Chapter 10

August 20, 1983

Silent Hill, Idaho

Midwich Elementary School

1:45 PM

Harry awoke face-down (had he fallen unconscious face-down? He couldn't remember) on cold stone. Realizing that he last had been on mesh, not stone, he sat up quickly and gasped as his head spun and colors began to swim in his eyes. He put his head back down and waited for the feeling to subside, then slowly got to his feet and looked around the room.

He was back in the boiler room in the school. Things seemed to be back to normal. The generator was back, no swinging gates this time. No mesh. No rust. No blood. And, most importantly, no static was coming from the radio, which he checked to make sure wasn't broken. He then checked to see if he was broken at all. He was fine. A few cuts and bruises, and he kind of felt like he was going crazy, but yeah, otherwise he was just peachy keen.

Then she walked out from behind the generator. Harry gasped and aimed his gun at her, before registering that she was a human. Not only that, she was the girl who had walked out in front of his Jeep. "You...." He lowered his gun and shone his flashlight on her. She leaned casually back against the generator and put one foot up back against it, not looking at him but looking attentively at something shiny she held in her hand. She stared at it for a few minutes, and Harry found himself unable to say anything else to her. She then slowly looked up at him, tossed what she was holding at his feet, and then disappeared into thin air.

A shiver ran down his spine. Through all the bizarre and truly fucked-up shit he had seen since the accident, this actually had frightened him the most. A shiver ran down his spine and he felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. He finally found himself able to speak. "Who was that? Who in the hell was that?" He asked the empty room.

He walked over and picked up the shiny object the girl had thrown at him. It was a key. A name was engraved on the key: "Gordon".

Clueless about who Gordon was and where the key was to be used, he left the basement and headed up the stairs to the first floor west hallway. Everything here was back to normal too. He walked up and down the hall, testing all the doors. All were locked except the one leading to the entry hallway.

He opened the door just as the ringing started. Church bells. Harry's heart skipped a beat. Maybe there was someone else left alive in this town!

He opened the map and quickly discovered the nearest (and, upon closer inspection, only) church. Balkan Church. It was on Bloch Street, a few blocks east of the school. He hoped his way there wasn't blocked by any of those damned chasms.

He took one last look at the secretary's desk before he left and saw the bloody books were gone. There was only one book left, and it was open. Harry glanced at the open page and saw it was a list of the teachers at the school. One name stood out for him: "K. Gordon". He was convinced: the key the ghost girl (what else could he call her?) had given him was the key to this teacher's house. Why did she have it, though? Maybe this K. Gordon was still around and could help him. He found the address on the map, it was also on Levin Street, but the number was pretty high. It must be farther south on Levin than the "dog house" had been, probably between Bradbury and Bloch. He'd head there before the church. It was closer, and the girl must have had some motive for giving him the key.

He carefully opened the front double doors and peeked out. The darkness was gone and the fog was back. The streets looked mercifully monster-free. He ran across the street and onto Bradbury Street. He ran past a narrow alleyway that ran up behind the block of houses Gordon's was on. He soon saw a chasm come into view. Access to Levin was barred.

Maybe I can get into the house from that alleyway, he thought, as unpleasant an idea as another alleyway romp was to him.

He walked quickly up the alley, glancing at the numbers on the garages flanking the sides of the alley. He finally found the number he was looking for, but also found a disheartening smear of blood all over the garage doors next to the gate that led into Gordon's backyard.

His radio burst into a fresh scream of static. He pulled open the gate and burst into Gordon's backyard. He lunged for the door as a bird creature flew over his head and out of sight over the roof. The door was locked, and Harry had the key out and in the lock in a second. Thankfully, the lock clicked and the door opened. Without looking back, he pulled the door shut behind him and slid the deadbolt into place.

August 20, 1983

Silent Hill, Idaho

K. Gordon's house, Levin Street

1:54 PM

Harry turned from the door and looked around at the small kitchen and tiny living room. It struck him how this house's interior was almost identical to the "dog house" up the street. "Hello? K. Gordon? Is anyone here?" Silence was the only reply. He walked into the hall, opened the door to his left and looked into a room that was also almost a mirror image of the living room at the "dog house". If it hadn't been for the TV in the room and the different placement of the bookshelves, he might have thought he had been transported to the "dog house", much the same way the bathrooms at the school had teleported him upstairs and downstairs.

There was no one in the house. Harry had a suspicion that K. Gordon was probably what had left that big smear on the garage doors. In any case, he wasn't going to find any allies here. He turned back to head to the back door again, wondering how he was going to get to Balkan Church, when he realized he could get to Levin Street from Gordon's front door. If there weren't any chasms or anything to get in his way, he could easily make it to Balkan from there.

