Keep on Knocking
Chapter Four
The little boy peers around the corner of the bedroom doorway, afraid yet intrigued by the raised voices emitting from the room. He sees a man at the foot of the bed, towering over a smaller woman, who sits on the egde of the bed, drowning in tears.
The man leans in close, pushing his face closer into the woman's own. The boy cannot make out what the man is saying under his breath, but he seems to be taunting the weeping woman. The little boy stares intently for a moment; but then, the enraged man raises a closed fist, and then it suddenly snaps out like an agitated snake, slamming into the woman's nose. She recoils, and blood begins to instantly drip from the orifice.
The man begins to shout again, leaping onto the woman's belly as sobs fiercely on the bed, and then he raises both fists and continually beats her in the head. The boy shrieks, as if he feels the woman's pain.
But soon, there is no more crying. The boy curls up against the wall outside the doorway, his teeth grit and his eyes tightly shut, thin tears squeezing from beneath the closed lids. His hands are pressed firmly against his ears, as if to shut some voice out.
The little boy rises from the wall, and siezes a wooden chair from the dining room and drags it back to the bedroom doorway. He suddenly sees the angry red face of the man glaring at him from in the room, and as he begins to stride fiercely towards the boy, he slams the door shut and wedges the chair under the door handle. The knob twists vigirously, but the door does not open.
The man howls in defiance, and begins to thump on the door.
Daniel woke up in the unlit corridor of a house. He rose, turned, and gazed out the pane of the door. It was dark outside, but he could see the pavement beyond the front steps, and the trees a little further beyond.
At least I'm back to reality, Daniel thought, but doubt of this quikcly returned to his mind.
Daniel turned again, and began to walk steadily down the dim corridor, his footsteps echoing eerily in the house's empty silence. He could not see much, save for a closed door to his left, and an archway at the end of the corridor, but he could not see what was beyond. Daniel's hand snaked out and he wrenched the door's knob, but the lock was jammed and the door would not give passage.
Daniel continued to advance to the end of the hall, and passed into a large room, filled with old household items. From some pale light emanating somewhere outside, Daniel could make out the cobwebs that lined the items. He scanned the room; there was a window in the far left wall, a closet door in the opposite wall; near the window. To his right was a set of armchairs an a couch surrounded a distance away from an ancient-looking, cobweb-coated television set. Cut into the wall behind Daniel near the right wall, was another archway, which probably led to a dining room or a kitchen.
And against the far wall, about four feet right of the closet door, was an ominous-looking wooden door. It was closed and there was a wooden chair wedged under the doorknob.
Suddenly, Daniel finally understood. The visions during his blackouts finally made sense.
This was his house.
As Daniel watched the door blast open and the chair fly across the room and break against the near wall, he saw the vision as one long, dark revelation.
The boy had sat, watched in terror as the woman, his mother was beat in the head continuously in a vulgar display of power by the man.
His father.
But when the crying had stopped, the boy knew what his father had done. He had gone one step too far this time.
He had beat his mother to death.
And when the father realised that his son had witnessed the brutal killing, he went after him. To silence him.
But the boy had anticipated his father. The boy had slammed the bedroom door closed and jammed the knob so his father could not get out and beat him. Maybe even do the same thing as he did to his mother.
His father began that terrible thumping on the door, screaming; "Let me out you fucking little shit! I'll fucking kill you, I'll kill you, y'hear me, you little maggot!!". The boy had scrambled over the couch, ran through the archway and into the kitchen, drawing a large preparation knife from its wooden block, and ran back to the couch, tucking his knees to his chest, his eyes set on the thumping door.
Suddenly, his father had thrust the door open, the chair sailing across the room and into the wall, breaking it into several pieces. His father stormed out of the bedroom, toward the little boy who sat on the couch and had concealed the knife under his leg; gazing into his father's face with terror. The man had raised his curled fist as he stooped over his son, when the boy leapt to his feet, then lunged onto his father's chest.
His father froze; his face manipulating in an expression of bewilderment and horror as the boy grit his teeth and the tears returned as he drove the knife through the soft flesh of his father's chest. He dragged the blade clear and thrust it into his chest once more; and again, and again and again. His father tried to scream, but only a gurgle rose from his throat as blood bubbled in his gullet. He collapsed to the floor, the little boy still clinging onto the handle of the entrenched blade.
The little boy took one final gaze into his father's eyes; his iris' burned with rage but there was the fear of a cornered animal within the stare he gave the boy. Then he twisted the blade.
