Chapter 2
The room is dark and as hot as blood rushing to the head.
The door is thumping, quickened like the beating heart.
Its pulse drives the boy mad. He squeezes his palms against his ears to shut out the sound, but to no avail. It keeps beating inside his ears, as if trying to mock a guilty conscience.
Tears begin to fall as the little boy, who sits with knees tucked to his small chest, continuously stares at the bloodstained knife that lies on the carpet.
The little boys runs out of the house, breathing hard and fast, onto the street and into the fog.
* * * * *
Daniel came to, jolting from his blackout with a start. Droplets of cold sweat coarsed down his face and from the tips of his perspirant matted hair. During his unconsciousness, he had dreamt placelessly about a small boy. He did not understand its significance, but he recognised that deep, thumping heartbeat. The thing that was drawing him closer was as vivid and at the same time, as mysterious as the dream.
Drawing me?
What is drawing me? To where?
[Or more to the point, to what?]
"Why in God's name am I here?" Daniel cried out in frustration.
Suddenly, he heard the wind swirling up the road behind him, and as it thrust past him, he heard what sounded like a hushed breath whispered beside his ear. He spun around, only to see the dry leaves dying down with the exhausted flow of the short-lived wind.
Daniel slowly turned back around, and something caught his eye. A trail of blood footprints led away from him, up the street for a few metres and around the corner until they were out of view. The footprints were delicately small, as if made by the feet of a young child.
Daniel thought for a moment, considering what he should do next. He was strangely compelled to follow the bloody footprints. He began to follow, starting off in a slow, almost cautious advance which, suddenly, in the middle of the road, broke into a desperate run, his mind speeding ahead even further than his own pumping legs were carrying him.
Where am I going? Was the constant, doubtful thought that played over in his mind like a bad television lymeric, when he tried to rationalise everything that had happened. Yet, the dark allure of these events, despite the disturbing nature that danced about them, captivated him. He wanted to follow them.
But each time he analysed the figurative elements of the signs that were being unveiled before him were accumatively frightening him each time. For each of them symbolised children. He felt it.
What else seemed logical?
Nothing.
The resurgence of a vague childhood.
The vision of the boy staring at the bloody knife.
The child-size footprints of blood mysteriously matted upon the surface of the road.
Yes. It made sense.
Something happened to him in his innocence as a child. Something foreboding and terrible.
Something that should have been left in the grave.
That last thought caused Daniel to shiver.
That other mental voice of the Daniel who focused on the bleakness of the glass half-empty again. Damn him.
Daniel continued to run, around the corner and up the long street. Both sides of the street were lined with dull, unwelcoming houses, with a perfect column of maple trees planted in the grass outside the footpath, just before the curb.
The thick grey of the gloom seemed to intensify; he couldn't see beyond about four or five metres ahead of him.
Daniel looked at the road. The blood footprints had suddenly stopped, as if whoever made them (that is, if this is not all going on in my head, he thought) had just vanished into thin air.
He walked on, convinced that this was where he was intended to be. As he advanced toward what would usually be the end of a street, the grey gradually became a pure white light, as if there were some light trying to cut through the fog.
He suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, when he saw that the white, in fact, was a solid object and just behind it, he noticed that the road stopped, dropping into a vertical deadfall as if there had been an earthquake.
The fog began to dissipate again. The sky began to darken and the object was no longer obscured by the black background.
The white object was a long, thin billboard, its posts hammered crudely into the crumbling tar road. It looked as if the road was collapsing inwards from the deadfall.
It was as long as from one side of the road to the other, and stretched high into the dark sky.
Daniel's eyes widened in disbelief, the thought of such a large thing being erected by human hands seemed abysmal (which was why he was quick to discard the idea, given that the things happened were definitely not things caused by human hands).
And dead in the centre of the billboard, scrawled in blood by a shaky, child-like hand, was written:
Daddy
Daniel's heart began to thump in terror as he heard the heartbeat within his head, offbeat with his own. But this time, it seemed more as if the heartbeat was audible, as if it was less a psychological factor, rather becoming a material thing. It was coming from the direction behind, from one of the houses beyond the trees and the footpath.
Daniel slowly turned around, and suddenly knew where it was coming from.
He was afraid, but now he was certain that he was close to discovering why he was brought to Silent Hill.
The heartbeat was the key.
He could hear those sirens in the distance again. Their echo drew closer to home as he found himself collapse to his knees, and suddenly the black curtain of unconsciousness drew across his eyes.
Daddy……?