Chapter 14: Trust

Adrian failed to notice the police car parked not too far away down the road and instead walked up the front steps to his home. and found that the front door was slightly ajar.

'You gotta be kidding me. You really gotta be kidding me.'

He frowned at the thought of a burglar inside his house. Who would go all the way out here to rob a place that practically had nothing of value inside?

He glanced around to see if John was still close by, but he was long gone; now only a distant screech of tires against dirt. But what eased him a bit was the police car not too far away.

'Well, at least I can get help if it is a burglar..'

He turned around and slowly pushed the door open, and quickly jumped back at what leapt into his arms.

"Whoa," he said in an almost Keanu Reeves type manner as the look of fear on Adrian's face quickly turned to relief. He smiled and ruffled his dog's fur before setting him down in the doorway where Howler trotted off through the living room and into the kitchen as his master closed the front door. Adrian's eyes followed the dog for a moment, but they were quickly drawn away when he saw a figure with his back to him, looking down at something.

"Er," Adrian scratched his head and flinched at the uniform, "is there something wrong, officer?" The officer turned around, and a warm smile crossed her face as she revealed the item in her hand to be a picture frame, a picture of Adrian and Maria inside of it.

"Hi, Adrian!" Cybil said in a cheery tone. Almost a little too cheery. Adrian stepped back for a moment- it only took a second to realize who it was greeting him, that was no problem. The real problem was wondering why she was there, or better yet why she was grinning at him.

"Oh.. Cybil, hi." Adrian waved slowly before he stepped further inside his home. Upon further inspection of Cybil's features, he noticed the picture frame she had rather tightly clenched in her hands- almost as if reluctant to put it down. "Uh, what are you doing?" He asked, keeping a close eye on the frame. Cybil followed Adrian's eyeline and noticed him looking at the object she was holding. She then flashed a smile, and a look of guilt quickly washed over her as she put it down on top of the bookcase where she found it.

"I'm sorry," she said, "was just admiring this home. Very neatly kept." Adrian flinched again. Cybil was nice, at least he remembered her to be nice, but in his memories she was never that nice.

"So," Adrian stammered, "what are you doing here?" Cybil looked as if an epiphany popped in her head. And with that, her smile grew wider. From ear to ear.

"Oh that's right," she replied, "I wanted to show you something." She then reached around to her back and pulled something off of it. A shotgun. But the thing that got Adrian was the fact that there was no shotgun on Cybil's back when he walked in.

"Yeah," Adrian said, looking the shotgun over, "that's cool."

"You think so?" Cybil said as she smoothed out her hair with her right hand, her left one clutched around the barrel of her shotgun. She then spoke again, with a much more sinister tone to her voice. "Want to have a closer look?"

Adrian stared at Cybil for a moment, before he took a rather minute step back. "Nah," he said, "I don't think that's necessary." He waved a hand, motioning for Cybil to put the weapon away, but this only seemed to get her more anxious to 'show' him her gun. She lifted the shotgun with her left hand alone and aimed it directly at Adrian's face. That minute step Adrian took quickly turned into a leap backwards for the front door. His right hand reached around for the doorknob, too nervous to know that the doorknob was digging against the small of his back.

"Heh, I'm sorry," Cybil said, putting the gun down, "I made you nervous." Adrian nodded his head to open his mouth, the words 'yeah you made me pretty fucking nervous' about to escape his lips when Cybil cut him off. "I know something that's going to make you -really- nervous." And with that, she gave the barrel a pump, before sticking said barrel in her mouth.

"SHIT!" Adrian yelled as he reached to grab the shotgun out of Cybil's hands, but it was too late. A loud, thunderous BOOM, sent Adrian back on the seat of his pants as Cybil's practically headless body crumbled backwards onto the now reddened carpet floor. "Oh God why the hell'd you do that, Cybil?!" He screamed as he rushed forward and looked the body over. Her face was no longer recognizable. One eye was blasted out of the socket, the other dissected by the many shards of buckshot. Speckles of tooth littered the ground, a couple digging into Adrian's hands as he stared wide-eyed at her on all fours. The shotgun fell over to the side, the barrel drenched in red and soft tissue. Hair, still attached to the scalp, was scattered all over, given a red makeover as well no less.

