The young man deposited his bags on the kitchen counter, and passed the short hallway on his way to the answering machine. There was a beep, and a small voice said "messages…erased". He then returned to the kitchen area, all the while avoiding looking down the short hallway. Jennifer had the sinking suspicion that he knew she was there, that he was only humoring her until he could call the cops or kill her or something. It had, after all, been that kind of day.
After dallying in the kitchen, the young man went to the footlocker beside the TV. He drew out the ax, and eyed it with mild confusion. "How odd." He remarked. "I don't remember having this here." With a shrug he replaced it in the footlocker.
Growing more uneasy as the young man went about his daily life only a few feet from her poorly chosen hiding spot, Jennifer waited for the young man to leave before she got back to her feet. She could hear voices just on the other side of the door; when she peeked out, she could see the young man talking to a young woman—he called her 'Eileen'. Half-curious as to whether or not that was the Eileen that 'never knew…' but more concerned with how she would explain her presence to the owner of the apartment, Jennifer paced the living room nervously. Her mother had taught her that upfront and honest was the best way to be; maybe she'd luck out and the guy wouldn't be as psychotic as most of the other people she had met today. Hell, maybe he'd even have an idea of what was going on…or at least have the capability of understanding how she'd magically gotten into his apartment through a paper doodle.
The man came in, whistling cheerfully. He had turned to shut the door behind him, missing Jennifer sitting on the couch. When he turned around and finally saw her after all this time, the most he did was utter a surprise 'oh!' and wear a moderately shocked look. "Hello." He said, his voice soothing and low. "Who are you?"
Jennifer studied him. His hair was shoulder length; blonde though the original color must've been brown (she could see the roots) and his face was generically handsome enough to blend into a crowd. He was average height and average build—abnormally normal in every way except his eyes…they were bright blue and shining as though with fever. "Um…" she began nervously, though her throat closed up and she found speech impossible.
"I don't get many visitors here who don't use the front door." He said, smiling softly. Something in the smile shook her further; it was…sly. Sly and shady and most definitely one Jennifer did NOT want directed at her.
"Uh…" she tried again. The man came across the room and stood at the edge of the coffee table. He offered a hand; the cuff of his blue trench coat was soaked. It looked black and ominous against his pale white skin.
"My name is Walter. Walter Sullivan. Welcome to my apartment." With that, he grabbed her wrist and pulled Jennifer to her feet. Though his face remained blandly calm, his fingers dug into her arm with surprising ferocity. "Now please Miss; why are you in my home, and why are you holding my golf club?"
Her knees shook and the only thing she could stammer out was "Did you know your bathroom's totally soaked with blood and please don't kill me!"
The man calling himself Walter Sullivan cocked his head quizzically at her jumbled statement, and loosened his grip. "Kill you? Why would I do that?" he asked.
Jennifer managed to pull her hand free. She massaged her wrist, the red finger marks hot to the touch. "It's been that kind of day." She replied as the first onset of a fresh panic attack tried to dance on her already jangled nerves. "And your bathroom really is covered in blood."
Walter sighed. "That happens sometimes. I think perhaps Mother is ill." He said with a sad little shrug.
"Mother?" Jennifer asked. There had been no one else in the apartment the entire time she had cowered there.
He laughed, and held his arms out. "Meet my mother. We both should like very much to meet you now."
What few warning bells hadn't been going off in her head now set to screaming full blast. Jennifer managed to force her name and a smile out, even as her eyes gazed longingly at the only exit in the room. The more she stared at the front door, the further it seemed to get.
"It's good to meet you Jennifer." Walter said. He pointed to the couch. "Please sit while I see what's wrong."
