Chapter 22: Path of Ceres
After wandering across the bottom of the lake for about half a minute, Beth finally saw the door. Contrasting with the green waters around it, the wooden surface was painted bright blue. The door was simply there, in the middle of the water, its doorframe lacking a wall. The sandy ground constituted its threshold.
Beth grabbed the blue knob. As she slowly pushed the door open, she felt her hand glide out of the water and into dry air.
The doorway offered a view of the lake above the surface, on top of the thin ice. Even though the deep waters around the doorway rendered the idea of this exit completely impossible, the portal stubbornly insisted on leading to an area located 15-20 metres above. It was like a window in the middle of a huge mirror, reflecting infinite waters. However, the way it seemed to defy gravity could only be compared to a hatch at the top of a water-filled area. The waters refused to let a single drop trickle through the doorway, despite it being a vertical opening with empty air on the other side.
This almost literally turned the laws of physics upside-down, but Beth had to accept it. She had no other choice.
As all faith in the concepts of gravity and logic began to slip from her mind like sand through one's fingers, Beth stepped through the doorway on the bottom of Hooper Lake. And just like the doorway had wordlessly promised her, she entered an area devoid of water, above the lake surface. The door slammed shut behind her, but she barely winced at the noise. Her senses were hypnotized by the astonishing scene on top of Hooper Lake.
The ice was dangerously thin and felt ready to crack under Beth's feet. Yet, a thick and heavy-looking wall stretched around the area in a long oval, encircling the centre of Hooper Lake's icy surface. Beth recognized the dark green wall from the corridors of St. Gilliam School. Two other, closed doors were situated in the wall. All three exits constituted the points of a right-angled triangle, Beth having entered through the 90 degree point. She wondered if the other two doors could be Shelley and Dean's entrances.
Thin shadows between beams of moonlight covered the ice in a cobweb-like pattern. Beth looked up to find their source and saw something even more unbelievable than the school wall encircling the lake. A huge construction of wires was stretched out at the top of the wall, like a bizarre excuse for a ceiling. All the wires came together in the centre, and a thick, leathery, black tube lined the whole thing. Beth nearly laughed out loud, as she realized that the tube was a tyre and the wires were spokes. "It's a goddamn bicycle wheel!"
"Amused by the scenery?" Philip asked. Beth looked down to find him and Louise standing on the middle of the thin ice, next to the hole. The hole where the taxi had crashed down, the hole where Kyle had floated up to his next life.
Beth nodded, grinning. "This is all so … ridicolous!" Her voice and the smile on her face made her look as if she was standing before a hole of her own, one that led into the depths of insanity.
"Well, as the expression goes, we don't have all day," Philip said. "Or rather, all night." The sky was ink-black with a dismal full moon. No stars could pierce the darkness. Philip raised his right hand to eye level. The coat sleeve slid down to reveal a black cup clutched in his bony fingers. "The obsidian goblet." He produced a small bottle from his pocket, removed the cork and poured an oily, white liquid into the cup.
"What's that?" Beth asked. "PTV?" Although she had never lived in Silent Hill, she had heard rumours about the infamous drug.
Philip shook his head, exasperated. "No. Not PTV. That's what the ignorant sinners would call it, as they will never learn to appreciate its secret beauty and its true name. White Claudia …" As he spoke, he pulled out a long, rusty knife and handed it to Louise.
The girl took the dagger and looked up at the priest. "Are you sure it's necessary?"
Philip nodded.
"Okay, I'll try." Louise pulled out a small photo and contemplated the image of herself and Sharon, sitting on the swings in their old backyard, laughing. She tucked the photo back into her pocket and closed her eyes to reminisce.
Blue sky with a few ghostly clouds. Sunlight. Butterflies. Sharon's smile. They swung back and forth, counted to three, then both jumped off and flew through the hot air, landed on green grass and laughed.
Louise pressed the dagger's blade across her left palm. Blood trickled from the cut. Philip held the obsidian goblet out below her hand. The priest looked up at the skies, and the jacket's thick hood fell back to reveal his shaven crown. Blood dripped into the cup and through the white surface. "The ritual has begun," Philip declared, smiling.
With closed eyes, Dean walked down the underground tunnel. The place was already shrouded in impenetrable darkness. He could only feel the cold winds, smell the rancid air and trace the earthy wall with his left hand.
And suddenly, he could hear a male voice, reverberating from afar. "Mr. Frost? What is taking you so long?"
Dean froze in the middle of the pitchblack tunnel. It couldn't be him, could it? No, of course not. That would be impossible.
