For those of you waiting for Casper's grand return…well, here it is.
Chapter 27: What be we but actors on a stage?
Grace picked up her head and feverishly scanned the hallway before her, flicking the bang that was softly stabbing her eye out of her face.
There were no faceless monstrosities staring back at her, only a short hallway that gave the impression that the hospital's janitor had packed up his bags with the rest of the town's citizens when they all decided to do an exodus en mass.
Jobe shakily rose to his feet, collapsing into the nearest dust-caked wall as his leg sang in bitter protest.
"I guess we need to find where they keep all the medical stuff here…" Grace commented in a far away voice as she eyed the darkness suspiciously, as if at any moment it she expected it to scream 'boo!'
"Grace, we're in a hospital. I really don't think it'll take us too long." He could practically see her rolling her eyes through the back of her head.
"Good, then let's patch you up and get outta here. This place can't be healthy and the sooner I see the last of this town, the better." She fell in behind Jobe as he began to shakily work his way along the wall, there shoes clacking numbly against the tiled floor. She shivered, feeling as though she was wondering deeper and deeper into some ancient mausoleum, a festering house of old decay. The place certainly smelt dead enough…
Jobe had always hated hospitals with some deep, unfathomable dread to the extent that when he was young, he'd almost put himself in an early grave after his appendix ruptured, insisting that he had nothing but a stomachache while his own body slowly poisoned itself.
It wasn't the doctor's or any of their questionable methods of curing whatever ailed the body, in fact Jobe had never before been able to place a finger on what it was that terrified him so.
But now he could.
It was the smell. In Silent Hill's nightmarish atmosphere it had amplified it to the point where the foul odour singed the skin in Jobe's nose, the overpowering scent of harsh chemicals and familiar aesthetic tang made his head spin. But there was something else that made him want to tare his nose from his face, a deeper stench that lay just beneath the acidic medical reek.
The smell of sickness.
Each time he breathed in, his mind harped back to the god-awful stink that occupied the sewer tunnels that ran haphazardly beneath Silent Hill's street like dormant basilisks.
"Huh?" A voice pushed Jobe's scrambled thoughts out of his head.
"I said why don't we try this one, first door I've seen that looks as though we just have a hope of opening it." She winced as Jobe's flashlight caught her face, momentarily illuminating it a ghostly white as he made a move towards the door. In that short space of time, no longer than a single heart beat, he saw how the town had already begun to wear away at her. Wide, dusty, bloodshot eyes had caught his, looking as though they hadn't blinked in a long for fear that would be all the time the darkness around them needed to swallow her up.
The door handle clicked obediently as Jobe twisted it, the forging sound breaking the wan image that had burnt itself into his mind's eye. Grace bit her lip as she watched Jobe slowly draw the fire-axe from his belt, pushing the door open inch by inch and peering desperately through the ever widening crack. After a taught moment, she saw his posture loosen considerably.
"C'mon, it's empty." The pair slunk in like two small children moving through their house in the dead of night only if they were caught, their punishment would be a hell of a lot worse that a tanned hide.
The room opened out into a dank square, both walls lined with neglected, unforgiving beds that did nothing to entice you to sit on them with full confidence you wouldn't contract a skin disease but to be frank, Jobe didn't give a damn about that as he flopped onto the nearest one.
Ignoring the springs that jabbed at his ass through the crusty sheets, he watched Grace as she rummaged through a lonely cupboard, the only other occupant of the dreary room besides the brick-like beds and themselves.
The woman's brow furrowed as she scanned the contence of the dusty shelves, the grey powder multiplying out of control and colonising every inch of visible wood. Most of the bottles were caked with the stuff in rich layers so thick she couldn't read the tiny print and she didn't recognise the bare few that were still legible.
'Well what did you expect? To find a box claiming to cure wounds caused by the Pillsbury Dough-Boy? Way to go, Grace.' She would have continued this self-scolding for never paying attention in those first aid lessons when something else caught her attention. Grace pulled her head out of the cupboard to make sure she wasn't hearing things.
She wasn't.
Every second, the crisp, regular sound of hard shoes slapping against the hospital's tiled floor grew ever louder and the sound of voices now floated up the long hallway into the room. Grace felt her heart skip a beat.
Jobe' s head also pricked up at the approaching sound, his face contorted as he tried to make out the voices but Grace never gave him the chance.
"Quick, hide!" She hissed sharply, her hushed words cutting the air. Jobe's mouth opened to question but the look on her face silenced him. If her words hadn't pleaded with him then the expression on her face sure did as she stood fidgeting anxiously on the spot, she looked as though she'd seen a ghost.
The footsteps were notably closer, the raised voices bouncing madly off the wall. From their tone, Jobe wasn't too sure he wanted to meet the owners either.
"Where?" He asked, glimpsing about the room. There was nowhere that you wouldn't stand out against the barren backdrop. Grace chewed her lip frantically, the very same question on her mind and then she did something Jobe would never have thought she would.
She dove under the nearest bed, slipping into the shadows and out of view, the cold floor biting through the thin tank top she'd donned that morning. From under the bed, she watched as Jobe followed suite, worming his way (with a little more difficult) under the opposite bed. He'd barley had time to turn off the flashlight and drag his feet into the darkness before the door was thrown fully open.
