Ah, that took way too long to get done. Please, accept my appologies and I hope this was worth the wait. The rest of this chapter should be up sooner.

Chapter 42: Sin's of the Father

Part 1: Revelations

Jobe clapped a hand to his mouth. Despite all he'd seen in the thirty-one hours since this horrific odyssey had begun, nothing had made his stomach turn quite like that. Shocked dumb, the man stared wide eyed at Parker who was still grinning ear to ear despite the knife hilt standing proudly out from his unwavering hand.

"Oh my god…" He rattled, the gag of words barely making it through the criss-cross of fingers strapped over his lips.

"Your god?" Parker tilted his head to one side, looking so sure of himself that it almost hurt. "Your god is nothing but a myth, a fairy-tail cooked up by men who wanted to rule the world through fear and power. Tell me, my boy, when has your god ever dained to show his face?" He paused, raising his free hand to his ear. "Is that never I hear you say? Have you ever even once wondered why that was?" He paused again, waiting for an answer Parker knew he'd never hear. "Because he dose not exist."

Jobe tried to ignore the lead weight that had settled in the depths of his churning gut.

"So how can you say that your god is real after that? I don't see her curing the lame and walking across water…"

He felt himself begin to falter as he noticed Claudia's slowly shaking head.

"Don't you see yet?" She began mournfully. "This town is more than enough proof to justify Her existence…"

Jobe must have been pulling a particularly 'what the hell' expression for the woman sighed, almost allowing herself to roll her eyes in frustration. "It shares her almighty power for the gods of old have held sway over this sacred land for longer than any of us can even begin fathom. They have left their mark upon Silent Hill, and even if it may only have a mere fraction of Her capabilities, you cannot deny the divinity of it."

"You'd call those monsters out there divine?"

"Of course I would. They have been created in the image of man's imperfections and doubts, showing us our faults."

Jobe snorted.

'I wouldn't call some brainless eyesore that's sole purpose was to eat anything that moved holy…'He muttered bitterly to himself, but Parker must have seen his lip twitch.

"I sense that you still lack the faith that you so desperately need, my boy." His eyes switched from Jobe to the long trickle of ruby blood that spiralled down the knife's serrated edge, collecting in a fat, liquid sphere at its tip. "I think a little demonstration of the power you so readily mock is in order…"

The droplet of blood finally gave to gravity and hurtled towards the ground, hitting the carpet with a soft 'plip'.

"Behold, as I am re-born in Her faultless image…"

Parker grinned with unbridled ecstasy.

"I want to hear you scream hallelujah."

There was a pause, and in the second it took the dark spot to soak into the thick carpet, horrid suspicion dug its nails into Jobe's back and turned him stiff. Something very, very bad was going to happen. Suddenly, the man wanted to turn tail and run screaming from the church before whatever was coming to pass caught up with him and tore him to bloody shreds. Hell, even the lazy, heavy air seemed to have cracked into life and begun racing towards the sealed door in a desperate attempt to flee before all hell broke lose.

But then, it did before anyone could escape.

Virgil had clambered to her feet, still gripping her pillar as if it were some sort of saviour when she felt the carpet ripple between her toes like solid water. She gasped, but the sound was mercilessly drowned out by wet tear as something burst through the floor beneath Parker, only the floor never truly broke as it ruptured. Instead, the carpet rose up, splitting like taunt skin as a hump of black tendrils ruptured rose up in a towering mass and effortlessly engulfed the man who stood at the centre of the writhing mass. He didn't even flinch as it swallowed him whole, sinking back beneath the carpet just as suddenly as it had come and leaving not a trace of its existence. The red carpet rippled again like a pool of blood as it flattened out and the calm returned.

Jobe heard the odd moan that creaked up his throat as he stared at the spot where Parker had stood only seconds before, blinking furiously as his brain re-played the Father's final moment's again and again.

