AN: I noticed/realized that not everybody reading this story has good knowledge of Silent Hill, so I'll give an extremely brief overview of the history and rules of the town here before going much farther.
A long while ago, a cult known simply as "The Order" existed within Silent Hill and held secret dark rituals meant to bring about the birth of the dark lord, Samael, who they often refered to specifically as God. Shortly before the first game, some sort of magicalness goofed and ended up consuming the town in darkness (there's no exact reason given). Although the exact nature of this darkness is unknown, it did cause every living thing in Silent Hill to vanish forever (or possibly turn into the demons). Harry Mason (hero in the first game) went on his little quest, found out all the truths, and managed to kill the incarnation of Samael/God, since, being born of a mortal, it itself was mortal; even though he saved the day and escaped, Silent Hill still remains consumed by darkness.
Three main rules apply to Silent Hill, which more or less continue through all the games and in this story:
1) The darkness is not restricted exclusively to Silent Hill, allowing it to slowly expand outward and can also affect specific people far away and surround them within the illusion/reality of SH. Also, anyone is capable of wandering inside SH, not everyone is coerced inside. Finally, the scenery itself will sometimes alter into a much darker form, preceeded by the blare of sirens.
2) The darkness calls "sinners" to SH. This idea of "sinners" is rather vague, but in the past, it's mostly taken form in murderers and lunatics, but isn't restricted to these extremes. The "calling" in general is never explained, but it can sometimes come in the form of letters from the deceased or longing for the past.
3) The monsters within SH take forms relating to a person's sins and/or fears. For example, James of SH2 sinned by killing his invalid wife, and witnessed monsters vaguely resembling people in straitjackets and nurses, but also fear-monsters like possessed mannequins. If a person has no sin, they can still see fear-based monsters. If a person is truly innocent (like the child Laura of SH2), they can pass freely without monster contact.
I think that's all the background any non-SH fans need. Hopefully that was just enough to help out any holes in logic you might have had. Oh, and thanks for all the reviews so far!
Walking, walking, walking… Daria was getting very tired of walking, especially through drizzle and fog with the potential of violent apparitions jumping out and doing untold things to them.
"Jane?"
"What?"
"Say something."
"Why?"
"This complete silence is getting to me."
"Yeah, I don't blame you. Okay, let's see: My name is Jane, and I am walking. I am walking and my name is Jane."
Daria sighed and continued walking, the feeling of completely saturated clothes not a pleasant one. They passed the antique shop, continued moving down Simmons Street, and then caught notice of the Silent Hill Town Center.
Staring through the glass doors, Jane mused, "Hmph, never expected a town like this to actually have its own mall, even if it is a tiny little dump."
The writer kept staring down their intended path, not really interested in any sight-seeing. A sound came to her ears, faint but real, like a combination of running water and rocks scraping against each other. Its maker then stepped out from the fog before her, though "stepped" wasn't exactly the right word, she decided. There were four "arms" and a "body," not much else, so four-limbed movement was what it did, the way you don't think of a dog or cat stepping. The "thing" was made of dirt-colored putty or clay, something malleable that caused it to be constantly in motion from quasi-liquidity. The form of its "arms" reminded Daria of the way plant vines will often curve and wrap around a metal bar or trellis, as they consisted of several strands of putty that held together to form arms but appeared to separate as the monster seemed to breathe in and out; an elongated bird cage, sealed on both ends, that was it.
It continued to "stare" at the girls as Daria attempted to keep calm and tell her friend, "Jane, open the door. Open it now."
The artist muttered a "huh?" before she caught a glimpse of the putty thing, then wasted no time at forcing open the door and pulling Daria in with her. The monster started rushing towards them the instant Daria moved, traveling at a fast enough speed to impact with the door immediately after it was shoved shut. A loud "squish" sound accompanied its crash into the door and subsequent splatter. Daria rushed over to a detached metal bench nearby and brought it over to Jane, who helped her prop it up against the doors and seal them shut.
Jane cursed loudly as the two of them backed away immediately from the door and monster. The putty thing was squishing and spreading across the glass doors, as if trying to find any sort of opening to squeeze through. Laughing half-heartedly through her heavy breathing, Jane scoffed, "So much for 'when silly putty attacks.' Guess the horrors of Silent Hill aren't that bad after all."
Daria wasn't ready to joke just yet. Once the putty thing had covered the full perimeter of the doors, rocks of various sizes--pebbles to large gravel--started to sift through the goo and press directly against the glass. After another moment, the force behind the rocks started causing minor cracks and scratches that gradually spread and reached to the sides.
