Chapter 18: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? (Part 1)
With his eyes clamped tightly shut, Jobe prayed so furiously that the blood smashed at his temples. The first thing he'd noticed since he came too was that it was blissfully quiet, gone was the hellish ballad of scream that made his flesh crawl. In comparison, the sharp caw of woodland birds seemed idyllic.
As he lay there on the ground, revelling as coarse blades of icy rough grass jagged into his back with every breath he drew, Jobe prayed that it had all been some nightmarish fantasy and in truth, he was lying on the road-side having been propelled through the front screen of his car.
That would make so much more sense than the last few hours of insanity Jobe had endured. After all, a traumatized mind could have easily fabricated such a warped dream of monsters with a cast of lunatics, most of who belonged in the extras list of 'The Wicker Man'. After all, the idea of God being born in such an ambiguous town as Silent Hill was ridiculous, let alone the thought of him aiding in 'the coming of Paradise'. Jobe let out a laugh that helped imprint the idea even deeper into his mind and open his eyes.
A canvas of grey sky, dotted white by fat snowflakes, greeted them.
Jobe sat bolt upright, his sudden movement shocking the silent landscape like some cardiac arrest. There was a rush of shrew cries from the birds as they took flight; beating their wings so fast you would have though a clap of thunder had scared them from their posts. For a moment, Jobe traced the dark cloud's random movement as it ascended and broke apart before letting them wonder over his new surroundings.
This certainly wasn't the roadside.
Sprawling out before him was a thick forest of pine trees that seemed to reflect the dull grey of the winter's sky, as their spindly tops brushed dryly against one another in the ghost of a breeze. The long branches were covered in a thin dusting of the white powder that seemed to have bleached everything he saw. So dense was the wood that within a few meters of the perimeter, any of the pale rays of light were soon swallowed by its ominous shadows. Now void of bird song, the whole thing felt dead.
Jobe stood up, trying feverishly to hold onto the idea that the whole thing had been a dream. With every detail his eye took in, the comforting delusion slipped further and further away.
He span round, the frozen grass crunching under foot and he saw that he wasn't alone in the tiny clearing. Behind him lay a small, ramshackle house, its black tiled roof standing out boldly against the bone-white backdrop. The whole building looked as though it could collapse into a cloud of dust if any more snow landed on it, not that it would be a great architectural loss.
"What the hell have I got myself into now?" Jobe muttered to none in particular as he rubbed the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve some of the stress that was welling up inside him. He felt as though he would burst in a minuet. Wasn't he due a break by now?
Fate, the grand master of things, deemed not.
"What are you doing here?" An indignant voice asked.
Jobe took a deep breath before wheeling round and coming face to face with his tormentor.
"What am I doing here?!" Jobe didn't even try to hide the furry that throbbed like a heartbeat in his temples that threatened to explode when he met Claudia's accusing gaze. "What am I doing here?! You're the one who started playing mind games!" He shook his head in bewilderment, trying to shake off the rage that clouded his rational thinking. "Just what the hell was that anyway?"
Claudia merely folded her arms as Jobe ranted, flaying his own wildly.
"Think of it as an eye opener. You"
"Stop right there, I don't think I can take listening to you launch into another of your o so enlightening preaching about," Jobe through back his head, roaring in a deep mock voice of a minister, "The wonders of God's everlasting Paradise!" He snapped his wild, wide-eyed gaze back onto the pallid woman, panting heavily. He could barely stop himself from laughing in her face as he saw his words taking affect; a small bud of anger was slowly beginning to gestate behind her somewhat frosty exterior.
For a moment, Jobe pondered if his mind had finally crumpled under the weight of the insanity around him.
Claudia opened her mouth again but the man just turned his back to her.
"You know what? I don't have to put up with any of this. You want to worship devils? Well that's just dandy but I swear, if you try to pull me into this Biblical crap one more time," Jobe let out another short burst of mirthful laughter, shaking his head. "Well, I can't be held responsible for my actions. I'm going to find my friend and get the hell outta here." Glancing over his shoulder, revelling at the look of malignant wrath fermenting on the woman's face and he began to walk away. Hell, he wasn't content with pushing her buttons; he was going to fucking tap-dance on them.
"Good luck with the apocalypse and all!" Jobe yelled, casting a cheery wave over his shoulder. The man broke into a run and quickly joined the fleeting shadows that webbed between the trees, praying that he could leave all this insanity behind him.
Claudia let him go…it wasn't like he was going to get very far.
Jobe had been running for all of two minuets when the adrenaline high began to wear off.
'What the hell were you thinking running off into a wood?'
(Not much)
'Do you know how big it could be?'
(Nope)
'Do you even know where you are?'(Not by a long shot)
Jobe slowed to a trot. The last thing he needed now was to get lost in a forest. A thin dusting of snow began to build up on the man's shoulders as he came to a halt and weighed up his options.
"Aw hell" he muttered to himself as he reluctantly turned round to go back to the house. At least he'd still be able to follow his
Jobe's train of though came to a crashing halt when he saw where he was.
