CHAPTER 4, THE TOWN
As he drove towards the town, he felt a sudden pang of security in the pit of his stomach. He wasn't quite there yet, and still had about another fifteen minutes of Nothingness to endure before the safety of the town cradled him. All was silent again. The only noise outside was the low hum of his engine in the dense night. No tree's adorned the roadside now, and only a baron emptyness of Nothing stared back at him in those few moments he caught to glimpse out of the drivers window. Taking advantage again of the long straight roads, he took his eyes off of the relentless stretch ahead and stared into his wing mirror. All he saw behind him was the open road. No shadows, no reflections, no life. He stared at the pointed peak of the road's reflection as it cut off into the distance, and felt as if the darkness wasn't merely covering up the world behind him, rather it was destroying everything he knew. Everyone he knew. Inside, he felt as if he was never going to see the civilisation he knew ever again.
He took his eyes off of the black reflection in the dusty mirror, and fixated them once more on the road. In that instant, he felt completely alone. All the times before this when he'd been driving, he hadn't thought of it. But after looking into that mirror and seeing the world he knew annihalated by the darkness, he felt truely alone. The need for company overwhelmed him, and he took a hand off of the brown leather steering wheel, and reached over to the old radio in the dashboard of the car. He fumbled around aimlessly for a few seconds, before his fingers met with the cold plastic grip of the on/off switch. He turned it harshly to the left, almost breaking the end off, and the radio gently hummed into life. A chilling sensation ran down his spine as the car was filled with unnerving white noise. He hated white noise. That place between stations where Nothing resided. The harsh undertones. The deranged concerto it endlessly sang. He swiftly moved his hand over to the tuner and turned it slowly, longing for the sound of another voice apart from the one in his head. He turned and turned, seemingly to no avail. He thought he heard a break in the hypnotic noise and reversed his twisting, but his ears met with nothing but variations on the noise he heard before. All of a sudden..
The noise..
Stopped.
He stopped twisting the knob on the front of the green-lit hatch, and apart from the hand on the wheel, remained completely stationary. He listened, hoping to hear a voice. Any voice. He heard nothing, but still moved his hand away from the radio and back onto the wheel. He clinged on to a vain hope that the station was merely on a break, and soon enough the light jesting and themed music would fill his car. At least there was no white noise. He never knew why he hated white noise so much, but whenever he heard it, his head filled with imagery. Disturbing imagery. Bodies everywhere, the hallways ahead filled with the dead and dying. But they were not dead. The dead dont get up. The dead dont walk. The dead don't want him. The creatures in his head do. He never see's more than this, and it only lasts for a second at the most, as he has always had a natural reaction to avert his ears and stop the noise at the source. Must be a memory from early life. If only he could remember...
Ah hell, What good would it do him now? He was alone in the world. No one was with him. There was nothing behind him, only Silent Hill in front of him. His sanctuary. His place of refuge. The whole town was dark, but he could see it. The pale moonlight reflecting generously off of the windows like a lighthouse in the middle of a dark sea of fields and desert surrounding the backwater town. Memories wouldn't get him anywhere right now. He didn't need to know why he was going there, or what he would do when he got there. All he needed to know was that he was going to Silent Hill.
Silent Hill.
The name of the town resounded inside his head for a few seconds, seeming to bounce off of every wall inside his brain, getting louder with each return it made to his conciousness. He closed his eyes and twitched his head, almost trying to shake the words out of his head and into the black of the night, where he would never have to think them again. The town appeared to be his safe haven, so why did the mere name of it induce so much fear into him? So many questions to be answered... the time he had to answer them in was another story entirely.
On that thought, the radio buzzed into life. Yet, instead of the refreshing sound of civilization, he was greeted with the harsh white noise he tried so hard to avoid. He wanted to shut the radio off, but he couldnt move his hands from the steering wheel. It was as if his entire body was made of stone. He sat, a harmless statuette of a real person, trapped within the confines of his own mind. Unable to stop the noise, the creatures in his head emerged from the back of his mind. He saw them so vividly... so many of them. Crawling.. running.. on the brown, blood stained walls.. the rotted wooden ceiling.. the metal grated floor.. Creatures with no Face's, creatures with blank smooth orbs where there eyes and mouths should be. Some had merely a hole in the front of there heads, the edges adorned with yellowed, rotton, broken teeth. Some of them carried crude, rusted knives. Some of them were carrying long, metal poles, scraping them off of the floor with a screech not unlike that of the radio as they walked. Every one of them made a hideous gutteral sound, even the ones with no discernable mouths or orifice's neccessary to make such a sound. It sounded like someone harshly scratching a record while smashing glass both at the same time. He stood, helpless, as the tide of his own imagination flowed over him. Unable to move, unable to scream, unable even to close his eyes and deny himself of the exsistance of the approaching death. He could merely wait for them to kill him.
