And here's the conclution to this super long chapter… and I really felt I could have done better when it came to exacuting it. I don't know, around the midway point I think I really lost it and it's been tormenting me ever since. A thanks to beethoven's moonlight sonata. I think I may have gone completely insane before I finished writing this without it. Oh, and check out EPO's new fic, tis very, very good stuff.
I'll be quite now.
Chapter 34: The Malebolge (part 2)
'Okayyyyyy…'
Doctor Drake stopped, blinking stupidly as he stated into the solid black rectangle that lay behind the heavy door he'd pulled open. He'd jumped, almost expecting the lightless air to reach out and grab him, ripping him from the ground he stood upon, but the darkness did nothing but stared back. A combination of lack of sleep, overdosing on coffee in hope of making up for it and dealing with the criminally insane on a daily basis tends to make those more sensitive souls a little on the edgy side, and Drake was no exception to the rule.
'Someone left the light off…' The little voice that occupied the doc's head piped, stating the painfully obvious as his hand scurried over the wall to the little light switch.
'click'
Harsh, stark light flooded the small, featureless room, pouring relentlessly in from the ceiling. Drake squinted, trying to stop the bright, white glare that seemed to radiate from every inch of the room frying his eyeballs in their very sockets.
Well, almost every inch…
Something twitched in the corner.
Michel's (still stinging) eyes fell upon the small ball of curled up wreck of a human that had buried itself between the two walls.
'So this must be the infamous 'miss Crisp' Whittle was harping on about…' Drake mused, but the longer he analysed the lone occupant of the room, the more his 'friend's' story stuck in his throat. How could this scrawny girl cause all that chaos in the entrance hall? She looked… well… so pathetic.
The dark mess of greasy hair shifted, lifting up from the crossed folds of her bonded arms, a cloudy, grey eye languidly falling on the doctor. It barely seemed to be able to acknowledge his existence, but something in the blank gaze set the man's teeth on edge.
Drake suddenly thought back to the time when he'd been very, very small, to a time when the thought of working in a loony bin (but you could never use the 'l' word here, politically incorrect, ya know?) would have made him laugh so hard, he would have given himself a stitch. This excuse of a girl all scrunched up before him reminded him of a cat he'd once found in the dark recesses of the shed just beyond his house, lying in a bed of dust clotted with its own mess. The poor, wretched creature had been on the brink of death, thanks to a piece of metal that had managed to embed itself in its chest and was leeching the very life from it. The young Drake had approached the broken creature with only the best intentions at heart, but the second his hand had crossed into the dying creature's personal space, it sprung back into life and nearly removed the boy's hand in the process. Maybe it didn't appreciate what he was trying to do, or maybe it just wanted to die with a shred of dignity still intact.
Drake sensed that underneath this placid and not entirely 'with it' visage, there was something much darker that would lash out with far less mercy than that cat if anyone even attempted to approach her, and Drake could just jump with joy at the fact that this job fell to him.
"Miss Orosco?"
No response came from the girl.
"Miss Orosco?" Michel tried again but actually putting a little effort in this time, but was still not rewarded with even a hint of acknowledgement.
"Angela!?"
"Huh?" The girl twitched, snapping out of whatever brain dead state of mind she'd subsumed to. Her face turned up to his and in that moment, he stopped, suddenly rooted to the spot as if an army of invisible tendrils had sprouted through the floor, ensnaring his feet.
"I…"
The hospital had its fair share of burn victims but he'd never, not in all his years of being a doctor seen anything on par with this but just as his eyes grew accustom to these warped features, her head ducked back into the crook of her folded arms.
"…I just have to ask you a few questions. Do you mind?"
Nothing. Looks like that was the closest thing to a conversation he was going to get out of this particular patient.
"Is there really a choice?"
Eureka. This had to be something of a breakthrough despite how negative the croaky voice sounded.
"I'm afraid you do, hospital policy, wouldn't you know."
"…Sorry"
Angela stole a glance from between the rills of the canvas jacket as the doctor took a few tentive steps towards her, pen and note board at the ready and poised to scribble down anything to damn her to this room for the rest of her natural life. If she said nothing, they'd keep her here, but on the other side of the penny, if she said too much, they'd keep her here.
