"I thought you said we weren't far from this place," Jessie muttered through gritted teeth, chattering and shivering from the cold.
"You said that about a mile back on the road."
"No kidding. I'd forgotten already."
Denver shielded his eyes from the onslaught of snow that leapt at him with a sudden gust of wind. "I could have sworn it was," he muttered. "I guess I was wrong."
"You just guess?"
"Look." He stepped up behind her and pointed over her shoulder. Beyond the thick fog and sheets of snow, a gray shape was rising.
"What is it?"
"Don't know. Might as well go see."
A parking lot and aging building apparated from the mist. Jessie was more vigilant about exploring than Denver, who pushed against the wind and into the parking lot first.
"What is it?" Jessie called.
"Historical Society."
"What?"
"The Silent Hill Historical Society."
"Is it open?"
Denver looked at her oddly. "Didn't you know?"
"Know what?"
"This place is abandoned. This whole city, both districts of it. It's been that way for a little while."
"Oh." Jessie held her hair out of her face and examined the building before her. "So...would we be breaking and entering?"
"Possibly."
Jessie raised her eyebrows at him, but he didn't return the gesture, and tried the door to the building.
A dirt road, laid in on both sides by ranches and houses on large plots of land. The further down the road she walked, the smokier everything seemed to become. By now, the clouds above her were so thick it surprised her that the clouds hadn't grown sick of teasing her with snow and just dumped buckets of rain onto her head.
The thick silence nipping at her heels kept her stumbling along the uneven road at a rock pace, glancing over her shoulder too often and then gazing around, wishing she could run across another human presence. But the world around her ignored her silent pleas, and the road sloped upward, forcing Hazel to trudge on, alone, up the snowy hill.
Her throat was closing. Hazel stopped and leaned against the fence, catching her breath, wishing she could hold her heart in place to keep it from hammering so.
'Need to get out more.'
She examined the hill she'd just conquered, and her face fell. 'Very disappointing.' She rose from the fence and stumbled the rest of the lengthy distance upwards, and stopped again to rest when she reached the small cement building that crowned it.
The hill seemed awfully short when she looked down it again. She laughed at herself, and her throat burned. 'There're probably people worse off than me who could pull that off without breaking a sweat...'
She wiped the small sheen of perspiration from her forehead and upper lip, then turned her head and inspected the short hallway that lay ahead of her. Papers, mostly newspapers, were strewn around the floor and plastered to the cold, wet walls. Hazel stepped into the hallway and put a hand against the wall for balance, but quickly drew it away again when she realized how cold the wall was. Wet newspaper ripped from its source and stuck to her fingers.
As she began to wipe the paper off her fingers and onto the wall, she examined the paper.
'Jacob Halliwell was hospitalized early Sunday morning for nearly fatal injuries received during a mysterious attack Saturday evening. Police suspect a crime of passion spurred by the attempted murder of Thomas Hawk in early 1994, but no suspects have yet been caught and questioned.'
There was "More on ATTACK on 13A," but page 13A didn't seem to exist in this hallway. A short, further examination revealed that all the papers scattered around the hall were the same paper.
"Huh." Hazel skimmed the rest of the articles, but nothing else really caught her attention. She continued down the hallway, pushing open the gate that blocked her way.
"The town's just down here. I swear."
Though Denver couldn't see her, he knew Jessie was pouting behind him. 'Or something like that,' he thought.
"I think you owe me for this."
"What do I owe you, then?"
Jessie shrugged, then remembered she couldn't see him. "I don't know. Tell me what all you know about this town?"
"I told you already, I don't know anything about it."
"I'm not stupid. You've got to know more than just that."
He frowned thoughtfully. "Maybe. It's dodgy, though. I don't even know if it's true."
"What is it?"
"A little bit of history."
"Tell me anyway." She caught up with him quickly, her interest piqued.