At that precise moment, he heard a loud screech above him. He looked up, and saw nothing but black in the pits of his mind. At least he was able to move his gaze away from the hideous abominations that ambled closer. Then he realized that the sound was louder than those made by the creatures in his head. It sounded more... real...
He swerved the steering wheel of the car in shock as eight browned, weathered talons ripped effortlessly through the roof of his car. He heard a loud thud, as though something was trying to keep its grip on his car. On it's prey. He continued to swerve the car from left to right, ducking as low as he could, paying no attention to the road ahead, merely to the surreal claws above him. He heard another screech that cut through his ears. He almost felt like checking to see if a small tide of blood was flowing out of his broken ears. The talons seemed to contract around the metal roof, ripping it aside as though it was merely tough cardboard. He peered up in terror out of the hole in the roof, and as his gaze met the abomination above, the white noise on the radio became so loud it was almost unbearable. The creature on his car looked like some kind of bird man. It was hunched over, a large lump in its back containing the bones and nerves of its wings. It's skinny body was covered in defined bones, ribs poking out of the upper torso. Its fa.... its head, merely a beak. Not a normal beak. This one looked more as if it was made of flesh than bone. Muscles and veins protrouded from the stretched construct on the top of its neck. It had no arms to speak of, merely the wings on its back. These were a lighter colour than the rest of its body, yet were stil adorned in sickening black veins. It had no eyes, yet it seemed to look at him through the torn hole. Angling its head down, breathing heavily.
He swerved the car one last time, and the sound of the tires screeching as the car slid sideways down the road filled the night. After a few feet, the traction of the road kicked in. The car was flipped over and over, like some kind of toy. He closed his eyes and waited for the agonizing pain that was almost pre-destined to claim his body in the seconds to come. He clutched the wheel and felt the seatbelt crushing his ribs as he was jerked around like a helpless puppet in some kind of sick show. He felt a snap as he was jerked forwards again, and a sickening pain shot through the left side of his body. The car finally rolled to a stop. He waited. Almost waiting for Death to appear to him, take him away. It felt as though his time was up. The adrenaline levels in his body served to numb the pain. He lay in a crumpled heap, on the roof of his upturned car for a few seconds, before realizing that his time had not yet come. He tried to get up and the pain shot through his shoulder again. He grabbed it with his hand, and was met with a jagged object, wet, covered in some warm liquid. He flipped on the map reading light, and it flickered gently. He turned to look at what he touched. As he turned, a spray of crimson liquid hit the shattered window of his car and trickled between the gaps of the broken glass. He went white as his eyes reached there destination.
His shirt was ripped across his left shoulder. It was covered with blood. In the middle of the red flowing tide, covered with viscera and dirt, was a white, snapped bone poking out of his shoulder. It was his collar bone. He screamed. Unlike before, there was no concerto of forest animals to join him, but the pain prevented him from realising this. He tried his hardest not to pass out from the sickening pain, and curled over forwards. Occasionally, a dark red spray of blood would cross his vision, and he would have to stop for a few seconds to regain himself before carrying on. When he was finally the right way up, he crawled out of the car window. He could feel the snapped bone rubbing against the gaping hole in his shoulder, and tried his hardest to ignore the pain. He got a few cuts in his hand, and had to stop multiple times to pull the broken glass shards from his palms with his teeth. His left arm was all but unusable. When he placed his first foot on the ground outside, he expected to be met with a gravely crunch. Unfortunately, he was disappointed.
As his foot protruded out, he felt a fleshy squelch as it hit solid ground. He clambered away from the car, biting his lip till it bled to take his mind off of the pain. He turned, and looked at what he had stepped on. It appears his attacker had not been as lucky as him. The creature lay under his car, motionless. A trail of blood fanned out from its broken beak-like head. Ribs stuck out of its brown chest, yellow sticks standing out in the rusty looking field of the creatures torso. The tumbling car had ripped the creature almost in two. He took one step towards it, and the second his foot hit the gravelled road, the creature turned to stare at him. He froze. It stretched out and stabbed its claw-tipped wings into the road, and he could see it straining to pull itself out from under the car. The upper body of the creature spilled forwards, in a hideous, bone-crunching lurch. Sickeningly, the lower torso of the thing still resided under the car. He could hear organs ripping, veins snapping loudly, bones tearing apart. The creature finally ripped itself free of the trap its lower body was presenting it with, and ambled slowly towards him, undaunted by the huge amount of pain this should be causing it. He was still completely motionless, watching the gruesome spectacle in front of him. All at once, his body regained control, and he turned away from the creature. The pain in his arm was numbed by true fear. The white noise in the radio filled the night air, and he ran.
He ran from the creature.
He ran from the noise.
He ran towards the only thing he had left.