Talk about a catch twenty-two.
"Now, if I'm not mistaken, you were found on the outskirts of Silent Hill. Is that information correct?"
"yes…" Oh god, from that one worded answer, he was already scratching out lengthy notes. She was never going to get out of here during her natural lifetime if he kept going at this rate.
"I see…" Drake looked up from what Virgil estimated was half a page of condemning text. "Were you living there?"
She nodded, but this seemed to supply him with all the more to write about…
"For how long?"
The girl shifted uncomfortably.
"Two years? I-I don't really know…"
"And while you were there, you didn't happen to experience anything of a paranormal nature?"
Virgil hadn't meant to laugh, but she really hadn't seen that one coming. The doctor looked up at her for the first time since that initial, awkward glance. She quickly stopped, trying to work out if there was anyway she could kick herself without him noticing it and making a note of her 'self harming nature'. Not that she was into all that. Ha.
"No… why would you ask that?" Wow, that even sounded painful forced but the girl breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the doctor lay his o so very busy pen to rest on the clip board. No more note taking for the moment then, it seemed.
"I'll be honest with you, you're not the first person we've had from that town who's been emitted here. There have been scores of people like you, hell I think we even have a cop from these parts, who've come in here raving about monsters, fog and gods. All of that can't be coincidence, so we're embarking on a study into-" But whatever it was these fine men of medicine were going to be examining was lost as the room suddenly fell into darkness.
"What the hell?" In the pitch black that had been thrown over them like some blanket, Angela listened to the sounds of frantic movement as her interrogator made towards the door, feet scuffing against the padded floor. "Something must have blown a fuse…" He muttered, trying to reassure himself more than the girl as he strained the minute muscles in his eyes, trying to get them to adjust to the sudden dark as he blindly stumbled towards the door. Where the hell was it? He couldn't see a damn thing, surely he should have hit into a wall by now…Had the room suddenly grown, stretching out into it's dark, endless borders in the absence of light?
'Don't be an idiot.'
But then, as if by magic, there was light, he white beam coming tumbling through the one exit that Drake had been hunting so desperately for. The man froze, blinking like a deer caught in headlights as his pupils shrunk to pin heads, trying to shut out the sudden flare.
Someone stood silhouetted in the rectangular frame, black as black on their white background.
Angela squinted, whishing she could see at least something in the sudden haze that singed her optic nerves, but she could still hear perfectly fine as her ears caught onto the doctor's rising voice, its clam tone barely covering for the cracking hysteria it tied to mask.
"Whittle? Is that you, damn it, what the hell is going on? The light are on the fritz and-"
"I'm sorry to have to interrupt you like this, buddy," The new arrivals voice cut in the smug tones identifying it unmistakably as Whittle, effortlessly slipping like a sheet of cold ice over Drake's panicky jumble of words. "But Miss. Orosco doesn't belong here."
"Huh?" For a brief tick of time, Michael let the act he was in some degree of control drop as his brain tried to compute what Whittle had said. It didn't gel, not by any stretch of the imagination, and this particular man's behaviour (which seemed even more bizarre than usual, if such a thing was humanly possible) was threatening to drive him to distraction.
"What the hell is that meant to mean? We haven't had time to even annualise her."
Angela was dragged up from the hopeless heap she'd collapsed into, yanked by the rough collar of the jacket by growing curiosity, hand in hand with a slowly growing sense of dread. Something wasn't right, she could practically feel the bad vibes pulsate through the air like seismic waves as the silence between the increasingly irritable Drake and Whittle grew.
"Believe it or not, she has more pressing engagements else where…"
"Is this meant to be one of your jokes!? I really don't have the-"
'CRACK'
The outline of Drake jerked, going oddly ridged as his rant disintegrated into a wet splutter but Whittle seemed oblivious to Michael's loss of speech, his own voice rising over the gargling chokes.
"Things are finally coming together and it is crucial that she is returned to Silent Hill a.s.a.p. And, I'm afraid that it is we who do not have time for you."
Something bubbled on Drake's lips, but that was the best comeback he could offer, and as Virgil shifted to get a better view of the two, she saw the reason why.
And it would have been enough to make most people scream.
