Chapter 27: Final
It didn't take much thinking on Adrian's part for him to get out of the room. After he killed the creature, he tried the door he entered from, and it opened without a problem. He would have the long walk back through the hallway to think about what he would tell Cybil when he got up there. There were so many things he could say, but he would have to come clean no matter what. There was no way that the result of which could be good, but he would've took prison over Silent Hill any day.
When he reached the hotel room, Cybil was still there as Adrian assumed she'd be- sitting on the bed next to his child, consoling her to sleep. When Adrian trudged into the doorway, she looked up from the baby and eyed him carefully. Cybil didn't seem overly happy by his presence and had every right not to be, but she seemed glad that he was okay.
"Are you finished?"
Ade shrugged his shoulders and nodded. "I suppose I am." He slowly made his way to the bed and sat down next to his sleeping daughter. "Mia will be fine, right?"
Cybil shot a puzzled glance at him. "I don't see why she wouldn't be."
"No," Adrian quickly answered, "I mean.. well..." he trailed off. He just couldn't think of an easy way to put it. "What's going to happen to her?"
Cybil stepped back in confusion- she was still unsure what he was trying to tell her. "I don't understand."
"Well," Adrian lowered his head to look at the wooden floor in nervousness. "I'm going to jail, aren't I?"
Cybil had thought about the question ever since Adrian went beyond the red door in the bathroom. It was only procedure to put him behind bars, but something inside her didn't want to do it. He had been through much worse than what prison had to offer already, anyway. As tough as prison would be, it would have been a cake walk compared to what Adrian had been through here. "I..."
"Yes?" Adrian was eager for an answer. Whether it was one he'd want to hear or not, as long as it was a straight answer.
"I'm sorry."
Adrian flinched. "You're... you're sorry?" Cybil nodded slowly, subtly. Adrian frowned. "What the hell does that mean? Am I going to jail or not?"
The question played on Cybil's ears like a bad joke. Whatever answer she came up with, it would not be satisfying to them both.
'Well, life isn't always fair, Cybil. You need to make a decision, and face the proper consequences later.'
"For now, I wouldn't say jail just yet. But, but you need to go to the police and explain yourself. After that, we'll see what happens. And if they don't believe you, I'll try and help. I just need you to trust me, okay?"
The man's head sunk in defeat. However, he refused to argue the decision. In fact, it was deserving punishment. "Okay." He gave a solemn look at the woman. "Can I just..."
Cybil cringed. "Just, what?"
"I... I just want to do two things before you turn me in," he said, and quickly defended his request. "They wouldn't take long.. just two more things I need to do before I can leave this behind with a clear conscience. That's all I ask."
Cybil couldn't help but cave in to the offer. If he was a killer, he was damn sure the last person she'd have thought he'd be pictured as. "Alright. Let's just find our way back to the car, and work everything out from there."
Adrian smiled. He could at least accept that. He made his way to his child, and gently picked her up- careful not to wake her.
---
Inside the car, the slamming of its doors was enough to stir the little girl out of her slumber. The first instinct Mia had, of course, was to cry. "It's okay," her father whispered in attempt to soothe her bawling, "we'll go home soon and you can rest all you want."
When Adrian took a second glance out of the window, it was then that he realized how much his daughter really needed sleep. It was already dusk.
"Drop me off at my house first," he said calmly to Cybil, who approved. As he cradled the child in his arms, Adrian kept an eagle eye on the fog outside, wondering how they could possibly leave through such a cloudy haze. Cybil, however, had no worries. She drove a car better than she rode a motorcycle, that was for sure. As long as she didn't rush herself, they would be fine. Besides, she feared the conversation she would have in the car rather than anything outside of it.
"What are we going to your house for?" Cybil couldn't help but ask, and Adrian was considerate enough to know that the question must have been on her mind. He was actually surprised she hadn't mentioned it until then.
"To drop Mia off, and feed that poor dog of mine. He must be starving..."
Cybil blinked dumbly. "Oh."
"Then I want to go to Maria's," Adrian continued, "I still have one last thing to do there, and then we can go to the police station."
"Erm," Cybil stammered, "why go there exactly?"
Adrian remained quiet. "Let's just get it done. I promise I won't be long."
'Hm. Fair enough.'
"Can I ask you something, Adrian?" Ade warily turned his head in Cybil's direction. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but... why didn't you kill me back there, knowing your daughter could've been murdered if you hadn't done it?"
