Keep On Knocking
Chapter Three
The little boy is sitting curled up in a tight ball of terror on the sofa, his attention turned away from the static of the television, but rather, he stares at that foreboding brown door.
Its not thumping with a pulse anymore
but its thumping alright. Viciously, something is trying to force its way through the locked door, and the little boy begins to sweat profusely.
"Let me out, you fucking little shit!" The boy hears a deep, angry male voice spill from behind the door, "if you don't open this fucking door right now, I'm gonna beat the livin' shit out of you!"
Silence. The tears fall once more.
"I'll fucking kill you!" the voice screams, "I'll kill you, y'hear me, you little maggot!!"
The boy leaps up from his crouch and runs into the kitchen.
He pushes a wooden stool over to the bench and drags a long, sharp knife from its wooden block.
The boy climbs back down, and warily, he re-enters the television room to the manic screaming of the angry voice.
Daniel woke up, but even so, he could not reason whether he was truly alive or dead. Everything was black.
There was no road; no street, no trees, no street-lights, no houses; there was no sky. It was as if he was trapped in an airtight cube, save that the blackness knew no boundaries as the darkness rolled on into the distance.
Daniel stood up and began to walk; as if the blackness beneath his feet was solid.
Where am I?
"Hey!" Daniel cried out, as if someone could hear him, "Let me out! Let me out, goddammit! Let me the fuck out now!!"
.....
Nothing. Nothing but a hollow echo.
Daniel fell to his knees and began to sob like a child. He sounded as if his bitter tears were mixed a nefarious giggling.
"Fuck", he murmured, his voice jumping as he laughed behind his weeping, "why the hell is this happening to me?"
Suddenly, he tumbled and began to fall through the blackness, as if a trapdoor had given way beneath him. He fell like a stone from the sky, and as he fell, he saw a blurred, insubstantial image, like a jumpy screen projection, following him down; down, down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, Daniel thought with bitter amusement. It was of a small boy; his teeth grit and eyes tightly shut as he pressed his hands against his small ears. Tears leaked down his cheeks.
Daniel's eyes widened in awe and wonder as he recognised the image from
the blackout
a dream he had had. It was the same little boy.
Suddenly, Daniel heard a voice, but not inside his head; rather inside the blackness, echoing as if it were a tunnel. It was a female voice; lud yet gentle and soothing, and it seemed so frighteningly farmiliar; yet Daniel could not place where it seemed farmiliar from his conscious memory.
"Daniel", the voice said.
"Where am I?" Daniel replied almost before the soothing voice had finished whispering his name.
"You are in the zero-world, where nothing exists".
"Why am I here?! Let me out!"
"You are here to learn of a truth from which you cannot unearth in life or in death".
"What are you talking about?"
"It is here where you must understand why you have returned to Silent Hill. Of a secret which lies here, buried with your past".
"My past?" Daniel said, "You mean..."
...this is my hometown?
Well, I'm back here again
"Yes. It is".
"What secret? I don't have any secrets".
"Oh but you do", the voice replied, "You have a secret that not even you yourself recall it. You chose to forget it!"
Daniel could not reply. He simply gazed at that torturous image of the little boy crying; hurting; trying to escape
that fucking horrible screaming
something. He did not know what, but something about the boy's fear burned brightly with farmiliarity in his belly. As if it reflected....
....my own?
"Do you remember your parents, Daniel?" the voice asked.
"Yes", he answered, "my mother disappeared when I was three. Abducted, probably raped as well, according to common theory. My daddy.." He paused. "My father, he died when I was six. Heart failure".
There was a short, brutal laugh that seemed to chase Daniel as he continued to plunge deeper into the darkness.
"You even altered the past so you could believe a lie to forget a past which quite thankfully would have been forgotten".
Daniel's features twisted, puzzled. "What are you sa—".
"I'm saying that your parents were murdered, Daniel", the voice cut him off, "But both were killed by different people, in the same time period. And the second death was a consequence of the first".
Daniel's eyes were downcast with shock, and silent tears spilled down his cheeks. He did not want to believe it; all that this voice had told him. After all it was just a voice; could be all going on in his head. But somehow, he felt a release within; the penny had dropped and a lock on his heart had been removed. He felt he knew the truth, but still could not identify his position within it.
"I must leave you now, but with a warning", the voice concluded, "as you unearth the final fragments of the truth, so shall you ressurect a part of that truth that should have stayed buried in the past, but will rise again to consume before you awaken to the dawn of truth. It burns for revenge".
"Wait!" Daniel cried, reaching out to the darkness, "who are you?"
"I am—"
But the voice did not finish. The faint sound of the sirens grew stronger and surrounded him, the echo entirely consuming the blackness; drowning out the voice completely. Daniel stopped falling, and there was an end to the darkness....