"It's been a while since I read about it," he began, "but I'll try to tell you what I remember. I don't know how the town got started...probably a settlement...but during a war...the Civil War, I think, a prisoner camp was built here, and a huge number of executions took place, mostly hangings, firelines, and decapitation. There was plenty of bloodshed, though, and the swamps that used to surround this area turned red from the blood that was washed into them. The hospital in this southern area was built to house victims of a plague that struck the area. It started out as a tiny house, then grew into a pretty large hospital. I've told you a little bit about all the drug business and cult things that went on here."
Jessie nodded.
"The town used to be a tourist trap...people would come here just to visit, and that cult would get them hooked on White Claudia. It was one hell of a drug. It drove people insane. Tourists who visited here disappeared. Some time ago, a boat full of tourists went out onto Toluca Lake and never came back. No one knows what happened to it."
Jessie nodded again. "Spooky," she murmured.
"To put it lightly. Scary place. Those aren't the only strange things that have happened here, but I can't mention any more."
"Why?"
"That's all I know about."
The rest of the journey went in silence till they reached the gas station.
If the road weren't iced over, Hazel imagined she'd have a much easier time with the slope that descended slowly down into fog. Hazel stopped at the end of the stone hallway, examining the path that lay before her. Beyond the drop at the curb and the end of the road as it curled around the hillside like smoke, she could see nothing, just the thick gray fog.
'This is Purgatory, and now you're going down into hell.'
It made her laugh, in a dark way.
'Just a town,' she told herself. 'It'll be fine, unless it's Raccoon City or something.'
She quickly pushed away the thoughts of being assaulted by a horde of grotesque zombies. 'Been plastered to the TV too long.' She kept close to the cliff, digging her fingers into the cracks of the rock to hold herself steady as she slipped down the road with uneven steps.
Eventually, the road split, the right path spiraling on down and the left path barricaded off. Her interests laid not in scaling the barricade in the icy weather, so she chose the path to the right. According to the map, they shared a similar destination, so it didn't quite matter.
Gradually, beginning with bald patches of bare, uniced road, the ice melted away, and the road was simply wet. The sidewalks, however, remained frozen, so she stuck to the road, and paused to collect herself when it spilled into a whole other street where, only a few meters to her right, the road disappeared, crushed away like some giant foot had stepped from the sky and smashed the ground away. But when she approached the remains of the road and peered over, the jumbled mass of dismembered cement blocks, barely connected by pipework, tumbled into nothing, just the gray fog that lay heavily on the town like plague.
Behind her were high fences that hid the private properties of ranches from the civilians of the town. Hazel stepped back from the gorge and left it, her mind still wondering at it. Why was it there, what caused it...
The flower shop looked awfully old, Understandably so, it was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary.
'Wonder if it's open yet.'
The door opened easily.
'Maybe.'
She stepped inside and a thick scent of musty age assaulted her nose. It felt like she breathed in a thick batter of dust and warm, stagnant air. Beyond the aged air was something unplaceable, something that vaguely reminded her of a slab of steak left sitting out on the counter a few months too long.
It didn't require further inspection. Not a living soul existed here, and it had been so for a few years. The fiftieth anniversary must have passed years ago.
A cold shiver that had birthed from her spine the moment she'd set foot in the old building suddenly tore up her back like a parasite. Hazel shook it out, hugged her arms to herself, and took a precarious step.
A glass wall, crusted with dust and what could only be described as red-brown mud, led to an outdoor store of plants, but Hazel ignored it and approached the cashier's desks to her right. It was normal enough, reminding her of the garden shop her mother used to take her to.
Hazel coughed, and the memory was suddenly gone. She studied the machines, willing it back, but she couldn't recall what she had just remembered. With a small groan, she pushed it out of her mind and brushed off the magazine that cluttered the tabletop.
A tabloid. She didn't need the cheap style of the magazine to tell her; the front page revealed all. Silent Hill had it's own tabloid. It seemed fitting, somehow.