As soon as he was out of sight in the bathroom, Jennifer sprinted over the coffee table to the front door. A mass of chains covered it just as her fingers brushed the knob. They were thick, heavy metal chains that looped and crossed before the doorway. Not even Houdini could have made an escape out of that mess. Tears welled up in Jennifer's eyes as she realized she was probably going to join the rest of the mess in the bathroom. She heard the bathroom door open, but failed to make it back to the couch before Walter caught up with her. He grabbed her shoulder just as she reached the coffee table. "Please. Sit." He said, eyes and teeth glittering strangely. "I do so hate for guests to be uncomfortable." With that he pushed Jennifer back to the couch.
The golf club (which she had tucked into the backpack strap for safe keeping) poked a hole into the couch as Jennifer landed on it. The apartment filled with the strong smell of rotted meat. Stomach rolling, Jennifer didn't dare look back behind her to see what she was sitting on or how the frail handle of the golf-club had managed to uncover such a god-awful smell.
On the small table to her left, a lamp and phone sat innocuously. Walter leaned over her to turn the lamp on; even his skin had that faint scent of something long dead. The bloody bathroom was becoming less and less of a mystery in the back of Jennifer's mind; however, in the forefront she was too busy trying not to scream and vomit.
The phone rang. It rang three times before Walter noticed to pick it up; he had been staring at Jennifer in the lamp light the entire time. With each ring, the apartment had changed a little. On the first ring, a thick reddish dust had settled on everything. On the second, the windows boarded themselves over with blood-stained cardboard and there were thousands of red handprints along the furniture and smears of blood on the walls and floor. On the third, death and rot had been so thick on the air that Jennifer almost keeled over. She could see bits of something stretched on a rack, drying above the washer that was no longer hidden behind a door. She did not want to recognize it for what it was, even though the Cynthia tattoo decorated with roses was a dead give away.
"It's for you." Walter said, seemingly oblivious to the changes in the apartment. He held the phone out to her. In three rings, he had changed too! His hair was matted and the tips were clumped together with blood. His face was red where blood had to have splattered across it. His clothes had gone from fairly nice to street-tramp condition in less than a minute, and they too were soaked with blood.
Jennifer gingerly accepted the phone, for it too was stained with blood and something darker…nothing she wanted on her fingers. "H-h-hello?" she whispered, watching Walter nervously as he went into the kitchen. She saw him open the fridge and draw out a package wrapped in butcher's paper. She turned away before she saw what was in it.
"You're in a bad place." A childish voice told her.
Though scared enough to wet herself, Jennifer breathed a sigh of relief. If the voice on the phone had been falsetto, that would have been the final straw. "Billy? Billy honey, how did you get this number?" Jennifer asked sweetly, seeing Walter jump in the corner of her eye.
"You're in a very bad place." Billy repeated. "You need to come to school. Me and Miriam are here." He said. "This place isn't as bad as the place you're in."
"Billy, the door is locked." Jennifer whispered. "There are chains. I can't get out because of the chains Billy."
"In the secret book that you got. It has all the secrets of Silent Hill in it." He told her. "You just have to read the right part."
"Billy? Billy, I can't hear you." Jennifer said, a note of hysteria creeping into her voice. Billy and Miriam were at the school…the school! Billy and Miriam…it couldn't be though; it couldn't be her childhood coming back to haunt her. She wasn't here, sitting in a blood-soaked death-reeking living room with a lunatic; holding a bloody phone and talking to a little boy who couldn't possible exist now. She wasn't here, and no one could convince her otherwise.
The static over the phone got worse. "The book." Billy managed to get over the line before the phone went completely dead in her hand.
"Who was that?" Walter called from the kitchen.
"Just a boy I know." Jennifer called back breathlessly. He was still working in the kitchen; she had time to look in the book. Just not the courage…until Walter drew a butcher's cleave off the wall and began attacking whatever was in the white package. That was all the bolster Jennifer needed to drag the book out and flip through the pages.
