Chapter 16: Confession and contrapasso

I'm lost, exposed,

Stranger things will come your way

It's just I'm scared, got hurt a long time ago

Can't make myself heard, no matter how hard I scream

-Portishead, 'Biscuit'

-

"What happened?" Kyle asked the girl, hoping to finally remember where he had first seen the grey cat. "And … how do you know about it?"

"I was there," Sharon said. "I saw it happen. I heard you scream." She hesitated, allowing her attentive listeners to absorb this new information. Then, she softly added: "We were both screaming."

"What are you talking about?" Kyle said, seemingly bewildered.

"You know what this is about, Kyle." The girl's voice grew frustrated, like that of a parent scolding her little boy for snatching the last cookies, while the treachorous child insists that he never touched the jar. "Although you may not want to remember it, you know what happened."

"Kyle …?" Shelley cast the man a suspicious look. "Is she …"

"Is she right?" Kyle finished his companion's query. "That's what you were going to say, huh? Is she right!" He let out a short, mirthless laugh. "You're not seriously going to believe that weird kid, are you?"

Shelley quickly shifted her gaze back to the girl behind the counter. "Look, Kyle, if you know something about what's going on … If you know anything about all this, you should tell me. Maybe we can use that knowledge to get out of here."

"What knowledge?" Kyle's voice remained confused and annoyed, but a faint tone of fearful doubt was slowly emerging. He knew he'd seen the cat before. He knew he'd met Sharon somewhere in the past. He just couldn't remember it, or rather, he didn't want to remember it.

"You're still pretending it didn't happen," Sharon murmured. "You're denying it."

"I'm not denying anything," Kyle shook his head.

The girl continued: "Why can't you accept it? You won't-"

"Shut up!"

Shelley winced at the man's outburst, while Sharon remained motionless. In the following silence, Kyle's thoughts drifted back to how the nightmare had begun in his taxi. The streaks of blood sliding up the windows had bluntly announced that he couldn't trust the laws of physics from now on. But the worst part had been the sight of his two passengers' mangled bodies, putrefying in the backseat. Kyle could still hear the man's corpse whispering its puzzling last words: 'False. It's … false. This … falsehood, this deceitso loathsome.'

Kyle finally realized that the passenger's corpse had been implying the same accusation as Sharon: That Kyle was deceiving himself.

"No," he mumbled. "I don't have anything to hide from anyone …"

Sharon slowly shook her head and laid her hand on the edge of the counter. She then hopped up to vault over it, but her movements were far too slow. It looked like she was floating through water in lieu of the perfectly normal oxygen pervading the room. Gravity simply refused to pull her down at its normal pace.

"What the fuck?" Shelley breathed. Kyle merely stared with wide eyes and gaping mouth at Sharon's flight through the stale air.

After about ten seconds of floating over the counter, Sharon landed on the other side. She turned to her right and opened the old double doors. "Goodbye," she said tonelessly before stepping out to the fog-shrouded parking lot at Nathan Avenue.

"Wait!" Shelley started after the girl, but the doors slammed shut before she could reach them. The woman swiftly grabbed the handles and pushed the exit open. But Sharon was nowhere to be seen outside. In fact, the foggy parking lot wasn't there either.

There was only a long, narrow staircase.

Leading steeply downwards.

Shelley stood on the threshold for a dumbfounded moment, her booted feet teetering on the edge. Her balance was soon irretrievably lost, and a high-pitched shriek escaped her mouth. She could only watch as the steps grew larger, filling her field of vision with their dark brown surfaces.

The collision sent a dull, throbbing pain through Shelley's upper body, and her initial scream of panic turned into agonized yelps. She slid head-first down the staircase for a few seconds, until her left hand finally gripped one of the banister's finely carved wooden bars. Her right hand gripped the adjacent banister, definitively stopping her fall. Shelley sat and drew breath on the narrow step, 15 steps below the doorway at the top.

Glancing around, she noticed that the staircase was surrounded by nothing more than inky darkness. The staircase stretched through this cold, black air without any kind of foundation to keep it suspended. The wooden steps led straight down as far as Shelley could see, before they were lost in the all-consuming darkness.

