Chapter 20: Vanity
The creature dove at him, leaping down the narrow flight of stairs and making a direct beeline for the man. Jobe lunged for the door, slamming it tightly behind him but even through the thin panel of wood, he could feel, let alone hear the thunderous crash as gratuitous mass of muscle and claws smashed into the floor. It's howling roar set his teeth on edge as it resonated throughout the building.
Without thinking, Jobe rammed the metal pole under the doorknob that looked all but ready to fall from the door in some attempt to barricade the nightmare out.
'Oh yes, that really going to make a difference' If one of these creatures could demolish a reinforced iron door, a rotten wooden one wasn't going to do Jack-shit except perhaps provide tooth-picks for the centaur to remove the remains of Jobe from between its fangs.
Already, the sounds of it moving could be heard…
Jobe feverishly scanned the narrow hallway, looking for anything that could prolong his survival. That was when his dancing eyes fell upon the long, rectangular box hammered to the wall only a few paces away from him. Through the musty glass panel, the siloet of a fire axe could be just be seen.
Deeming that his current situation over-ruled the 'do not break unless in an emergency situation', Jobe smashed the transparent panel with his elbow and wrench the axe free, ignoring the sharp pain as the shards of broken glass his hand.
He swivelled round and faced the door, perspiration stinging at his eyes as he waited for the centaur to tear down the door and probably tear him to ribbons…
Jobe flinched as the sound of splintering wood reached his ears and the creature behind the door let out another thick roar.
Yet the door remained.
Suddenly it dawned on Jobe how quiet the hallway had become, as if some muffling blanket had fallen over it, smothering even the faintest noise. Nothing could be heard on the other side of the door and Jobe realised that in the pregnant silence, he'd even stopped breathing. Watching the door like an unexploded bomb he let a hand fall from the tightly griped axe and switched the phone in his pocket on.
The heavy silence reigned on, uninterrupted by the phone's mechanical ballad that should have been going haywire due to the centaur being so close. What the hell was going on?
Jobe took what could have been his final breath, blocking out the voice of reason as he threw the door open, only to find himself staring into an empty hallway. The centaur had simply vanished into air.
'…But how?'
Then Jobe saw, and his primary relief shrivelled up like an autumn leaf.
A jagged hole lay before him, starching across the space between the man and the stairs that ascended to the second floor. Jobe dropped to his knees, his legs crumpling underneath his body as his brain went numb. All he could do was stare at the empty, deep cavity before him that fell away to an unforgiving darkness.
So what had happened here? Well, it is no great mystery, that's for sure. The floor-boards had simply given away under the centaur's great mass, all it took was for the gross beast to raise up on leg and the pressure just became all too much for the already sickly floor.
The look of shear surprise that flashed across the less warped of the two head was disturbingly human as the sounds of the wooden boards singing their splintering swan song cracked through the stairwell. The centaur gave one final moan and plummeted into the darkness, taking out most of the stairs to the first-floor with it. It smashed into the entrance lobby's tiled floor in a rain of grimy debris and its own blood, it's eyes rolling wildly in its sockets as it tried to comprehend the rapid series of events and the pain…all it knew was pain.
He didn't want to scream, rave or shake his fists at the heavens at the town's twisted deity exclaiming how unfair it all was. He didn't feel wronged or even angry…only an apathetical sense of defeat. He felt crushed.
Without thinking, he rose and walked as if lead by an invisible other away from the hole that mocked him with a wide, black and ragged grin. Its silent, mocking laughter was almost deafening.
Aimlessly, he wandered like a ghost down the hallway, his head bent low.
'So close…'
There
'So close…'
Was
'So close…'
Nothing
'So close…'
He
'So close…'
Could
Something flashed by Jobe's peripheral vision and his head snapped up in time to see the door at the end of the narrow hall snap shut.
That was all it took to shake free from the emotionless shackles…
"Phil?" His throat cracked dryly as he called, breaking into run. In a single moment, he was outside the door, banging on it with his bleeding fist.
There was no sign of life within.
Jobe didn't even think of the possibility that his exhausted brain could have finally fallen into the pit of insanity and brought the axe savagely down on the door, the brittle wood splintering under its bite.
Within seconds, he'd smashed his way into the room.
"PHIL!?"
He stepped over the remains of the door, frantically searching for any sign of his friend. All he saw was himself staring back.
Jobe stopped, looking in silent awe at the enormous mirror that spanned across the opposite wall. He stepped closer, examining the mirror image of the room but found to his horror he could barely recognise the man staring back at him. Tired eyes gazed listlessly at him from sunken hollows and his skin seemed to have taken on a sickly ashy tint. His once spiked hair dropped lifelessly round his head, doing nothing to lift the impression that all the vitality had been sucked from him.