Whittle's fore arm shot out from his body, disappearing into the shadows of Drake's oddly dark chest, the unnaturally white coat seemed to have lost it's pristine sheen. At first the girl had put it down to a trick of the light, but that didn't explain where the rest of Whittle's hand seemed to have vanished to, or the reason why that dark patch of shadow appeared to be spreading out from that point.
However, when the answer to both those questions finally came, struck home with disturbing clarity.
That black stain wasn't a shadow and the reason why Whittle's hand seemed to have slipped from sight was because it was buried deep in Drake's stomach.
His elbow twitched, ripping his bloodied hand free of the warm, living cavity it had created.
"….oh….god…." Was all Drake managed through clenched teeth, a sliver of blood and saliva dribbling through them as he watched the limb tare itself free of his body. He cast one last glace at the girl he would never have the chance to help and wondered if he would have even be able to anyway before he collapsed, sinking into the white sea of floor and letting it absolve him completely as his legs forgot how to function, the nerves controlling them turning off one by one.
That scared face, twisted in confusion was the last thing his eyes would ever see.
"Man, he had to be the most serious person to ever grace god's green earth. I think hell would happily accommodate Eskimos before he learnt how to have a good laugh…"
Angela snapped her eyes of Drake's still warm corpse, the wide orbs locking on the shadowed figure towering over his fallen body, contemplating their gory hand. In the thick darkness of the room, it looked oddly out of proportion, but somehow, Virgil doubted it was a trick of the light.
"But for all his professionalism, he would never be able to ask you the truly vital question…" It trailed of, letting the hand with its weird, elongated fingers that looked so very brittle slink back into the shadows as it fell to his side. Even before Whittle lifted his head from his fallen peer, Angela already knew that the town had sought her out, for it missed its own. When the light caught the doctor's features as his face turned to hers, what she saw was enough to silence the final whispers of the tiny voice of hope that begged it not to be so.
His face was gone, the light catching nothing but a smooth surface as if someone had let his dark flesh grow wildly out of control, smothering each and every feature.
Save the mouth.
"Why do you fight us? Why do you insist on running away? Are you really as a afraid of the inevitable as you look?"
She bleated, the sound that escaped her mouth reeking of fear as she shuffled back, trying to get away from this walking obscenity, but of course, this room wasn't designed to let people run away and the straight jacket's soul perpus was to render her harmless. There was nothing she could do and she knew it. So did the doctor, and those lonely lips pulled themselves into a malicious little grin as he took a step towards her, growing wider and wider. They rode up, skin wrinkling as they parted to reveal those horridly white teeth that had multiplied like bacteria since the last time we made their aquatince. Yet still the lips parted, the corners of his mouth going taught as slowly the mouth grew past the point where his nose should have been, up past the halfway point of his face.
"Now, now, don't look so scared." The crinkled mask of skin rippled as it smiled that obscene and monstrous smirk, the horde of teeth jumping as he laughed. Those long, delicate fingers by his side sprung back into life, creeping into his pocket as he spoke. "After all, I'm not here to hurt you, just to take you home…" The spider like hand crawled from the folds of his coat, clutching something in its tangled mass of fingers. "Where you belong," Angela's eyes went wide when the light caught the hypodermic needle's pin-like shaft, the metal winking maliciously at her from the dark. "Where you've always belonged…"
The words had barely died on his lips, coming to a hissing close before his other hand sprung at her, the long fingers probing the air for anything to snare in their long web of digits. She swerved beyond them, ducking under the warped arm that seemed to be as elongated as the fingers it branched into, diving suicidaly for the other side of the room.
But the thing called Whittle had seen that one coming from a long way off.
He jerked his leg out, clipping the girl's own as she blundered past. With a yell, she tipped forward; helpless to pull herself back with arms pinned to her side and fell past the point of no return. Virgil ploughed gracelessly into the floor, crashing into it like a beakless freight train. The air cracked out of her and she lay there gasping, trying to work out which way was up in the darkness as Whittle laughed on, the vindictive sound flooding every inch the tiny room with its infectious madness.
She lifted her head, something lukewarm and wet clinging to her cheek as her head rose from the ground, tracing down the odd texture of her burnt skin as she looked up. A thin vein of moisture found its way to the corner of her mouth and pierced through her sealed lips, revealing its metallic tell-tail flavour to the girl as it swam over her tongue. The crumpled form of the fallen Drake swam into focus and filled her vision, removing any doubts over the liquid's red identity.