There were blank pages and pages of pictures and words that didn't make sense and the mark of Samael, the beast. Jennifer flipped through the book back and forth, back and forth, wondering what she was looking for. As she drew her finger across another page, the faded gilded edge cut a deep furlough in her finger. "Ouch!" she yelped, putting the finger to her mouth. A drop of blood made it from her finger to the blank page before, and the blood crept along invisible lines on the page until it seemed to fill in slight furrows of the page.
Spidery script, in her own blood, mocked her from the page.
…and rather than become dinner for the angry giant, Jack leapt from the window of the giant castle and scurried down the beanstalk back to his home. The giant followed, but being so large and cumbersome he fell all the way down the beanstalk, hitting the ground with such force that his body left a giant crater; and with a great roar of indignation, the giant was dead and Jack…
Jennifer stared blankly at the page. What the hell kind of clue was that? Nothing in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' had anything to do with what she was going through. She would have been better off with a copy of 'Alice in Wonderland'! Disgusted, she shut the book despairingly and looked up to see Walter looming over her.
"Oh…" he said, sounding out of breath. "You've cut yourself." He murmured, taking her hand away from her mouth and staring at her finger. He began to squeeze.
"OW! LET GO!" Jennifer bellowed, struggling to pull her hand away. A thin trickle of blood crept from her finger into Walter's sleeve and wrist, and a few drops dotted the dingy carpet.
"Blood is so very important. We need it to live…to be a family…" Walter murmured, staring at her finger in rapture. "It's such a wondrous thing, blood…"
Eyes searching the room madly as she struggled, Jennifer picked up the book without thinking and slammed it down on Walter's arm with as much force as she could muster. With a surprised cry, he dropped her bleeding finger.
"You hit me!" he cried out, looking frightened and indignant all at once. "You hit me!" he repeated.
Then it hit her. "THE WINDOW!" Jennifer shouted, hoping to startle Walter into taking a step back. He did, and with adrenaline surging throughout her body, Jennifer launched herself at one of the cardboard windows. Her fingers scrabbled on the wet cardboard, taking out huge chunks at a time. There was no glass beneath the cardboard, and once Jennifer had torn enough cardboard away (she thought) she began to push her way out of the bloody room.
Walter, having recovered some sense in the mean time, had grabbed her feet and was pulling with all his might to bring her back in. Jennifer kicked and twisted, feeling her shoes come off in his grasp. Having lost his leverage, Walter fell back and Jennifer shot out the window. As the ground rushed up to meet her, Jennifer could hear a child wailing. She wondered if it was Walter…
Someone was hitting her face. She hated it when people hit her face. "I'm alive, I'm alive!" Jennifer protested, eyes fluttering open to gloom and shadows. She frowned, and sat up. Looking around didn't do any good; the room was so dim she could barely see past her nose. "Hello? Is someone here?" she asked, rising slowly from the ground. Her joints ached and cracked loudly in the stillness—of course, belly-flopping onto pavement should have some kind of impact on a body, even in Silent Hill.
"Don't move; there's broken glass on the floor." A male voice warned.
"Who are you?" Jennifer asked, getting to her feet in a hurry and taking a wary step back. Glass snapped under her foot, and she jumped back to the space her body had been occupying. The sound hadn't been followed by the tell-tale sting that meant she'd cut her feet…but hadn't she just lost her shoes to Walter and his apartment? Isn't that what had just happened! "What's going on here?" she repeated for what had to be the millionth time that day.
"My name is Leon Kennedy; I'm an officer with the local police department." The man replied soothingly.
"Get out of the shadows." Jennifer ordered. "And your weapon had better be holstered!" she added.
"Calm down; there's nothing here to hurt you now." He said; a small beam of light blinded Jennifer for a moment. She ducked away from it, eyes unseeing. "Sorry about that." He said as a hand wrapped itself gingerly around Jennifer's wrist. When she tried to pull away, the man spoke again. "Please be careful; there's glass anywhere…I don't know how you got in here without cutting yourself." He said as he pulled her out of what was slowly emerging as a boiler room in her eyes.
