Chapter 10: Coincidence
"Adrian?" A small, almost distant voice called to Adrian as his eyes fluttered open and shut. His eyelids were heavy and his strength was completely sapped from him, the last thing he would want to do was wake up. "Adrian," the voice called again, "are you alright? Come on, wake up..." Slowly, Adrian forced his eyes open and looked up at the person speaking to him.
"Ugh, Cybil," Adrian coughed as he tried to sit up, "what the hell is going on here?"
Cybil didn't answer quickly, she simply put her hands on Adrian's shoulders and guided him onto his back onto the soft bed he was lying under. "Just be still now," she said warmly, "what happened? I saw you come into this church, so I followed you."
"You.. saw me?" Adrian tried to sit up again, but he simply didn't have the power to. The only muscles he could possibly move were the ones he used to speak. "What about Raven? Did you see her, too?"
"Raven..." Cybil said softly, seeming a bit puzzled, "I don't know anyone by that name. I didn't see any woman here either."
Adrian forced himself up. "B- but she was here..."
"I'm sorry.. I'm sure someone was here, it's just-"
"But she was," Adrian cut her off, "c'mon, Cybil, I'm not lying, why would I make something like that up?!"
Cybil rested her hands on Adrian's shoulders once more and tried to calm him down. "I believe you, Adrian, but I'm asking you to be sure of this.. this town can make a lot of things seem different from what they really are. I know..."
Adrian seemed a lot more calm after Cybil said that, but he immediately looked to his side and down at the floor where the dismembered part straw part human body was lying. "There was this fucking doll, though, and-" he reached over to point, but quickly pulled his hand back at the sight of the floor. Nothing. It was perfectly clean and tidy. No blood at all, no doll. The fire trucks and board games and dolls were all put away on shelves around the room. It looked far different than how it appeared a little while ago, if it was indeed just a little while ago, but it was definitely the same room- and Adrian was next to positive that Cybil didn't just go and clean everything up.
"What? What was it?" Cybil asked. Adrian looked around for the huge abomination he had killed, but it was nowhere in sight.
"N- Nothing," he said softly, "nevermind."
"Oh.." Cybil could see through Adrian's insistence that everything was okay, and knew that something else had to be wrong. But to talk about it with him in the bad way he was in... it was probably something he didn't need. "So," she mumbled, "any luck with your brother?"
Adrian shook his head. "I mean, I thought he'd be here... that's what that girl I was tellin' you about, Raven, had led me to believe anyway."
"Sorry to hear that," she said, "just goes to show that everyone caught here is off the deep end, I suppose." Adrian shot her a nasty glance, which she immediately sensed. "I'm sorry."
Adrian sighed and nodded his head. "Yeah, it's okay."
"What about you?" Adrian asked. "Why did you come here in the first place?" Cybil took a deep breath and looked at Adrian with a sense of unpleasantness. She didn't exactly look willing to tell her story, but before Adrian could retract his question, Cybil started to speak.
"Went into Silent Hill for what was thought to be a regular domestic abuse situation. Young woman called the department over in Brahms constantly, reporting acts of abuse by her husband, but never stayed on her phone in time to give us a location. This went on for about three weeks or so until we managed to trace the calls that had led to a house here in Silent Hill. So I headed out there, crashed my bike around the same spot I did a little while ago, and had to walk the rest of the way. And when I finally got to the house, it looked deserted. No furniture inside or anything. But the thing that really got me thinkin' was when I turned to leave, and I glanced down the driveway and into the backyard.. and I could see this figure, standing over something at his feet. So I went into the back to question him but he disappeared into the house. So I crouched down to see what he was standing by, right... and on the headstone it said, 'Here lies Evelyn Curtis, nineteen sixtyeight to nineteen eightyeight'- and I swear on my badge that it really said this underneath that, it said.. 'Fear of blood.. tends to create fear for the flesh'."
Adrian stared blankly at Cybil for a long moment. Suddenly he felt like a dumbass for ever asking Cybil the question he had asked her. "What's worse," she continued, adding more and more memories to the base of her story, "was that when I got back to the situation about a day later, I traced the calls again, and couldn't pin a location. It was as if the town was in existence one minute, and not the next. Kinda like the Bermuda Triangle, you know?"
"Was about fifteen years ago," she added, "was about nineteen then, would've been twenty in a few weeks. I'm thirtyfive now."
Adrian's eyes widened as he tilted his head slightly. "I'm nineteen now..." he trailed off for a moment, almost as if he was thinking as he looked down at the space on the bed between him and Cybil, before he looked back up at her, "I turn twenty on the seventh of July."
And then, Adrian noted the shade of white Cybil's face slowly changed to, before she nodded. "That's my birthday..."
'Holy shit...' Adrian's thoughts spoke to him as they pelted him with eerie musings, 'that's one hell of a coincidence...'