That one, needless to say, caught him off guard. "I, uh..." he trailed off, trying to play back the events that led up to the situation he'd been put in once inside room '105', as much as he did not want to. "I don't know. As much as what was at stake... what, are you saying I should have killed you or something?"
"No," Cybil responded straight away. "I'm just trying to make sense of the entire situation, that's all."
"Well," Adrian started in reply, a bit upset at the questioning. "Look. I did something that I regret. Everyone does, except I did something that most people don't even have the courage to do. If you think I'm terrible enough to do something like that again, you're wrong." He sighed in triumph- he felt strongly about the issue, more than he let on. He seemed apologetic about the whole thing, and the type who was debating to himself why it had to be him and why he had to do something so bad. Cybil couldn't help but understand his position.
"Yeah. I'm sorry." She faltered for a second, before she spoke again. "Maybe we just shouldn't talk about it until we arrive at the precinct."
"Okay."
---
Adrian climbed out of the car and walked up his front steps in apparent exhaustion. He still had Mia clutched warmly in his arms, stepping inside with her and taking her upstairs. Cybil waited in the car- she didn't have to bother him any more than she already had, and he didn't seem as though he was going to take the time to run from her. And it was indeed the last thing he was thinking about. All he wanted then, was to tuck in his daughter, at least once.
He took her into his room, and laid her down gently. He had no crib nor did he have anything remotely like one, so he would have to settle for her resting in his king-sized bed. It would work- he wouldn't be gone for long he hoped, and he was set to call someone to watch her until then anyway.
He seized the phone that rested on the nightstand near the bed. He dialed the first number that came to mind, and hoped for an answer. "Hello? John?"
"Yeah, it's me. What's going on, man, are you okay?"
"Eh..." he trailed off, looking himself over. "I could be better, I suppose."
"Ah." John paused for a moment. "So, what makes you call?"
"Well... are you a reliable babysitter?"
Adrian could imagine the look John had on his face, and it made him smile. "Huh? Why are you asking me that?"
"Take a wild guess." After no reply on the other end of the phone, Adrian frowned. "I need you to watch my daughter for me. Think you could do that, for like an hour or two?"
Another pause on John's side. It was obviously due to the confusion of what he was being asked to do. Babysit his friend's daughter...
'...Shit, I never knew he had a daughter.'
"Uh, I was supposed to be doing something, but it's not that important. Am I like.. the only person you can get?"
"I'm in a real big hurry," Adrian answered, "and yeah, I'd appreciate if you'd come by cause you're basically the only person I'd trust to show up."
John thought about it, but only for a very brief moment. "Yeah, it's cool. You won't be too long?"
"Just for an hour or so, I swear."
"Alright. I'll head on over then."
"Thanks, man. Seeya in a little bit."
After he hung up the phone, Adrian watched Mia rolling contentfully along the bed. She cuddled the blankets and pillows with a giggly smile. Her father leaned back against the dresser behind him, and he did not want to move from that spot. He wanted everything to be okay, to just be able to move on with his daughter, but he couldn't just yet. And then there was the thought of how he'd get Cybil to drive him back to Maria's house, which he still had no answer to.
His attention was soon diverted when his dog came trotting into the room and leapt up into Adrian's arms. Ade smiled slightly, not taking his eyes off his child. "Come on, bud, let's go get you some food."
---
Adrian was relieved to see John's car pull up outside of the house, almost seconds after the distant street lights could be seen faintly illuminating the sky. He had been sitting in wait on the stoop while Cybil was still in her car, and she spent every moment wondering what the point of everything was.
John walked up to Adrian and the black haired man stood to greet him- and in doing so, revealing his battered frame. "Mia's upstairs in my room, don't let the dog bother her, okay?"
John nodded slowly, but he seemed much more attentive on how beat up his friend looked. "Gotcha..." he trailed off, obviously worried. Adrian looked at him impatiently.
"What did I say?"
The tall drummer blinked in surprise. "Uh..." he wavered for a brief moment before he could get the words to come out, "the baby's upstairs in your room, keep the dog away from her."
Ade shrugged. "Good enough." John shook his head slightly. He knew his friend to be on edge after the incident with his brother, but he never saw him in the light he saw him this time. This time he was...
'Wow... that's one creepy lookin' dude.'
