Harry was back in the town he'd swore he'd never lay eyes on again, and saw in his fitful nightmares.

It hadn't changed much, he thought. The fog was still so thick that it was hard to hear anything other than his own breathing. It muffled the entire atmosphere. The scrapes and grunts that came from beyond the veil kept his brain in a guessing game with itself; was it just his imagination, or were those noises real?

He walked the broken white line in the middle of the road. In his hand he clutched a rusted pipe - a weapon that seemed to be dutifully waiting for him after all these years, sitting on a bench that greeted him upon entry to the town. Silent Hill was alive and conscious, as it always had been, as he hated to think about. There was a static in the air that felt excited. The hair on the back of his neck stood to a strange humid warmth in the midst of all this, well, mist. Harry could sense the jittery eagerness of the unknown and ungodly that wanted to welcome him back into the tragic, deadly fold that was Silent Hill.

Of course, he was here for the only reason he endured its hell in the first place. He sighed, looking into the boarded up shop windows and peeling signs as he passed them. His poor girl. This town was obsessed with her. He would give his life over and over for the rest of eternity for her to be left alone and live a normal, healthy life.

Instead, Silent Hill repeatedly tried to wedge its way back into their lives and steal her away again. The reason he was here meant that it may have succeeded and he would, again, collect his daughter and take her home.

Harry thought about Silent Hill more often than he liked. He remembered its streets, the school, the hospital, the basements and the houses. He recognized the other side of some of these streets as he walked them, but soon found himself in an area he was unfamiliar with.

Curiosity piqued and senses alert, he cautiously wandered the new section of town. Strangely, and reeking with dangerous foreboding, he had not yet encountered a monster. He heard them in the fog, and saw nothing.

As a veteran of Silent Hill, this did not sit well with him.

The asphalt gave way to cobblestone as he approached a park. A park! The hedges were neatly groomed and the grass seemed maintained. Harry would have appreciated it if he were anywhere else, perhaps, since here it just rang wrong. He curiously followed the path, and as a wide walk bordered by chipped railing came into his view, he realized he'd found the lake.

Harry approached the railing and peered over into the water. There was nothing to see under the mist. He looked right - past an abandoned hot dog cart - and then left. He was about to turn back when his brain caught up to what he saw out of the corner of his eye (a figure, a dark and horrible hulking figure, just behind him within view, ready to jump him), and Harry quickly swung around.

His heart was thudding in his throat when he found that the monstrosity he thought he saw was in fact just a man. Just a man, sitting on a bench, staring into the fog as though he wore blinders. He didn't see Harry, and he didn't seem to even see what he was looking at. He sat there, very still, and very pale.

Harry was an empathetic man. Finding another person stranded in Silent Hill was simultaneously relieving and worrying. He didn't want to think about what happened to the other people he'd met here. They always reminded him when he closed his eyes.

With his pipe held low and as unthreatening as he could, he slowly approached the lost soul on the bench. The man was so pale and his face was so forlorn. His dirty blond hair was styled fashionably for 1999, and he wore a dark green jacket that looked military, while its owner did not fit the type.

He tried to edge slowly into the man's line of sight. "Hello?" he said gently, getting closer. "Hello, I don't mean to bother you, but I was wondering if you were okay."

He frowned, seeing that he wasn't yet making an impression on this faraway fellow. Harry gripped the pipe firmly, just in case he was to be duped, and leaned down to try to meet this man's vacant eyes.

That's when the foggy green irises lifted and Harry was engulfed in a wave so heavy with sadness that he nearly rocked on his heels. His brows knit in concern, and he braced his hand on his knee.

"Hey. You okay buddy?" No response. He looked like he was trying to process what Harry was, much less what he was saying. "My name's Harry Mason," he continued, hoping to prompt a similar reply.

"Hi."

Oh, good. He was cognitive. Harry smiled, and opened his mouth to greet him for a third time, when he was cut off. "Are you a tourist?"

"No, uh, not exactly," Harry replied, laughing. "I'm looking for someone, actually. But I've been here before - uh, the town. I've been to the town, though this is a part I've never seen before," he said awkwardly, then looking out to the lake. "It's a nice view, though. Shame about the weather, huh?"

When he looked at him again, he was held in a curious stare by eyes that were soaked in defeat. Harry felt a pang of guilt for a reason he couldn't explain, and again tried to smile at the nameless patron. He was given no kind mirroring. The attempt at friendliness began to fade, and his eyes dropped to the ground.

Harry wasn't being given much to work with. As much as he would have liked to help he was in a rush to find Heather, but he felt torn. He couldn't just leave this guy here without having some idea that he was going to be okay. He appeared to be totally lost to the winds and that worried him; he would feel horrible if something happened and he'd turned his back. Harry tried to smile again.

"Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine. Who are you looking for?"

Finally, they were getting somewhere. The guy was waking up. "My daughter. Her name's Heather. She's about, oh, this tall," he demonstrated with a wave of his hand, "and she has short blonde hair. She's seventeen. She's a real sweet girl, handling being a teenager with effortless grace."

The sarcasm didn't go unappreciated, and Harry was pleased to see that the wretched man could smile. It brought a wide grin to Harry's. "I haven't seen her," he was told. "I'm sorry. A lot of people go missing here."

"Yeah," Harry sympathetically agreed. "This place isn't like any normal town."

"That's for sure."

Harry watched his eyes return to the lake. He straightened his posture and winced; he wasn't getting any younger, and he was really regretting putting off that massage appointment that he won at an art faire raffle. He swung his pipe arm and stuffed the other hand into his jacket pocket.

He studied this odd young man. He didn't look much older than 27. The entirety of him was haunted and exhausted. It's possible he was a native of Silent Hill.

It made Harry sad to think about her. He still remembers that she was probably the last good thing about the town before it went to complete shit. She was young too. Though it was only two he'd met so far suffering seemingly the same fate, it really felt like too many people. Too many people were being eaten from the heart outward in this shithole. That poor girl.

Poor, sad Lisa.

Harry twisted, and looked down at the stranger. "Well, I'm going to have to get going. You be careful out there, okay, uh..? What was your name?"

Their eyes met again. "James. James Sunderland."

"James. Be careful, okay? I hope I'll see you around."

"Yeah. You too. I'll keep an eye out for your daughter. She sounds nice."

"Thanks. She means the world to me," Harry said, offering a final smile as he began to retrace his steps. "I just want to get her home safe."

James nodded. "I think that's what any of us would want."

Harry didn't really know how to respond to that. He lifted his hand to wave, and received one in kind, and so he turned away. Behind him, James had turned his attention back to the lake.

How sad that young, blonde women were often lost here. The town ate them up like Easter candy. It was cruel and unfair, and James had been through this dialogue over and over so many times that he let it run in his head like an episode of a sitcom at midnight.

Behind all that noise, something else was itching in the crevices of his head. That man was important. Very important. The town was as excited to see him as much as it hated him. The fog thrummed with malicious energy. Silent Hill wanted to simultaneously swallow Harry whole and forcibly eject him. James could feel it all. He couldn't know why it felt this way about Harry Mason. It was just so strong that he nearly felt vertigo when he stood up.

James began to walk in the opposite direction of where Harry departed. He was going to help him find his little girl. He didn't like the way that Silent Hill changed when Harry arrived. He'd felt the shift immediately, and now understood what had caused it. He had to get him, and his daughter, out of this town.

Unfortunately for him, Heather hadn't arrived yet.

But they didn't need to know that.