That couldn't have just happened…

"Wha-" The words came out in a jumbled mess. Jobe looked desperately at Claudia who'd somehow managed to retain her cool despite the fact the floor had just eaten her co-conspirator as part of some obscure ceremony. "What the hell just happened to him?"

"He has returned to the dust, just as God did once she created Paradise and like her, he will rise again. Once you behold this final miracle, you will have no choice but to accept your pre-ordained place in God's resurrection." Her gaze dropped, softening as it fell away. "I am truly sorry that you will have to go through this, but you have left no other option open to us."

Jobe would have laughed at her right there and then if she hadn't sounded so sincere. However, even if he could, he never got the chance.

"What's t-t-that noise?" Virgil moved away from the pillar, her wide and fearful eyes trying to look in every direction at once, trying to settle on something that just wasn't there. Jobe opened his mouth to ask the girl what she was on about but no words ever left his hanging jaw for within seconds, he could hear it too.

The sound was so quiet that even the soft rustle of his own breathing overwhelmed the almost inaudible buzzing hum. Where was it coming from? Jobe looked over his shoulder but saw nothing save the old, familiar interior of the church smiling warmly back at him, trying to ensure him that nothing was out of the ordinary.

He didn't have to concentrate quite so hard on the sound to hear it now; he could even begin to make out some of its detail. It wasn't a buzz as the man had first though, but rather a muted scream that sounded as though someone had twisted it out of shape until the voice cracked under its own warped distortion like feed back on a faulty microphone.

Virgil flinched at it, her hands itching to plug her ears but stayed stubbornly at her side. It was defiantly getting louder. Jobe suddenly found his mind lingering on the memory of a train station and how the slow rumble of an oncoming train would slowly fill the cramped platform as it drew nearer and nearer…

What was going to come out of the tunnel this time?

Claudia closed her eyes and tilted her head back, absolved by the wail that had gestated to a painful volume as she locked her hands in prayer.

"He returns to us…" Was all she managed to sat before her voice was smothered by the ever growing scream that seemed to be coming from all directions at once, bombarding those with in the church with its rising shrike. Suddenly, it was clearer than before, as if the screamer had been yelling into a pillow that had suddenly been ripped away, letting the hideous sound reach its true pitch.

Something shifted in the corner of Jobe's eye next to his foot. He looked down and felt the breath catch in his throat as his eyes focused on the floor, swelling in their sockets. Something was rising up from it, the red of the carpet rolling off the writhing form like liquid wax as it pushed itself up through the floor like it was nothing more than water.

It was a face, but not like any that belonged to any normal human being.

Jobe stepped back, trying not to look at the gnarled features that were a misshapen parody of Parker's as withered, twig like fingers dragged themselves through the crimson fabric only a foot away from the still rising head, snapping at the air with spasmodic jerks as they struggled to latch onto anything.

Gasping like a fish, it pushed itself up from the carpet on broken hands and strained against the floor's grip as it wheedled yet more of its twisted form through. With each passing second, yet more of it would emerge as the red trickled down it like blood off a new-born. His skin, once so full of colour had become spotted with dark patches of rot and hung emptily from his bones in hollow folds like some living robe, hanging between legs that had lost all their meat.

But it wasn't like he needed them to stand any more.

The vines of stringy muscle that had drugged him under now held him up, sprouting from random points of his body like confused umbilical cords, connecting him to whatever it was that lurked under the church's floor boards like an unborn child to its mother. They slithered up through the floor, pushing the monster up until its limp feet were free of the carpet's watery grip and hovering inches above it.

Parker slowly raised his arms out, the muscles twitching as the vines guided them into place and all the while, the thing that had once been a man still howled. Dangling like that, he looked like a hideous mock of Christ on the Cross, and that was more than the man before him could bear.

Jobe shirked back, tripping over his feet and fell backwards shrieking.

"Ohgodohgodohgodohgod…"

"Behold, see the power of our dormant God and renounce these foolish misconceptions you hold so dear!" Claudia cried, the lunacy of unbridled joy creeping into her voice as it crackled with excitement.