"We are waiting, Mr. Frost. We are still waiting."
It was him. No doubt, no hope for other possibilities. Dean began walking down the tunnel again, towards the source of the echoing voice. If he was really there, Dean wouldn't want to test his patience.
Another horribly familiar voice: "Dean? Come on down here! Let's talk. Maybe she's gonna show up, too."
Dean quickened his pace. After a few seconds of running down the seemingly infinite tunnel, he bumped into a hard, metal surface. A hospital door. His hand slid down along the frame. Cold handle. He pushed the door open and stumbled into a grey, dusty room. Soft, forgiving, white walls. No furniture. Light seeped through the fog outside the little window, illuminating Dean Frost's last abode.
Room F2.
The door slammed shut behind him. Dean pivoted to find a middle-aged man standing in front of the exit. He wore a white coat and crescent-shaped glasses. His face looked weary. "Hello, Dean." His voice sounded as deep and intimidating as usual. "I am pleased to meet you in person."
"Doctor," Dean breathed. "You've …"
"Come true? I have come true? That is what you were going to say, was it not?" Doctor crinkled his hawk nose in disgust. "I have always been true. What about yourself, Dean? Are you true? Will you ever come true?"
"Hey, cut it out. You're scaring him."
Dean slowly turned around. Mister stood leaned against the opposite wall, a friendly smile on his face. He was probably in his mid-thirties and wore ordinary, crumpled clothes. "Hi there, Dean."
"H-hi," Dean managed to stutter out.
"Mister." Doctor gave the man a slight nod, then turned his attention back to Dean. "Do you think Mister is true, Dean?"
"What! Of course I'm real!" Mister gestured to his body. "Look, I'm right here, moving and talking and thinking!"
Doctor's eye twitched slightly. "You do not understand, Dean. He is merely an illusion. You know that. Accept it."
Dean took a few steps backwards to keep both men at a distance. "What are you trying to tell me?"
Doctor let out a melancholy sigh. "I knew this would happen. I have been expecting it for years." He raked a hand through his grey hair. "You are ill, Dean. Your mind is ill."
"What the hell are you talking about, Doc?" Mister protested. "There's nothing wrong with my …"
Doctor lashed out with the speed of a venomous snake. His fist connected with Mister's jaw and sent the man flying backwards, into a corner. Dean stood motionless and watched Mister slump down on the dusty floor, blood trickling from his nostrils and mouth. Doctor calmly produced a syringe, walked across the room, pulled Mister's shirt sleeve back and injected a clear liquid into his arm. With one last groan, Mister's body went completely limp.
Doctor tucked the half-empty syringe back into his coat pocket. "I hate it when he calls me 'Doc'."
Louise was still letting her blod drip into the goblet. Beth ran towards her and the priest, out to the center of the ice. "If I don't stop this now, they'll …"
Her train of thought abruptly stopped on its wobbly tracks, as Beth slammed against another invisible barrier. She stumbled back, but soon resumed kicking and pounding on the wall, systematically searching for a gap. Ripples spread throughout the air. Not even the slightest weak spot was revealed to Beth's frantic arms, as she traced the circular wall around Louise, Philip and the hole in the ice. "Let me in! You don't know what you're doing, Louise!"
"I'm saving Sharon," Louise said.
"Ignore Beth. Ignorance pervades her soul," Philip remarked. He held the obsidian goblet up to eye level and contemplated the blood-stained White Claudia inside. Handing the cup to Louise, he produced the book of the Crimson Ceremony and opened it on its middle pages.
"Is he … dead?" Dean asked.
Doctor shook his head and answered: "He will probably be unconscious for twenty minutes. Half an hour at most. That will leave plenty of time for me to converse with you, Dean."
"Converse?" Doctor's vocabulary had always been much more sophisticated than Dean's.
"Talk."
"About what?"
"Everything." Doctor produced a document from his white coat. "This is what the hospital wrote about you. I believe Beth read it, back when you were both visiting the main office." He read aloud: "Was born in Silent Hill, New England. Father deserted the mother soon afterwards and left her to raise the child on her own (illness partly rooted in lack of father figure?). For once, I can agree with those quacks at Lambert Hospital."
Doctor slipped the paper back into his pocket and started pacing back and forth between Mister in the corner and Dean in the opposite end of the room. He took a deep breath and embarked on a monologue: "First of all, you must understand that you already have a father, Dean. We cannot know where he has gone – perhaps he has married some other woman and found happiness, perhaps he lies dead and buried – but we know that he is out there. He exists." Doctor walked back from the corner and approached Dean yet again, stepping even closer this time. Both bodies were of equal height, but Dean felt like Doctor was towering above him. An adult in front of a defenceless child. Doctor stopped there, a mere inch of stale air between him and the mental patient.