"Hey.. what happened?" John glanced over his shoulder, at the police car down the road. "You look like death, friend."
Adrian looked past John, but not necessarily looking at the road ahead. His focus seemed to be centered on something intangible. "Nothing happened."
"What's up with the police then, man?" his concerned friend asked in persistence. "I mean, you've gone off the deep end lately. I've been talkin' with the others, they don't even trust being around you anymore."
That one snapped Adrian out of it, by the look of his reaction. "Why not?"
John smirked. "It might have to do with the fact that whenever we see you now it looks like you're gonna kill one of us, but, eh heh..." when he suddenly realized Adrian was not laughing, John stopped the sentence dead in its tracks.
"Come on, man," the drummer said in an attempt to get serious once more, "you can't stay silent forever. What's the matter?"
Adrian shifted his brown eyes to meet John's green ones. John was always a trustworthy figure, no matter what the secret. But was this something he needed to talk about?
"I..."
Unexpectedly enough, as if God himself was eavesdropping on the conversation, a cackle of thunder interrupted Adrian's thoughts. The loud noise was quickly followed upon by a downpour of heavy rain. "You should head inside, John," Ade finished.
John looked at his friend with an unsatisfied, dodgy glance, before he brushed past him and to the front door. "Okay."
The sense of frustration in the man's voice caused Adrian to sigh inaudibly before turning back towards John.
"Hey look..." John looked back over his shoulder. Adrian tried to think of something good to say, but nothing worked. He eventually stammered half-heartedly. "Don't worry about me, everything is going to work itself out real soon."
John could do nothing but nod and flash a lopsided smile, before he disappeared into the home.
---
"Now what?" Cybil set the car into motion, eyeing Adrian in search of a response. However, she did not get one- the man was too busy looking back at his house as it became smaller and smaller the more the car had carried on. And then, there was nothingness.
"Maria's house, right?" Adrian wiped a couple of raindrops from his forehead and nodded. That was all the confirmation Cybil needed to know that she was right. It was just too bad that the foreboding silence only became more and more of a nuisance as time slowly came to pass.
"Did you... find that girl? Back at the hotel?"
Adrian hesitated. For a second, he didn't even know how she meant that question. She could have meant, 'was she behind that door in the bathroom afterall, or did she get away?' Or, it could have meant, 'was that where you first ran into that girl and thought you'd kill her?' Adrian prayed it didn't mean the latter.
"Yeah. Yeah... I took care of it."
Cybil forced herself to smile. "Good." She could say it was good for him, but as good as it was, it didn't hide the fact that he had killed someone. And the fact that she was almost attracted to him, it startled her.
'I really need to watch who I try to make friends with in the future.'
But the more she thought about it, the more she came to acknowledge how terrible the man's life had to have been. Living with those religious fanatics for the first years of his life, only to be taken in by a family who also happened to have their own problems with the strange town.
'Reminds me of Cheryl...'
Lord knew that his life with Harry as a relative had to have been nothing beyond traumatizing. She could imagine the trouble Harry had stirred up, knowing where his brother and sister adopted Adrian from...
'..must have torn that family apart limb from limb...'
..and that reminded her of her own family.
'..if I were him, I wouldn't want to remember any of this either.'
Cybil took the entire drive to think about the issue, and she assumed that the person sitting next to her was doing the same exact thing. And he was. Except for him, it was more difficult to piece together.
After Hope House, he could remember a loving mother and father. He had to have been ten, or at least around that age. He could distinctly remember his father's name, David, but his mother's remained a mystery to him. It was weird though, because aside from that, it was all he could remember about his father. All except...
'..the rosary.'
His father told him how he'd got the rosary from a peddler during he and his girlfriend's trip to some city in South America or Mexico, he forgot which-
'-that's right... I remember, they weren't married yet. Yeah, I was at the wedding a year later... I was Adrian Mason back then.'
David gave it to him so he would feel protected, but it was ironic- that was when the fallout had started.
'Uncle Harry.'
He remembered shortly after the wedding, his uncle tried to take him away. He couldn't figure out what the exact reasoning behind it was, but David didn't take too kindly to it...
'...but she believed him. Yeah... they were blood related. She knew that he wouldn't have been upset without a good reason. That was what drove them both apart. That's why I don't remember her. It's all coming back to me now.. it's starting to actually make some fucking sense.'
