't remove it, and removing it might kill you anyway."

"I wanted to die!" Alessa snapped.

"What about me? What if I wanted you to live?!" Hal demanded.

Alessa shook her head. "Harry…no, your real name is Hal, isn't it? You're kind…and sweet. But I'm not. I'm a witch."

"You're no witch, your mother's a witch!" Hal snapped.

David, who was watching on, had absent-mindedly brought out his radio. Alessa, with a gesture, seemed to summon the radio to her hands, the device apparently flying through the air. David did a double-take. "What? Are you a psychic or something?"

"An Esper," Strangelove murmured. "Psychokinesis, telepathy…no wonder those bullies called you a witch."

"My mother wanted to harness my power. Give birth to…that thing," she said, indicating the spasming lump of flesh. "What she calls God."

Strangelove grimaced. "What is it, then?"

"Science doesn't have names for it. Religion does. Like demon. I believe in God, Dr Strangelove…that is your real name, isn't it? But I don't believe in my mother's God. All I wanted was to have her love me, to be with her forever. But she killed that love when she decided to use my body as a womb for that…thing." Her face twisted up in anger. "Why did you save me?! I wanted to burn, to take this thing with me! But now this town had awakened! And we'll be eaten alive by the fog, and what lurks within it!" With that, she ran, dropping the radio as she did so. Hal, shooting a brief glare at his mother, ran after Alessa, despite Strangelove's admonishing cries.

David walked over, and peered at the grotesque lump of flesh that was Silent Hill's dark deity. A small, black eye, as dark as oblivion, peered into his own. He heard whispered promises of power and prestige, if only he would take it into his own body.

With a grimace of disgust, he brought his booted foot down heavily and repeatedly on it. Screeches of pain, like fingernails down the blackboard of the soul, sounded in both his mind's and Strangelove's. Not until the screeching stopped did he stop stamping down on it. By that point, it was now little more than a purulent smear on the pavement.

"Ugh," David snarled in disgust, before walking over to his radio. He turned it on, only to get static. "Dammit, she must've busted it." He then looked up. "What do you think the girl meant when she said, 'the town has awakened'? This place can't be alive, can it?"

"Normally, I'd say no. But I know enough about that parasite to know, according to projections, it would have taken only a minute or so to work, and it had already started. How could we get from her house to this area within that time?" Strangelove said. "I know this area, it's at least twenty minutes' walk from the Gillespie house. Come on, we've got to find them."

A pair of screams in the distance only served to punctuate her point, and Strangelove and David began running.

The sound of static from David's radio got louder and louder as they hared down the small street, with strange noises also emanating from it. They ended up in a main street, only to notice a number of things. Firstly, said street was destroyed not far from where they were standing, the last ragged chunks of asphalt hanging over an abyss. Which Strangelove was certain was impossible, as she had driven down that very street earlier that afternoon. In fact, wasn't it meant to be dusk? And yet, it seemed more like a fogbound day.

Secondly, Alessa and Hal, hand in hand, were staring, horrified, backing away. Thirdly, said thing they were backing away was no creature Strangelove had ever seen in her life.

It looked vaguely like a knight, but with rusted armour that seemed to have feminine lines. Its helmet, however, was a featureless (save for the blood and rust) cylinder, but opening and shutting periodically to reveal a featureless lump of flesh, save for two hollow eye sockets, and a ragged mop of blonde hair that looked disturbingly familiar. It seemed to reach out for the children as if wanting to hug them, a melancholy, vaguely feminine moaning coming from it, but the dozen or so spikes on its front, coated in gore both fresh and old, suggested that this was a very bad idea.

VOYEVODA

An Iron Maiden, and Mother to Corpses

David plucked out his slingshot, and fired a metal shot, hitting the creature on its flesh head as the 'helmet' was open. "Leave them alone!" he snarled.

The creature did, only to turn its attention to them. The two kids took that opportunity to run. "We'll be at the school!" Alessa yelled over her shoulder.

"Wait!" Strangelove yelled, but the two kids had already fled down an alley. Another of the creatures appeared from nearby, and began shambling down the alley after them.

"Come on," David said, tugging at her arm. "We don't have guns or any real weapons."

Reluctantly, Strangelove conceded, especially as the knight-like creature stumbled towards them at increased speed, almost a run. "This is insane!" she snarled as she followed the son of Big Boss. "Nothing like that should exist! So either I'm having a really bad dream brought about by smoke inhalation, or something has gone very wrong with the world!"