Parker lowered his broken head and, for the first time since he'd risen like some decaying plant from the carpet, took in Jobe as the man desperately tried to scramble away from the thing that swayed above the floor as if caught in a nonexistent breeze, but his hands and feet could never carry him fast enough. When those two, dull orbs locked on to Jobe, he screamed for all he was worth as the glassy eyes, void of the liveliness that had once filled them raked over him. Just the feel of them on his skin was enough to make every bit of it crawl as if those cold, slimy vines were wrapping around him, slithering like a horde of worms as they probed and inched their way over every bit of flesh. The bile rose in his throat and it was all Jobe could do to stop his watery gut from chucking its content back out through his mouth.

The man groped madly for the sword he dropped as he'd fallen to the floor but all his blind hand could find was empty fistfuls of air and fabric.

Parker glided forward, the tendrils slithering through the carpet that melted before them, rippling as they carried their monstrous load towards Jobe. More sluggishly pulled themselves up from the floor around the fallen priest as he closed in on the quaking man, reaching out for him with withered arms that were nothing more that bones, the knots of fingers at their end twisting and writhing as they eagerly explored the air for its prey.

One tendril budded next to his hand, licking the air as it tried to find something to lock on to. Jobe managed to tare his eyes away from Parker's hideous form in time to see it brush against his hand, wrapping itself tightly around his wrist like some fat leech as the coil tasted the warmth of his skin.

It felt even worse than he'd imagined.

The slick membrane of the tendril bulged and tensed as the muscles within it drew an ever tighter hold around his hand until the bones within grinded together, but oddly, Jobe felt no pain…

In fact, he didn't feel anything.

His hand may as well have died, for the nerves that should have been screaming as they were crushed together had fallen silent under the tendrils touch. The only thing that remained was the coldness of their touch…

Oh god, were they cold .It felt as though his hand had been plunged into a bucket of ice, and slowly the sensation began crawling farther up his arm, muting the limb as it went.

Bit by bit, it was killing him. Jobe forgot all about the sword and screamed. In that moment, all the concise thoughts ravaging his brain shut off as it sub came to the animalistic urge to survive. Panic welled, threatening to split his skin. He had to get away.

Now.

A vein wrapped itself round his shoe, dragging him ever closer to the leering form of Parker. The freak now lent over him, suspended by the army of swaying coils that danced slowly around the preacher. A gnarled hand shifted into Jobe's vision, only inches from his face, the gnarled and knotted fingers splaying out as they drew closer and closer to him. Jobe yelp, the sad, pitiful sound catching in his throat as he strained against the un-dead vines that had somehow found their way around his neck. This was it, when that hideous, misshapen hand laid itself upon his face, it was all going to be over-

A streak of movement flashed in his peripheral vision, a roar and…

Suddenly, there was a shaft of metal protruding from Parker's face, jutting straight out from the centre of his features that were shaped in a barely recognisable look of utter confusion. Slowly, thick, black blood began to ooze and well around it. The coils froze as if static with the shared shock of their master.

Jobe blinked. His heart slowed from the frantic gallop it had been racing at. Gradually, he brought himself to break away from Parker's face and follow the sharp slice of metal back over his own head until he found himself staring up at Virgil's hand, shaking as it gripped the kantana's hilt.

"I won't let you…" Her trembling voice faded as her body slumped, exhausted and spent. "Nobody could deserve this. Not even him." Sluggishly, she pulled the sword back, the tip slick with blood as she dragged it from the mass of flesh and bone. Jobe flinched as it hit the floor with a heavy 'thunk'. For a moment, everything was blessedly still, until…

"You FOOL!" Claudia spluttered as her clenched hands shook. Her eyes narrowed into two livid slits as she started towards the pair. "Do you have any idea what you have done?" She glanced desperately at Parker's wilted form but stir it did not. "You," She aimed a vehement finger at Virgil. "you have hindered God in such a way that now, she may not be able to bring about Paradise. I gave you something, something wonderful; I gave you a way to serve mankind but through your selfishness, you have damned us all by perverting Envy's-"

A heavy, rusty groan cut through Claudia's voice like a knife. The woman's rant came to a crashing halt when it struck her that neither of the two scraggy humans before her had opened their mouths. Wide eyed, she spun to look at the frozen sculpture of twisted coils and limp limbs to her side…

Only, they weren't so still any more.