"I'm sorry," Kyle said, rushing down to her. The doors to the Historical Society slammed shut behind him, but he ignored them to focus on his fallen companion. "I'm so sorry - I tried to catch you, but it all happened so fast …"

Shelley couldn't reply to the apology. Her breathing came out in pathetic gasps, and her mouth opened and closed silently like that of a fish pulled out of its element. Her fingers tightened around the banister, nearly breaking the fragile old wood.

"What's wrong?" Kyle asked. "Shelley, what are …"

The woman abruptly leaned forward. Kyle winced as vomit gushed from her mouth and splattered onto the staircase. The repulsive juice trickled down a few steps before surrendering to complete stagnancy.

The duo sat dumbly on the step for a quarter of a minute, while Shelley's respiration slowed down to an somewhat normal pace. Deafening silence emanated from the abyss encompassing the stairway.

Kyle was the first to make a weak attempt at breaking this overwhelming lack of noise. "What the hell is this place?"

"I have no idea," Shelley replied. "I guess … the town knows I'm afraid of stairways. It's using people's fears against them." She turned her head to look at Kyle. The man felt repulsed to see the mixture of chalkwhite skin and blue bruises that pervaded her face. He had to remind himself that he probably looked at least as horrible as her, after what they'd both been through since this twisted adventure began yesterday.

"Do you want to know why?" Shelley asked, her voice as broken and miserable as her appearance. Kyle could feel her acidolous breath brushing against his nostrils, but he didn't move an inch. "Do you want to know why I have been brought here?"

Kyle looked away, peering down the staircase at the pitchblack depths. "No," he answered.

Shelley let out a weary sigh and looked over her shoulder. She was not the least bit surprised to find that the Historical Building at the top of the stairs had vanished without a trace. They were definitely not in the town of Silent Hill anymore - just the two of them sitting on these stairs in the middle of nowhere.

"I'm going to tell you anyway," Shelley insisted. "I have a feeling we might never leave this place. Maybe, for all I know, the entire human race won't survive what's going to happen. I want to tell you about this, in case …"

Kyle quickly understood what she meant. "In case you won't have anyone to talk to later."

"Yeah," the woman sighed. There was a long pause as they sat motionless on the staircase.

Then, Shelley began: "I was always a pretty shy kid. I never had any siblings or real friends, let alone boyfriends. My dad died in a plane crash when I was 14, so I was left alone with my mother. I can still remember what I was doing, when she came to tell me what had happened. I was watching TV. That stupid Disney cartoon with the three little pigs and the big bad wolf … I can still remember the lyrics."

Kyle silently listened to the young woman's story. He felt glad his own parents were still alive, although he hadn't talked to them for months. He promised to himself that he'd visit them as soon as he escaped from this hell.

"My life basically went from bad to worse during the next three years," Shelley continued. "I was almost obsessed with getting good grades, and spent most of my spare time doing piles of homework. My mom knew I was getting stressed out, but she didn't really do anything to prevent it. She was too busy worrying about her weight and going through all kinds of crazy diets. I guess that, maybe, that's where I got it from …"

"Got what?" Kyle asked.

"Anorexia," Shelley stuttered out. "Anyway, like I said, my mom was always taking those diets and all kinds of exercise. She talked a lot about my weight, too. Said I shouldn't eat so much. She could talk for hours about how obese girls will never be fully accepted in this world. And … I didn't want to listen to her, because I knew there was nothing wrong with my weight … But after a while, I could see it. When I looked in the mirror, I could see all the the fat, the obesity, the hideous little freak that would never be accepted by the normal, healthy people around her …"

Shelley had to pause to draw breath. Her voice was growing hoarse and thick. She stood and began walking down the staircase. Kyle followed, feeling the air turn colder as they slowly descended.