He couldn't manage to think of any more, however- they were at Maria's house.
---
Everything was exactly the same from earlier. No one caught the stench of the corpse that lay in the upstairs bedroom, but the street was quiet before- even during the day- so Adrian doubted that any teenagers or young adults were around to care.
Ade's wet boots squished as they made their way up the large flight of wooden steps on the left side of the front door. Well before he hit the top, the smell of decay hit him. He covered his nose with his shirt, but in truth the dampness of the texture from both rain and grime wasn't all that pleasant to his senses, either.
He walked into the bedroom slowly, respectfully, and blinked rapidly at the sight of the dead woman on the bed. He seemed reluctant to move closer to the body, but he had no choice; he went there for a purpose, and he was going to fulfill that purpose.
Adrian softly grabbed a hold of the spear that impaled the woman he once called his girlfriend, and carefully pulled it out from Maria's blood smeared stomach. Looking her over, Adrian saw nothing else that attached her to the bed. He lifted her up and carried her out of the room, oblivious to the crimson he got all over him.
---
Cybil had been waiting for what had to have been a half an hour, and this wait was even worse than the last one. Not really for the length, however- rather, the location. Why did Adrian want to go to his dead girlfriend's house again? Paying his last respects seemed like the logical answer...
'...but that shouldn't take thirty minutes.'
She peered through the passenger side window, watching the house as the rain continued to pour relentlessly. It was the perfect setting for something horrific to take place, and Cybil took note of it.
'I should check on him.. just to make sure.'
She got out of the car and wandered toward the front of the house. It looked incredibly intimidating, especially when taking the bad weather into consideration. She turned the doorknob and pushed the front door open a creak, before sticking her head in and calling out. "Adrian?" No answer.
Cybil made her way upstairs, cautious enough to keep from slipping on the water that got in from Adrian's boots along with hers. However, when she got to the bedroom...
"..he took the body..."
It was then that she remembered her accusations- hinting that he killed the woman. She couldn't fully back up her own claim, but it seemed much more plausible now.
'He couldn't have gone far, you can find him no problem.'
She glanced around the room, before Cybil took to the windows in the bedroom. The first one she looked out of showed off the side of the house on the right, and an open yard surrounding it. An empty yard.
With growing panic, Cybil checked the other window at the far end of the room, which gave a perfect view of the entire backyard. There, fortunately, Cybil saw Adrian huddled down on the ground, under the large tree towards the end of the yard. "Oh... thank God..."
She rushed downstairs and bolted out the front door into the pouring rain.
'What is he doing back there? Did he get sick again?'
She had no time to think about what was going on- she simply followed her instinct and ran down the driveway and closed the gap between her and the kneeling person in the backyard. It almost reminded her of that man behind the house she was sent out in Silent Hill to check... and only found a tombstone afterwards. Hopefully, this event wouldn't end the same way.
Cybil drew her gun, just as a precaution. "Adrian? What are you doing?"
Adrian paid no attention to her at all, as he drove his hands into the soil underneath him once last time, and with that, he finished covering up the hole he created. Two handfulls of Earth were clenched in his fists, dirt trickling from them like sand in an hourglass. His breathing was heavy and ragged, as if he were just in an agonizing defeat. The pain etched on his face could not be told in words- the mere expression he bared was more telling than any spoken description. He had been through hell, and if he were in any better mood at all he'd have wore that fact like a badge. Now, though... it meant nothing. Everyone he could've gloated to was dead. Dead, or dead frightened of him.
"I, I just wanted to bury Maria," he confessed with sorrow through chattered teeth- no anger, or bitterness, just sorrow. "I had to bury her.. I couldn't leave her the way she was."
Feeling a huge rush of relief and stupidity bash her brains in, Cybil let her gun drop to the soft, wet grass at her feet. The thought of him killing Maria, too... it went away. It went away along with every other doubt she ever had in the ill-fated young man. Still, something wasn't right. If he didn't kill her... who did?
Whoever... or whatever it was, made its presence. Right behind Cybil.
"Not like anyone here would give her a decent burial anyway," Ade continued, just as unknowing of the other intruder in the backyard as Cybil was. When he stood up and turned, though, things quickly went black when he felt something big and powerful strike him on the head. His weakened state was no match for the blow as he crumbled like a stone to the wet ground. Cybil laid unconscious next to him.
