A/N: 'Clockwork Little Happiness' from the SH3 OST really fits the first part of this chapter …
Chapter 18: St. Gilliam School
Part 1: Retribution for a death
Louise calmly walked down the third floor corridor of St. Gilliam School. A grey gleam came from the sky outside, shining through the windows to her right, dimly illuminating the green walls, white arched ceilings and reddish floor-tiles of the desolate building. To the 14-year-old's left, a row of oak doors opened into classrooms. The rooms were completely abandoned, despite the time of day (13:30 PM) and the day in question (Tuesday). This, however, wasn't her normal school – this was her version, and it was devoid of all the annoying kids and unsympathetic teachers. No, she was alone here today. Alone with the single pupil she had pulled into her world.
The 16-year-old, red-haired boy ran in front of her, his feet rapidly pounding the stone floor. He used to be such a tough kid. He used to play the leader of one of the school's most awe-inspiring gangs of vandals and bullies. Now, he was the one who feared Louise. And she was the one leading her own 'gang'.
Two Reapers walked on either side of the girl. Their arms were raised, the six scythe-blades glinting in the dim light that seeped through the windows. "The beauty of the last struggles," they chanted with muffled, sputtering voices.
The teenage boy fled down the hallway, pounding on the doors as he sprinted by. "Help! Isn't anyone there!" he yelled, his voice high-pitched and shaking with panic. Urine soaked his trouser leg and left a yellow trail on the hallway floor. "Help me, dammit!"
But neither teachers nor pupils came out to rescue him. Only the monsters responded: "Dying man, withering man, heed my words and speaketh them …"
"You can't escape!" Louise said, beaming. "No one can escape from justice!" Her voice sounded sick and insane, but no one was around to hear it. No one except a pathetic little boy, who would soon be reduced to nothing more than a mutilated corpse.
Actually, her voice sounded triumphant.
The boy finally reached the end of the corridor. The metal double doors in the end wall were locked and wouldn't budge at all. Louise was right; there truly was no escape. The boy slowly turned around, tearful eyes locked onto Louise's unforgiving glare. "Why?" he breathed. "Why me?"
"Don't you remember?" Louise said, stopping a few feet before the boy. The Reapers halted on either side of her. "My little sister, Sharon. You and your stupid friends always treated her and me like shit. Well … It's gone too far now."
"Is … Is this about Sharon's bike?" the boy asked.
A plethora of apologies started tumbling out of his mouth, but Sharon cut him off: "This isn't about the bike. This is about what that incident caused. Sharon had to take a taxi home. There was an accident. The car crashed and sunk into Hooper Lake …" Louise took a deep breath, but only used the air to utter two monosyllabic words: "She's dead."
The boy stood there for a few seconds, the dismal revelation dawning upon him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry. We never wanted anyone to die, we just -"
"You 'just' caused my sister's death!" Louise screamed. "It's too fucking late for apologies!"
"Please d-don't …" The boy's voice had lowered itself to a miserable whimper. "I know I deserve to be punished, but not like this … D-d-don't let those things k-kill me …"
Louise's triumphant grin broadened. "Those things are called Reapers. And don't worry. I won't let them kill you, because guess what? You started it all. You were the one who came up with the idea of ruining her bike, you were the one who cut the tyres open … You deserve something worse than the Reapers."
"Please … Just calm down and we'll -"
The boy froze as something fell from the ceiling and smacked onto the floor behind him. A sticky, tearing noise echoed through the hallway, followed by a deranged female voice, cackling and panting heavily.
The boy's hand dove frantically into his pocket and produced his switchblade knife – the same knife he had cut the bicycle tyres with. He spun around and raised the weapon, but before he could even graze his assailant, gooey hands shot up to grip his wrist, wrenching the knife from his fragile fingers. The creature flung the knife away and effortlessly pulled the screaming boy into its chrysalis.
"Last struggles of the dying man, they are my blessings," the Reapers intoned.
Louise cast the Nymph one last repulsed, but satisfied glance and walked away.
Part 2: Key of Ceres
Beth had spent the last fifteen minutes wandering out of Hooper Park and up the snow-carpeted, foggy streets of this deserted version of Hooper Lake City. She now stood before St. Gilliam School once more. This city was obviously not her home, but merely another part of Louise and Sharon's world. Beth had a feeling that, if she wanted to escape from this world, she would have to go through the one place the two sisters despised and feared the most.