Safely out in the hall, the stranger turned off his flashlight. "The batteries are trying to die." He explained, wincing at his choice of words. "Now…are you all right miss?" the officer asked, again touching her very gently as he turned her from side to side.
Jennifer shook her head. "I'm not hurt, if that's what you mean." She said. "But I'm about as far from all right as you can get in this place; where are we anyway?"
Officer Kennedy frowned. There was more light in the hallway, and she could see his face more clearly. He was young—probably a rookie if he was anything—with wide blue eyes and brown hair that fell over his forehead and into his eyes. His face was long, but not frighteningly so; it was in proportion with the rest of him as he loomed over Jennifer. "We're at the elementary school…question is, how did you get here?" he asked.
Jennifer blew a long and dramatic sigh. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." She warned.
"You seem shaken; let's go into an empty classroom and sit down." Officer Kennedy tried to take the golf club from her. She hadn't even realized she'd been holding it.
"No way man; I am not walking around this demented hell hole unarmed." Jennifer warned. She pulled away from him.
Kennedy sighed. "Miss, please don't be hysterical—"
"I am NOT hysterical. If I were hysterical, I'd be screaming. What I am, at the moment, is crazy." She replied sharply.
The cop held his hands up. "Look, I didn't mean anything by it, okay?" he said, his voice strained. "It's just…" He couldn't seem to be able to finish the sentence; his words were lost in an exasperated sigh.
"It's just that something's going on here that they don't teach you about at the academy, right?" Jennifer said sarcastically. Her tone softened immediately when she saw the young man's anguished face. "Get me out of this basement and I'll tell you what's happened to me. Then you can tell me what happened to you. Is that all right with you Officer Kennedy?" she put a hand on his arm.
He nodded. "Call me Leon." He replied, taking her hand and pulling her through the darkness surrounding the boilers. Glass crunched under their steps until they stood before the only door in the room; Jennifer was glad she had worn sneakers that day…gladder still that she hadn't really lost them earlier.
As Leon pulled the door open for her, Jennifer looked back over her shoulder. The windows were blacked out, but the room was barely lit with what she would have called 'stupid cheesy horror-movie ambiance lighting'…if this were a movie. She could just make out the looming shape of the boilers; no flames flickered within their cast-iron bellies. For a second she thought she saw something move in the shadows; the thought was gone before she really even finished it. Numb, she focused on the dark, empty staircase ahead. Leon was close to her back; she hoped he had a gun…
The first floor was blissfully empty, cool and smelling faintly of stale air and old papers. She started for the front doors, but Leon pulled her back. They were locked, he'd explained, though how he wasn't sure. She'd made the mistake of wishing aloud for her ax back; he'd stared at her like she was insane.
"What do you mean 'your ax'? You're not going to tell me you gave up a perfectly good ax for a piece-of-crap 9-iron." He said, staring at her, amazed and disbelieving.
Jennifer put her hands on her hips. "In case you didn't notice hun, I ain't exactly stacked like Arnold." She replied sourly. "The ax was heavy and it slowed me way the hell down; so yes I gave up a perfectly good ax for this piece-of-crap 9-iron because I put stock in my feet over my ability to swing an ax." The thought of swinging an ax again made her queasy…she could still see the cloven head of the cross-dresser if she wasn't careful when she shut her eyes.
"Okay, okay!" Leon said, shaking his head. "Good points, all of them…but man I wish you hadn't done that." He groaned.
Jennifer ignored him. She brushed past him, and pushed her way into the nurse's office. The classrooms were on the second floor, she remembered, and she was too tired and too frightened to climb the next flight of stairs to see what monsters were waiting for her up there.
"Hey…wait up!" Leon protested, grabbing her arm. "You'll get yourself killed if throw yourself into these rooms without clearing them." He said with wide eyes and a strained voice.
His fear was palpable, riding the stale air in bitter electric currents that made Jennifer dizzy and shaky. "Personal knowledge or common sense?" she asked, unable to help herself.