A shuffle behind her reminded Angela why she'd been trying to run and how sitting here contemplating the tang of Drake's spilt blood was severally cutting chunks out of her life span.
The memory of those dagger like fingers buried within Drake's chest was all it took to kick start her back into life.
She made to move, shifting up from the tangles of Drake's now red coat but that was as much of an escape she managed to make before Whittle's gross hand slammed into the centre of her back, pinning her back to the ground as he let his nails pierce the thick fabric of the jacket.
Virgil thrived, kicking wildly in the air in vain hope of hitting her assailant but he shifted out of reach, digging his knee into her spin, grinding it into her vertebra as he endeavoured to hold her still without losing the syringe grasped in the hand that wore a glove of blood. His other hand found the back of her neck and clamped it in vice like grip, forcing her head back into the puddle of blood. Ignoring the bubbling cries of protest, he held the injection aloft, admiring the way the dark liquid sloshed in its glass container before plunging it into his captive arm. The sound she made was just to die for.
"ARRRGH" Virgil arched, trying to get anywhere else but here as the long nose of metal bit into her arm, shattering the nerve it punctured. She opened her eyes, looking for some way of escape.
The was when she saw the pen that Drake had once used so generously lying only inches from her face, framed by its owner's own blood.
The makings of a plan began to formulate, but these were cut short as Whittle's thumb slammed down on the needle's plunger, depositing the thick concoction directly into her blood stream. She hollered again, her veins feeling as though they were nothing but tubes of ice as the mixture crept through them and the who limb turned numb and lifeless. Desperate eyes fell back on the pen… If she was going to do something, it was going to have to be soon, already her body had begun to turn against her as the contence of the syringe pumped its way around her system.
Angela shuddered as her tongue dipped into the pool of blood, the tang of the once warm fluid made her want to heave as she wrapped it around the stainless steel pen, drawing it in towards her mouth.
"There, isn't that better?" Whittle cooed, shifting off the now still girl. He rolled her over, scooping her up in those bizarre arms as he worked on picking her up. This was going to be-
His train of though came to a crashing halt as he found himself staring into a pair of wide, black eyes that glared up at his faceless features. He dropped his gaze and was caught on the pointed tip of the fountain pen clutched between her teeth; her mouth pulled back in a vindictive grin that was an odd parody of the one he'd been wearing only moments before.
"Wha-"
She turned her head, rocking it back as she took aim and darted towards his neck, pen first. The carved nib had no problems finding its fleshy target, burrowing deep into the network of veins and arteries that were so exposed.
If Whittle had still had eyes, they surly would have gone wide with shock.
The man leapt up, fingers clutching at the metal shaft slick with his own blood, but those over long fingers just couldn't catch onto it no matter how they groped.
Angela drew herself up, resisting the temptation to collapse back onto the ground as the ground beneath dipped violently to the left. Through eyes that had lost the will to focus, blurred by whatever the hell was now circulation around her body, she saw the blurry form of Whittle bang into the wall, clutching at the pristine surface as he weakly attempted to hold himself up. However, the walls it seemed, were going to have nothing to do with this and were more than happy to let him slide down to the floor and let him paint them crimson as bloody fingers tried to find something to support themselves with.
The girl shot the man one last glance, just to make sure he wasn't going to get up before heading for the door, or at least trying to. Suddenly, walking in a straight line had become the most daunting task in the world. It felt as though some gremlin infiltrated her head and was happily playing havoc with the carefully constructed circuits that made up her brain, cross wiring anything it could lay its hands upon.
"Shhhhhiiiitttt…" She breathed, taking a dragged step towards the rectangle of light. It felt as though the floor was racing away from breathe her sloe as it sought where to land, threatening to let her trip once again, and this time, there was no way she would be getting up…
'So this is what walking on water must feel like…' She mused, forcing herself to get through that …um thing that…err, what do you call it… separated two rooms.