"Jesus Christ." Jane fumbled around in the back of her pants for the handgun, ignoring the katana still strung through one of her belt loops, pulled the gun out and aimed it at the putty thing.
Daria quickly put her hand on the gun to make her lower it. "Yeah, I'd be afraid of a gun if I was Jell-O. Jane, let's just go, now, before it breaks the doors and lets everything in after us."
She could hear the quickness and strength of the air coming out Jane's nose from their proximity and the danger. Jane was becoming too tense, too afraid, but then, Daria couldn't blame her; maybe they just had different ways of dealing.
The artist finally agreed, and they started running the opposite direction, past the various little stores and restaurants, but ten seconds into their escape, they found something they did not expect.
"Um, is there supposed to be a giant bottomless pit in the middle of the mall here?"
The floor had suddenly stopped, as if ripped off by giant teeth, and everything beyond and underneath was darkness that slowly grew deeper and deeper as the lights from the front of the mall went out, one after another, traveling down towards the girls. Two escalators led up from where they were, the only possible way to go now.
"Screw it, come on, let's go!" Jane shouted as she grabbed Daria by the hand and pulled her up the closest escalator, which would have been a lot more convenient if the machinery was working.
The long run up, then a new corridor to escape down, bordering on the endless, black void; the sound of glass shattering far behind them caught the girls' attention only for a moment before a second putty thing now dropped from the ceiling in front of them. Jane cursed a second before one of the monster's arms lashed out and smashed her through the closest glass wall and against the display wall inside, quickly expanding to cover her face and much of her body.
So now Daria was alone. She pulled out the kitchen knife from her jacket, took something of an attack stance… and froze. She was going to… stab this thing? Images of blades cutting flesh and blood pouring free, the movie-dramatized sounds of thin blades passing through air or through body parts, the memory of the touch of the knife gently running along the length of the arm…
Her body convulsed with the understanding of what she needed to do: plunge a knife into… something, a "living" thing. I… Her knees gave way and let her drop to the floor, only her hands supporting her. I can't… do this…
A "mouth" started to form from the closest middle-point of the creature, between two legs/arms, with many jagged pieces of glass and metal and rock acting as impromptu teeth. This "head" reached out at a slow rate towards the quivering girl--
Until an unearthly scream ripped from the "mouth" instead, like the dreaded chalkboard-scrapping sound--one of its arms/legs was missing. Jane was still tearing some of the gooey mess off her face and clothes as she waved the katana around, having finally ripped it from her belt loop and cut straight through that putty limb. The smeared blood on her face and arms added an almost aesthetic flair and beauty to her charging and slicing that damn monster right down the center.
Heavy breathing followed; Jane eventually composed herself enough to turn around, see the closing in of darkening lights, and demand, "Daria, you okay?"
Of course I'm not okay. I just had a breakdown when you needed me most, because all I could think about was the horrible concept of plunging a knife into flesh--well, whatever the hell that was. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it.
The writer said nothing, merely forcing her way to her feet, leaving the knife on the ground, and starting to run with her friend. Everything became a blur, a thoughtless act to just continue living, anything to keep moving and making it to that final door in the back, the exit to the outside, and praying to God that these metal beams laid across missing floor areas would hold, and trying not to think that more putty things were behind them even though they could hear those horrible shrieks and scrapping sounds like a deafening choir of Hell in their ears--
And the last door exposed them to a darkness deeper than what was growing inside the mall: it had become night. Jane merely thought a curse and continued pulling Daria out of the building, down the emergency ladder path and out the back parking lot, running down, down, down the long empty street with the sounds of screeching behind them, high up in the air. The darkness was too thick, no moon, no light, only the outlines of endless shapes in the black, and those nightmarish sounds, and the darkness growing thicker, deeper, the darkness…
"Daria…?"
The voice sounded so far away…
"Daria…? Hey, Daria!?"
Her feet tripping on a curb suddenly brought her back to reality, even though the darkness barely lessened.
"Hey, sit down, rest a minute."
Jane's voice kept coming to her, even though she could barely make out her friend's outline in the black. She wrapped her head in her hands and tried in vain to control the headache that was starting to rage a protest in her brain.
"We're okay, Daria. I can't hear them anymore. I can't hear anything, really, except you and me, so hopefully that's a good thing." Several long, needed breaths. "Hey, you alright?"