The Town.
As he drove towards the town, he felt a sudden pang of security in the pit of his stomach. He wasn't quite there yet, and still had about another fifteen minutes of Nothingness to endure before the safety of the town cradled him. All was silent again. The only noise outside was the low hum of his engine in the dense night. No tree's adorned the roadside now, and only a baron emptyness of Nothing stared back at him in those few moments he caught to glimpse out of the drivers window. Taking advantage again of the long straight roads, he took his eyes off of the relentless stretch ahead and stared into his wing mirror. All he saw behind him was the open road. No shadows, no reflections, no life. He stared at the pointed peak of the road's reflection as it cut off into the distance, and felt as if the darkness wasn't merely covering up the world behind him, rather it was destroying everything he knew. Everyone he knew. Inside, he felt as if he was never going to see the civilisation he knew ever again.
He took his eyes off of the black reflection in the dusty mirror, and fixated them once more on the road. In that instant, he felt completely alone. All the times before this when he'd been driving, he hadn't thought of it. But after looking into that mirror and seeing the world he knew annihalated by the darkness, he felt truely alone. The need for company overwhelmed him, and he took a hand off of the brown leather steering wheel, and reached over to the old radio in the dashboard of the car. He fumbled around aimlessly for a few seconds, before his fingers met with the cold plastic grip of the on/off switch. He turned it harshly to the left, almost breaking the end off, and the radio gently hummed into life. A chilling sensation ran down his spine as the car was filled with unnerving white noise. He hated white noise. That place between stations where Nothing resided. The harsh undertones. The deranged concerto it endlessly sang. He swiftly moved his hand over to the tuner and turned it slowly, longing for the sound of another voice apart from the one in his head. He turned and turned, seemingly to no avail. He thought he heard a break in the hypnotic noise and reversed his twisting, but his ears met with nothing but variations on the noise he heard before. All of a sudden..
The noise..
Stopped.
He stopped twisting the knob on the front of the green-lit hatch, and apart from the hand on the wheel, remained completely stationary. He listened, hoping to hear a voice. Any voice. He heard nothing, but still moved his hand away from the radio and back onto the wheel. He clinged on to a vain hope that the station was merely on a break, and soon enough the light jesting and themed music would fill his car. At least there was no white noise. He never knew why he hated white noise so much, but whenever he heard it, his head filled with imagery. Disturbing imagery. Bodies everywhere, the hallways ahead filled with the dead and dying. But they were not dead. The dead dont get up. The dead dont walk. The dead don't want him. The creatures in his head do. He never see's more than this, and it only lasts for a second at the most, as he has always had a natural reaction to avert his ears and stop the noise at the source. Must be a memory from early life. If only he could remember...
Ah hell, What good would it do him now? He was alone in the world. No one was with him. There was nothing behind him, only Silent Hill in front of him. His sanctuary. His place of refuge. The whole town was dark, but he could see it. The pale moonlight reflecting generously off of the windows like a lighthouse in the middle of a dark sea of fields and desert surrounding the backwater town. Memories wouldn't get him anywhere right now. He didn't need to know why he was going there, or what he would do when he got there. All he needed to know was that he was going to Silent Hill.
Silent Hill.
The name of the town resounded inside his head for a few seconds, seeming to bounce off of every wall inside his brain, getting louder with each return it made to his conciousness. He closed his eyes and twitched his head, almost trying to shake the words out of his head and into the black of the night, where he would never have to think them again. The town appeared to be his safe haven, so why did the mere name of it induce so much fear into him? So many questions to be answered... the time he had to answer them in was another story entirely.
On that thought, the radio buzzed into life. Yet, instead of the refreshing sound of civilization, he was greeted with the harsh white noise he tried so hard to avoid. He wanted to shut the radio off, but he couldnt move his hands from the steering wheel. It was as if his entire body was made of stone. He sat, a harmless statuette of a real person, trapped within the confines of his own mind. Unable to stop the noise, the creatures in his head emerged from the back of his mind. He saw them so vividly... so many of them. Crawling.. running.. on the brown, blood stained walls.. the rotted wooden ceiling.. the metal grated floor.. Creatures with no Face's, creatures with blank smooth orbs where there eyes and mouths should be. Some had merely a hole in the front of there heads, the edges adorned with yellowed, rotton, broken teeth. Some of them carried crude, rusted knives. Some of them were carrying long, metal poles, scraping them off of the floor with a screech not unlike that of the radio as they walked. Every one of them made a hideous gutteral sound, even the ones with no discernable mouths or orifice's neccessary to make such a sound. It sounded like someone harshly scratching a record while smashing glass both at the same time. He stood, helpless, as the tide of his own imagination flowed over him. Unable to move, unable to scream, unable even to close his eyes and deny himself of the exsistance of the approaching death. He could merely wait for them to kill him.