Parker twitched, another grunt spewing from the gory mess that was his face. It strained, stretching out its ragged appendages to an almost impossible span as something began to bulge in its throat. The groan cut off wetly as the lump grew, stretching the skin around it until it was fit to rip.

The bile rose in Jobe's throat as he watched the twisted man's spindly body arch back and jerk back into life, and all the while, that hideous lump expanded like some out of control tumour. Jobe clamped a hand over his mouth in an attempt to hold the sick nausea at bay.

'Oh god, it's going to-'

RIP

Parker's throat ruptured, erupting in a shower of gore as the thing swelling in it finally burst through with a high, grating scream. Jobe felt his pupils dilate to the size of pinheads as the crimson mist cleared and his eyes were able to decipher just what it was.

Another head…but this one had discarded any of the human features its predecessor (which had been reduced to a stringy pulp of bone and tissues, the soggy regiments of it hung around Parker's neck) had retained.

Smooth, taunt skin covered the head that seemed to just be an extension of its neck and two tiny, black eyes stared out from the column of skin, blinking the blood out of them. Asides from that, the only other feature on its face was a row of needle like teeth that glared at the world from behind a pair of pulled back lips.

"My, that is so much better!" it crowed in a voice that made Jobe cringe. It sounded like there was a buzz saw or something at the back of Parker's throat, cutting the words as the tumbled out of his inhuman mouth. What made it even worse was that the Southern twang was still audible, something that forced the man to remember that this twisted creature before him had once been a man.

The head/neck twisted, landing on Virgil as it grinned insanely.

"It would seem that you do have some use after all. Remind me to thank you for your most wonderful assistance when this all over…" It said in its mangled voice before hurling a knotted mass of vines at the girl like a balled fist. She didn't even have time to twitch as the huge blur smacked into her like some organic wrecking ball and sent her flying into and through the nearest row of pews with a dry crack of wood.

Jobe stared wide jawed at the wrecked bench. That thing, it had tossed her like a rag-

"What are you doing!?" Claudia too stood staring in disbelief at the wreckage of fractured wood. "Don't you realise just how important that girl is to us? If we lose her, why, you could have jeopardised everything we have worked so hard to achieve! Without all the angels to carry the burden of man's sins, how can they all ever hope to enter Paradise?"

"Oh yes…" The creature called Parker purred, straightening up and letting the tendrils raise it a little higher into the air. "The salvation of man…how utterly careless of me, I'd almost completely forgotten about that…" Claudia frowned, suspicion rising with in her as she watched her co-conspirator from the corner of her eyes. Was it just her imagination or was there a harsh, mocking note in his voice?

"Have you gone utterly mad? How could you possibly forget about our aim?" She asked softly, trying to hide the growing anxiety that threaded to burst from her mouth and betray her.

The creature swivelled, turning on her.

"You, of all people, question my sanity? Oh, Sister Wolf, that is so very rich…" Something malicious glinted in those coal black eyes as it looked down on the woman. He almost couldn't stop the laugh bubbling at the back of his throat from bursting through his inhumane jaw when he saw how sick with livid fury she looked.

snap

"What the hell are you talking about!?" The crack was almost audible as Claudia's tether finally broke with a brittle crunch….but it didn't rattle Parker at all. Instead, he just placed a gnarled finger on his chin in a disturbingly human motion and shook his head at the bristling woman.

"My poor dear, how long is it going to take for your thick skull to absorb the simple fact that you, much like our dear Jobe, have been utterly duped."