"I hated myself," Shelley said. "One part of me hated my body for looking so horrible in the mirror reflection, and the other part of me hated myself for inheriting my mom's stupid weight-obsession. But sometime when I was 18, I decided that I'd had enough of it all. It was in the fall, I think. October or November. Anyway, I … I told her that I wanted to move out. She said that I'd never make it on my own, and before long, we were arguing, screaming the craziest insults at each other … She slapped me, and … "

Shelley slowed to a halt, and Kyle paused one step above her. She turned around and stared up at him. He was anything but surprised to find that tears were streaming down her cheeks, trailing pale streaks through the bloodstains. Her shoulder-length red hair clung to her skin like maggots on the dead tissue of a corpse's skull.

"I pushed her." Shelley's voice was barely above a whisper now.

Kyle knit his brows in mild confusion. "But … I'm sure anyone else would have done that if …"

"No," Shelley shook her head. "You don't understand. We were on the second floor of the house. I pushed her, and she fell … down the staircase … this staircase. It wasn't nearly as long as this one, but apart from that, they look exactly the same."

"That's impossible."

"So is everything else that's happened lately," Shelley stated. "Completely impossible."

"Did … did your mother survive?"

Shelley shook her head. "I checked her pulse. When I realized she was gone … I just ran. I ran out to the highways and hitchhiked all the way to Hooper Lake City. My last lift was in an old Pontiac driven by some middle-aged guy. He told me I looked a little skinny. I probably looked like a goddamn skeleton, but I guess he put it mildly. Anyway, he offered me a burger he'd just bought at McDonalds, and I said I wasn't hungry, but he kept insisting. So … I took a bite. And I puked."

Kyle didn't know how much longer he could stand listening to this bleak tale. But Shelley wanted to confess it all, and he respected that wish. "You had bulimia, then?" he figured.

"No," Shelley said. "I hadn't thrown up for years. But when I swallowed that one bite of the BigMac, I saw my mom tumbling down the staircase again, and I heard her voice saying that I shouldn't eat so much … I vomited all over the dash. The driver got so angry, he stopped the car and pushed me out. Then he just drove away and left me there."

"What a bastard," Kyle commented.

"I can't blame him," Shelley said and walked farther down the staircase, closely followed by Kyle. "I'd have gotten pretty mad, too … Well, I walked down the street for a while, and was lucky enough to find a hospital. Lambert Hospital. I walked in there and managed to say something like "I think there's something wrong with me" before passing out in the middle of the lobby. When I woke up, they'd put me in a room on the second floor and force-fed me. I spent the next three years in that hospital …"

"What about your mother?" Kyle asked. "Didn't anyone investigate her death?"

"Yeah, but since the police never found me, I guess the investigation didn't spread to Hooper Lake. No one really knew her," Shelley informed, "so I don't think anyone cared whether her death was an accident or not."

"But … Do you think it was an accident?" Kyle asked.

"That's what I want to think. But I still have climacophobia. I'm still afraid that someday, she'll come back to push me down a staircase, murdering me just like I murdered her …"

"At least you've admitted it. You've accepted that she's dead," Kyle said. "You can move on now."

"No," Shelley said tonelessly. "I can't. That's why I was brought here. This place … You've seen the demons, too. All the decay, the suffering … This is Hell. I've been brought here to be punished."

Kyle didn't reply. He couldn't think of any words of reassurance to soothe the damned soul. He simply followed her down the ridicolously long version of the staircase from her memories. The air continued to turn colder, its touch as sterile and chilling as that of a latex-gloved hand. Kyle thought he could hear muffled cries and sobs coming from both sides of the stairway. However, when he stared out there to find the sources, nothing but darkness greeted his gaze.

"Here's some more parts of that kid's diary." Shelley picked up three yellow scraps of paper from one of the steps. "Maybe they were written by the girl from the museum?"

"No, I don't think she's old enough to write like this. It could be Louise's diary, though," Kyle guessed. The duo read one of the entries together. The date was from about three years ago:

Mom wanted to start afresh, so we just moved to Hooper lake city. I don't like the new school. The kids are really mean. They keep calling us witches. The kids at Midwich school weret so mean, I miss them.

The next entry was from one year ago, December 20:

I just bought Sharon's christmas pressent. She said that book with the island on the cover looked exciting, so I bought it for her at My Bestsellers. It's called The Tempest. Some guy named Shakespeere wrote it a long time ago. The shop girl who sold it to me was really nice. I think her name was Beth.