Leon's lips tightened, and he said nothing.
"Sorry…" Jennifer mumbled.
Leon went in first; to Jennifer's relief, he did have a gun. She stood in the doorway while he poked into every dark corner and under the gurney and the desk and chair. She didn't see anything personally, didn't…didn't sense anything or anyone. But she waited in the doorway for Leon to give her the all-clear sign. She owed him that much, didn't she?
Jennifer boosted herself onto the gurney-bed, crossing her legs Indian-style on the paper cover. There was too much darkness underneath the bed to leave her feet dangling free. Leon tried the light switch by the door with no luck; he made a strangled noise of disgust and flopped into the chair next to the desk. Without any real hope on his face, he tried the lamp.
It flickered once, twice; then flared to life only to dim almost to the point where it did no good. Still, it alleviated some of the creepy, untraceable ambiance lighting.
"So how did you get here?" Leon asked, leaning back in the chair. He didn't relinquish his hold on his gun; he gripped the butt tightly, though thankfully enough he kept his fingers away from the trigger.
Jennifer blew a deep sigh through her lips, the cold air ruffling her bangs and tossing them across one eye. "Honestly? I leapt from what had to be a third-story window in an apartment building that I'm not sure actually existed." She confessed.
Leon didn't bat an eyelash. "I crashed my car into a ditch and woke parked in the parking lot. Then I got chased in here by these…things." His eyes lost their focus for a second. Jennifer left him a minute to regain his composure. He seemed grateful for it. "My partner…he didn't…we…" he shook his head. "We opened the front door. We walked in." he said firmly, as though she had disagreed with him.
Jennifer hadn't said a word. She supposed it was his own mind arguing with him, telling him that the things he was going to say hadn't happened. She knew that feeling; she'd let him wrestle with it and she wouldn't say anything different.
"But we shut the door, and we were on the third floor…" Leon rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. "There were…things…little…demon-things. They had pieces of scrap metal…they kept trying to cut us…and the walls…" he shuddered. "There were bodies on the walls. Pieces and whole ones…and blood…I've never seen that much blood before…" he said weakly.
"I know." Jennifer said dryly with a faint nod.
"We heard sirens off in the distance…Chris—Chris is…was…he started shooting the things, trying to get a path. He was screaming about back-up." Leon's eyes came back into focus then, and they blazed furiously in the dim light. "One of the little bastards came in behind him and got him right in the back of the knee. He went down hard; they were all over him. I don't know what happened next…I…I remember they started swarming me too, but I can't remember if it hurt. I just remember falling down. Then I woke up in this weird-ass hospital room." He said.
"Weird-ass hospital room?" Jennifer asked suspiciously. "Was it old? And bloody?"
Leon nodded. "Yeah, how did you—" he started.
Jennifer interrupted him. "And you were on this nasty-ass bed, right?"
He nodded.
"And there was a picture on the monitor next to the bed; of some girl?"
"The name on the bottom said Alessa." He offered. "How did you…?"
Jennifer shook her head. "I woke up in there…after…" she tried and failed on her first attempt to get the words out.
"Start from the beginning." Leon prodded gently. He smiled softly, though his eyes were still wide with fear.
"I thought you were telling yours first." Jennifer replied.
"There's not much after that…I woke up in that nasty place and I ran for the door…I could hear a kid crying, so I threw open the door to try and find them. Then I was in the boiler room; where I found you in the middle of all that glass." He finished.
Jennifer rubbed her face; the 9-iron rested on the bed beside her hip. "I've been tripping all day." She said at last.
"Tripping?" Leon said, cocking his head and staring at her curiously.
"I guess that's what you'd call it. I was in my car, I'm pretty sure…I was driving into town, through the woods, when something hit my windshield. I went off the road; then I woke up, and I was still in my car, but I was sitting in the driveway of my house." The words came faster and faster still; she didn't want to relive all the memories so far. "Then I went up the stairs to go in, and I swear I went through the door but then I was back in my car and I was still in the woods."
