Chapter 6: Otherworld Library
When Matt regained consciousness, Carpenter Public Library had been transformed into a dark version of what it used to look like.
In fact, it was so dark he couldn't see anything until he had stood, pulled the flashlight out of his pocket and switched it on.
The first thing he observed about his new surroundings was the lamps. The round modern lamps were gone – instead, small round, rusty cages hung from the ceiling, each containing a lump of flesh that looked a … deformed fetus? Whatever was trapped in those cages, Matt didn't want to stare at them a lot and moved his gaze down and away from the ceiling.
The shelves were empty. Where there had been hundreds of books, CD's, movies and games just before, there was now only dust and a few (luckily motionless) stains of blood. The walls and floor were filthy and all the windows had been boarded up.
Carpenter Library wasn't silent anymore. He could hear all kinds of strange muffled noises – children shrieking with laughter, demons grunting and snarling …
Clutching his table leg, Matt wandered through the children's department of the library. There was a horrible stench of decay here. He had never smelled a stench so loathsome before in his life, except for back when he was a kid, visiting his grandfather's farm in Sweden. "God, that place smelled like shit. Probably because of all the pigs and …"
His thought was interrupted by the sound of his radio which was beginning to play static again. "But where's the mon…"
The Cerberus attacked him from behind and Matt tumbled down, gasping. He scrambled to his feet and (aware of the fact that a metal table leg was a very weak weapon against a creature like this one) ran away. He fled down the aisle, pursued by the hellhound, turned left at the corner and was about to rush down yet another aisle when he noticed the shotgun shells seated on the shelf.
Smiling, he grabbed the ammunition and dropped the table leg.
The Cerberus came around the corner, all three heads screeching, white froth and slobber emanating from the mouth of the middle head. Matt fumbled. The Cerberus ran towards him. Matt reloaded the shotgun. The Cerberus jumped and sailed through the air towards its victim. Matt pulled the trigger.
While the monster was in mid-air, a bullet plunged into the red jaws of its middle face. The odious creature flew backwards and landed on the filthy floor.
"Bull's-eye," Matt mumbled. Even though the radio was silent, he stamped on the Cerberus a couple of times for safety's sake. There were five shots left in the shotgun. He picked up the table leg and stuffed it into his backpack, thinking that he wouldn't be needing that for a while.
And so, he continued exploring the Otherworld version of the children's department. The pool table had been replaced by a gory hospital stretcher and the armchair Tommy had been sitting in was now a blood-stained weelchair. On one of the shelves, he found two small white cards. On one of them, a single word was written with big, black letters: ANGER. On the other one, someone had written the word AVARICE. Matt frowned and placed them in his pocket.
Later on, after exploring the entire children's department and finding no more useful items or exits, he reached the area between the departments for kids and adults. This was where there used to be some counters, desks and a floor – unfortunately, none of these three things were present now. All that was left was a big, dark gap. Standing at the edge, peering down, Matt couldn't see the bottom of the chasm. The only way to get to the adult department on the other side was a narrow bridge above the middle of the hole, stretched out between the two departments like a crude metaphor for the puberty years of a man's life. The bridge appeared to be made of gory flesh and it looked slippery.
"Good thing I'm not afraid of heights," Matt muttered and stepped onto the bridge even though he was still scared as hell. "Crawl, don't walk … unless you want to stumble and fall into this bottomless pit," a little voice said in his head. Of course, that was ridiculous – there are no such things as bottomless pits … but for safety's sake, Matt got on his hands and knees and began crawling gingerly across the bridge three seconds after stepping onto it. He could see the door at the top of the stairs in the entrance hall to his right. It was open. If only he could make that jump to the doorway, he could go down the stairs and get out of this hellish building …
Finally, after what had seemed like an eon, Matt reached the other side of the gap and stood.
As he walked around in the adult department – where the shelves were now utterly devoid of any books, CD's, movies, magazines or newspapers – he discovered two more of those cards. The words written on these new cards were ENVY and GLUTTONY.
"Are these cards about the seven deadly sins?" Matt mused, snatched "envy" and "gluttony" from the shelf and placed them in his pocket.
He also discovered a little wooden box seated on a table. He lifted it – "not very heavy" – and shook it – "something inside? Sounds like some kind of small object …" When he tried opening it, he discovered that it was locked. "Dammit. Gotta find the key …" he thought and wandered away.
Later on, he found Stu sitting at a table in the area where there used to be newspapers on the shelves. The former anthropology teacher was reading a bulky book with pages that had grown yellow a long time ago.
"And so we meet again," Matt said, enjoying the way Stu started when he heard Matt's voice.
"Jeez, you scared the daylights outta me," Stu said and closed the book. Matt noticed that the title was "Lost Memories".
"Lost Memories? What kind of book is that?"