Adrian tried to register what just happened as his dog wandered into the living room and looked innocently at the horrible sight. It tilted its head in confusion, before it quietly walked off upstairs, leaving Adrian by himself to piece together the event that just played out right before his eyes.

'God, Cybil, why'd you do that... Why-'

He then clutched his ears. A ringing noise, not exactly overpowering, but an annoying noise none the less, had started to scrape deep into his nerves, forcing him to collapse amidst the horrific sight and pass out.

He then woke up, finding himself yawning in the comfort of the passenger seat to John's silver car.

"Man, you really should get some more sleep," John said, "you sure look like you need it." Adrian looked around in confusion as the end of Ill Nino's 'Unreal' played on the car stereo. Was he dreaming again?

He looked to the side, out of the window he was slumped against, noticing he was right outside his house. He turned nervously towards John and smiled, nodding his head. "Yeah.. yeah, maybe I should." Not wanting to spark a conversation, he quickly climbed out of the car and scratched his head before turning to close the door. But before he could, John leaned over towards him and said one last thing.

"Take care of yourself," he said slowly, "don't want you getting in any trouble now." Adrian smirked and shook his head.

"Well I'm not exactly Scott Weiland."

"Man, stop ripping on my idol and just go." John laughed and Adrian closed the car door. They both waved to eachother, and then the car was gone, now only a distant screech of tires against dirt. Just like before.

Adrian slowly walked up the front steps and approached the door, noticing that it was slightly ajar. Just like before.

'God, please don't let it be there...'

He turned his head slowly, knowing what to expect next, but he prayed it wouldn't show this time, but it did. A typical police car, not too far down the road. "Shit."

He slowly opened the door and peered inside, and immediately greeting him was Howler who jumped right into his arms. So far, his dream was ready to become a reality.

"Don't scare me like that..." Adrian said in a stoic manner as he set the dog down and stepped inside. He followed the dog with his eyes, watching as the dog headed off into the kitchen. When he turned to the heart of the living room, there was Cybil, the same way he first saw her in the dream- her back to him, looking down at something. That something she revealed to be a picture frame.

She turned around and set it on the bookcase where she found it. "So that's Maria, right, Sam?"

She pointed to the picture in the frame, and Adrian nodded ever so slowly. "Yeah... it is." Cybil smiled slightly, but something about her wasn't right. She wasn't the creepy kind of cheery Cybil from his daydream. It was at that moment he had realized something. "And... you just called me Sam.. why?"

---

"No! That's not fucking true!" Adrian slammed a fist on the dining room table in response to the paper that Cybil laid out in front of him. Him and Sam were not the same person. It was impossible. Physically and mentally, it just -had- to be impossible. Afterall, how could he have been chasing himself? Or did he even chase himself at all? Maybe it was just a dream like the one he just had? He didn't know what to believe anymore. He thought he could believe in himself, but the irrefutable evidence laid upon him changed all that.

"I'm not.. there's just no way... that's not the fucking truth and you know it!" Cybil sat back in one of the dining room chairs- seemingly unaffected by Adrian's outburst. "Why come to me with this now? Huh?"

"I tried to reach you prior to today," Cybil replied calmly, "but you've never been home. And you've never called me."

"So that's automatically my fault?" Adrian snapped back as Cybil ran a finger along the rack of samurai swords in the middle of the dining room table- she seemed a bit freaked out by this. Adrian changed a lot since she'd last seen him.

"What are you planning to do?" She asked softly.