According to the 'Silent Hill Word,' 'deformed bones' were found 'arranged in mystical patterns that suggest Satanic worship.' Smaller font beneath the large print provided the hook that the bones might not be that of humans, but those of monsters, as some townspeople seemed to think. The article was not without photographic evidence, but it was only visible on page twenty-three.
'This is stupid.'
Hazel flipped the magazine open to page twenty-three. The entire page was engulfed by the huge, aerial image of an entire cemetery littered with bones. From the high distance, they seemed to be plain, unaltered bones, but the next page revealed deformities and odd accessories attached to them (such as extra limbs and horns) that made her wince slightly. After turning back to the aerial image and studying it for a moment, her eyes picked up the strange pattern the bones lay in.
A circle, filled with three triangles and a number of other shapes and delicate swirls whose detail was lost in the disproportionate bulk of the boned. It made her head ache like pinpricks behind her left eye, like one of her migraines coming on, so she quickly closed the magazine and dropped it onto the countertop.
A shadow stumbled across her peripheral vision. Hazel spun quickly, hesitated, then jogged after the shadow. "Hello?" she called tentatively. At first glance, the room seemed void of any life, save her (even the plants were dead), but further inspection revealed a quaking, wide-eyed child cowering in a corner, his hands clutching his arms tightly. He jumped and squealed when he saw her.
"Hey there," Hazel said softly, approaching him. "You okay?"
He didn't reply, only gazed up at her dumbly, terrified, with those huge, shimmering eyes.
"My name's Hazel. I'm not gonna hurt you."
"You're not Hazel," he breathed.
"What?"
"I want my sister," he whimpered.
"Here." She offered him her hand gently. Her eyed her warily. "I'll help you find her. Do you live here?"
"I did."
"Let's go find your sister."
He examined her eyes, then took her hand slowly and let her pull him up.
"Do you know where she might be?"
"No. We were in the hotel, and I fell asleep, and when I woke up, everything was like this. Everyone was gone."
'Gone,' Hazel thought. 'That's weird.'
"Come with me," she said. "It'll be safer this way."
"You said that about a mile back on the road."
"No kidding. I'd forgotten already."
Denver shielded his eyes from the onslaught of snow that leapt at him with a sudden gust of wind. "I could have sworn it was," he muttered. "I guess I was wrong."
"You just guess?"
"Look." He stepped up behind her and pointed over her shoulder. Beyond the thick fog and sheets of snow, a gray shape was rising.
"What is it?"
"Don't know. Might as well go see."
A parking lot and aging building apparated from the mist. Jessie was more vigilant about exploring than Denver, who pushed against the wind and into the parking lot first.
"What is it?" Jessie called.
"Historical Society."
"What?"
"The Silent Hill Historical Society."
"Is it open?"
Denver looked at her oddly. "Didn't you know?"
"Know what?"
"This place is abandoned. This whole city, both districts of it. It's been that way for a little while."
"Oh." Jessie held her hair out of her face and examined the building before her. "So...would we be breaking and entering?"
"Possibly."
Jessie raised her eyebrows at him, but he didn't return the gesture, and tried the door to the building.
A dirt road, laid in on both sides by ranches and houses on large plots of land. The further down the road she walked, the smokier everything seemed to become. By now, the clouds above her were so thick it surprised her that the clouds hadn't grown sick of teasing her with snow and just dumped buckets of rain onto her head.
The thick silence nipping at her heels kept her stumbling along the uneven road at a rock pace, glancing over her shoulder too often and then gazing around, wishing she could run across another human presence. But the world around her ignored her silent pleas, and the road sloped upward, forcing Hazel to trudge on, alone, up the snowy hill.
Her throat was closing. Hazel stopped and leaned against the fence, catching her breath, wishing she could hold her heart in place to keep it from hammering so.
'Need to get out more.'
She examined the hill she'd just conquered, and her face fell. 'Very disappointing.' She rose from the fence and stumbled the rest of the lengthy distance upwards, and stopped again to rest when she reached the small cement building that crowned it.