The vicious glower melted.

"What?" She asked in a low, quiet voice.

"Oh, I'm really going to have to explain this to you, aren't I?" The creature cocked is smooth head to one side as it delivered a sickly, patronising smile that one might give a child who had just proudly stated that two and two always make a five. "You see, my dear Sister Wolf, after that somewhat disturbing speech you delivered to the higher members of our Order, we decided that something had to be done about you and those nasty, wayward beliefs that were rotting away your brain. After all, you'd just displayed to us the full extent of your insanity by suggesting that even the lowest, most pathetic excuse of a man had the right to walk in our promised land!" The creature thumped its chest indignantly, the last few words it spoke disintegrating into a snarl dripping with bitterness. "Such blasphemy! Why should those disgusting creatures that live in sinful ignorance be allowed a chance at redemption, especially if Paradise is a land reserved for only those who believe in it? Your father, Alessa bless his soul, was right about you, you are nothing but a deluded fool! How could you possibly believe that God would open her arms to the flocks that turn their back on her and scorned her holy name?"

"…" Claudia looked as though someone had just punched her square in the stomach as she grimaced at the volley of words. "But- Every thing you said…I..I thought you believed-"

"HA!" Parker rocked his head back and laughed. "Can't you see or are you as resilient to the practically blinding truth as our dear Jobe? It's soooo painfully simple. My dear, even though you may be something of a thoroughly bad apple, the Order still had a use for you and that wonderful gift you possess. After all, what a waste it would be to let the one person who had the power to located God slip from our grasp..."

Jobe would have thought it impossible for the pallid colour in the woman's skin to fade any more, but with each passing sentence, a little more leaked out.

"So," Parker continued, grinning like a shark. "The big boys decided that if they couldn't make you follow orders and wedge your head up out of the sand, they'd play along with this bizarre fantasy you'd managed wrap yourself up in."

"No…" The woman shook her head in dumb disbelief, as if to rip it free from the iron grip of Parker's words.

"Oh yes," He drawled, enjoying the hiss of the word against his cracked and rancid tongue. "And do you know what they did, my poor, little, misguided wolf?" Claudia couldn't even find the words to answer with. "They appointed someone to feed you the repulsive trash that you were spurting out and dying to hear other's say until your lie seemed to become the absolute truth that you'd always dreamed it to be. That someone was me."

The woman's jaw jutted sharply as she staggered back. Parker might as well have hit her over the head with a sledge hammer for her mind was reeling at a nauseating pace as it tried and failed to come to terms with the harsh facts that had just been crammed into it.

It couldn't be true, it just couldn't…

She looked up at the monstrosity, mad desperation dancing within her pleading eyes.

"But…what about the Sin's? Was that just another deception you played me with, yet another lie you manipulated me with?"

"Ah yes, the sin's…" Parker's jet -black eyes rolled back in their sockets. "You've finally managed to hit the nail on the head. I must admit, they were my own ingenious invention." His lips stretched that little bit further as he giggled like an old, rusty gate begging to be oiled, his skin practically oozed with self-satisfaction. "God, I still can't believe just how readily you swallowed that particular fabrication…"

"Why…" The woman swayed, her ragged sentence barely able to be heard above the wet hiss of the infinite vines slipping over each other as they writhed with restlessness. "Why tell me that it was necessary to bloody my hands…"

"To tell you the truth," The monster's voice drawled with a cruel, forced gayety that seemed so out of place coming from a mouth filled with razor blades. "I was having too much fun watching you suffer with each soul this town corrupted. I couldn't get enough of seeing that nauseating compassion of yours forcing you to weep for total strangers as they disintegrated into nothing but inhuman shadows, and the fact that you believed you were doing it to build some perverted version of our paradise made it all the sweeter. I swear, at times I was having trouble keeping a straight face-"

"You mean I went through all that just so you could make fun of her beliefs?" A cold voice that had been silent all the while sounded, speaking each word with a deliberately slow pace. Parker tossed a gaze over his shoulder to see Jobe staring at him with eyes practically aglow with malice and fists strapped to his side just twitching to tare apart the first thing they could get a hold of. "Was everything I went through some fucking practical joke?"

