Chapter 2: The Beginning of the Journey

Matt's eyes darted around until they found the thing that was rapidly approaching him.

It looked like the mutilated body of a stewardess, still wearing that blue uniform, which was now dirty and stained with blood. Apparently someone or something had severed its legs at the knees, thus forcing it to use its arms to pull its body around now that its feet were gone. Even though it was kind of handicapped, the Stewardess moved with surprising speed as it rushed through the water. There were several ugly wounds and scars on its body, but the arms were completely uninjured.

The strangest thing about this creature was its third arm, which stuck out of its neck where its head should have been. This arm was more pale than the others and seemed to be trembling with excitement in a nauseating way as it came closer to Matt.

It wasn't human, but it wasn't merely an animal, either. "Maybe I'm going insane and this is some sick delusion of mine. Or maybe I'm just still dreaming," Matt thought and slipped the radio into his trouser pocket. "Yes, I must be dreaming. There are no such things as monst…"

Groaning, the Stewardess jumped up and hugged him, wrapping its two normal arms around his waist. The third hand reached up and was soon clutching his throat.

Then Matt realized that he wasn't dreaming and this wasn't just some sick delusion of his. Baffled and overwhelmed with fear, he understood that the monster was trying to kill him.

He couldn't breathe. The static emitted by his radio was deafening. As the creature slowly strangled him, he staggered around in the plane and struggled to free his body from its vice-like grip.

After about 30 seconds of trying to throttle the life out of Matt with its third hand, the Stewardess fell to the floor. Maybe it was because Matt had actually managed to fight back rather vigorously, or maybe the monster just didn't want to kill him - yet.

The terrified veterinarian scanned the plane, trying to find some kind of weapon, something he could defend himself with …

He didn't see anything useful.

The Stewardess made yet another groan-like sound ("How can that thing groan when it doesn't have a mouth?") and its two normal arms started dragging its body towards him again, while its third arm twitched and squirmed, obviously eager to torture its panicky victim again.

Then Matt spotted the suitcase lying on one of the passenger seats.

It looked like an ordinary suitcase, but a round red symbol, about one foot in diameter, had been painted on it – a triangle inside two circles, surrounded by many minor symbols.

Somehow, the intricate triangle-inside-a-circle symbol convinced Matt that there was something useful inside that suitcase. He dashed through the plane and opened it.

There was a shotgun inside.

"Well, that's a godsend," he thought, grabbed the weapon, turned around, aimed and pulled the trigger.

Matt had rarely fired a shotgun before in his life. Luckily, he hit his target and the grotesque creature flew an inch backwards before it landed on the floor. He ran up to it and tried shooting it again while it was squirming on the ground, before it scrambled to its … hands, but he had run out of ammunition.

Cursing, he used the shotgun as a club and finished the Stewardess off with it. Its 15 fingers twitched slightly and then stopped moving. Blood coloured the water around the body red.   

It was dead.

Matt stood there for a couple of minutes, ruminating. The radio was now silent again. He had so many questions flying around in his brain.

One of those questions was "What is that thing I've just killed?" Another question was "Since when were passengers allowed to take shotguns on board planes?" And another question was "What do I do now?"

Confused and scared, Matt decided that there was no reason to stay on the plane any longer. He retrieved his backpack from the small hand baggage compartment above his seat and placed the radio inside it. In addition to the portable radio, the grey backpack contained his discman (which had run out of batteries 15 minutes after the plane had taken off), toothbrush, some CD's (old jazz and blues songs), sunglasses, aspirins and his cell phone which appeared to be broken or something – he couldn't call 911 or his relatives in South Ashfield to tell them what had happened. Clutching the shotgun and with the backpack hanging from his shoulders, he exited through the doorway in the left side of the wreck.

After a split second of falling, his body plunged into the waters of Toluca Lake. He quickly stood – the water was waist-high – and got out of the cold lake, shivering. His clothes - a black t-shirt and brown trousers - were soaked and his teeth chattered.

Matt turned around and stared at the plane. It was badly damaged and had landed at the shore of the large, gloomy lake he had seen in his dream. A few windows had been smashed. One of the wings was broken – it had probably hit a tree or building before the plane landed in the lake.

He turned around and scanned the area he was about to wander through. It was a forest slope, filled with various trees. He could see a track in the distance. Could it be the path from his dream? Intent on finding out, he footed it through the forest.

After about a minute of wandering up the hillside, he heard an unearthly noise coming from behind him – it sounded like at least 50 men, women and children whispering, crying and laughing … He turned around.

The plane had vanished.

Matt shuddered and began making his way towards the track again, now walking much faster than before the plane had been pulled into the murky depths of Toluca Lake.

He reached the path – it was the same as the one from his dream – and followed it through the quiet forest (none of the disturbing sounds from his dream could be heard). Soon white fog surrounded him. "Great," he mumbled and continued following the path.

He reached the white van about half a minute after the fog had appeared. There was a map of Silent Hill and a small flashlight on top of it. He snatched them and placed them in his trouser pockets, then continued following the track which had now turned into a wide road.

While Matt footed it towards the town of Silent Hill, he passed several signs ("DANGER! KEEP OUT! CONSTRUCTION AREA!" "NO TRESPASSING") and old newspapers that had been scattered across the road. He began to hear eerie faint sounds. According to the map, he was currently following "Wiltse Road". "What a strange name for a road," he mumbled as he passed the sign from his dream ("Welcome to Silent Hill, the most peaceful town in the world!"). Some shotgun shells had been dropped in front of the sign. He picked them up and reloaded his weapon with them, fumbling ackwardly for a minute before he remembered the correct way to reload a shotgun.

