Chapter 9: The Ride
Beth and Kyle led the way through the windy underground hallways and down the ever-descending escalators. Dean and Shelley followed closely, having never set foot in the subway before. Pick-pockets were everywhere, but the handgun Kyle had picked up in the hospital seemed to scare them away. Large posters advertising the latest razor blades, vacuous Hollywood movies and cigarettes lined the white walls.
The quartet soon reached a hall with a black depression for the train tracks resting in the middle, between two narrow platforms. The green tiles covering the floor reflected the fluorescent lights above. Roughly fifty passengers were waiting on each platform, filling the hall with scattered echoes of trivial conversations. Shelley and Dean sat down on a marble bench, while Beth and Kyle stood at the edge of the platform, staring at the stagnant sea of coals between the tracks.
"What were you doing in the hospital?" Dean asked.
"Anorexia," Shelley replied.
"What's that?"
Shelley rolled her eyes. The guy really had lived an isolated life in the mental wing. "I'll explain it some other time," she said, glancing at the yellow numbers on the black count-down box hanging over their platform:
NEXT DESCENT: 01.11
Shelley winced and blinked furiously, then looked back up at the digital letters and numbers:
NEXT TRAIN: 01.09
"Phew. Just my stupid imagination …"
Meanwhile, Beth's gaze was following a grey cat wandering through the dense forest of human legs on the adjacent platform. No one in the crowd noticed the animal gracefully making its way down the platform and up the stairs to the corridors above.
"I feel like I've seen that cat before," Kyle said.
"Of course you have. It was in the hospital, too," Beth reminded him. She looked pale and nervous, trying not to interpret the cat's presence as a terrible omen.
"No, I feel like I saw it sometime before I came to the hospital. I just can't remember where or when; it's like déja vu. And … it makes me feel sad somehow."
"Seeing a cat makes you feel sad?" Beth gave Kyle a look of odd amusement.
"I don't know, there's just something depressing about it. If only I could remember what happened when I first saw it …"
"Whatever," Beth shrugged. "Looks like our ride's coming now."
The train rushed out from the dark tunnel and into the brightly lit hall like a worm slithering out of the soil. It came to an abrupt halt and the doors slid aside. Waves of passengers immediately flooded in and out of the eight cars.
Beth and Kyle found tolerably clean seats in the back corner next to a large window. The rectangular pane was greasy and scratched, but the drab view of the walls whizzing by outside wasn't too intriguing, anyway. Shelley yawned and leaned back in her seat next to Beth, while Dean had to stand up, clutching a steel pole for support as the car shook and jolted through the tunnels.
Suddenly, Beth thought she saw a little flash of milky-white and scarlet just outside the corner of the window.
The shapeless black surfaces instantaneously resumed slurring past the window, unbroken by any lighter colours or shapes. But the memory of the brief, organic flash stayed in Beth's mind.
"Calm down. Just relax. You've been through a lot today, and you're tired. Besides, no one else in the car noticed anything. It was a trick of your imagination," said her ever-soothing voice of reason. It had betrayed her before, though.
Another flash of skin appeared outside the window for a startling splitsecond. There was a muffled thud as an arm banged into the pane, leaving a crimson handprint behind.
Beth let out a short scream, jumping up from her seat. Most of the fifteen other passengers shot her concerned and irritated looks before focusing back on their conversations, newspapers or whatever they passed the time with during these dull train rides.
"What do you think you're doing?" Kyle said softly.
Beth glared down at him. "You mean you haven't seen that?" she asked, gesturing to the pane behind her.
Which was now completely free of blood. The dark wall continued gliding from right to left outside.
"What the … I swear, I saw something …"
"Beth, just sit down," Kyle sighed.
The car jolted and a disquieted Beth half sat, half fell back down to her seat. "How long before this ride's over?" Shelley asked.
"We should have two stops left before it's our turn to get off, at Malone Station. And we're already at the first stop," Kyle said as the train brakes kicked in and the doors opened. Beth savoured the moment of freedom, knowing she could just walk out to the platform if she wanted to get away.
Then, the doors closed and the train rumbled onwards, rendering all thoughts of escape pointless. There were now only nine other passengers occupying the car. Beth stared at the window as the crowd on the platform was rapidly replaced by the bleak view of the godforsaken tunnel. She had nearly drifted off to a well-earned nap when the blurry head smacked against the other side of the pane few inches from the woman.
The bloody imprint of a screaming child's face stayed visible on the glass for half a second before the lights began flickering.
