Don't worry EPO, Virgil's part in this story will be revealed but I'm curious about what you were going to say about Parker. And thanks to wonderful failure, I'm glad your enjoying it.
I though I'd try something new with the opening of this chapter but I'm not sure if it works…
Chapter 17: The butterfly effect
As he stepped out into the cool night air, we must remember that Jobe was not the only soul to be affected by the dark reaches of Silent Hill. Hundreds have fallen victim to its nightmarish lull, stretching back to the first setterlers who built the foundations of this accursed town. These unfortunate dammed have either driven themselves to it through there own guilt or manipulated by whatever hellish powers that be rule this quaint corner of America.
We should take into account that Jobe will not be the last forced to see the true face of Silent Hill and many shall follow him. As Jobe shivered, wrapping his arms around himself in some vain attempt to keep the bitter atmosphere from stealing the last of the church's heat, there was another who had been touched by the darkness and brought dangerously near to the brink of corruption. At this point, we shall leave Jobe and his glorious inner light of hope and go to her, floating away from Silent Hill as if we were nothing more than leaves caught in a turbulent breeze.
Fifteen hundred miles away, a small, run-down service station stood out like a sore thumb against its dreary backdrop of monotonous grey farmland. The harsh, neon lights that blazed unwelcomingly from the windows were the only sign of human activity to be seen in the backwater landscape.
The girl sat by the window drew her knees up to her chest in an attempt to make the uncomfortable plastic chair she occupied slightly more habitable as she glared moodily at the bleak view, oblivious to the other patrons who sipped cheep coffee or leafed through dog-eared magazines with mild interest.
On a first glace, she looked like any other seventeen-year old. Dark roots were beginning to surface through the short dyed blond hair that fell over her eyes, hiding them behind a peroxide-yellow curtain. She looked ill and fatigued, as if sleep had eluded her for nights on end but if anyone had taken a second glance at the girl, they may have said she looked scarred…
But of course, no one did. Nor did they notice how dishevelled her cloths looked, the occasional smear on her white sleeveless jacket or the layers of grime that stained her boots an ugly crimson tone.
"Heather?"
The husky voice awoke Heather from whatever morbid daydream she'd been floating in and turned almost sullenly to its owner, who hastily took a seat opposite her and removed the limp fedora from his head. Rain started to beat against the window and quickly, the only thing that could be perceived through it was a dirty blur of drab colour.
"What the matter" It was hard not to notice the defeated air that clung to her partner like a bad smell. "Douglas, the car, its ok, right?" A feverish desperation seeped into her voice.
"Don't worry, the car's going to be fine…It might just take a while" The large, bear-like man avoided Heather's questioning brown eyes and instead told the story to his knees.
"What do you mean 'take a while'?"
Douglas sat back in his seat, letting out a great sigh as he absently scratched at his receding hairline.
"The whole engine overheated. There's nothing we can do until it cools down."
He cautiously stole a glance at the girl and was met by one of her patented icy glares.
"How long?" She asked Douglas, simmering like a volcano and he braced himself for the imminent eruption.
"Any thing from a hour to five" In reality, it could easily take ten for the engine to work again without protest. Last thing he wanted was to get on some abandoned strip of road and the car to finally give up. With the way his luck had been going that day, he wouldn't be shocked if it did.
Douglas grimaced but Heather didn't explode into a fit. On the contrary, she looked as dead as ever.
'Can't blame her,' Douglas lamented, 'She's been through more in the last day than anyone should in their entire life.'
By the time he looked up, Heather had gone back to numbly staring out the window, whatching the raindrops wash down the translucent surface and he couldn't help but remember that he was the one who'd dragged her into this fine old mess. Maybe now was the time to ask the question that had been on the tip of his tongue ever since they'd set out on this damned odyssey.
"Heather?" His mouth seemed to dry up before the word even left it.
"Yeah?" She murmured, her head resting on the cool, glass surface. Condensation clouded it as she spoke.
"Maybe…maybe we shouldn't go to Silent Hill."