Daria felt her friend's arms wrap around her, for warmth from what now felt like snow or for her own sanity, she wasn't really sure. She allowed herself to lie back against her, head upon shoulder. It was probably closer than they had ever been, physically, though this was probably also the most harrowing of ordeals either of them had ever experienced.
Taking a moment to find her voice again, the writer quipped softly, "You're the one that went through solid glass and nearly suffocated, what about you?"
Silence. "I'll be okay." Liar. The sound of her lips shaking from the cold invaded the silence. "So… what happened to you?"
Daria wanted to just avoid this question and leave life right about now, but things aren't always that convenient. "Something about putting a knife into a seemingly living thing didn't appeal to me. I panicked. End of story." If she could have seen in the dark, Daria expected she would have seen Jane raising an eyebrow at that statement, which ultimately gave her too much guilt. "A long while ago, I became pissed at the cutter culture of our generation, just couldn't understand the mentality or the thinking, couldn't figure out why it even happened. So I wanted to test the bounds of this ideology. I wanted to comprehend it so I could legitimately hate it and everyone that practiced it. So I tried it."
"You never told me any of this."
"That's because I forgot. I had a mental breakdown from the whole experience and forced it out of my mind. Digging a shallow grave and burying it. The knife brought it all back, not to mention every other possible thought connected to bleeding flesh." A pause. "Are you mad at me?"
Sigh. "No, but the next time I'm being devoured by vomit-flavored Jell-O, I expect you to at least kick the damn thing."
They shared a smirk in the darkness.
Time passed; how long had it been? No watch, no light to judge any facet of existence. So what now?
After a short mental debate, Jane decided she had had enough sitting around and waiting to be eaten. "Hey Daria, you stay here, I'm gonna check to see if we can get to that place Derek talked about. There's only two roads leading there, and we ran too far past the first one all the way to the end of the road, so we just have to one to the right over there. I'll go check it out, you stay here."
The writer's light acknowledgement hinted at great fatigue. Jane took a breath and put the katana in another belt loop, then started walking down the road, staying on the sidewalk to make sure she didn't lose track of where she was. She had barely been walking a minute before a light caught her attention, small but obvious straight ahead of her. A quick look around, then a full run towards the light that, within this absolute darkness, might as well have been a solar flare; then an immediate stop when she felt her right foot come down on an angle much lower than her previous steps. "What the hell?"
The light made the situation obvious: a pocket flashlight on a loop was hanging from a lead pipe that was balanced between two extended branches of a fallen tree over the road which happened to be nonexistent, replaced by a large, gaping hole of nothingness to which the collapsing street Jane was standing on lead into before breaking away completely. "You have got to be kidding me. A bottomless pit in the middle of one of the only exits in town. Where's God when you need to jab his eyes out?"
Well, it was either get the flashlight so they could find where the hell they were going, or stumble on in the darkness all the way to the other side of town. Yes, hard decision, indeed. "I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't. This is insane."
She continued mumbling as she crawled on top of the tree and sort of shimmied her way down the thing, all the while hoping the roots--which happened to be planted within the adjacent sidewalk but still appeared unreliable--would not come flying out and drop her into the black hole. Splinters dug into her skin and clothes, and the pain from that injury in the mall started to act up again, but she kept pulling herself closer and closer to that light whose brightness was shining right into her eyes and really pissing her off. So, painful experience aside, she finally grabbed the pipe from the center, lifted it up, and brought it to her, flashlight and all.
And then the tree creaked and drooped slightly. "This is a sick joke. When I get out of her, I'm gonna find that chainsaw and cut down every damn tree I see."
More movement at a gradual pace. Jane cursed under her breath as she quickly got to her feet, ran desperately back across the tree, and leapt towards the street the moment the roots gave way and let the damn tree plunge into the darkness. Her arms were skinned by the slide on the pavement, but at least she was still alive. She brushed herself off and then decided to look around with this new flashlight. Everything seemed different when cast within the glow and produced shadows, but then there was nothing really to see--oh, except that.
Jane walked over to the little bottle on the ground, that read "Health Drink," just like all the others they had seen before. "Oh, what the hell, better than just dying.
She grabbed the bottle, popped off the top, and drank half of what was inside; almost like Vanilla Coke. She wasn't exactly cured of all pain and injury, but at least she felt a little better. Carrying all her newly acquired items in her arms, Jane made her way back to Daria.
The writer was fast asleep--definitely not dead, because her chest was still rising and falling from breathing. She looked content, much better than her previous panic phase.
Jane knelt beside her, rocking her gently and speaking in a soft tone, "Hey, c'mon Daria, babe, I'll find you some place to rest, but not here in the open. We gotta keep moving for now."