Their school.
Beth walked up the three steps to the double doors and gripped the ornate brass handle. 'Et Facta Est Lux,' the sign above still proclaimed.
Beth pulled the door open and entered a short entrance hall. Her snow-caked shoes left white prints on the mat. She closed the door behind her and stepped past the green swing doors to the school's main hallway. Red floortiles, white walls with green dados and high, arched ceilings would, under normal circumstances, have given the place a vaguely festive, childish mood. But in this version, the hallways were pervaded by shadows and a dim, melancholy blue light.
Beth flicked a switch on the wall next to the swing doors. "And God said: 'Let there be light' …" The overhead lamps immediately hummed to life, a white glare emanating from the tubes. "And there was light," the woman muttered.
Stairways ahead led up to the second floor and down to the basement. The hallway to Beth's left led to the girls' gymnasium, while the hallway to her right led past a few classrooms to the school library and another stairwell. Beth followed the right hall and entered the first classroom on her left.
Dean and Shelley whirled around as the door creaked open. Standing at the teacher's desk next to the door, Shelley raised her rusty metal bar to defend herself, but lowered the weapon at the sight of a surprised Beth entering the room. "What are you doing here? I thought you were dead, when you fell into that pit with Kyle …"
"No, it's a bit weird. I just woke up on the lawn outside, and …" Beth quickly considered whether it would be best to tell her companions about Kyle's memory or not. Hell, she wasn't sure if she fully understood it herself. After all, the souls of dead people can't talk and act like ordinary living persons … can they?
"Yes, they can in Silent Hill's realm," a voice whispered in the back of her mind. "Kyle and Sharon are walking proof of that. You just had to see their past with your own eyes to comprehend what they really are …"
"Beth?" Dean said impatiently. "What happened?"
"Do you know where Kyle is?" Shelley inquired.
Beth made a quick decision and chose not to confuse or disturb them any further with the story of last Friday's events: "No, I have no idea. After I woke up on the lawn, I just walked right in here. What about you?"
"After you fell from that walkway, Louise must have cast some weird spell on us. We lost consciousness all of a sudden and woke up in this room. Where is this room, anyway?" Shelley ran her eyes over the pupils' tables, arranged in three humble rows of teak before the teacher's authoritative mahogany desk. Four windows in the wall opposite the door offered a bland view of the school yard. The basic rules of the iambus and the trochee were written with yellow chalk on the blackboard. A small, exotic plant hung from a pot suspended under the ceiling.
"It's St. Gilliam School, in Hooper Lake City," Beth explained.
"Isn't that Louise and Sharon's school?"
"Yeah, probably."
"That would explain some of the things written there," Shelley gestured to a bulletin board at the far wall.
Beth walked up to the board and examined the graffiti. Between the posters of pop idols, various childish insults and gossip about pupils and teachers were scribbled on the board: 'Kenny is gay', 'Mrs. Midkiff is David's g/f', 'Becky and Melissa are whores' (followed by Becky and Melissa's eloquent reply: 'no were not!'). But most of the scribbled insults were about the Barkin sisters. 'Sharon doesnt have a life', 'luise and sharron are WITCHES', 'fuck off Louise!'
"God, kids can be so cruel," Beth said softly. Two storeys above, one of those cruel kids was being tortured by a Nymph.
"And illiterate," Shelley added.
Beth turned around and gaped at the blackboard behind Shelley. The trochaic and iambic rules had somehow been wiped out and replaced by an actual poem. Beth recognized the handwriting from Louise's diary.
"What is it?" Shelley and Dean turned around, their jaws dropping at the sight of the inexplicably changed writing on the blackboard:
Spring come to you at the farthest
In the very end of
Scarcity and want shall shun you;
Ceres' blessing so is on
"I think it's some dialogue from Shakespeare's The Tempest," Beth said. "But it looks like two of the words are missing …"
"A Shakespeare play? What does that have to do with anything?" Shelley asked.
Dean briefly explained to her how Louise thought of herself as a modern Duke Prospero, and that this realm of Silent Hill could be compared with Prospero's strange island - with grotesque monsters in lieu of spirits like the nymphs and reapers.
"In the play, the main characters are marooned there, because Prospero summons a storm to bring them to his island," Beth said. "I guess you could say we're stranded in this world, too …"
"Damn," came the terse reply from Shelley. "Were … Were those stranded people in The Tempest just chosen randomly?"