"What?" The word was so curt, Douglas barely heard it. Heather's head rose from the glass and she gave the man opposite her a look of sheer disbelief.
"It just doesn't seem that good an idea, I mean do you even know what you're going to do when you get there? And you saw how crazy things got back at the shopping mall, just imagine what its going to"
Douglas never got to finish whatever it was he was going to say for at that moment, Heather truly did explode.
"Oh yeah? Well what the fuck am I supposed to do? I can't exactly go home, can I!" Slamming her hand down on the chair with enough force to break it, Heather leapt to her feet. "Every where I go, this shit just follows me and destroys everything I have!"
Her voice had risen to the point where the other patrons glanced in the direction of the ranting girl, immediately losing interest in their newspapers and plastic flavoured, lukewarm coffee.
"Heather, please!" Douglas looked about franticly, trying not to notice just how many people where watching this unpleasant drama unfold.
"Ha! You have no goddamn right to tell me what to do; you're the one who got me mixed up in all this! Do you think I wanted anything to do with some fucked up Satanist's vision of Paradise?"
She drew in a hitched breath but before Douglas could protest, she was off again.
"It's your goddamn fault he's dead, and how can you question what I'm going to do when I get there? I'm gonna kill that goddamn bitch if it's the last thing I do!"
During the course of this passionate speech, the tears that had been building up in the corner of Heather's eyes had begun to flow freely, streaking her face.
"Heather, for Christ's sake calm down!" Douglas hissed, getting to his feet as an extremely aggravated clerk strode towards them. He really didn't want a scene.
"Oh that's right, lets bring God into this!" Heather turned to her audience and bellowed. "Hey, everyone! Lets have a show of hands of everyone who wants to go to hell!" She paused, sobbing hysterically. "No-one, not a soul? Guess I'll have to go to Silent Hill and blow Claudia's brains out, cause that's the only way to to" What ever she was going to enlighten her horrified audience with was lost as she broke down completely.
Douglas wheeled round as the fuming clerk tapped his shoulder impatiently.
"Will you please get her out of here!" The fat, small man hissed in a tone that was full of self-righteousness as he jerked a thumb at Heather.
The girl didn't protest as Douglas wrapped an arm around her, leading her gently towards the door under the scrutinizing gaze of the other customers. The passion that fuled the out burst had run dry.
"Feeling better?" He asked as they stepped out into the night, squinting as the pair was barraged by rain.
"Yeah…" Came the subdued response from under his coat. The two sat down heavily on the curb and were soaked to the bone within seconds. For the little good it would do, Douglas returned the fedora to its resting place atop his head and sighed.
This had been, without a doubt, the weirdest day in his entire life.
For a brief moment, he looked at Heather, his raincoat wrapped around her like a great cloak. Her once choppy hair was now plastered flat to her face by the relentless rainfall. Grinning to himself, Douglas compulsively lifted the limp hat from his head and dropped it onto hers.
Heather looked at him with a mild shock and Douglas couldn't help but laugh at them.
"Your really weird, you know."
Heather's comment just made him laugh all the more. The girl arched her eyebrows but found herself unable to stop a giggle escape her lips.
Pretty soon, the pair were sat there, roaring with mirth.
As wonderful as it would be to stay with these two and share their brief moment of happiness, Silent Hill beckons our return and we have our own protagonist to watch.
Jobe jogged down the church's stairway, his feet mushed softly in the slush that had congealed on the steps from the previous half-hearted snowfall. Oblivious to the world around him, the man pulled Virgil's dog-eared map from its bag while trudging briskly up the street.
And stopped dead in his track.
"Oh no…"
Blue Creek Apartments, his final destination was on the other side of that horribly large lake that divided the town in two.
"Frustrating, isn't it?"
Jobe's eyes tore from the map and whipped round to the owner of the voice. He had a horrible sense of dread he'd already made their acquaintance.
"Being so close to achieving your aims but the final key part being just out your reach."