Had he finally caught the sickness that seemed to have touched everything else in Silent Hill with withered fingers? Was he going to end up like Virgil, who's exposure had left her as nothing more than a scarred shadow or perhaps surrender his sanity and will as Claudia seemed to…
He was so wound up in his thoughts that he didn't notice the reflection raise its arm as if on its own free will. It was only when its finger tapped against the film of glass that he snapped back.
And screamed.
Jobe backed away from the mirror, goggling in silent terror, as the image remained firmly where it was, its finger still pressed against the glass. It grinned as it began to speak in low, rusty, twisted tones.
"Do you still know who you are?"
Jobe's back hit the wall. He tried to turn away but his eye's were glued helplessly to the mirror, like a kid who wants to turn away from the T.V, knowing that they're about to witness something grisly but just can't.
"I don't think you do. WAKE UP AND TAKE A DAMN GOOD LOOK AT YOURSELF" The reflection stopped, its final word dying abruptly in its throat. It glanced over its shoulder and the look it shot Jobe when it turned back made every inch of his skin crawl.
"She's coming for you, perhaps she'll help you see…"
Despite his rising terror, Jobe managed to blurt out a single question.
"Who?"
"Vanity" It let the word roll of its tough, savouring the look of shear fear that cracked across Jobe's face.
The mirror's image began to slowly darken, the room corrupting with the coming darkness. The walls browned like spoiled fruit as the floor crumbled away into nothing but a fine grate stretching over perpetual darkness. His reflection simply faded, still grinning with a dark lunacy but Jobe had already made for the doorway.
Only to find himself staring at a wall, his escape rote plastered over.
He turned back to the room, tightening his grip on the axe, as he frantically looked for any means of escaped. He froze when he saw the mirror.
From the shadows that had engulfed it something came shuffling forth…
'Vanity'It lurched towards the plane of glass that stood between it and Jobe, becoming more visible with each dragged step.
A lone eye peered out from between a gap in the long curtain of hair that fell over its face. 'Her' arms hung loosely from slouched shoulders, swaying to the steady beat of her march. It seemed to be wearing some sort of dress but it was nigh on impossible to distinguish where that ended and its flesh began. Both were rotten patches of white and brown that flared like bruises. But that wasn't the worse of its myriad of rancid features.
Raking up from its shoulders were shards of sharp glass, stained a rusty brown with Vanity's own blood.
Jobe was so absorbed that he didn't notice it come up against the glass until is hammered two balled fists into the panel. They came down again, and this time, a thin, hairline crack splintered across the translucent surface.
'Oh god, it's going to get in here!'
This time, the spindly monstrosity lent its body back before slamming into the glass like a living pendulum and the whole panel shattered into a billion crystal shards.
Jobe gripped the axe even tighter.
The malformed thing stood upright, as if to admirer its destructive handiwork before stooping down and grabbing one of the long dagger-like fractions and Jobe noticed all to well the sharp fracture it ended in. Slowly, it began to march towards him, barely lifting its feet from the floor.
He hoisted the axe high above his head and lunged at Vanity, bringing the weapon down in a heavy arc.
It dodged, leering out of the way as Jobe tripped past his monstrous target. He let out a hitched grunt as it swiped at his side with the shard, slicing his chest and he tumbled to the floor.
It didn't hesitate to descended upon him like a furry, the sharp nails of its free hand digging into the first thing they touched, holding the writhing man down as it raised the glass knife in preparation to bring it down on his exposed neck.
Jobe's hand locked around the creature's bony wrist, stopping the shard's lethal journey towards his jugular vein.
Vanity howled as the two struggled on the floor as the knife inched closer to Jobe's skin. He caught a momentary flash of his wide eye reflection in the glass's flashing surface.
"NO!" Jobe's hand locked around the butt of the pistol that had been waiting patiently in his belt and whipped it out, pressing it into the Sin's side.
It lone visible eye went wide.
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAMVanity rolled off him as Jobe leaped to his feet, trying to block out the infernal creature's high-pitched scream.
He looked down, void of pity as the thing writhed on the floor, clawing at the ground as it tried to rise.
"Stay down" He muttered raising the axe above him. Vanity's milky grey eye locked onto him.
"Monster…" It hissed vehemently in a disturbingly human voice. Jobe froze and the axe hovered in mid-air.
"Nothing more than a monster…" It choked again and he could feel it smile.
"Damn right."
And the axe came down.
Yes I know Vanity was a blatant rip off of Sadako from the ring but I was having trouble coming up with a design foe a creature that is men to be the embodiement of self love.
Please don't shoot me…
