New and Familiar

I heard voices whispering around me, but I was so tired, I didn't feel like opening my eyes. Sensing I was in danger, I tried at opening them, but it felt as though my eyelids had been shot with Novocaine. I could only open them slightly, in slits, and all I saw ahead of me was light; bright, glaring bulbs that burned at my retinas. I saw shadows, figures, but this was all I could see. I heard voices, but they seemed distorted.

"Where did you find her?" asked a elderly sounding woman.

"I tried to warn her of Silent Hill," said another woman, but she sounded younger than she previous one.

"Is that why you died the same day as that girl?" asked the elderly woman.

"I had outlived my years, anyhow. She thought of me as only a nutcase. I had to find someway to look over her."

"So, what about the parents?"

"Well.." hesitated the younger woman.

"Is that the girl you found?" asked a young man who entered the room.

After that, all I felt was a sharp pain in my arm. Then I fell asleep several seconds later. When I felt the need to awake again, it was only because I felt cold water trickling on me. My eyes flicked open, and I found myself sitting on the floor of a shower, and the cold water cut back to heated. I blinked.

"Where am I?" I was only fooling myself. This was my shower, all the essentials circled around it, or maybe it just looked the same. I had a hard time standing at first, and collapsed to the ground shortly after trying my first time to regain footing. I turned back the faucet and the water cut off. I opened the shower shutters to grope to a towel to wrap around my nude body. I found one nearby and wrapped it around myself. I first noticed my surroundings; it looked like my bathroom, everything where it should have been, and there were even clothes sitting on the sink top, but they were not mine. Nevertheless, after throwing on my laid out undergarments, I pulled on the black tank shirt and dark blue jeans and opened the door hesitantly.

At first, there was a streak of light, but then I noticed my hallway as before, and to the immediate right, my room. What was going on, I wondered. Had all that happened been a passing dream?

I followed the hall to the living quarters, and then into the kitchen. On the refrigerator was a note posted with a magnet in my mother's handwriting, "Gone to visit our friends several hours away for a get-together. Be back soon. Mom." I stopped breathing for a second and realized that this was the same note that Mom left the night they left and Miranda was murdered. Impulsively, I sprinted down the hall and for Miranda's room and peered inside, but she, too, wasn't there.

Maybe all of this was a dream, I figured. Maybe Miranda went with them and none of that ever happened. So why don't things feel right?

It was small clues that gave me a feeling of uneasiness. These clothes, first of all, were neither Miranda's nor mine. She and I were near the same height, 5'3", and size in Juniors, but I had never seen these before. They smelled rather sterile, that smell like when you walk into the dentist's office. Who was that girl I saw Dad pick up, whether it happened at all or not? And how had I fallen asleep in the shower if this all was just a figment of my imagination?

I tried not to worry about it. Things would surely calm down in the next day, and my parents would be home in several hours, all of this put aside. Figuring I had some homework to catch up on for the weekend, I walked into my room with my studies only after locking the door behind me.

3rd Person Mode

"I was getting worried," said the elderly woman, staring into a dark portal that floated above an alter in the Cathedral. "Her brain waves were moving very rapidly. She still seems rather suspicious, though."

"Tell me again why we're doing this," asked the young man, pushing back his messed, dark hair.

"We need someone to end the Damnations of Silent Hill for good. We want to welcome God into this Paradise."

"What paradise?" scoffed the boy. "This place is worse than an insane asylum."

"Hush, nave!" hissed the old woman.

"You have to admit it. This place is overrun with demons. This town was never this way until you and your cult got involved with this town. Sacraments and sacrifices are two different things! Can't you see that you welcomed demons instead of Holiness into this God-forsaken town?"

"He may be right," said the young, brunette girl.

"Shush, child," said the woman to the young girl. "Neither of you could stop the Darkness that has been brought into this world. All that we can do now is try and reverse the process."

"You're the one who caused this ruckus in the first place," mumbled the boy.

"Then why are you helping me?" asked the old woman. "Because you know that the world will fall into utter Damnation without me? It was going to happen anyways. Sometimes, when calling on the Spirits from the fourth dimension, you must welcome in the Darkness first."

"She's crazy," said the boy, giving up on having any chance on being heard and understood. He walked away and into another room.

"You are putting a lot of people in danger, including Unique," said the brunette. "Anyone with superhuman powers are in danger to the souls of the Dead. Just like.."

"Yes. James Sunderland and Henry Townshend. Doomed to the curses of this town." The old woman walked away from the alter, her eyes wild. "Maybe this girl will finally break that curse."