Chapter 14: Underground University
"Jenny? What are you doing here … oh no."
Matt opened his eyes and was greeted by the light blue shade of the floor he was lying on after dropping through the hole, following Tommy like Alice following the talking rabbit. Fluorescent tubes were reflected on either side of his head. "Wow. A spotlessly clean floor. Now there's something you don't see every day in this place." He slowly stood to take a look at his new surroundings and discovered that he was alone in a small room with white walls and five wooden doors, illuminated by the four tubes on the ceiling, in the middle of which the hole he had entered through was sitting like a huge black spider.
That voice just before … it had sounded like Stu, tired and surprised. "But who's Jenny?"
Then he heard Stu talking again: "Oh no, you're not Jenny … shit, get away from me!" His voice trailed off into a scream of pain. It was easy to hear that he was somewhere to the right of Matt.
There were two doors in the right wall of the room. The first one Matt tried opened at once and he tripped into a surprisingly large room, brightly lit by ceiling lamps that were a little dated, although less primitive than the tubes of the previous room. There was a maze of dark chinks and crevices in the ceiling. Various paintings and photos of landscapes and scientists hung on the walls. It looked like a university's lecture room or something, with several benches positioned in a sloping semicircle to face the platform down at the back of the room. There was also a screen for showing slides down there.
But it was empty right now, except for him, Stu and a repulsive new monster. Matt named this one a Doll because of the way it resembled a twisted puppet. It had the naked and blood-smeared body of a young woman, but the arms were missing, replaced by plastic arms, just like those you'd find on a mannequin. These artificial arms had been sloppily stitched together with the torso's flesh with black string in a weak attempt to create the illusion that there was nothing unusual about this body.
An illusion shattered by the two extra, slightly hairy and muscular arms growing out of its back. Its bald, pale head was missing eyes, ears and a nose, although it did have a huge, dislocated, toothless mouth. A transparent sticky liquid covered the body like icing on a cake. Since its legs had been cut off at the knees, it couldn't walk. But three long wires – one attached to its crown with a hook, the other two clutched in the mannequin hands – hung through cracks in the ceiling and kept the body hovering a few feet above the floor. Matt got the feeling there was some weird puppeteer residing above the ceiling, controlling the Doll's movements by pulling the wires around.
Stu was standing at the rostrum and Matt could now see why he was screaming like that: the Doll was embracing him, the arms sticking out of its back wrapped around his torso, its huge mouth gobbling up his head in a grotesque parody of a kiss.
Matt ran down past the benches to save him, but that proved to be unnecessary. Stu managed to free himself from the Doll's hug and thrust the monster away before Matt had reached the scene of the fight. Something above the ceiling (in all probability the mysterious puppeteer) let out an angry roar as Stu raised the knife he had been holding and drove it into the creature's mouth and through the back of its head.
The puppeteer roared one last time and dropped his wires. They fell to the floor along with the Doll's blood-squirting body.
Not until now did Stu notice Matt standing at the lowest row of benches. "You again? What are you doing here?"
"I, uh … I've been checking out the hospital. Then I found this hole and jumped down it, and the next thing I know I'm in an underground university or something, and you're getting attacked by something that belongs in a Clive Barker story … who's Jenny, anyway?"
"Oh, that's just … a girl I knew once, before I ended up in this town. She … I thought I saw her just before, I really thought that was her. But then she … transformed …"
"Into this thing?" Matt asked, pointing to the monster on the floor.
"Yes. I should have known it was just one of the town's tricks. How stupid of me …" Stu turned away, placed his elbows on the rostrum and buried his face in his hands. "I'm so disgusting … a disgusting old bastard …"
Matt wasn't good at consoling people. He only managed to utter an awkward "errr …" and stand there with a somewhat concerned look on his face.
Then Stu turned around and stomped the Doll a few times before he calmed down. "Got any cigarettes?" he asked, fidgeting with his black tie.
"No."
"Dammit."
"Uh … so where did you get that big-ass knife?"
"The Silent Hill Fresh Meats store. I think it was somewhere on Neely Street. Lots of butcher's knives there. If you need a good weapon, you should go there the next time you're in that part of town."
"Thanks, but I think I've already got enough to defend myself with, at the moment."
"Suit yourself."
"So what's with this lecture room? It doesn't make sense at all, that there should be some fancy university situated beneath the hospital …"
"Well, there aren't any universities in this part of the US. This is probably the town materializing my memories of that university I used to work at … It does that a lot."
"So you never know what's real around here?" Matt asked.
"Of course you don't. I thought you'd have figured that out by now. In the beginning, I was confused, too," Stu said and began to walk up to the door Matt had entered through before. "But then I started to understand the … nature of this place. It'll be easier for you if you compare it to a dream."
"A dream?"
"Yes. A jumble of memories and familiar feelings, a seemingly absurd mess. And yet, it's trying to tell you something …"
"Actually … I know what you mean. It does feel like a dream. It's like I'm not really here," Matt said.
Stu turned around, apparently now starting to take an interest in Matt's situation. "Like you're not really here?"
"Yeah, as if my real body is sitting, or lying, somewhere far away from this room, and I'm sleeping, or unconscious or something … It's stupid, right? I'm just really tired …"
"No, I think it might be because you're … Well, you said your plane crashed nearby and you were the only survivor? You got up from your seat, walked around and tried to feel the pulses of the other passengers, and it turned out everyone had died except you?"
"Yes …"
"Maybe that was too lucky for you. Maybe you did in fact …"
"What? You're mumbling," Matt said.
"Oh, nothing. Let's just get out of here," Stu replied and led the way back into the room with the hole in the ceiling.
The door in south wall was locked, but Stu produced a small key from his pocket and unlocked it. "Where did you get that?" Matt asked.
"Found it on a bench in that lecture room, before you got there," Stu said and opened the door. They stepped into a short hallway with more fluorescent tubes and white walls. For some reason, there were several baby's dummies and broken nursing bottles lying on the floor. A disgusting smell was rising from the floor; the milk that had poured out from the bottles looked much too old.
"Eeew," Stu declared as they walked down the hallway until they reached a dead end with a rectangular black hole in the floor.
"Ugh. Another hole. Do we really have to go down there?" Matt said, staring into the darkness below them.
"Well … all the other doors back there wouldn't open. I guess this is our only way out."
Despite that comment, they hesitated for a while.
"Life is like a deep pit. When you're born, you start falling. When you reach the bottom, you die," Stu said.
"And who said that? Some old philosopher?" Matt asked.
"I don't know. I think I read it in a magazine somewhere … So anyway, we'll jump at the same time, right?"
"Right."
"Okay … on 3, then. 1 … 2 … 3."
Their feet left the floor somewhat simultaneously and they fell into the cold abyss.
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A/N: Darn, 'twas a short chapter. Oh well. The next one will certainly be longer, TINW. Jake: Yes, I'll probably have to try making a living as a writer when I get older … Wrath: Good, it was supposed to be slightly disturbing. My theory is that the "audience" consists of people like James and Matt who didn't answer correctly and are doomed to spend the rest of their lives stuck in Silent Hill, playing spectators at the quiz shows. Sounds pretty stupid now that I think about it … Karry: Didn't he get the town map somewhere in chapter 2? –E.P.O.