Disclaimer: I do not in any way own or represent the Silent Hill games, Konami, George Washington University, or any part of the Federal Government.

"My Joshy is a special little boy," Beatrice Manheim would use to say. "He has the most wonderful imagination." Joshua Manheim was indeed a "special" little boy, and, as his mother stated, he did have quite the imagination. He was an extremely intelligent lad as well, with a knack for drawing. Needless to say, his drawings were always on his mother's refrigerator. His older brother John was no less intelligent, but he wasn't a dreamer like Josh. He was looking forward to his last year of high school, getting accepted to George Washington University, and landing a nice job at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, perfectly content to file away numbers in exchange for a salary and connections. Who knows, one day he might be a politician, but for now he needed to be realistic—and stable.

Beatrice, Joshua, and John formed the last surviving members of the Manheim family after a horrific series of events led to the death of all the other relatives. Train wrecks, plane crashes, automobile accidents, cancer; all of these seemed to plague the family. While Beatrice was not normally a superstitious woman, she quietly wondered if she had not been devout enough, and subsequently slipped a few more dollars into the collection plate each Sunday. Nevertheless, she managed to keep the family together and cheerful, and everything seemed to be going well. She had smart, healthy young men with bright futures, and runoff from wills and life insurance kept them comfortably middle-class while allowing her to stay home. Life was relatively good.

Then Joshua disappeared.

His mother was shocked, as was his brother. They had been noticing changes in Josh recently; he had lost all interest in his friends, his school, food, everything. Except the drawings. He worked with a possessed, feverish intensity on his drawings now. Before, his drawings had been simple, standard 9-year-old fare: people he knew, people playing sports, idyllic landscapes, along with a dose of the whimsical surreal, all done with a good amount of talent. Now, the drawings became more and more disturbing: people with exaggerated faces, screaming as blood poured out of their eyes; mangled body parts stitched together, slowly approaching; ravenous dogs with no skin.

Beatrice wondered inwardly if this was some kind of subconscious release of the trauma he experienced in the accidents that killed his family, or maybe he was sick, or maybe it was part of growing up, though she never remembered John doing anything like this.

John, also, wondered if this had to do with the death of the family. It had been hard for him; Josh was close with his father. But he couldn't fathom how the images could relate to the accidents. He had taken a Psychology class sophomore year, and decided to apply what he had learned to Josh. "Josh?" Silence. "Hey buddy, what's up?" Again, silence. Only the scribbling of a red crayon could be heard. "Listen man, Mom and I are worried about you. You won't talk, you won't eat, all you do is draw these pictures." Silence. John picked up a recent drawing. It showed a man being dissolved in a sticky substance, presumably acidic. "What is this one about?" Silence. "...is it Dad?"

Joshua slowly looked up from the paper. His skin was waxen and pale, his face gaunt from lack of food. His eyes seemed enormous as they slowly focused on John's. Suddenly, John felt a tremendous sense of fear, no, not even that—human beings can attempt to reason with themselves and dissipate the fear. This... this was an animalistic, mind-consuming sense of paranoia. He convulsed and nearly fell off his chair.

"J-Josh, wha..." Joshua slowly held up the drawing he had just finished. John couldn't understand; it looked like a mass of scribbles. "What is it, Joshua?" Joshua began to scream. "GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!" John gladly obeyed. This was two nights before he disappeared.

Later that morning, after the police had filed their report, John wandered into his little brother's room, hoping to find something they had missed. He looked under Josh's bed. Nothing. He leafed through the drawings. The same psychotic images. He flipped to the last one—the scribbles from two nights prior.

He stared at it. The scribbles seemed to draw in all of his senses. It seemed that the scribbles unlocked something in John's brain. Suddenly, he could see, smell, taste, hear, feel, and another sense there is no word for, EVERYTHING. He could taste his mother crying in the next room. He could see the inside of the floor beneath him. He could hear the ants outside screaming. As he focused more on the drawing, the scribbles seemed to undo themselves, like watching a video of them being drawn in reverse. John's head began to pulse. His eye twitched involuntarily. The same feeling of animalistic fear from the first time he saw this drawing knotted his gut.

Then, the scribbles stopped.

His senses returned to their normal proportion, and his fear melted away. On the paper was left the drawing of a single hill, containing a man's head whose mouth was stitched shut. John stood slowly, with the paper in his hands, and walked out the door. His mother was crying in the armchair. He approached her with the drawing.

"Mom?" "What, John?" "Take a look at this..." He handed her the picture. She studied it briefly, and then a light of comprehension dawned on her face to be immediately conquered by a contortion of fear.

"NO! NO! NO! NO!" "MOM! What? What's wrong!?" "NO! NOT THIS! DAMN YOU, DAMN HIM, AND DAMN THAT TOWN!"

John looked on in shock. His mother had apparently lost her mind. He snatched the picture away and held his mother firmly, softly calming her with his voice. She collapsed into tears. "Mom, what does this mean?" She looked at him for what seemed like an eternity. Then she quietly began.

"Your father and I grew up together, and when we got married, he wanted to go to the town of Silent Hill for our honeymoon. Back then it was a resort town, nice and picturesque. Then, when we reaffirmed our vows, we decided to have a second honeymoon, and made plans to go back. All of our calls to all the people there went unanswered, though. We figured it was coincidence, and packed up and headed there anyways. When we got there, the road was blocked, and... and... the bodies..." She sniffed and looked into the distance. Josh was confounded.

Beatrice looked slowly into his eyes. "I'm old, John. You're all I've got left. Please... stay safe..."

For some reason, John was filled with rage. "You're acting like he's already dead! I mean, aren't you going to tell the cops? This is a major lead! Time is running out!" His mother simply looked at him.

"If he's there, he's already dead."

John was out the door and halfway to his car before his mother could get out of the chair.

John drove slowly through the fog. His eyes were bloodshot as they scanned the desolate highway. He had driven the better part of two days, searching for the town of Silent Hill, and finally he had found it. It was silent indeed... and what was this fog? His halogen lights, even on high, barely cut ten feet through the fog. As his mother had remembered, the road was blocked. There were cars strewn about the roads, rusted and decrepit. He stopped at the rest area before the blocked tunnel. It was filthy and didn't look like it had been cleaned this decade. He looked at his reflection. His face was haggard from lack of sleep. A five o' clock shadow framed his sunken eyes. He looked around the bathrooms and decided there was nothing there for him. As he exited the bathroom, he heard an odd clacking noise, like an anatomy class skeleton being shaken.

John remembered what his mother had said before he left, most vividly the last words: "the bodies". What that was referring to, he had no idea. A form appeared from the mists. He squinted and waved. "Hello? Is someone there?" A throaty moan emanated from the figure as it staggered forward. John let out a gasp. The figure was humanoid, but... not. It was decayed, much like the bathroom. Was this some kind of sleep-deprived illusion? "Who... what... I... AGGHH!" he screamed as the monster leaned back and sprayed a burning substance at him. Temporarily blinded, he rushed forward and knocked the thing over, and proceeded to kick it. After a while, he cleared his eyes, and looked at his assailant. It was... zombielike, there was no other word for it. It was also very dead. Was this what his mother referred to?

He wandered down the only path he could find, skirting around the road and through the forest. Odd noises followed him wherever he went. He felt the stirrings of paranoia within him. He couldn't see anything through the fog. John began to run. The noises got louder. He ran faster and faster, the blood pounding through his head. His fear was consuming him, as he ran faster, faster. He smacked into a gate, tore it open, and dashed inside.

Into the graveyard.