The hill seemed awfully short when she looked down it again. She laughed at herself, and her throat burned. 'There're probably people worse off than me who could pull that off without breaking a sweat...'
She wiped the small sheen of perspiration from her forehead and upper lip, then turned her head and inspected the short hallway that lay ahead of her. Papers, mostly newspapers, were strewn around the floor and plastered to the cold, wet walls. Hazel stepped into the hallway and put a hand against the wall for balance, but quickly drew it away again when she realized how cold the wall was. Wet newspaper ripped from its source and stuck to her fingers.
As she began to wipe the paper off her fingers and onto the wall, she examined the paper.
'Jacob Halliwell was hospitalized early Sunday morning for nearly fatal injuries received during a mysterious attack Saturday evening. Police suspect a crime of passion spurred by the attempted murder of Thomas Hawk in early 1994, but no suspects have yet been caught and questioned.'
There was "More on ATTACK on 13A," but page 13A didn't seem to exist in this hallway. A short, further examination revealed that all the papers scattered around the hall were the same paper.
"Huh." Hazel skimmed the rest of the articles, but nothing else really caught her attention. She continued down the hallway, pushing open the gate that blocked her way.
"The town's just down here. I swear."
Though Denver couldn't see her, he knew Jessie was pouting behind him. 'Or something like that,' he thought.
"I think you owe me for this."
"What do I owe you, then?"
Jessie shrugged, then remembered she couldn't see him. "I don't know. Tell me what all you know about this town?"
"I told you already, I don't know anything about it."
"I'm not stupid. You've got to know more than just that."
He frowned thoughtfully. "Maybe. It's dodgy, though. I don't even know if it's true."
"What is it?"
"A little bit of history."
"Tell me anyway." She caught up with him quickly, her interest piqued.
"It's been a while since I read about it," he began, "but I'll try to tell you what I remember. I don't know how the town got started...probably a settlement...but during a war...the Civil War, I think, a prisoner camp was built here, and a huge number of executions took place, mostly hangings, firelines, and decapitation. There was plenty of bloodshed, though, and the swamps that used to surround this area turned red from the blood that was washed into them. The hospital in this southern area was built to house victims of a plague that struck the area. It started out as a tiny house, then grew into a pretty large hospital. I've told you a little bit about all the drug business and cult things that went on here."
Jessie nodded.
"The town used to be a tourist trap...people would come here just to visit, and that cult would get them hooked on White Claudia. It was one hell of a drug. It drove people insane. Tourists who visited here disappeared. Some time ago, a boat full of tourists went out onto Toluca Lake and never came back. No one knows what happened to it."
Jessie nodded again. "Spooky," she murmured.
"To put it lightly. Scary place. Those aren't the only strange things that have happened here, but I can't mention any more."
"Why?"
"That's all I know about."
The rest of the journey went in silence till they reached the gas station.
If the road weren't iced over, Hazel imagined she'd have a much easier time with the slope that descended slowly down into fog. Hazel stopped at the end of the stone hallway, examining the path that lay before her. Beyond the drop at the curb and the end of the road as it curled around the hillside like smoke, she could see nothing, just the thick gray fog.
'This is Purgatory, and now you're going down into hell.'
It made her laugh, in a dark way.
'Just a town,' she told herself. 'It'll be fine, unless it's Raccoon City or something.'
She quickly pushed away the thoughts of being assaulted by a horde of grotesque zombies. 'Been plastered to the TV too long.' She kept close to the cliff, digging her fingers into the cracks of the rock to hold herself steady as she slipped down the road with uneven steps.
Eventually, the road split, the right path spiraling on down and the left path barricaded off. Her interests laid not in scaling the barricade in the icy weather, so she chose the path to the right. According to the map, they shared a similar destination, so it didn't quite matter.