They halted for a moment. David was examining his radio, trying to get it to work. "There's less static…" he muttered.

"It got louder when we got closer to the creature," Strangelove mused. "And when we got further away…"

As if drawn by her musings, the static became louder, and another of those things began lurching towards them from the mist ahead. Strangelove and David looked at each other, before dashing past the moaning creature. David, as Strangelove knew where the school was, let her take point as they ran through the fog-bound streets. But both of them knew that there was something very wrong. The town was apparently deserted, creatures roamed the streets, and streets were cut off, destroyed, with a bottomless abyss below.

As Strangelove and her new comrade fled through the streets, she could scarcely believe that this was happening. In fact, the only thing that kept her reason from falling to bits, and her sanity along with it, was the conviction that, if this was truly real, then they were in very real danger. Hal, Alessa, David, and herself. Whatever these demonic beings were, they meant her and her son harm, along with his friend and this boy.

Hopefully, once they regrouped back at the school, she could get back to doing what mattered: protecting her son.

As the taxi sped away into the evening, Huey glared at it, before looking at the motel, given the rather bland name of 'Norman's Hotel'. Now he was staying in Silent Hill, and he would track down that treacherous hag!

After checking in, he asked, discreetly, about a woman with albinism, and a boy with glasses that resembled him. The clerk actually told him that they were pretty sure it was Dr Davina Bowman, a new teacher at the school, and Harry, her son.

Huey gave a smile at that. He couldn't risk bringing the police into it, not given what he was about to do. So he merely made for his room, planning to do something in the morning.

As he began to open the door to the room, he fumbled and dropped his key, his luggage in his lap. A man with dark hair and a suit picked it up for him and handed it to him.

"Thanks," Huey said.

"No problem." As Huey opened the door, the man said, "Would you want me to carry your bags?"

"I'll be fine," Huey said.

"Hmm. Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Doubtful, but I was told my son is living here," Huey said. "My so-called wife kidnapped him and brought him here."

"Is she an albino, habitually wears sunglasses, has short hair?" the man asked.

"Yes. Dr Strangelove. Yes, I know. Blame her parents," Huey said. "She was born before that movie came out."

"Huh. Around here, she's known as Davina Bowman. A teacher…and a troublemaker. She has hurt a dear friend of mine rather often, dismissing her religious beliefs in a somewhat cruel manner."

Huey smirked. He wasn't much of a religious person, but even so, nice to hear that the treacherous hag hadn't had it all her way. "Well, that sounds like her. She's in love with a dead woman, you see. Used me to get a child, and then discarded me. She can't just use me like that."

"Then I'll see if I can't bring her to you tomorrow. I'm staying here overnight while I conduct a business deal with a client. I'm Doctor Michael Kaufmann."

DOCTOR KAUFMANN

A Doctor and a Drug Dealer

"Doctor 'Huey' Emmerich," Emmerich said.

"Well, I'll see you in the morning, Doctor Emmerich," Kaufmann said with a smile.

Soon after, in his room, Huey decided to get some sleep first. His vengeance would come. As sleep took him, though, he could have sworn he heard, faintly, the sound of air-raid sirens in the air…

CHAPTER 3 ANNOTATIONS:

At last, the actual horror begins. And Huey has met Kaufmann.

As each enemy is introduced, I will be putting in 'bestiary' entries, explaining my rationale for each of them. We'll start with the first monster, Voyevoda.

BESTIARY ENTRY 1: VOYEVODA: A twisted and grotesque manifestation of Strangelove's obsession with reviving the Boss. 'Voyevoda' was the name the Russians gave her, and means 'War Lord', though in Snake Eater, it is translated as 'lady knight'. Her intent to embrace her enemies is a twisted parody of the Boss' desire to unite the world, though given a horrific, iron maiden-esque twist. The cylinder that conceals her head is actually based on the AI Pod Strangelove developed, and the head it conceals is a decayed version of the Boss' own. Slow and easy to avoid, but relentless, and hard to kill without a shotgun at the bare minimum.

Anyway, that's the last of the chapters I'm posting so far. Hope this catches your fancy. I think this story has potential. But it'll be updated infrequently. If you're very lucky, you might get another chapter on Halloween itself, but don't hold your breath. This story counts as my little Halloween contribution.

1. In case you're wondering, 'homichlophobia' actually means a fear of fog and mist, a good term when dealing with the fog-bound Silent Hill.

2. Unlike Silent Hill: Origins, they've ended up closer to Midwich Elementary, in the area closer to the start of the original game.