"What?" Leon shook his head, unable to follow.
"I know, it's confusing. But that's what happened…then I was hauling ass through the woods because my car fucking blew up…" Jennifer growled. "Two payments to go and the thing is now a series of flaming bits."
"Tough luck." He commiserated.
"I wound up at this place called 'Wish House', and—"
Leon got to his feet. "You didn't go in, did you?"
"Well…yeah…I mean, I was looking for help. What's wrong?"
"The 'Wish House' shouldn't have been there…some guy named Henry or Harry or something burned it down; it used to be owned by this cult…they used kids for their ceremonies…it's some pretty dark history." Leon said softly, turning his face away from Jennifer. Bile had risen in his throat, and he needed a minute to clear it. He'd made the mistake of reading the reports on 'Wish House'. He wished he hadn't.
"Well it was there. I went in it." Jennifer said firmly. "And I met this kid, and it was crazy because he looks and he sounds just like this boy I went to school with. But the kid I went to school with is dead, so that's impossible." She added sharply, more for herself than for Leon's sake.
Leon sat on the edge of the bed, laying his gun next to her golf club. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Can you really say that?" he asked.
"Not anymore…" she admitted. "But then the kid, who says his name is Billy, just like the kid I used to know, started telling me all this weird-ass shit! And then this big-ass cross-dresser comes in and Billy practically throws me in a closet and I wind up going down these stairs and into this cell…then that psycho's right on me and I passed out."
"And then you wake up somewhere new." Leon finished.
"Right; back in my driveway. Then some more crazy shit happens, and I get eaten by shadows."
"Eaten by what?" Leon sounded genuinely surprised.
"I can't describe it…I was in the attic, and the lights went out and came back on. But the shadows didn't go away. They got thicker, and I could feel them pulling at me…and then I fell."
"And you woke up…"
"In the same hospital room you did." Jennifer said promptly. "Then more crazy shit—"
"That you're reluctant to tell me about." Leon interrupted.
Jennifer licked her lips, and ran her hands over her face again. "I thought I killed someone…I thought I saw someone else die…but I don't know if anything I've seen or felt is real anymore." She said in a hushed whisper.
Leon looked down at his lap. "I know." He replied softly. "I know." He repeated.
"Anyone, I wound up going through this door that was drawn on paper, and I wound up in this closet in this apartment owned by some psycho that's calling himself Walter Sullivan."
Leon's head snapped up. "No." he said firmly. "That is…"
"Don't even say it, because nothing's that anymore." Jennifer replied. "Anyways, he tried to grab me, so I opened the book—"
"What book?" Leon demanded.
Jennifer shrugged the backpack off her shoulders, and pulled it onto her lap. She pulled out the book Doulgas had given her. "That kid—Billy—he said all the answers were in here."
"So you got it out while he was trying to grab you?"
"No; he hadn't grabbed me yet. He was just being creepy and psycho…"
"Okay."
"So I open the book, and I wound up cutting myself on the edge. Then this passage from 'Jack and the Beanstalk' appears and then Walter went ape-shit on me." The book remained closed in her lap. She couldn't bear to open it again.
"So you…what? Climbed down a beanstalk?" Leon couldn't follow the story; hers had even more holes in it than his; no wonder she had called it 'tripping'.
"No; I leapt head first out of the third story window, like I told you earlier. Then I was in the basement, and that's about the time you showed up." Jennifer finished.
Leon shook his head, staring blankly at the wall ahead of him. "Tripping is a good word for whatever this is…"
"It's like…it's like the reality we're used to has…it's either turned into a Pink Floyd video or water; I haven't decided which." Jennifer said.
Leon nodded. "So what do we do?" he asked.
"I don't know; you're the cop, you tell me."