His father jolted, gasping for one more breath, the blood now rising to his lips; and then, he slumped on his back; the life fleeing from his body.
The boy had pulled th knife out of his dead father's flesh and cast it onto the carpet. He grabbed his father's ankles, and with much struggling and effort, he pulled the lifeless corpse into the bedroom, where he saw his mother's limp body, stretched across the bed. He released his father's ankles, and cautiously stepped over to the bed. The boy looked into his mother's elegant face, and was suddenly buried in bitter tears. Her eyes were closed now, the tears dry on her cheeks. Her face was matted with blood. The boy reached over and kissed her forehead; saying his goodbyes, but all too late.
The boy ran out to the dining room again, and took another chair away from the table, but the time he did not rush back to the door with the same sense of urgency as he had before. He had lost his source of love to brutality, and it had seemed like time now stood still.
The little boy took the doorknob in his bloodsmeared fingers and closed the door
for good
and wedged the chair under the knob.
The boy had sat down on the couch and stared at the television, but found nothing more than static buzzing across the screen. He tucked himself into a tight ball, staring at the static emptiness of the television, trying to ignore the bloostained knife that lay on the carpet, and the hearbeat of his father
that came from the bedroom
that echoed inside his head. The boy had pressed his ears shut with his palms, but the beating did not stop. It mocked him; haunted it him. It drove him mad.
The boy ran out the front door, onto the street and into the fog. Never to return to that house as its door closed behind him. For good.
And as Daniel stood, seeing the vision like a drawn-out cinematic sequence, and realised the truth, a figure began to emerge from the shadows of the now-open bedroom.
I am...the boy. Who killed his father who killed his mother.
And now, Daniel thought as he knew who
what
the figure was before he even saw his
its
face, I confront the returned evil that wishes to drag down the final element of the secret he wishes to kill for good. I must confront—
"—Father".
Daniel stood and stared at his father—or what was left of him. His face was mishappen; the skin and most of the flesh decayed, though revealing some of the still-remaining muscle and sinew that twitched underneath. His lips were drawn-back and rent, and a single baleful eye glared at him—the socket of the second all but gone; replaced by a clump of maggots writhing within. The flesh of his limbs was all but hanging from his bones, but his chest was still intact with foetid flesh, caked in dried blood.
A dried-up, ghastly voice that resembled dead leaves rustling in the wind emerged from the tattered remenants of his throat. "My son, you have returned to me".
"I am no son of yours", Daniel spat contemptuously, "I can accept truth, just as I can accept defeat in life. That's what makes me different from you. You only woke up because you still cannot come to grips with the truth. Your fate".
The corpse cackled at this; the laugh reminding Daniel all the more that this was his father.
"You cannot accept the fact that you killed my mother but you died as a consequence of an innocent woman's death, by the hand of your own son", Daniel continued, "you cannot accept your own defeat. I once believed that 'what goes around comes around' was just a stupid proverb. But it seems fate is not without a sense of irony".
"Yet I have come back, but this time to taste victory, VICTORY LIKE NEVER KNOWN BEFORE!" the father-corpse declared, "and you will go to the same place as that fucking hell-bitch that was your mother went!"
"The corpse began to shamble toward him, yet Daniel was surprised by the sheer speed at which the thing moved; like it was not just a living corpse but an evil mannequin animated by some demonic force. It closed the gap and reached out with its dirty, overgrown claws, and Daniel pressed himself against the wall. The stench of his father's decay was insidous, as he realised as the zombie moved in and opened its maw, ready to take a chunk out of his flesh.
Daniel suddenly launched his foot out into the creature's rent belly, knocking the thing back. It stumbled over the old couch and fell to the floor. He siezed the largest piece of the broken chair from the floor (which as the seat with a single leg still in place), and strode toward the fallen corpse as it struggled to get back to its feet. Daniel raised the chair above his head and brought it down onto the creature's rank head, bludgeoning it again, again and again. A dull, wet whimper of what may have been pain escaped its rotting throat. Daniel twisted the chair around so the remaining leg was pointing at his father's face, and then growled;
"Go back to the Hell where you came from".
With that, he stabbed the chair leg down, caving in the corpse's skull. What unlife had been animating the thing left it.
For good, I hope.
A voice of a woman, both strong yet gentle, rang inside his head.
"You have released me", it said, and Daniel recognised it as the voice from the blackness, "And I thank you, my son".
Daniel was left in the shadows.
-M.T 2003
"Silent Hill" FanFiction