'Oh god, you're so fucked, you can't even thing straight' She pulled through the doorway, trying to work out where that fresh crop of laughter had sprung from, the world around her merging into one great, incomprehensible smear of white and grey. Angela laughed all the harder when she finally realised that it was coming from her very own mouth. She was still roaring with this mad delirium when the floor rushed up to mete her as her shaking legs finally gave way.
8 8 8
"Shut UP!"
But the figure to whom the cry of protest was directed to blatantly ignored it, letting lose another high scream, threatening to tare down the four plain walls that made up the room with the shear volume of noise that hammered against them.
The patient growled, flipping onto her back, the creak of her mattress inaudible as yet another piercing cry shattered the air and glowered at the bunk above her with enough venom to burn a hole through it. It was bad enough that she had to sleep on this bed that felt as though its mattress had been stuffed with concrete, but the fact she had to share this tiny little living space with a girl who was as sociable as a howler monkey was enough to make you go crazy…
Oh wait, she already was.
After all, why else would they have thrown her in here and tossed away the key?
The patient slammed her palms over her ears, trying to bock out her roommate's blaring lullaby. If she'd had a pillow, she would have been more than happy to burry her head under it, but then, they didn't give the patients in this ward anything to rest there heads upon while they slept in case they decided they'd had enough with hospital routine and sought another way out rather than a traditional discharge. It was probably a wise decision on the hospital's behalf as well, because this particular patient would have been more that happy to take her pillow and ram in over the screaming girl face and not let up till she'd shut up once and for all.
Gritting her teeth, the woman rolled over once more. It was almost funny to think that once, long ago, she was sitting on the other side of the fence, batting for the other team, if you will. In all her time of working in the police force and making sure people like the girl above her weren't allow to taint the crop of society like a bad apple, she never once though that she'd end up behind the walls of an asylum.
Well, that was until she'd wound up in a sunny little town know to the rest of the world as Silent Hill some seventeen years ago, but Cybil Bennet though that her own name for it suited the quiet little settlement far better.
Hell.
After all, what she'd seen there had easily earned it that title and it had certainly had quite the effect on the young officer, it's talons easily raking through her fragile mind to leave very deep scars, scars deep enough to convince her colleges that the best thing for Cybil would be to lock her up in here after a number of incidents that brought her sanity into question…
'Huh?'
Something had changed in that brief moment that she'd shut her eyes and taken a ramble along memory lane. The screams that she'd been desperately trying to ignore from the moment the overhead light had gone out all those hours ago had finally subsided, but something in the far darkness of the hospital's labarinth-esqu hallways had taken its place.
The former cop sat up (not that the bed did anything to entice her to remain curled up on its o so comfy surface), blinking in the dark as her eyes tried to decode the mass of grey shadows that composed the room.
"Someone's out there…" The surprisingly mousy voice of the screamer rose above the rattling chucks that echoed through the room, whining so shrilly that it sounded as though the whole pipe system was about to tare itself apart, ripping itself free from its tomb of plaster. The only other time she'd heard the hospital's water system make such interesting noises was when the old boiler had been allowed to overheat by a slothful and now redundant janitor, but this was something else altogether. It was almost as if the copper pipes were wailing in, as ridiculous as it sounded, pain.
Cybil strained her ears, and sure enough, the dry, distant sound of feet clacking against the tiled floor could be clearly heard over the shrieks rumbling through the surrounding walls.
'tap tap tap'
The thump of the heavy double doors that separated the different wards echoed up a not to distant hall as whoever was roaming the empty halls barrelled through the heavy metal sheets.
'tap tap tap tap'
No doubt about it, they were drawing closer to this particular room, the gradually rising tempo of their feet slowly gestating with volume as they broke into a run.
'Thump'
It was in their hallway now, picking up speed…
'taptaptaptaptap'
It was moving faster now, the sound of its footfall so close together that it just merged into one, long, break less beat. What on earth could run that fast? In a matter of seconds, it would go streaking past their door as it bolted down the uniform corridor as it continued on its rampage.
And that was when something sparked in the back of Cybil's brain and the feeling of dread that flared from it was enough to make her gasp aloud, for something very bad was going to happen when that thing came upon their room.
"Hey, get away from the d-" but she didn't get a chance to finish before that thing went rumbling past, ripping the door free from its frame as it went. Cybil flinched at the sound of metal and brittle plaster snapping lose, squinting as the light from the outside world illuminated the room with spontaneity of a solar flare.