At that precise moment, he heard a loud screech above him. He looked up, and saw nothing but black in the pits of his mind. At least he was able to move his gaze away from the hideous abominations that ambled closer. Then he realized that the sound was louder than those made by the creatures in his head. It sounded more... real...
He swerved the steering wheel of the car in shock as eight browned, weathered talons ripped effortlessly through the roof of his car. He heard a loud thud, as though something was trying to keep its grip on his car. On it's prey. He continued to swerve the car from left to right, ducking as low as he could, paying no attention to the road ahead, merely to the surreal claws above him. He heard another screech that cut through his ears. He almost felt like checking to see if a small tide of blood was flowing out of his broken ears. The talons seemed to contract around the metal roof, ripping it aside as though it was merely tough cardboard. He peered up in terror out of the hole in the roof, and as his gaze met the abomination above, the white noise on the radio became so loud it was almost unbearable. The creature on his car looked like some kind of bird man. It was hunched over, a large lump in its back containing the bones and nerves of its wings. It's skinny body was covered in defined bones, ribs poking out of the upper torso. Its fa.... its head, merely a beak. Not a normal beak. This one looked more as if it was made of flesh than bone. Muscles and veins protrouded from the stretched construct on the top of its neck. It had no arms to speak of, merely the wings on its back. These were a lighter colour than the rest of its body, yet were stil adorned in sickening black veins. It had no eyes, yet it seemed to look at him through the torn hole. Angling its head down, breathing heavily.
He swerved the car one last time, and the sound of the tires screeching as the car slid sideways down the road filled the night. After a few feet, the traction of the road kicked in. The car was flipped over and over, like some kind of toy. He closed his eyes and waited for the agonizing pain that was almost pre-destined to claim his body in the seconds to come. He clutched the wheel and felt the seatbelt crushing his ribs as he was jerked around like a helpless puppet in some kind of sick show. He felt a snap as he was jerked forwards again, and a sickening pain shot through the left side of his body. The car finally rolled to a stop. He waited. Almost waiting for Death to appear to him, take him away. It felt as though his time was up. The adrenaline levels in his body served to numb the pain. He lay in a crumpled heap, on the roof of his upturned car for a few seconds, before realizing that his time had not yet come. He tried to get up and the pain shot through his shoulder again. He grabbed it with his hand, and was met with a jagged object, wet, covered in some warm liquid. He flipped on the map reading light, and it flickered gently. He turned to look at what he touched. As he turned, a spray of crimson liquid hit the shattered window of his car and trickled between the gaps of the broken glass. He went white as his eyes reached there destination.
His shirt was ripped across his left shoulder. It was covered with blood. In the middle of the red flowing tide, covered with viscera and dirt, was a white, snapped bone poking out of his shoulder. It was his collar bone. He screamed. Unlike before, there was no concerto of forest animals to join him, but the pain prevented him from realising this. He tried his hardest not to pass out from the sickening pain, and curled over forwards. Occasionally, a dark red spray of blood would cross his vision, and he would have to stop for a few seconds to regain himself before carrying on. When he was finally the right way up, he crawled out of the car window. He could feel the snapped bone rubbing against the gaping hole in his shoulder, and tried his hardest to ignore the pain. He got a few cuts in his hand, and had to stop multiple times to pull the broken glass shards from his palms with his teeth. His left arm was all but unusable. When he placed his first foot on the ground outside, he expected to be met with a gravely crunch. Unfortunately, he was disappointed.
As his foot protruded out, he felt a fleshy squelch as it hit solid ground. He clambered away from the car, biting his lip till it bled to take his mind off of the pain. He turned, and looked at what he had stepped on. It appears his attacker had not been as lucky as him. The creature lay under his car, motionless. A trail of blood fanned out from its broken beak-like head. Ribs stuck out of its brown chest, yellow sticks standing out in the rusty looking field of the creatures torso. The tumbling car had ripped the creature almost in two. He took one step towards it, and the second his foot hit the gravelled road, the creature turned to stare at him. He froze. It stretched out and stabbed its claw-tipped wings into the road, and he could see it straining to pull itself out from under the car. The upper body of the creature spilled forwards, in a hideous, bone-crunching lurch. Sickeningly, the lower torso of the thing still resided under the car. He could hear organs ripping, veins snapping loudly, bones tearing apart. The creature finally ripped itself free of the trap its lower body was presenting it with, and ambled slowly towards him, undaunted by the huge amount of pain this should be causing it. He was still completely motionless, watching the gruesome spectacle in front of him. All at once, his body regained control, and he turned away from the creature. The pain in his arm was numbed by true fear. The white noise in the radio filled the night air, and he ran.
He ran from the creature.
He ran from the noise.
He ran towards the only thing he had left.
The Town.