"It's about the ancient religion and history of this town," Stu explained, "very interesting. You should try reading it yourself."
"No thanks. I'll pass the time trying to find a way out of here instead," Matt replied. "Anyway, why didn't you wait for me at Neely's Bar? I was only in there for a few minutes, and when I came back out, you were gone."
"A few minutes? You were in there for at least an hour."
"What?"
"I couldn't just stand there freezing my nuts off all day, so I went into the nearest building and I've been here ever since."
"But I was only in that bar for a couple of minutes …"
"Yeah, well … a few minutes to you, an hour to me. This place is messing about with our minds, you know."
Matt thought about all the weird stuff he had experienced since he met Stu for the first time and nodded. "I guess you're right. It's like a nightmare … I wish I could wake up in the plane and it would all just have been a bad dream."
"The plane?" Stu said.
Matt explained how he had ended up in Silent Hill.
"Ah, interesting," Stu remarked, "and you were the only survivor – isn't that a strange coincidence, Matt? … The Gods must have really wanted to punish you, if they have gone to all that trouble just to get you here. I mean, a lot of sinners end up here because of car accidents, but a plane crash … that's new."
"Sinners?"
"Murderers, rapists, thugs …"
"Wait a minute. Are you insinuating that I've done something horrible like that?"
"Well, you must have done something to end up here."
"Jesus Christ," Matt muttered. "So what did you do? Murder, robbery?"
"No, nothing like that …" Stu said. He suddenly sounded like he was talking to himself, not aware of Matt's presence. "But she was so young … so beautiful …" Then he was clearly directing his attention to Matt again: "I don't want to talk about it."
"Er … okay. So, what's with the door over there?" Matt asked, pointing to the metal door in the wall behind Stu's table. One word was written on the plate: TELEPHONE.
"I don't know," Stu said while Matt walked up to the door to try opening it, "but it's locked and I have no idea where the key is."
"Great. Well, have you seen some kids around here? A boy and a girl, both with black hair …"
"Nope. Who are they?"
"I'm not sure. The boy said that they're brother and sister, just before he ran off."
"Ran off?"
"It's a long story. Anyway, have you seen a young woman around here? Her name's Daryl. I can't remember her last name – it was something-man … oh yeah, Thurman."
"No, I haven't met anyone else around here except for a woman named Angela and some of the cult members."
"Cult members?"
"Yeah, there's a cult in Silent Hill. The Order."
"And you're in it, right?"
"No, I'd never join. It's really silly. Just a bunch of morons who believe that "God" is going to come and save mankind someday and give us all "salvation" and "Paradise"," Stu spat.
"And isn't that what you believe?" Matt said, recalling what Stu had told him about gods and the "Time of the Awakening" back on Sanders Street.
"Oh, I know that God will come to our world someday, but I'm not looking forward to the so-called Miraculous Descent. If there was anything I could do to prevent it, I would be doing that right now. But I guess our only hope is Metatron's interference now."
"Whatever," Matt said and ran his eyes over the table Stu was sitting at. There was a small bronze key lying on it. "Could I take that key? I think it might be …"
"Go ahead. It's not the key for that "telephone" door, though – I've already tried that," Stu said, once more reading his "Lost Memories".
Matt snatched the key, muttered "see you later" and then backtracked to the box on the table. He stuck the key into the keyhole, turned it and pulled the lid back.
It turned out that the box only contained an ornate key and three white cards: LUST, PRIDE and SLOTH.
"Great, I've got the entire set. Now, what am I supposed to do with them?" Matt mumbled as he placed the cards and key in his pocket.
When he got back to the area with the "telephone" door, Stu was gone. The thick book, "Lost Memories", was still lying on the table. Matt sat down and read some of it.
… one of them. But unlike his "colleagues", Amamet specializes not in gathering new believers or preparing the Second Creation of Paradise, but in showing sinners the right path and punishing them when they refrain from following it. It is indeed an angel, but the legends only give us this scant piece of information about his purpose. While he is also known as "Hagio Anemo" ("Holy Wind"), the original worshippers usually used the name Amamet when writing about this creature …
Matt leafed through the rest of the book. It seemed "Lost Memories" was about all kinds of occult ceremonies and legends, gods and angels. Not very interesting to him at the moment.
He left the book on the table and tried unlocking the "telephone" door with the key he had found in the box, but alas, he was supposed to use the key somewhere else.
Ready to shoot anything that might suddenly jump out of the shadows, Matt continued exploring the demented building until he found yet another locked door. But, unlike the stupid "telephone" door, he was able to unlock this one with the ornate key.
He was about to step into the room beyond the doorway when he fortunately noticed that it didn't have a floor. A ladder went down from the threshold to the floor of what was probably the 1F hall where he had met Daryl.
Aware of the fact that there had certainly not been a ladder here before and wondering why and how the library had suddenly changed like this, Matt climbed down the ladder to the northeast corner at the bottom of the art exhibition hall. While he climbed down, the radio began to play static once more.