From his hiding place, Jobe watched the pair of men's shoes flap their way into the room, one pair notably larger than the other.
"I hope you know I am thoroughly disappointed in you, my boy." Jobe instantly recognised the voice as that of the Southern preacher whose acquaintance he'd made in the church what felt like years ago. He would have crawled out from under the bed there and then but the shady image of Grace stopped him.
The larger pair of shoes shifted uncomfortably.
"I am sorry zat I have failed you, Father…"
Casper's tail-tell accent floated down from up high.
"No Casper, It's not that…but can you just imagine my disappointment when I received that phone call from you telling me you had the girl in your company, only to find you wondering about this town like a lost sheep on your own? It is crushing to say the least…" Parker's feet shifted around, clacking dryly against the dirty floor. "We're so close now, my boy" Richard's voice began to rise with an angry excitement. "I can almost taste it now but thanks to your bumbling efforts, we now have three wild cards to take care of."
"Three?" Casper sounded as confused as Jobe felt. Parker's feet stopped pacing.
"Well first, there's that brat of Sister Wolf's who's been as receptive as a brick wall to our teachings. I don't see why the woman takes so much interest in her, even though she can exert some sort of control over her at times. She's a lost cause if I ever made acquaintance with one."
"Sister Wolf has very poor judgment…" Casper cut in, his comment sending Parker into a fit of hysterics, the almost manic sound echoing around the room.
"HAHAhaha…amen to that, amen to that, but still, we must respect her decision. Anyway, the second has very recently made his way into this town. A man named Jobe"
"Jobe? I have met this very man. I had no idea he vas of any importance but I sent him to zee church…" Father Parker's cool tone quenched Casper's rant.
"And I am so very grateful that you intervened in this way. Thanks to you, we were able to direct him to his… final destination if you will, in hope that he would awaken from the fantasy he's buried himself in. Unfortunately, he still seems to be living in ignorance…" There was a creak as the mattress above Jobe sagged, its groan accompanied by a sigh from the Father as he sat down.
"And the of course, there's your Grace…" Jobe felt the breath catch in his lungs at the sound of his recent aquatance's name. He glanced across the floor at the woman who seemed to be listening to the conversation with visibly growing horror.
"Well, you know all about her, don't you Casper? And you're going to find her again for me, aren't you?"
"Zat bitch ruined my life!" With a roar, the gentle natured Casper rounded on Parker, his shoes squealing on the slick floor. "I'm going to find her and deliver her to God personally, even if it takes mien last breath to do it!"
Grace tried to stop the choked scream, the shocked mumble escaping through the hand she vainly slapped over her mouth to repress it. The muffled whimper broke through, no louder than a whisper.
But it was loud enough.
Suddenly, everything went deathly quiet.
"What in the name of all things holy was that?" Parker sat up, straining his ears. Grace clamped her eyes shut, praying with all her might that they hadn't heard her.
'ohpleaseohpleaseohplease'
She opened her eyes, in hope she would be able to make some sort of communication with Jobe…only to find a very different pair of hard eyes staring back at her.
"Vell look at what we have here!"
This time, she let the scream free.
Jobe was in the act of springing from his hiding place when three turns of events halted him, all initiated by Casper's hand. It shot under the bed, splaying out like a huge spider making a mad grab for its pray, his long bony fingers just kissing Grace's cheek as she wormed her way further back under the bed. In wild desperation like that of a bated beast in its death throes, she lashed out the only way she could, catching one of the spindly, eager fingers and biting down on it so hard that even the muscles she didn't know existed in her jaw sung.
It had the desired effect.
The hand was snapped back as Casper reeled himself backwards, howling with a bastard mixture of agony and surprise right into Father Parker who had been in the midst of rising. The two collided, tumbling in a mass of limbs back on to the bed that squealed like a stuck pig, caving under their combined weight. Jobe had made the unfortunate decision to raise his head just at that precise moment, receiving the full brunt of their fall as the web of springs above him crashed down on his head, setting off an explosion of colourful pain inside his skull.
Grace had already pulled herself free from her hiding place and bolted for the door, tearing into the dark corridors of the hospital by the time they'd hit the bed.
"What are you waiting for?" Richard screamed at the man who lay across him, momentarily transfixed by his bloodied finger. "GET HER!"
Casper snapped his mind away from his stinging digit, ignoring the slow, pulsating sensation as if his very heart beat within it and leaped up from the bed. Parker watched him go with a sneer.
"Idiot" He muttered to himself as he rose, dusting off his black shirt before striding purposely from the room.
All the while, Jobe lay curled up under the bed, clutching his head as if it were about to detonate. By the time the mist of pain had cleared enough for him to see straight, he was completely alone. No Parker, no Casper and most importantly, no Grace…
With the clogs in his mind still whirling as he tried to make sense of the conversation he'd just born witness to, Jobe staggered out the room but there was one thing that shone like a scorching light of clarity. Parker had used him, yet another actor to add to the cast list along with Casper.
Jobe felt his face warp into a wrathful snarl as he limbered down the hallway as fast as he could carry himself but another question raised its head: WHY?
It was only after he turned the first corner that he realised that he had no idea which way Grace had gone.
A/N: Yes, Jobe should probably be dead by now…but then, what would be the fun in that? Oh, and the drowned made its original appearance in part 14, falling apart.