With a heavy sigh, Daria finally managed to wake up and stand, rubbing her face profusely to stay conscious. Jane gave her the health drink, which she grudgingly drank and felt slightly better. After a moment's thought, she gave the writer the pipe as well, saying, "I figure you won't have as much trouble using this thing, as long as you don't have a history of bashing yourself in the head with blunt, metal objects." Lastly, she hung the pocket flashlight around Daria's neck.
The walk started. According to the map, they were going west down Koontz Street, which would take them to Alchemilla Hospital, though the likelihood of anyone useful being there was slim to none. A few minutes passed before they started to hear noise in the air again, something like the grunting of a warthog, that deep, nasal sound of pure animal nature. Where was it…?
The instant Jane noticed the light catch the monster, she flipped the switch to turn it off and dragged Daria with her to the nearest wall. The grunting sound became louder as it realized something was nearby. Jane kept one arm around Daria while using her free hand to cover her own mouth and nose, silence the breathing; Daria did the same, though was able to stay quieter.
Sniffing, movement, periodic grunts; the monster wandered slowly over towards them, onto the scent, maybe. Although this thing was nearly invisible in the pure darkness, they could still feel the hot air shooting out through its nose and messing with their clothing. Daria could feel Jane shaking beneath her arm, the terror of this large creature being so close to them, starting to get to her. It sniffed, it looked, it listened, but couldn't find them within the black, finally giving up and moving on its way, looking for someone else to kill. Daria stared after it, noting the huge outline and fairly human body structure, thinking to herself that it reminded her of a Lawndale football player.
Once the sounds of the monster finally silenced, Jane let out a long, relieved breath, wiping her face and nose afterward with the loud sound of sniffling. Daria was about to say something to her, but her attention became distracted by a light that wasn't hers. Further down the road, in the direction they were heading, was a faint light, but its pure "whiteness" within the dark was so strange, so unnatural, it seemed.
Jane quipped, "That better be God, come to give me some compensation for all this."
"Jane, I don't know what that is, but it's light and it's in the middle of this hell, so let's get there fast."
The sounds of their boots echoed within the silence and became almost deafening in their haste towards the light which continued to grow as they approached it. In no time at all, the light became revealed to them as--
"A kid!?"
Running through the darkness and surrounded by pure light, a little girl no older than eight appeared to them. There was terror in her eyes only visible until she ran through the gate in front of Alchemilla Hospital.
"Hey hey, Daria, we gotta go after her! We can't just leave a little kid running around in this place!"
"Yeah, even though she was producing her own mystical source of light and could very well be another monster trying to kill us."
"I'm going either way. Come on!"
Daria groaned to herself and followed Jane through the gate and into the front lawn area of the hospital. The growling of dogs or whatever in the distance outside gave extra necessity to running inside as soon as possible, through a side door leading into a long hallway. The child was visible inside an elevator directly ahead for only a moment before the doors closed and took her down. Without exchanging words, the girls made a run down the adjacent stairs. At the bottom, Daria ran left, Jane, right; Daria found no more stairs to descend, while Jane made two quick turns that found her the elevator which was unfortunately still going down. They quickly ran into each other, asking in unison, "Well?"
"She's still going down."
"But there's no more stairs."
"Damn it!"
Jane pounded on the elevator button, pressing it more times than necessary, but considering the fact that it was still going down, she was really starting to get nervous. A full minute passed before the elevator returned, empty. The artist cursed again before the two of them got inside and hit the B2 button. The elevator descended for only a moment before letting them off into a long corridor illuminated only by Daria's flashlight. Complete silence and dull brown walls; the unsanitary appearance hardly befit a hospital. A feeling of uneasiness passed through both of them as they started taking small steps forward. There weren't any signs of monsters, but no little girl, either.
A door finally appeared on the right. Daria moved forward and opened it, catching sight of another hallway with more doors inside. She took only a few steps before the door suddenly slammed shut behind her, Jane still on the other side. The sound of the artist's pounding on the door immediately increased her panic.
"Daria! What the hell! Are you there!? What's going on!?"
The writer pulled on the door, messed with the knob, but it wouldn't budge. Anxiety shot through her, causing sweat and heavy breaths. "It won't open! Damn it! Let me out!"
Sirens broke their screaming, the kind like heavy weather warnings, only these were blaring, as if right beside them and headache inducing. Daria grabbed her head from the pain of the noise, staying conscious only long enough to see the door fade away and become a solid wall covered in blood-red rust.