When he reached the floor, a new monster greeted him. It had the small body of a child, but it looked like someone had pulled its skin off, revealing its pulsating flesh. It wore the same t-shirt and unbuttoned raincoat Amanda had been wearing, but these clothes were filthy and drenched in blood. Its feet had grown together and it walked on crutches, making a sad noise that almost sounded like a human being, crying. Therefore, Matt named it a Weeper. Its head was wrapped in bandages soaked in a gooey yellowish liquid – "Tears?"
Unable to figure out how this creature could possibly attack him, Matt didn't consider it dangerous … until the Weeper got close enough to swing its legs up towards him as gracefully as a gymnast. From three gross holes in the soles of its joined feet, three razor-sharp blades were suddenly shot out a few feet until they couldn't get any further. One of them made a little gash in Matt's left arm. He screamed in pain as the Weeper retracted its claw-like weapons and its feet returned to the floor.
Matt aimed and pulled the trigger. The Weeper staggered back, dropped the crutches and fell to the floor where it continued crying until Matt had kicked it a couple of times. He used the contents of his first-aid kit to patch up the gash and extinguish the pain.
Then he stared at the dead abomination for a while. "This place just keeps getting crazier. Or maybe I'm the one getting crazier all the time …" A tear emerged from his left eye and began travelling down across his face, but was soon wiped off by his hand. "Cut it out, Matt. This is neither the time nor place for sobbing. You've got more important stuff to do, like trying to find a way outta here …"
The exhibition hall had also changed. The square pillars that had supported the ceiling were now gone. Instead, there was a strange monument in the middle of the hall: a round pillar that looked like it had been severed at the middle. It went from the floor and halfway up to the ceiling, then it abruptly stopped. "I wonder where the other half is?" A large painting had been nailed onto the ceiling above the pillar. It depicted a young Caucasian woman wearing a ridiculously long scarlet gown. The beautiful lady had a reproachful look on her face. From where he was standing, Matt could see a caption at what was probably the bottom of the frame: "GOD, SHE WHO IS ETERNAL AND OMNIPOTENT".
The lamps in this hall had also been transformed into cages, each containing what looked like a deformed fetus. The windows had disappeared, and all that was left was a big dark wall. The doorway between the 1F entrance hall and the exhibition hall had also vanished and a crude picture of the formerly existent door had been painted on the wall exactly where the exit used to be, as if the artist was attempting to induce Matt to believe that nothing had changed.
All the nice, normal paintings that had been displayed when Matt was here with Daryl were gone now. Besides "God", there were seven new paintings hanging in a circle on the surface of the round pillar. Matt walked up to the pillar and strolled around it, examining the images. He soon drew a conclusion: They were about the seven deadly sins.
There were small indentations in the bottoms of the frames, where captions would have been seated under normal circumstances. Maybe if he placed the right cards in the right indentations …
In one of the paintings, Matt saw a woman holding a purse. Rats and toads crawled and jumped around at her feet. Matt placed the "Avarice" card in the frame of this work and moved on to the next painting, which depicted a woman tearing up her clothes. He stuck the "Envy" card into the frame.
Now the paintings began to get creepy. The next picture he found portrayed a naked woman who had torn open her chest and pulled out her entrails. She was devouring them with a fierce look on her blood-spattered face. Matt placed the "Anger" card below this picture.
He continued walking around the pillar until he found yet another painting. A corpulent woman stood in the middle of the canvas, pigs and wolves walking around her in a circle. Matt placed the "Gluttony" card below her.
The next painting he discovered depicted a woman with a peacock sitting on her head. Without hesitation, Matt placed the "Pride" card in the frame of this painting. After that, he reached a picture of an overweight man riding an ox and stuck the "Sloth" card into the indentation of this painting's frame.
The last painting he found depicted a beautiful naked woman lying on a bed. Cats were walking around the bed, and snakes and toads were feeding on her breasts and genitals. He placed the "Lust" card below the strange image …
Nothing happened.
"Shit." He tried switching the "Anger" and "Envy" cards, and now something did happen.
Light seemed to seep out of the painting of "God" on the ceiling. The light suddenly divided into seven beams that whizzed down to the seven paintings. It was so bright Matt had to cover his eyes as he staggered back from the pillar which was now completely enveloped in light …
Then he heard a loud explosion-like sound and the light disappeared. When he opened his eyes, the pillar and all the paintings were gone, and all that was left was a key with a tag, lying on the floor in the middle of the hall.
Matt picked it up and noticed that the tag said "Telephone". He smiled, slipped it into his pocket and climbed back up the ladder to the second floor.
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A/N: "Tune in next week" … He he. Please tell me what you think about the sin puzzle and the "Weeper". –E.P.O.