"Your father is true, Dean," he informed. "In fact, your father is more true than any of this ... this falsehood." Doctor's soft voice made such a sharp contrast to the noisy silence of the hospital room.
"I know he's true," Dean said.
"Then why do you create these lies? So many people have been abandoned by their fathers as well, but they can learn to cope with it without resorting to lies. Illusions." Doctor gestured to Mister. "Dreams of what a friendly, loving, encouraging, optimistic father would be like." He looked down at himself, his white robe, his bony hands. "Nightmares of what a cynical, unfeeling, even violent father would be like. But it is all lies, Dean. You have to stop lying." Doctor gripped Dean's head between his hands. "Stop lying. It is time to leave this trial and wake up from Wonderland, you immature little idiot."
"Go away!" Dean sobbed.
The exasperated Doctor thrust the man's head around and smacked it into the wall. Dean howled in pain. "I cannot go anywhere before you stop lying," Doctor said, watching in disgust as Dean curled up on the floor. "Is it really that hard to understand? No, of course not. You understand this perfectly well; otherwise, I would not understand."
Speak.
Trapped outside the barrier, Beth could only watch as Philip began to read aloud. "You are the Crimson One. The lies and the mist are not they, but you. We know that you are One. Yes, and the One you are. We hearken to you!"
Louise raised the goblet to her lips and drank its white and crimson liquid.
"Twenty score men and seven thousand beasts. We heed your words and speak them to all, that they shall ever be obeyed, even under the light of the proud and merciless sun. You would bring down bitter vengeance upon them, and they would suffer your eternal wrath. The beauty of the withering flower and the last struggles of the dying man, they would be your blessings."
Louise emptied the cup and dropped it, arms now hanging limply at her sides. The goblet landed on the ice and rolled off the edge, sinking through the murky lake surface, nevermore to be seen by human eyes.
"I call upon you, and all that is you, in the place that is silent. Oh, proud fragrance of life which flies towards the heart."
Doctor bent down, grabbed Dean's hair, stood and pulled the man to his feet like a marionette. "I must admit this, Dean; I am beginning to doubt my plan. Perhaps you cannot be cured. Perhaps, even with all my skills as a Doctor, I cannot save you from your own lies."
"They're not lies," Dean murmured. His feet were now planted firmly on the floor. He raised his voice and repeated: "They're not lies!"
Doctor's hand shot out, gripping Dean's throat, pushing him up against the wall. He produced a long, silvery scalpel from his jacket and pressed the blade against Dean's throat. "Ah, the Adam's apple. Formed by the largest cartilage of the larynx, usually more prominent in men than in women. It is such a marvellous anatomical part. One quick, deep slit through the elastic vocal cords at the top of the trachea, the windpipe, and you will not even be able to scream in agony. Your voice will simply vanish, along with your life. Is that murder, Dean?"
Silence. A cacophony of silence.
"Answer me!"
"M-murder. It's mur-"
"NO!" Doctor let the scalpel slide up, past Dean's chin, onto his cheek. Tears of dread trickled down the pale skin and landed on the razorsharp blade.
"There are slower ways to die, Dean. More painful ways. Do you want to suffer before you die, Dean?"
"N-n-no. Please …"
"Then answer me. I want to help you, Dean. Simply give me the correct answer. If I killed you, would that be a murder?"
Dean slowly shook his head.
"What would it be, Dean? If it is not murder, what is it?" When the reply did not come, Doctor let the scalpel slide farther up Dean's cheek. The man clenched his eyes shut. Doctor started pressing the blade against one of the closed lids.
Dean finally screamed the answer.
"Suicide!"
Louise's eyes closed and her lips parted. White mist slithered out like a serpent. The trail of mist slowly billowed down, towards the hole in the ice. A thin, scarlet line could be seen in the middle of the fog – like an artery, ripped from Louise's system to pump blood into someone else. Both the vein and the mist around it slipped into the waters without leaving the slightest ripple.
"Oh, Cup which brims with the whitest of wine, it is in thee that all begins."
Doctor lowered the scalpel and stepped back. "You are making progress, Dean. I shall allow you a reward. Give me the portrait of her."