"No," Beth said. "If I recall correctly, Prospero had his reasons for dragging some of them in … Vengeance, unsettled pasts, that sort of thing."
"And did they ever leave that island?"
Beth shook her head. "I don't know; I didn't read it all the way to the end."
"Great." Shelley looked up at the potted plant hanging under the ceiling. It vaguely resembled one of those carnivorous plants that would sometimes trap flies in its flowers.
Meanwhile, Dean had been contemplating the poetic dialogue on the blackboard. He picked up a yellow chalk from the teacher's desk and tried filling in the missing rhymes. First, he wrote 'you.' at the end of the fourth line. He then looked up at the first two lines: "Spring come to you at the farthest, in the very end of …"
"August?" Shelley guessed.
Dean shrugged and wrote the two-syllable word at the end of the second line. The moment his chalk left the blackboard, the word was thoroughly wiped out by some invisible duster.
"Guess that wasn't correct," Shelley said. The three of them had long ago gotten used to invisible forces and inexplicable disappearances.
"At the farthest, end of ... At the farthest, end of …" Dean repeated. "What comes at the springtime and rhymes with farthest?"
"Well, that dialogue was sung by one of Prospero's spirits," Beth said. "Ceres. I think it was just before the reapers and nymphs were summoned …"
Suddenly, the solution flashed through Dean's mind. "Reapers! That's it! Spring come to you at the farthest, in the very end of harvest." He scribbled the word at the end of the second line and read the rest aloud: "Scarcity and want shall shun you; Ceres' blessing so is on you."
As if on cue, the plant above fell from the ceiling. The ropes suspending it just snapped, and the collision with the floor easily smashed the pot. Lumps of dirt and clay spread across the floor, the unshielded plant resting in the middle. A brown, metallic object was intertwined with the roots. Dean picked up the earth-coloured key.
"What!" Beth said. "Who the hell would hide a key in a plant's pot?"
Dean didn't reply. He stared at the two letters engraved on the key: Cs.
"Ceres."
Part 3: Liberation of a sinner
Suddenly, the school's intercom system crackled to life, and a middle-aged male voice seeped out of the speaker next to the blackboard: "Elizabeth Kalember, Dean Frost and Shelley Tate, please report to the third floor lab for your astronomy class."
"How did he know our names?" Shelley said.
"It's probably just Louise's memory of her old principal," Beth guessed. "Did he mention a lab on the third floor?"
"Yeah, I think I know where that is." Dean started towards the door to the hallway. "I went to this school while I was living with my foster-parents," he explained.
The trio silently walked through the hallway and up the stairs opposite the doors where Beth had entered the building. Fortunately, the stairway was wide, with steps made of grey stone. Only the narrow, wooden staircases could trigger Shelley's climacophobia.
The wall of the first landing was covered under a childish painting of a bright blue sea, with fish and divers peacefully swimming around under the surface, and flocks of seagulls flying across the sunny sky above. Large papiér mache-models of colourful butterflies hung from the ceiling. But neither the butterflies nor the mural of the exotic sea could pierce the melancholy atmosphere that had been pulled over the school like a thick winding sheet. Suspicious shadows accumulated out of the corner of one's eyes, the air felt stale and tainted, while ghostly, taunting voices echoed from the corridors.
"What're you doing here, Sharon? Fuck off …"
"… God, Louise is such a weirdo …"
"… loser."
The trio reached the third floor, and Dean led the way towards the lab. At the end of one of the hallways, two silvery metal doors were shut tight. Luckily, they could be unlocked from Dean's side. He turned the lock, grabbed the handles and pulled.
With a demented cackle, a Nymph came tumbling through the doorway. It rolled to a halt between the two screaming women, leering up at them from its pupa. Reflexes kicking in, Beth aimed her shotgun and fired twice. The bullets plunged through the cocoon and sent blood squirting out. The Nymph uttered one last squeal before falling limp and lifeless onto the cold stone floor. A reek of decay emanated from its corpse.
Beth walked on silently, trying not to breathe the acidolous air. Shelley and Dean quickly followed. They didn't even notice the slight trail of urine left on the hallway floor.
Far behind them, a dying boy's voice whispered two last words from inside the chrysalis: "Thank you."
-
A/N: Wrath: Actually I'm not sure why The Tempest got mixed up in this fanfic. It was just there all of a sudden … Well, tune in next week for even more gratuitous Shakespeare references! –E.P.O.