He might as well have taken two steps from his starting point.
"No!" He cried, his brain trying to make any sense of the phenomena as Claudia looked up at him with mild interest. She opened her mouth but Jobe spun away and charged back into the wood before Claudia had a chance to vocalise her thoughts.
Jobe ran, kicking up great clouds of fallen snow as he pushed his legs as fast as humanly possible. He had to put as much distance between that clearing as possible while his mind still reeled with confusion.
'That…that just wasn't possible, I should have been able to see that house, let alone be standing next to it.'
Jobe let out a rasping gasp, ignoring that his lungs felt as though they were slowly being stuffed with cotton wool and charged deeper into the woods, the trees becoming brown blurs as he speed past them on increasingly weakening legs. Jobe's shoulder clipped one of the spindly pine trees and that was enough to send him flying through the air and he went down like a rock, his momentum dragging him through the snow.
He just lay there for a moment, trying to catch his breath as he panted like a dog. When the feeling of asphyxiation finally passed he glanced half-heartedly over his shoulder. The house was just as close as ever.
There was the soft crunch of snow under foot and a long shadow fell over Jobe as he let out strenuous moan. He just wanted to close his eyes and never have to open them again.
"I did not mean to bring you here, Jobe," Claudia continued more to herself than the figure that lay in on the frosty carpet and seemed all but oblivious to her words. "But perhaps it is for the best you witness these past events."
He sat up, the snow clinging to his back, encrusting it in a cracked white shell. Something in her sentence snagged him.
"Past?" He repeated, scowling as he made sure his mind wasn't playing tricks on him and he'd heard her correctly. "Just where the hell did you bring me?" Jobe began to rise slowly, his heart hammering within his chest like a trapped bird.
Claudia, however didn't appear to have heard him as she stood transfixed by the black house.
"Leonard always abhorred the public eye…" She muttered so softly Jobe barely caught it as she stared in an almost catatonic trace.
He
would have asked who this 'Leonard' was but some obscure shadow flitted by the
corner of his eye. Jobe glanced over his shoulder and…
"Shit!" The man leapt as if he'd grabbed a live wire and goggled at
the sight before him in shocked disbelief.
Jobe hadn't taken much notice of the large rock that jutted up from the snowy blanket and to be honest, he still hadn't given it a second thought, rather it was the figure that had materialized out of nowhere and was now sat upon it that held his dumbfound attention captive.
The girl had to be no older than eleven but she looked horribly matured for her age, as if she'd been twisted prematurely by the hand of time. She seemed oblivious of the man who goggled at her with a look of shear confusion as she gazed at the house with a look of hopeless defeat. Her glassy eyes reflected every other detail of the barren landscape except for the delapid building, transfixed as though it hummed a siren hymn that only she could hear. Even though he'd never met the child, it was far too easy for him to recognise her as a younger version of the woman beside him.
"But…but…how?" Jobe couldn't string a sentence together as he began to back away from the melancholy girl, still wondrously oblivious to him. A pale, ghostly complexion had been painted upon her drawn, starved face, its whiteness spoiled only by an ugly purple bruise that flourished under her eye. Absentmindedly, she began to chew the inside of her cheek as she drew the threadbare raincoat she donned round her tighter in an effort to stay warm. Perhaps staying warm was part of her act of procrastination as she tired to prolong her time outside the house.
'It's her…but how is that even possible?' He glanced back to Claudia who was observing her young doppelganger with a harrowing look of sorrow. She moved her eyes onto Jobe and in a sad tone uttered:"I never used to understand what he was trying to show me until now. That pitiful creature over there had no concept of what he was trying to tell me, and interpreted it as some perverse punishment. I guess in a way it was…"
The girl let out a bitter sigh as she slowly pushed herself up from the rock and began to trudge towards the house at a snail's pace, her hands thrust deep into her pockets.
Claudia began to follow but only got a few steps before pausing and looking back at Jobe.
"Come, perhaps then you will understand my motives. After all," She continued towards the house, not bothering to check weather or not Jobe was following. "It was through his teachings that I became aware of the horrors and faults of this world."
Jobe watched as the pair were swallowed up by the house and the stillness that held sway over the clearing gradually regained control.
He stood there, treading water for a moment as he attempted to work out a marginally logical solution for all this. Was it a dream, some sort of living memory? His overloaded brain could barely cope with thinking straight, let alone tackling the idea that he'd got himself lost in some dark corner of Claudia's head.
With a start, Jobe realised hat he'd been staring mindlessly at one of the windows that revealed nothing save for how dark it was inside the house. The longer he stared the deeper that window seem to become, slowly expanding into a hole that gave way to a merciless chasm, so deep you could drown in its inky depths.
Jobe took a deep breath of the crisp air and reluctantly walked towards the house.
This was origanlly going to be just one chapter but it would have been way to long. I have exams next week so I don't think the next chapter will be up for a while.