Beth's yelp of shock at seeing the face on the window soon drowned in a cacophony of shouts and shrieks from the rest of the passengers. The jolts grew even more violent, sending many passengers falling painfully to the floor. Beth heard a frustrated cry somewhere to her right and vaguely sensed that Dean had dropped his box of drawing tools.
The fluorescent tubes on the ceiling enveloped the chaotic scene in a flickering, dark yellow light, but Kyle observed that another light was coming from the tunnel outside – a warm, reddish light that could indicate nothing else than a huge fire.
More contorted faces and erratic body parts whizzed past the windows, and Kyle was thankful the train speed didn't allow him to catch more than blurry glimpses. However, even these glimpses were downright unsettling. It looked like hundreds of naked, blood-smeared figures inhabited the tunnels outside. People of all ages and appearances whirled around in an unrythmical, obscene dance.
A few of them tried to get inside the train, clinging to the walls and pounding the metal to find a way in. Kyle could faintly hear them crawl around on the roof and in the tight space between the tracks and the bottom of the car. They sat on the windows like insects on windshields, glaring at him through the thick glass with wide leers that seemed to say "Come join us. You know you belong here."
The train let out a strident screech as if braking, but it only seemed to go faster through the hellish tunnel. Soon, the metallic screech turned into the same air raid siren Beth had heard in the hospital.
In the disorienting strobe light, Beth noticed Sharon walking down the middle of the car. The little girl's eyes were locked onto Beth's, and her mouth was once more wide open in a silent scream. Her movements were slow and steady, even though the car's jolts would make it impossible for anyone to keep their footing, let alone walk in a straight line. Nonetheless, Sharon effortlessly walked up to Beth and touched the woman's forehead with her fingertips as if blessing her.
A crushing migraine immediately assaulted Beth's head and she fell from her seat, screaming in agony. It was the exact same migraine she had felt in the hospital elevator, when trying to put a hand on Sharon's shoulder. And just like back in the elevator, she had another vision of the vandalised bicycle.
This time, the culprits were still at the scene. A group of teenage kids stood around the bike, laughing and talking about Sharon, "that goddamn witch". One of the kids, a red-haired boy with a switchblade knife, pushed the bicycle down to the snow-carpeted asphalt. An older-looking boy pulled off the bike chain and flung it away, while the red-haired hoodlum proceeded to cut the tyres open. The group then smirked at their handiwork and walked off.
The vision ended as abruptly as it had started, and Beth found herself lying on the quaking train floor. The lights finally gave up their death throes and all stopped flickering at once, rendering the car completely dark for. Somewhere to Beth's left, Sharon stuttered a whisper: "You can't imagine how cold it is here."
The fluorescent lights all softly hummed back into life, illuminating the whole train as brightly as usual. Beth scrambled to her feet and scanned the car. Kyle and Shelley stood to her left, brows furrowed with utter confusion. To her right, Dean was crawling around the benches on his hands and knees, searching for the pencils that had escaped their confinement within the black box. Sharon was nowhere to be seen.
Louise stood at the other end of the car, next to a middle-aged man with weird, circular symbols tattooed on his hands. His head was shaved free of all hair and he wore a thick coat vaguely resembling the robe of a monk. Beth wouldn't be surprised if he was a highly religious person. He looked like the kind of guy you'd find roaming the big city streets to yell at passers-by about the Apocalypse and Messiah.
Beth suddenly realized the car wasn't going through the slightest jolt anymore. It seemed to have slowed the previous break-neck speed to an idle snail's pace. This gave the six remaining passengers a perfect view of the tunnel outside, but Beth refrained from casting even a single curious glance. She had already had her fair share of mental scars from this dark adventure.
Focusing her gaze on Louise across the narrow aisle, Beth asked with a shaking voice: "When will this end?"
"When I want it to end." Louise gave an almost imperceptible smile. To Beth's right, Dean replaced the last pencil and put the lid back on the box as he rose from the floor.
"Well, you'd better want it to end right now, or I'm going to make you wish it hadn't started at all," Beth grumbled.
"Who is that girl?" Kyle said.
"Her name's Louise. I've met her before," Beth said. "She must be the one controlling all these weird worlds …"
"Yes, I am," Louise nodded. "And I'm sorry that I can't let you return to the normal world until you've helped me. I really am very sorry."
Beth pivoted to face Kyle. "Shoot her."