The creature clicked its tongue impatiently and waved its skeletal, withered hand at the seething man as if Jobe were nothing more than a bothersome fly buzzing around its smooth, featureless head.

"Don't be stupid, my boy. Do you really think I'd waste my time constructing such a detail plan if it were just to carry out vengeful retribution on our ignorant friend here? Don't insult me with that." Parker turned, gracing Jobe with his (almost, but from the unenthusiastic tone in his voice, anyone could tell he would rather resume breaking Claudia down into pieces until they were so small, the human eye couldn't even detect them) undivided attention. "No, there was a point to your suffering. You see, this town and our God are linked through forces even the likes of I cannot understand completely. As one strengthens, so dose the other. Easy as pie, huh?"

Jobe opened his mouth but didn't even get a chance to answer before Parker was off again.

"Now, this here town feeds on fear and pain, and as you experienced, it will exploit anyone it thinks it can leech dry until there's nothing left but a cold, empty shell. If want to see an example of this, just look to those broken benches yonder." Parker jerked his head in the still motionless Virgil's direction, who lay in a tangled mess amongst the wreckage. "If you linger here to long, why, you might just end up as just as the very thing you were trying to hide from, be it you're burning jealously, incurable gluttony or even heated wrath…" Jobe felt his lip twitch as he listened to the beast's oily words.

It had all been for nothing. Once again, he'd been living a total lie.

"So, Envy, you really aren't needed at all anymore. Sure, it was a barrel of laughs to watch you have to come to terms with what it is that lurks beneath your skin, but to tell the god's honest truth, all that happened to you was a taster of the damnation that awaits the rest of the atheistic pigs out there when the time comes for the worthy to ascend to paradise." Jobe gritted his teeth, the bone white pillars squeaking over each other as something hot and red bubbled seared within his chest, threatening to burn a hole right through it. The monster turned its spiny back on Jobe with a high-pitched snort that was rotten with false sweetness. "Heh, no hard feelings I hope!" It laughed.

Claudia stood stock still as her world lurched violently.

"You used me…" She murmured weakly in a little voice that had been stripped of its former self-assurance. With one sharp tug, Parker had ripped away everything she'd held true, desecrating each and every hope that had fluttered within her.

Had she really wanted someone to believe her that much?

Her eyes fell on the form of Jobe, who fidgeted with wrought agitation behind the suspended preacher. Something balled tightly within her gut, threatening to make her gag.

What had she done? How many people like Jobe had she ruined by blindly following Parker's false lead. She'd put so much blind faith in the man, and for what? To be struck by the aching revelation that he was just like all the others, only that he'd chosen to hide his mocking smiles from her in order to use her to his own means.

"I'm afraid that's true." The soft words snapped her from the turmoil of her mind. The woman looked up in time to see Parker towering over her, the compassion on his face obviously forced before it splintered like broken glass into a bare naked grin that reeked of malice.

She felt sick standing in his cold shadow.

"And, as much as it pains me to tell you, you've more than outlived your usefulness. You have lured God here and made sure that her arrival will be inevitable. I'm sure the Order will be pleased with your selfless service." He paused, amplifying the leer that twisted his face until it became something truly horrible.

"Good bye, Sister Wolf."

The woman didn't even bother to move as the floor beneath her erupted with coils, and no scream escaped her lips as they wrapped around her in a hold so tight that it threatened to snap all the bones within her like china. Even as they dragged her down through the floor they'd sprouted from, she still didn't put up a ghost of a fight.

How could she when she knew so very well that she deserved damnation?

A/N: it seemes that everyone's getting screwed over by somebody else in this...

Yet again, I would like to thank everyone who has endured my bad spelling up to this point.