The two entries on the last page were only a few days old.

January 7, Friday

Sharon didn't come home from school today. We're afraid something happened to her, and mom just called the police. I hope she isn't lost. I'm going to pray to God and ask him to bring her back.

January 8, Saturday

Mom just got a call and hurried out. She wouldn't tell me where she was going, but I could see she was almost crying.

Now there's some guy knocking on the front door. I can see him through the window. He looks like a monk and he's got red circles tatooed on his hands, but he looks harmless. I'll go ask what he's doing here.

"A monk?" Kyle repeated. "Circles on his hands? That must be …"

"Philip," Shelley finished the sentence. "That priest from Silent Hill's cult. He probably started this whole mess."

Kyle shook his head and glared out at the darkness besetting the stairway. "I don't know how, but … I think the cat triggered it all."

Shelley couldn't take the idea of a simple animal causing this madness seriously. She gave a slight chuckle and wandered on down the stairs. "Come on, Kyle …"

But Kyle froze on one of the steps above her. He had suddenly noticed a large shape moving in the darkness. The sight was beautiful, but deeply menacing at the same time. The shape flew and twirled around in slow, playful movements – almost like a dance, a ballet in mid-air. And yet, it wasn't just a flock of invisible dancers.

The darkness itself was moving.

And in the gaps between its wiggling, coal-black fingers, Kyle noticed numerous brief flashes of colour. Skin. White, brown, yellow. Red blood. Contorted faces. Nude bodies hanging motionless in mid-air. Most of them upside-down, some in fetal positions, others reminiscent of Jesus on the Cross. They all wept and screeched as the darkness twirled around them. A few of them were praying in some obscure, ancient language. But beneath this cacophony of human voices, another voice uttered its monotonous humming. The voice of the darkness.

Flies.

Even before the swarm started flying towards him, Kyle had sensed the danger and was now sprinting down the staircase, past a bewildered Shelley.

"Kyle, what's the … oh fuck!" Shelley noticed the immense wave of darkness swallowing up the stairway behind her. She rushed after Kyle, the collective humming of countless insects tormenting her sense of hearing. But the flies weren't after a simple murderer. They flew past Shelley in dark rivers, their surfaces gleaming like water under moonlight. Kyle's feet pounded the wooden steps, but he could not escape the swarm. They entered his screaming mouth, clogged his nostrils, flew into his ears, covered his eyes …

At that moment, Kyle lost all reason, all hope and, literally, his balance. There was nothing more in the universe than him, the flies and the infinite agony. He tripped and tumbled down the staircase, but didn't feel any of the impacts with the wooden steps, due to the carpet of flies he had been rolled into. Thus, he also couldn't feel the metal grille of the horizontal platform as he finally landed at the bottom of the staircase.

Shelley sprinted down the last steps and skid to a halt on the slippery grating. The walkway was about twelve feet wide and continued straight forwards until it was lost in the distant shadows. More tortured figures hung in mid-air on both sides of the path. Louise and Philip stood before Shelley, but her undivided attention was only given to Kyle. The man lay limp on the edge of the walkway, flies covering his body.

Shelley ran towards him to make a (probably futile) attempt at freeing him from the insects. She was instantly knocked back by one of Louise's invisible barriers. The woman fell on the unforgiving grille, confined to the left corner of the walkway. She scrambled to her feet and glowered at the teenage girl.

"Well, it seems the six of us are all gathered once more." Philip smiled and gestured to the duo standing behind him – Beth and Dean. "And I see Kyle has still not accepted his true nature?" he continued, cocking his head at the insect-enveloped body sprawled on the grating. "How pitiful."

Philip walked up to the man and gave him a slight, gentle kick with his booted foot. Unable to object with more than a weak rattle, Kyle rolled over the edge of the walkway. The swarm of flies followed him as he fell into the depths.

"Fuck you!" Shelley screamed at the priest. She had to resist the urge to run up to Philip and thrash the life out of him, since Louise's barrier would undoubtedly still be in the way. Instead, she could only attack him verbally. "Why did you have to do that, you sick fucker!"