Adrian, taken back by her quiet tone, replied in an equally soft manner. Between Cybil's composed nature and her not blowing her brains out yet, he no longer saw the need to yell. "You haven't figured it out yet?" Adrian's intentions were clear. He obviously hadn't forgot about Silent Hill. And he didn't seem like he was just going to sit down and have a conversation about it over a beer. Yet, as much as she couldn't blame him, she couldn't let him go through with anything, either.

"I think you need to think this through some more, Adrian.." she mumbled, and Adrian glared back at her.

"What happened to calling me Sam? You think I'm him, afterall."

"I didn't mean to-"

"You didn't mean to what? Offend me? Scare me? I'm very, very far beyond that now, Cybil. Far fucking beyond the point of being offended and scared. So far that it's hilarious." He sighed and shook his head. He knew where this conversation was going to be led. "Look, I can tell you're going to say I can't go back to Silent Hill, but I've already made my decision. Lord knows you'd let no one stop you from going back there if someone you loved died there." Cybil turned away and folded her arms across the dining room table. A sure fact that Adrian was right.

"What else do you want me to say, Adrian?" Cybil shook her head. She seemed really upset at the direction this conversation was headed. "I probably would do that... because it would be my job to investigate, not yours."

Adrian chuckled grimly and shot a gaze at Cybil. "And all you've done between then and now was point the finger at me for killing my own brother. How you can do that and keep a straight face is beyond me, but then again I'm sure you've had to give people a lot of bad news from your days as a police officer, huh?"

"Okay," Cybil replied as she slowly turned back towards Adrian. He officially crossed the line with that last remark of his. "You do not tell me how to do my job. If you do not like how I do my job, you can come join the force and see if you can do it better. Because you're not the only person who lost someone he loved. Everyone goes through that, Adrian. It hurts. But killing someone else is not going to make it any better. We don't even know anything about this Sam other than this thing with your names, which I admit, isn't even concrete evidence yet.. but it's too much of a coincidence to just throw away, can you at least admit that?"

Adrian took in what Cybil said, and shrugged. "I guess I can, as long as you admit to me that it's impossible I was chasing my goddamn shadow through a sewer system, and talking to another human being on the other side of a door, I guess me admitting that the anagram business isn't just a coincidence is fine."

Cybil nodded in agreement. "I do admit that's impossible, but I'm not exactly sure that happened."

Adrian stared at Cybil, and a look of frustration hit him hard. "God, Cybil... what the hell do you want me to tell you? I heard what I heard and I saw what I saw! You damn sure weren't there and you damn sure can't tell me different."

"So what else am I supposed to go on here, Adrian?"

"Go on your fucking gut, I dunno! Damn, you've been in Silent Hill before, haven't you? You should know none of this bullshit makes sense, and if it has it damn well hasn't with me in it. Shit.. if after trying to help me you turn around and stick me for my brother's murder, my own brother who I fuckin' went out of my way and risked my life to look for... wow." He rubbed his forehead and collapsed in a chair. A ringing was beginning to echo in his head. Not just a ringing, though.. it was the same ringing from his daydream.

The first thing that hit him was the yelling and screaming had finally got to him. Maybe he was just losing it. But Cybil tapped him on the shoulder, and those thoughts were long gone.

"Are you going to answer that?" Cybil asked as she pointed to the ringing phone in the living room. Adrian looked up at the phone and slowly nodded, even though he didn't really seem all there yet.

He stood up and made his way to the phone, picking it up and lifting it to his ear. "Hello?" He got no answer. Simply silence. No... not silence. Something was on in the background... a television or a radio. "Hello?" Adrian asked again. Someone had to be there, but still no one replied. And the first thing that popped into his head was...

'Maria...'

The phone fell out of Adrian's hand. And with the thunderous crash the phone made on the floor, he stood up and ran for the door.

"Come with me!" He called back to Cybil as he threw the front door open. Cybil stood up and slowly followed, obviously confused.

"What's going on? Who was that?"

"Dammit just get me to Maria's house! Please!"