"Claudia…"
He glowered at the woman who seemed to have materialised out of nowhere behind him, coming as subtly as the unperceivable night that engulfed the town. She nodded in morbid acknowledgement as her lips portrayed a watery smile.
"I see our mutual friend has expressed her views on me to you, Jobe."
Jobe stuffed the map back into a pocket and turned to face the woman.
"Yeah? Well she's not the only one who thinks you're some deluded deviant. Your fellow cultist, or Satanists or whatever the hell it is you believe you are, they think your nothing more than an out of control extremist." Jobe made a wild gesture at the church that had already sunk into the inky night as he launched into his testy verbal assault. He laughed.
"Hell, only some back-water bible basher like you could possible create this and call it Paradise!"
A look of mild incomprehension contorted Claudia's features.
"You think that I was capable of doing all this?"
Jobe opened his mouth but his feisty words had evaporated and he quickly shut it again.
"This is God's work, preparing this land for her glorious return to this world." Something flickered in her eyes and Jobe saw the look of manic, undoting faith that flashed across the pale orbs.
He was afraid.
"I am nothing in the grand scheme of things. All I am trying to do is bring the people of this earth the salvation they desperately deserve, and you are going to help me do so."
It took Jobe's brain a few seconds to latch onto her words, which had been uttered so calmly, Claudia could have been commenting on something as trivial as the weather.
"What? I don't want anything to do with this madness! Salvation? I'd call this the very opposite, how can you stand there and say this is paradise when it's nothing more than a glorified hell!" He drew himself up and glowered at her in preparation of the reaction.
It sure as hell wasn't the one he'd anticipated.
Claudia lifted her head and looked at Jobe, no, through would be better. He eyes seemed to lance into the layers of his skin and examine something much deeper. He shivered.
"I don't think you truly understand the gratuitous suffering that ravages this world. When god arrives, the veil of ignorance and predigests that clouds the people's minds will finally be lifted and they will finally be able to coexist. Can't you see? Finally, something will be done." The emotionless, robotic quality in Claudia's voice fell away. "I refuse to wait any longer for the coming of god's kingdom and watch as we slowly destroy one another .I do not understand why must you oppose me so?"
Jobe flinched but stood his ground. "Because the day the world need's a garden of Eden that look like this is the day when the world has gone as mad as you."
Claudia threw back her head and let out something that may have been a laugh but was so devoid of humour it made Jobe wince.
"You truly believe this world is such a perfect place? How can you say that when only a hundred years ago, you would have been persecuted merely for the colour of your skin?"
She shook her head.
"No Jobe, this world is a terrible place. Perhaps you need your eyes to be opened to the sins that seem to fuel its very existence…"
Claudia gave Jobe one last sorrowful look and then everything went black and Jobe's world blazed into a spectrum of pain.
"Oh God!" He started but it was quickly lost in a scream as every inch of skin felt it had been torn from his body. The malevolent force began worming its way under his flesh, searing every nerve it touched. Jobe fell to the ground as a chorus of screams echoing his own exploded in his ears with cries of pain and torment.
And that wasn't the worst of it.
Inside his head, any positive thought disintegrated, leaving nothing but hatred, sorrow and self-loathing, each emotion flaring one after another, leaving his senses reeling. Jobe grabbed his head, as if his hands could lock out the torrent of convolutions that wracked his being.
Above it all, he could still here Claudia's voice.
"Do you see now? This is only a tiny proportion of the pain people suffer due to the ignorance and wrath of others. Gluttony, Sloth, Envy, they've all played their part in corrupting the world."
Jobe raised his head that felt it would crack like an egg under the sheer volume around it and through eyes blurred with tears he saw a break in the darkness. He lurched towards it, trying to stave off the unconsciousness that threatened to engulf him on legs that felt broken in five places. With each step he took, the agony swelled, reaching an all-new crescendo that he didn't believe to be possible.
With a shaking hand, he reached for the window of light…
And fell straight through it.
A/N God, I'm so mean to Jobe.
For those of you following my other fanfic, Ave Maria, the next chapter is nearly compleat.