"What?!" Kyle glared incredulously at the determined woman. The latter didn't have time to talk him round. In the blink of an eye, Beth had snatched the handgun from Kyle and held it up in two remarkably steady hands, aiming for Louise's chest. Four bullets were left in the sleek weapon.
"Beth, she's just a kid!" Shelley said.
Beth slowly shook her head. "She's the reason we're all in this mess. If she died … This would be over for good."
Three shots rang out, their deafening noise mixing with Shelley's scream of terror. However, the target remained unscathed, the teasing smile not yielding for one splitsecond. The bullets clattered on the floor a few feet from Louise. "What the fuck?!" Beth flung the pistol to the ground. "I should have known, huh? You control this world, so you might as well have a goddamn invisible wall around you."
"That is one way to put it, yes," the man next to Louise remarked.
"And you are …?" Kyle asked.
"Father Philip Blackmer of the Valtiel sect," Philip said, confirming Beth's suspicion that he was a religious guy. "I was sent here from Silent Hill to find this girl." He laid a bony hand on the teenager's shoulder. "You see, Louise and her sister Sharon both have very important parts to play in the Awakening of our God."
"Did you hear that? He's in the cult!" Doctor said. "You can't let them get away with what they did to her." Dean was already running across the car, hands stretched out to grip Philips throat. But exactly like the three bullets, he seemed to be repelled by some invisible shield and collapsed to the floor when he was only a few feet from the priest.
Louise shook her head with feigned pity. "Some people just can't learn from experience."
Dean groaned and scrambled to his feet, retreating to the other end of the car where Beth, Shelley and Kyle stood with dumbfounded looks. "Okay, you've made your point. We can't get out of here, because Alice there seems to be in charge of this fucked up Wonderland," Kyle pointed to Louise. "But you could at least tell us, in plain English, what the hell's going on here? I mean … Where is 'here', anyway?"
"This is where all humans go sooner or later," Philip beamed, gesturing to the car windows. "Each and every human being. Why don't you take a look at them?"
And Kyle looked.
The tunnel had inexplicably transformed into one immense underground cavern, where swarms of mournful figures floated through the air as if diving in the deep sea. The shoals of nude humans were enveloped in reddish flames that appeared to rise from their own bodies. Although a few of them were burning from every inch of their skin, most of the figures only burnt from specific body parts. A young woman in an advanced state of pregnancy had flames shrouding her expanded torso. A skinny boy at the age of 8 screamed as the crimson fire devoured his eyes. An elderly man glared lethargically at his burning hands.
"Who are they?" Beth asked, having finally found the courage to look out the windows as well.
"Spirits," came the terse answer from Father Philip. "And what you are seeing is only a square centimetre of the proverbial iceberg surface. The amount of spirits paying for their sins out there would be impossible to count … But we have more important deeds to carry out than watching their suffering. If you want to return to your normal lives, you merely have to help us with the ritual."
"The ritual?" Shelley repeated. "How the hell are we supposed to help with some crappy ritual of yours?"
"You can start by going to Silent Hill," Louise said. "It shouldn't be more than a three hour drive from here. Once you have arrived in the town, I'll tell you how you're going to help us."
The girl turned around and opened the metal door at the end of the car. A blinding light streamed in from outside. Beth faintly saw Louise and Philip step through the heavenly doorway, before she had to clench her eyelids down to protect her orbs from the white glare.
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Beth awoke with a start on the uncomfortable corner seat. The train once more looked normal, filled with a noisy crowd of ordinary passengers. Looking through the window, Beth wasn't surprised to find the infernal view from her dream gone and replaced by the dull black wall, whizzing by at the usual speed. Dean, Shelley and Kyle soon awoke on the seats around her. Apparently, they had also dozed off to a brief nap while the train approached Malone Station.
The train stopped at their destination and the doors slid open. The group rushed out and started wandering out of the subway.
"We're still not back," Beth muttered, standing on the ascending escalator. "And that dream in the train … That wasn't a dream."
Kyle and Shelley nodded. Dean glanced at the abrasion his forearm had attained when he fell to the car floor, repelled by Louise's power. "We have to go to Silent Hill," Kyle said.
The others mumbled their agreement as the escalator brought them out of the subway's darkness and up to the twilight street.
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A/N: Tune in next week … Wolf Ravensoul: Haven't read much by those authors, but I started Mountain of Madness the other day. Thanks for the review on Family. Actually, the Egyptians depicted Amamet as a half hippo, half crocodile, who eats the souls if their hearts weigh more than a feather. –E.P.O.