By the time she looked up, the dust was beginning to slowly settle and the door wasn't any ware to be seen, only to be replaced by a gaping, jagged hole but that wasn't the detail, that caused the patient's heart to skip a beat and thick bile to rise up in her throat.
No, the factor that was responsible for that reaction was the simple fact that her roommate had vanished, torn from the spot she'd been standing on only seconds before.
'Maybe this is all just some nightmare…' Her brain pleaded, frantically employing every strategy to keep its curious body from wondering any nearer to the wide gap in the wall. 'Please, don't go out there…'
But it wasn't working. As if in a trance, Cybil wondered towards it, the sharp chips of plaster that has sprayed through the room nibbling gently at her bare feet as she waded through the puddle of debris. It wasn't like she actually wanted to see what lay beyond the confides of her room, but felt powerless to resist its lure. Something had happened out there and there was no way she could ignore it, go back to bed, roll over and go to sleep. Now that would be crazy.
'You don't want to see what's out there!' It tried again as the woman ducked through the oddly shaped exit but yet again, its advice was ignored.
However, when the woman straightened up and took in the details of her new surroundings, she suddenly found herself wishing she'd stayed inside.
For the world had gone to hell, and taken Cybil with it.
The light overhead flickered, revealing once again the hallways so very twisted features. In the spasmodic flash of pale, yellow light, it was impossible to miss the greasy smears of god knows what congealed on the tiled walls, slowly oozing between the groves of the rubber surface. Gravity, it appeared, held know sway over this living stain as it crawled sluggishly in whatever direction it pleased, collecting in the sharp angle between the wall and the ceiling. One of the veins of the tar like liquid ran across it in a crazy jagged line, collecting on the rim of one of the long overhead lights. The woman watched, mouth ajar as the oily drop grew fat before letting go and hurtling towards the floor, smashing against it in a minute shower of black rain before crawling of towards the wall and starting the whole, eternal process again.
"No…"
She took a step back, transfixed eyes not leaving that spot on the grimy, rusted floor. "It can't be…"
Oh, those words sounded so very insignificant in the moist and clammy air that weighed down on her. Every moment more she spent looking at the twisted surroundings, the harder self control had to dig its nails in to keep her from falling apart, for all those long years of therapy and 'corrective' medication had just come undone in a blink of an eye.
"YOU'RE NOT REAL!" She threw her arms over her face, clamping her eyes shut and praying that it would all just go away somehow. Oh god, it was happening all over again. Deja vu at its most malicious…
And that was when she heard the laughing come echoing from some distant corridor.
Reluctantly, she came out from the protective shell of darkness she'd been trying to hide in, letting her arms drop limply to her side. Was there someone else here with her? Cybil winced and slowly begun to make her way towards the mirthful sound that sounded so out of place in these morbid surroundings.
8 8 8
"BWHAHAHAA!"
'This….is….really….not….funny'But it was. Here she was, lying on the floor rendered absolutely helpless by whatever the hell it was swimming around her bloodstream, slowly cutting her off from the surrounding world. Hell, Angela couldn't even feel the floor beneath her any more and if some twisted creature that inhabited this other side came crawling up to her looking for a free lunch, she wouldn't even be able to run the necessary though processes to even try and deter it with the feeblest nudge.
Virgil tore her lids open, and sure enough, there was something towering over her, peering down from what looked like an unfathomable height from where she lay on the floor. She managed to let out one final burst of laughter before slipping into the dark depths of this drug-educed unconsciousness, eyes swimming back in their sockets.
From where she stood, Cybil watched as the girl went out with a smile on her face.
Needles to say, we can deduce what happened here, after all, this broken enforcer of the law was the same one that Jobe and Grace happened to stumble upon beyond the hospital's tainted perimeter. We already know where this part of this story is going so let us skip back to the time to which we belong for these three have a story that is still to spin out, even if most of it has been unravelled.
As for officer Bennet? Her story has been told but let us just say that she, like so many learnt that the town of Silent Hill rarely releases those it has touched, staying with you like a bad smell that no amount of soap and water will ever purge, for they are truly are the damned.
Can you give me an Amen to that?