"If I knew what the fuck to do, do you think my ass would be sitting here on this bed with you?" he demanded dryly.
"Touché." Jennifer replied. "The front doors are locked, you said, so we have to find another way out. Hopefully one that doesn't involve jumping off the roof." She added.
"You think the answer might be in that book?" Leon asked hopefully.
"I don't think so…this hasn't really become a puzzle yet…I mean…not that anything else was but…"
"I know what you mean; we haven't come to the last resort yet." He finished.
"Right…so, back to the question: what do we do?"
"We'll have to go exploring." Leon said grimly.
"Better stock up on band-aids before we hit the third floor." Jennifer said, perfectly serious.
Leon's face blanched.
"Sorry…my mouth can't seem to stop." She said sheepishly.
"It's okay." Leon replied stiffly. "You've been through a lot." He added.
Jennifer sighed again. "When I was in the apartment…I got a phone call…"
"From Billy?" Leon guessed. "I mean, since everything's gone haywire and all…" he added, the words feeling inadequate.
She nodded. "He said…he told me I was in a bad place, and to come to school because it wasn't as bad a place as where I was. He said he and Miriam were here."
"Then…we should find them, I guess." Leon made to get off the bed.
"Where do we start? I mean…if they really are who they say they are, they're dead." Jennifer protested, grabbing his arm before he could move away.
"Walter Sullivan's supposed to be dead too; but I have no doubt that the guy in the apartment who said he was Walter really was. I don't doubt it for a minute." Leon said firmly as he slid off the bed. He held his hands out to Jennifer to help her off.
Jennifer grasped his hands tightly; they were warm. "I wish I knew why we had to be here." She whispered, getting to her feet.
Leon squeezed her hands. "We'll get out of this. I'll get you out of this somehow…I promise." He added softly.
Jennifer smiled weakly. "Okay. Let's do it then." She said, hoping to sound resolute. She turned back to grab the golf club…but it wasn't there! Panic re-tightened its grip on her mind. "Leon? Your gun and my golf-club were on the bed, right?" she asked shrilly.
"What!" Leon pushed her aside and tore the paper off the bed, punching the poorly upholstered mattress and cursing soundly. "They're not here. How can they not be here!" he demanded, turning back to her.
Jennifer shook her head. "Whoever's in charge seems to think we don't need them." She said softly.
"There can't be anyone in charge; this is too crazy for anyone to be in charge!" Leon replied sharply.
"Come and get them…" a sweet, girlish voice called from behind them.
Jennifer and Leon both turned to face the doorway; Jennifer screamed.
There in the doorway, was little Miriam. She was wearing her favorite pink gingham sundress, and she had the golf club in her hand and the gun in the pocket of her dress. Her hair was in pigtails, and she was smiling up at them.
She only had one eye…
Then she was gone.
"Damn it! Damn it, damn it, damn it!" Leon bellowed, storming out of the nurses' office and standing in the middle of the hall. "Where the fuck did she go?" he screamed.
Jennifer shoved the book back in her backpack, and slid her arms into the straps. She rushed out of the office. "Probably to the place we'd be the smartest to be afraid of." She said grimly. "That's how it's been working so far." She added.
Leon punched a wall, near tears. "We can't go up there unarmed. Those things…" he said pitifully.
Jennifer patted his back. "To get our stuff back, we're going to have to. We'll find something; we'll make do. You promised me you'd get me out of this, remember? I'm holding you to that." She said softly.
Leon looked back at her slowly, his face blank and unreadable. "A promise is a promise." He said gruffly.
"C'mon…maybe we can find something along the way." Jennifer prodded.
Leon nodded. "Right…the stairs are at the end of the hall." He pulled away from the wall, took her hand, and led her up the hall.
Jennifer followed quietly and amiably. She couldn't say anything else, because the words on the tip of her tongue weren't morale boosters. Leon didn't need her doubt; he had enough of his own…still…
They were so fucked…