Adrian shook his head, and Cybil followed suit. "It's stupid," Cybil said, "lots of people share birthdays, not anything to get too excited over." Adrian quickly agreed with her.
"Yeah," he replied shakily, "yeah, that's right." Cybil nodded as Adrian looked around a bit, almost as if to having seconds thoughts as to whether he was still safe in that 'children's' room or not, before he questioned Cybil once more out of pure curiousity. "You didn't go after the guy you saw?"
"Not even sure if it was a man come to think of it," she shrugged, "I'm honestly not sure what I saw anymore."
"It looked like a man through the fog, but I just had one of those instincts that somethin'... somethin' wasn't right about him. And now I'm not so sure if it's a blessing that I didn't get to see him or not. Sort of took my mind off of it though when I met someone who was in the same trouble as I was."
Adrian then began to lean back, slowly growing more and more intrigued with the story and caring less and less about how frightening it would be. "Who was it?"
"This man... he was looking for her daughter, he said. Managed to find her, but she couldn't be helped when we got there. Gave birth to a little girl, though... almost as if her life would start over with that baby, really. And it's sad... I read a police report from a man who was helping his daughter on another Silent Hill case that said he died recently. Name was one I wouldn't forget.. Harry. Harry Ma-"
"OW!" Adrian slumped over and clutched his head as he was suddenly bombarded by literally thousands of memories in a matter of seconds, each one hitting him physically like a right hook to the jaw.
"Adrian?"
Cybil leaned forward to check on him, but he quickly pulled away. "Don't touch me!"
Cybil eyed Adrian curiously for a minute, and slowly began to piece the puzzle together. "Adrian," she mumbled, "you know who I'm talking about?" And with that question, one piece to the huge puzzle of Adrian's jumbled memories had fit in.
'Your uncle died recently... and your cousin disappeared...'
"He's my uncle..." Adrian muttered against the horrendous headache he had recieved, and this caused Cybil to reel back slightly.
"Your uncle?" Cybil asked with a bit of shock. "So your name is..."
"Mason," he sputtered, "Adrian Mason. I dunno how, I dunno why yet either.. I just figured it out myself. I know how it sounds, I may sound crazy not being able to remember who my own uncle is but it's the truth. I dunno, just... after I've come here, rather after I heard my brother was here, everything in my head's been all fucked up." As he pronounced the first syllable in the word 'fucked' he slammed his right fist down into the surprisingly forgiving cot he was lying in, angered at the frustration he was having to remember such a simple thing, and coupled with the utter disgust he had with himself for not being able to find his brother, there wasn't any room to be scared anymore. The only thing that hit Adrian at that moment, was unabashed hatred.
"Are you okay?" Cybil asked gently, trying to be that helping hand she usually found herself being. However, it was nowhere near enough to calm Adrian down. He was practically on the brink of tears.
"My brother's missing. Just.. just let me get the fuck up and find him already." Cybil didn't know what to say in response to that. Adrian looked beat, and Adrian just had to know that no matter how frustrated with himself he was. But what could Cybil possibly say aside from that to justify him simply resting?
"I..."
It was no use. Cybil finished her sentence right after she had barely started it. And through the sound of her silence, she could hear Adrian's audible crying across from her.
"Adrian," she sighed, "you have to calm down.. you can't let this town beat you. Don't let that happen."
Adrian sniffled and reply quickly, yet he refused to look Cybil in the eye. "No... I'm not letting that happen, I just want my brother and I wanna go home... I want a normal fucking life! That's all! I want a girlfriend who will love me through the fact that I have the need to make music that would make people wanna get up and say 'Adrian Weber is a fucking god'!" He collapsed forward into Cybil's arms where she gently consoled him. He buried his head into her shoulder, muffling his cries. She reaced up and slightly brushed his messy blond mane that was peppered with red droplets of the blood that monsters spilled at his own hands.
"...Weber?"
"Huh?" Adrian tilted his head slightly.
"That's what you said your last name was if I'm not mistaken."
"Yeah. That's right."
Cybil shook her head. "But I thought you just said..."
"It's the last name of my parents," Adrian cut her off, "Mason is only my uncle's last name. I dunno.. I guess I always related to him more so I wished I was Adrian Mason instead." He thought about that and immediately realized how fanatical he sounded. "Ugh, sorry." Cybil nodded the remark off.
"You can't let this town get to you... it will only hurt the chances your brother will..."
"No!" Adrian pulled back from Cybil's embrace and looked into her eyes. "No!" And with that, he sat back once more, looking down at the bedsheets underneath him. A long silence washed over the two of them, before Cybil would eventually think of something to say.
"Look. Do you have any idea where you'll be able to find your brother? Anyone at all who could or would know?"
Adrian slowly reached his hand down to his side, and into his pants pocket. When his hand reemerged, it pulled out the bronze storage room key with it. He held it up, and looked at it as if mesmerized. "Yeah," he said as he sniffled once more, "I got an idea."