Philip shook his head in reproach. "Why do people get so furious over such indifferent events? Do you really think I have killed him?"

"You pushed him into a pretty fucking deep pit," Shelley said, tears of anger blurring her vision of the sect leader. "Yeah, that's what I'd call murder."

"You do not understand." Philip's sickly smile reappeared. "Do you see me being punished by the demons of Hell? No. I have not sinned. I'm not like you."

Shelley felt her hands clench into shaking fists. How did he know about her mother?

"But there is still hope," Philip said and crouched down to grab a small black object from the grating. Shelley recognized it as the obsidian goblet from the Historical Society. It had apparently fallen out of Kyle's pocket when he fell down the stairway. Philip held the goblet up in his right hand, and a crimson book in his left. "There is still hope," he repeated, almost shouting the four joyful words. "At last, we have all the items for the ritual – words of blood, drops of mist and the vessel of night. The Great Resurrection is nigh, just as the Lord and Her messenger Valtiel have promised my sect."

Until now, Beth had merely stood on the walkway, speechless with confusion and shock. The town had transformed into the Otherworld about ten minutes ago, and she and Dean had had no choice but to follow the rusty walkway that Munson Street had been reduced to. They'd just reached Louise and Philip, when the cab driver and the anorexic came rushing down the stairway. Now, Kyle had vanished in the darkness beneath this inexplicably floating path, and the priest and Louise seemed to have found all they needed for their ritual. "So … Can we go back?" Beth asked.

"Yes," Louise said.

Philip nodded. "Mankind can finally 'go back', as you so eloquently put it. The world will return to the purity it once revelled in."

"No," Beth said, exasperated. "I mean, can we go back to our normal world? I don't care if you two stay here in Silent Hill, or 'Paradise' - whatever you call it – but you promised that we could leave this freaky place. Dean, Shelley, me and …" Beth paused slightly before mentioning the fourth name, "Kyle. We found your ritual items, so we can return to our old lives … right?"

"Lives. Worlds. Such loose terms," Philip said.

Beth's impatience turned into fear. "You're not going to let us leave," she stated.

"I can understand this must be quite a dismal epiphany?" Philip said, still smiling.

"You can't understand shit!" Shelley retorted.

Beth didn't utter a single word. She was speechless, neither with hatred nor dread, but with disappointment. She had been pulled into these godforsaken worlds, forced to travel to Silent Hill and find some hidden ceremonial book – all in the hope of being able to leave this nightmare behind in the end. All in the hope of reaching the light at the end of the tunnel, a heavenly light which had now turned into hellish darkness. "Why?" she said, glaring at Louise. "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm cold," said a familiar voice behind Beth.

The woman spun around to find Sharon standing a foot away from her, on the middle of the walkway. Before Beth could react, the little girl's hand shot out and gripped her fingers.

The touch felt cold and vice-like. Beth's fingers went numb in a single second, and the migraine from the train and the hospital elevator returned. Her head throbbed to a relentless, quickening beat, threatening to shatter her skull. She clenched her eyes shut and opened her mouth to scream, but she couldn't hear the slightest noise apart from that of her pounding head. It sounded like huge waves crashing against the shore, but she was listening to them from somewhere far below the water surface.

"Stop it … Please …"

In the midst of the violent headache, she saw the child's bicycle once more. The teenagers vandalising it, cutting the tyres open. Laughing, talking about Sharon. Contempt in their voices.

"Make it stop, Sharon!"

The grey cat, trudging around aimlessly.

The bicycle.

Ice.

"STOP IT!"

Beth staggered a few steps away from the little girl, clutching her head in pain. Her left foot came down again, expecting to find the usual rusty grating that made up the path. But the foot lowered itself into emptiness, and before she could regain balance, Beth tipped backwards over the edge.

At that exact moment, the migraine left her head as abruptly as it had come. Falling into the depths where Kyle had vanished earlier, Beth felt nothing but relief.

-

A/N: Apologies to Tommy, Amanda, Dean, Louise, Sharon and Shelley. I must stop this habit of giving my characters wangsty parental issues. Aaanyway, lo and behold: I have uploaded 2 chapters this time! Just click the nice shiny button down there to read on.