Probably.

August 20, 1983

Silent Hill, Idaho

Outside Balkan Church, Bloch Street

2:04 PM

Harry looked at the church with a sense of relief. He had finally made it.

On his way from Gordon's house to here, he had encountered three more chasms blocking his path and had to go through yet another alleyway to get here. Whatever strange force was in control of the town, it definitely didn't want him to go in here.

All the better reason to go in, he thought, and pushed open the heavy oak doors. He stepped into a dingy sanctuary with an old, weathered red carpet leading up to the stage. The floors were marble, and they were badly cracked in places. The walls had slim windows running up the entire wall in intervals, giving a view of Levin Street to his right and a lovely view of the next building over to his left. There were very few pews, just about sixteen or so rows of them, divided in half by the aisle running up the center. A large, wooden carving of The Crucifixion hung behind the pulpit. Harry was so struck by how miserable and creepy Jesus looked in this depiction he didn't notice the woman standing with her back to him on the stage for a few seconds.

Sensing his presence, she slowly turned around to face him. She looked at him without any expression of surprise, and did a weird kind of shrug with her left shoulder and chin. It was hard to determine her age; she was wrinkled and had a pinched, scowling face, but she could have been in her late fifties. She wore a very plain, dark grey dress that reached her ankles, with, strangely enough, a red-and-black-striped necktie around her neck, and a white lace shawl over her head. What little hair showed under the shawl was black streaked with white. She wore no shoes, and was barefoot. Harry thought she looked like some midwife from the 1800s who had been plucked out of her age and dropped into the present.

He walked slowly up the middle aisle, his feet thudding softly on the moldering carpet. The woman didn't take her piercing green eyes off him as he stopped about ten feet from her. She didn't say a word for about a very awkward minute before Harry cleared his throat and nervously broke the silence.

"Were you ringing that bell?"

"I've been expecting you. It was foretold by Gyromancy." The woman had a throaty, rasping voice, like a smoker's but not quite.

Harry lifted an eyebrow. "Uh, excuse me? What are you talking about?"

"I knew you'd come," the woman's scowl broke as she fixed Harry with an insane grin. "You want the girl, right?"

Harry's heart skipped a beat. "The girl?! Are you talking about Cheryl? My daughter, she's missing. I followed her to the school but then something happened to it. I have no idea where she is now. Have you seen those mon--"

"I see everything," the woman interrupted.

"So you know something? About what's going on around here? Tell me!" Harry started to move towards the woman.

"Stay back!" She spat, holding her hand out as if to push him back. For a second, Harry almost swore he was pushed back. She smiled sweetly at him, as if he were a child. "Nothing is to be gained by floundering about at random. You must follow the Path."

"The path? What path?"

"The Path! The Path of the Hermit, concealed by Flauros!" She said, as if he were an idiot for not already having figured this out.

Harry was losing patience with this lunatic. "What?! What are you talking about?"

The woman turned back to the altar and picked something up. She turned back to Harry and held it up for him to see. It was a small, stone pyramid. It looked like some sort of Chinese puzzle. "Here. The Flauros. A cage of peace. It can break through the walls of darkness and counteract the wrath of the underworld." She placed it back on the altar and gestured at it with her hand. "These will help you. Make haste to the hospital before it's too late." She turned and headed for a door on the left wall.

"Hey, wait! Don't go yet!" Harry called after her, but she simply opened the door and vanished without looking back. He ran to the door and turned the handle, but it was locked.

From the outside?

Harry ran to the nearest narrow window and looked out into the extremely narrow alley running between the church and the next building. He didn't even think there was enough room for her to have gotten out.

Wait a second. She opened that door outwardsThere's no room for her to have done that!

He looked back at the door, half expecting it to be gone, but it was still there. Confused and mystified, he looked towards the altar on the stage. The Flauros was there, as well as three boxes of handgun bullets, one box of shotgun shells, and a rusty iron key. He pocketed the Flauros and bullets, and looked at the worn engraving on the key. It read "Orridge Bridge Control". He remembered her telling him to go to the hospital. There was no hospital on this map, but maybe it was on the other side of the bridge.

Having no other leads as to where Cheryl was, he had no choice but to follow the woman's advice. He left the church the way he came, and turned right, heading towards Orridge Bridge.

The morose Jesus' eyes watched Harry leave, and after the doors shut, a single tear ran down his wooden cheek.