Dean hesitated a little before producing the crumpled paper from his pocket, handing it to Doctor. One side had once displayed the patient's first portrait of her, before it was covered under black streaks in the hospital office. The other side was adorned with a quick sketch drawn in Beth's car on the way to Silent Hill, outlining her face. Doctor took a few steps back, then held the paper out vertically between him and his patient. Dean stared into his mother's colourless eyes. He didn't even gasp as they turned blue.
The skin around them soon followed suit, obtaining a slightly tanned shade, while the shoulder-long hair turned blonde. The shoulders below seemed to appear from inside the paper itself. The paper grew and widened, making room for her entire body to leave it. It was as if she had always been waiting there to break free from her confinement of pristine paper.
"Hi, Dean," she said, smiling. "It's great to see you again." The paper, now large enough to depict an adult person in life-size, fell behind her and lay on the floor, completely chalkwhite.
"Mom … You're back."
Dean made a frantic attempt to colour over the black streaks with the four crayons. Alas, the blackness spread and covered up all other colours until only the woman's mouth was visible, uttering two last words: "Forget me"
Dean furrowed his brows at the memory. "You told me to forget you."
She nodded, a slight melancholy in her smile. "But you remembered me, and that's why I came back. You disappointed me, Dean. I want you to forget."
In the far corner, Mister regained consciousness with a bemused groan. He stood and walked across the room. Doctor was standing in front of the door again, motionless, observing the situation.
"Mister!" She threw her arms around the man in a loving embrace. They kissed and gazed into each other's blue eyes.
"Hi, honey," Mister said. "I missed you."
"Lies," Doctor commented. He walked up to the happy couple and pushed Mister away. Producing another instrument from his coat, he raised his bony hand, surgical saw blade flashing down through the air.
"Hey, Doc! What are you -"
But Mister never finished the sentence. He collapsed on the floor, his voice rising to an agonized screech, his torso ripped open from chest to groin. Intestines and blood sprayed out like waters breaking through a dam.
The bittersweet smile lingered on her face as she watched.
Doctor dropped the saw. It fell to the floor with a soft clanking, which was easily drowned out by Mister's scream. The man soon gave up his hopeless struggle, and the room fell silent.
"Perhaps …" Doctor turned to face his patient. Dean stared wide-eyed at Mister's corpse. "There might still be a way to cure you, Dean. It will be dangerous, but I see no other options. One last act of revenge, and you could forget us all."
"Avenge me," she said.
Dean tore his gaze away from Mister and looked up at Doctor. She was nowhere to be seen. The paper on the floor was still white as pure snow, but it had now returned to its normal size.
For a moment, all three stood motionless. Philip closing the crimson book. Beth watching from the other side of the barrier. Louise letting the trail of pristine mist with the red line flow from her mouth, into the water.
"Enough," Philip said.
Even faster than it had appeared, the trail vanished as Louise closed her mouth. Ripples finally appeared on the water surface, spreading from the middle where the ghostly vein had broken through.
Beth furrowed her brows. "What the hell was that thing?"
"A connection," Philip answered.
"To what?"
Beth's question received a sudden answer, as the surface was broken again – this time from beneath.
"Did you hear that?" For the first time since they had met, Doctor actually smiled to Dean. "She wants you to avenge her. Can you do that?"
Dean shook his head.
"Of course not. Goodbye, Dean." Doctor walked up to Mister, took the corpse by the shoulders and lifted it from the warm pool of blood. He gripped the torso and tugged at the vertical wound, pulling it wide open. Then, he simply plunged himself head-first into Mister's ribcage. Within seconds, both men had entered a ridicolous, obscene mutation. A flash of light engulfed the bodies, and Dean clenched his eyes shut against the painful glare.
"Avenge me …"
He opened his eyes as the room turned dim once more. Doctor and Mister had vanished. A strange figure stood before Dean. The newly arrived man did not seem unlike most people's vision of the Grim Reaper – tall, thin, wearing a black robe that left everything to the imagination. His head, however, was not covered by a cowl. The skin looked pale and bald, but the face was concealed under a crumpled, white paper hanging from his forehead. Dean recognized it as the exact same paper he had used for the portrait of her.
The stranger stepped forward and reached out his right arm. A razorsharp blade emerged from the sleeve like a pointing finger. Dean gingerly took the scalpel offered by his new companion.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"You already know it." Lord's voice sounded even colder and deeper than Doctor's.
"W-what do you want?"
"Revenge."
A/N: This has got to be the longest and weirdest chapter thus far ...Aaaanyway, remember to tune in next week as usual. –E.P.O.