After reloading the gun, Matt continued following Wiltse Rd. Suddenly, something white and cold landed on his T-shirt. He looked down at it.

A snowflake.

And then, hundreds of snowflakes fell from the sky. "Am I still dreaming or has the weather really gone crazy?" Matt said to himself (it was June) and looked up at the idle descent of the snowflakes. 

Later on, Matt entered the old resort town itself and stopped walking to study the map. He was standing on a short street called Sanders St. and there was a flower shop across the road. "There has to be at least one phone I can use in there," he thought and entered the shop.

The flower shop was dark and decrepit. Some of the windows had been smashed and the flowers were withering. Although it was 14:00 P.M. according to Matt's watch, there were no customers or clerks in the store.

Matt was starting to think that he was alone in the town. Maybe the residents had abandoned it for some reason, or maybe they had all been wiped out by some terrifying force, like in that Dean Koontz novel he had read a couple of years ago – "Phantoms"…

There was a black phone on the counter. Matt tried to make a call, but was disappointed when he discovered that the phone didn't work. He put down the receiver.

A door behind the counter was ajar. He swiftly made his way into the room on the other side of the door. It was a surprisingly large room with ordinary furniture – chairs, a table, lamps, a TV, a fridge, a bed. The owner(s) of the shop had probably been living here. The place was full of flowers that looked like they hadn't been watered for a long, long time. A door in the wall opposite the door Matt had entered through was half-open. He deduced that there was a bathroom beyond it.

The TV was the same as the one in Matt's flat in L.A. He tried turning it on, but the machine was intent on only showing him snow, snow and more snow, so he murmured "dammit" and turned it off.

He was about to leave when he heard someone breathing heavily. The sound came from the bathroom of the home and was unusually loud, as if the person was using a microphone. He could also hear the faint sound of … falling water?

"Er … hello?" he said. "Is there someone out there? In the bathroom? … Hello?"

Matt walked through the home and stepped into the bathroom. There was a toilet to his right, a washbasin and a mirror in front of him and a shower to his left. The sounds were coming from his left. A white curtain prevented him from seeing who or what was in the shower.  

"Someone taking a shower in there? … Hello?"

The curtain was moving slightly back and forth. "But there's no draught in this place," Matt thought and approached the curtain.

"Hello?" he repeated, still not getting an answer. He could still hear the sounds of someone breathing heavily and what he assumed was falling water.

Afraid and curious at the same time, he pulled the curtain aside.

The dead body of a lean woman with blonde hair had been nailed on to the wall opposite the curtain. Her clothes had been spattered with blood and huge rusty nails had penetrated the eyes and wrists to keep the corpse hanging one foot above the floor. Instead of water, a red liquid – probably blood – was coming out of the shower.

There was something familiar about the dead person. Matt knew he had seen her before, but he couldn't recollect where and when. He couldn't even remember her name …

Then he felt the small cold hands of a 7-9 years old child touch his back as he was suddenly pushed into the shower. Blood drenched his clothes and he heard a little boy giggle behind him. He was about to turn around to take a look at the annoying kid who had pushed him, when someone turned off the light and slammed the door shut …

Darkness.

He couldn't see anything. He heard blood-curdling sounds coming from all around him. Moaning, screeching, whining … The sounds made by the evil creatures that had been lurking under his bed at night when he was a child and his imagination was soaring. For a moment, in that bathroom, Matt Hardt was a child again, his imagination soared again and he was convinced that those creatures had returned to once more frighten him to death …

Then he got the flashlight out of his pocket and turned it on.

He was alone in the bathroom. A mature, 41 years old man, alone in a bathroom. Ordinary, hot water was now coming out of the spray and there wasn't any blood on his clothes, just water. There wasn't a single dead body nailed on to the wall, either. "What? But … the blood … and that corpse … that wasn't just a hallucination, was it?" he thought, frowning.

After switching the light on, he turned off the flashlight, slipped it into his pocket and examined a message that someone had apparently written with a black ball pen on the mirror while the light had been turned off. A lot of the words were misspelled. Matt almost couldn't see his reflection because of all the small, black letters covering the mirror:

I must forget his silly theorry, that hotheaded fool, She IS immortall, the moourning IS over and She IS otherwurldly, and I must resist the temptaytion, I must hymmn and yearhn for Her, so that She will save me when She arrives, but not everyone can be saved, yes, the spirit is willing but the flesch is weak, you fill your mind with lyies, you are a yukkhy sinner, your toomb is ready and your etternal soul will never rest again but now your journey has begun and you must go to BAR NEELY'S

"Bar Neely's?" Matt muttered and studied the map. There was a bar called Neely's Bar at the corner of Sanders St. and Neely St. "Well, I guess I could do with a drink at the moment," he said and decided to find that bar, hoping that it wouldn't be as desolate as the flower shop.

After taking a leak, he left the bathroom, walked through the abode of the flower shop owner(s) and made his way out of the shop.

Back on the mist-shrouded Sanders St., Matt was greeted by two monsters that looked just like the thing he had defeated in the plane. Luckily he had his trusty and loaded shotgun. After two shots, the Stewardesses were lying on the sidewalk, squirming. He ran up to them and kicked them until they looked dead. Then he stood there, exhausted, and took breath while snowflakes landed on his shivering body. "What the fuck ARE these things?" Matt mused. "This isn't just a bad dream …" He began footing it to Neely's Bar.

He had only taken three steps down Sanders St. when he heard a somewhat hoarse male voice coming from somewhere behind him.

"Hmm, they're new. Are these yours?"

---