Gradually, beginning with bald patches of bare, uniced road, the ice melted away, and the road was simply wet. The sidewalks, however, remained frozen, so she stuck to the road, and paused to collect herself when it spilled into a whole other street where, only a few meters to her right, the road disappeared, crushed away like some giant foot had stepped from the sky and smashed the ground away. But when she approached the remains of the road and peered over, the jumbled mass of dismembered cement blocks, barely connected by pipework, tumbled into nothing, just the gray fog that lay heavily on the town like plague.
Behind her were high fences that hid the private properties of ranches from the civilians of the town. Hazel stepped back from the gorge and left it, her mind still wondering at it. Why was it there, what caused it...
The flower shop looked awfully old, Understandably so, it was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary.
'Wonder if it's open yet.'
The door opened easily.
'Maybe.'
She stepped inside and a thick scent of musty age assaulted her nose. It felt like she breathed in a thick batter of dust and warm, stagnant air. Beyond the aged air was something unplaceable, something that vaguely reminded her of a slab of steak left sitting out on the counter a few months too long.
It didn't require further inspection. Not a living soul existed here, and it had been so for a few years. The fiftieth anniversary must have passed years ago.
A cold shiver that had birthed from her spine the moment she'd set foot in the old building suddenly tore up her back like a parasite. Hazel shook it out, hugged her arms to herself, and took a precarious step.
A glass wall, crusted with dust and what could only be described as red-brown mud, led to an outdoor store of plants, but Hazel ignored it and approached the cashier's desks to her right. It was normal enough, reminding her of the garden shop her mother used to take her to.
Hazel coughed, and the memory was suddenly gone. She studied the machines, willing it back, but she couldn't recall what she had just remembered. With a small groan, she pushed it out of her mind and brushed off the magazine that cluttered the tabletop.
A tabloid. She didn't need the cheap style of the magazine to tell her; the front page revealed all. Silent Hill had it's own tabloid. It seemed fitting, somehow.
According to the 'Silent Hill Word,' 'deformed bones' were found 'arranged in mystical patterns that suggest Satanic worship.' Smaller font beneath the large print provided the hook that the bones might not be that of humans, but those of monsters, as some townspeople seemed to think. The article was not without photographic evidence, but it was only visible on page twenty-three.
'This is stupid.'
Hazel flipped the magazine open to page twenty-three. The entire page was engulfed by the huge, aerial image of an entire cemetery littered with bones. From the high distance, they seemed to be plain, unaltered bones, but the next page revealed deformities and odd accessories attached to them (such as extra limbs and horns) that made her wince slightly. After turning back to the aerial image and studying it for a moment, her eyes picked up the strange pattern the bones lay in.
A circle, filled with three triangles and a number of other shapes and delicate swirls whose detail was lost in the disproportionate bulk of the boned. It made her head ache like pinpricks behind her left eye, like one of her migraines coming on, so she quickly closed the magazine and dropped it onto the countertop.
A shadow stumbled across her peripheral vision. Hazel spun quickly, hesitated, then jogged after the shadow. "Hello?" she called tentatively. At first glance, the room seemed void of any life, save her (even the plants were dead), but further inspection revealed a quaking, wide-eyed child cowering in a corner, his hands clutching his arms tightly. He jumped and squealed when he saw her.
"Hey there," Hazel said softly, approaching him. "You okay?"
He didn't reply, only gazed up at her dumbly, terrified, with those huge, shimmering eyes.
"My name's Hazel. I'm not gonna hurt you."
"You're not Hazel," he breathed.
"What?"
"I want my sister," he whimpered.
"Here." She offered him her hand gently. Her eyed her warily. "I'll help you find her. Do you live here?"
"I did."
"Let's go find your sister."
He examined her eyes, then took her hand slowly and let her pull him up.
"Do you know where she might be?"
"No. We were in the hotel, and I fell asleep, and when I woke up, everything was like this. Everyone was gone."
'Gone,' Hazel thought. 'That's weird.'
"Come with me," she said. "It'll be safer this way."