Once more, hello everyone! Not many are reading this—but then against it just started, so what am I saying?—but I've decided to continue for the special few who actually are. Thank you for reading, and also thanks for the reviews, and the advice that was given. I always like a piece of information I can add for the people that are confused.
Disclaimer: So much as I'd like to claim Silent Hill, and Vincent and Walter along with it, I'm afraid none of them are mine. However, my fork-obsessed Raephin and dear Fifty-Two are, indeed, my own. We also have two new characters joining the group, so that lovely pair I claim as well. Enjoy…and don't forget to review! –Cheesy grin-
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Could he get up?
…Should he get up?
The air's pressure seemed to thicken with every breath, every rasping inhale and exhale, slowly but surely living just one more precious moment—a moment not to be taken for granted. Raephin felt as if he needed all the time he could get. He felt as if he, himself, was living that odd, ancient legend of the little girl…not because he was being experimented on, no. It was because this world did not seem like his own.
The russet of his hair coated with dirt, so many messy strands hanging in the left of his eye, seeming to stand on the end, just as it bristled on the back of his neck. His hospital clothes were, surprisingly, fairly clean due to the wash they had had days ago when the guards collected the only pair of clothes each patient owned. The number Seventeen clung crookedly to his chest on a little, briefly made tag. It was who he was, this clumsy and careless excuse for a nametag. It was what represented his existence. Bandages, thick and tightly hugging to the skin—so much that beads of sweat constantly formed under the old material—lined his arms up and down in layers, as it did to his chest, half of his neck, and the upper-half of his legs. They were terrified that he would find some kind of way to gouge out his heart with one of the many plastic utensils they ate with at mealtime.
If his leg muscles would move—if they would just…push him a bit, hoist himself up to stand upright, perhaps he could get out of here. But…what if he was snatched back down? Grabbed by some sort of force, perhaps (for that's what seemed to be weighing down the room, and it rose a frightened jolt in his chest) to be thrust into a hellish hole of eternally glaring eyes and blazing—he would get up.
Trembling, shaky at the knees, his body forced to rise. It was as if he was lifting pounds atop his sagging shoulders, trying to shove him down, heaving at his worn body, but getting nowhere. He had to get out of this place…had to see what was going on.
Raephin's overwhelmed body staggered, slammed into the cell door—and his eyes widened as he watched it slide open. Creaking, slowly letting a slit of freshly scented air rush into the room. Freshly? There was a dire stench in the air. He let his hand reach out closer, closer, until the door was pulled back and he could peek out into what he assumed would be a hallway full of dozing guards. He couldn't have been farther from the truth.
His heart was racing, heaving itself against his chest with so much force that he had to keep in an expected cough—but it was not only his anxiety that caused his breath to skip, but also the vile stench that was lingering in the air. It was the smell of death, the disgusting scent of excrement and rotten foods, of decay. Such was a mixture of an unnamed stink that he could hardly bear to breath, much less identify.
The startled boy dared to take a step from his room, cautious gaze scanning the dramatically changed hallway. The walls were dark, rusted, as if they'd been sitting there for hundreds of years unattended—but it was nothing like the walls of his cell. The floors, always clean, always so tidy, were now beyond filthy…there were masses of brown and red, much like veins, shoved between the cracks of tiles and overflowing with what looked to be…puss?
He carefully watched where he stepped as he made his way down the hall. It was quiet, fearfully silent. It was worse than silence…but he couldn't possibly explain such stillness. What was worse than silence, when silence was what accompanied him now? It was more like an intensified patience. He was waiting for someone to come, perhaps explain what the hell was happening and why he was in the middle of it all. Could this really be the same hospital he had just been in, moments before, worrying over the nearing guards and their harsh words?
"In a dream…I've got to be. In a nightmare…" Raephin's whisper hardly carried throughout the hall as he made his way through with observance. Some of the other cell doors were open, or cracked, but whenever he chose to look inside one nothing was there. It was as if the patients had just vanished, along with guards. Maybe they had disappeared. Or perhaps, just maybe, there was an emergency, or some kind of danger that gave them reason to rush out so quickly, and—but that wouldn't explain why Fifty-Two wasn't there when he raised his head. He hadn't heard the door open or close when he was trying to remember the tales from long ago. They couldn't possibly have been invaded. That was an absurd idea.
After searching the cells and employee rooms and finding not a single soul at all, he briskly ambled down to where the kitchen doors were located, settling his ear gently to the surface and biting his lower lip in deep concentration. Eyes squinted, limbs rigid, he put all strain into trying to hear a human voice on the other side.
Ah! There was noise! Something was on the other side, something alive, breathing! However…it did not seem to sound like the mumbling, shouting, or rambling of a noise relative to humanity. It was a sound his ears did not favor. Reaching out, he pushed the doors open wide, hesitant to see what was on the other side.
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"You need to be quiet!"
"What, Ryland? You think someone's gonna hear us out here?"
The fog was thick. Like chunks of bulky cloud, the mist floated amongst the air of the gloomy atmosphere, causing the environment to look all the more eerie. Rounded lumps of stone sprouted from the almost grassless ground where the maggots roamed, and on these stones were the names and dates engraved of the people long past. Standing among the fog and the murkiness were two figures cloaked in dark clothing, one hunched and the other jerking its head right and left in watch warily.
"Roth, we're in a graveyard! Be a little intelligent, will you? The Beginning approached us without warning, but that gives you no reason to blunder around carelessly and exclaim that the town is absolutely empty!" Ryland shifted weight to her other foot and rested a hand on her hip as she glared furiously down at her bent-over brother. Her chestnut hair flopped past her shoulders and ended in a perfectly straight cut, indicating that her character would not stand to be less than "perfect"—or, perfect according to her standards. The sleek cloak that covered her completely showed no signs of blemish or dirt.
Roth's face twisted into a silly grin as he beamed up at his infuriated sister, the short, bright beard—tracing all the way up his cheekbones—giving him a somewhat mischievous look. Blazing hair, much like the color a raging wildfire would give off, hung off his shoulders and in his face in stringy strands. "Ah, bug off, Ry! The occult don't give a damn if we stir up a couple brawls 'round here…as long as we get our share done, there's nothing to worry about. Anyways, look at this place! The Beginning finally HAS begun! Although, from this view, it seems more like an end…" He patted at his stained clothing, all the while keeping that careless expression present.
"This is no time to joke," Ryland spat, raising a hand to thwack him over the head roughly. "We've been waiting all our lives for this moment…for this very time when we—"
"Well, I wouldn't say all our lives," Roth interrupted, applying pressure on the shovel propped in his arms and giving a meek shove. The spade's tip barely dug into the dry surface of soil.
"Since you were eleven, and I, ten. The occult has been our home for quite a time." His sister sighed, stepping back to observe their work. Her older sibling had created a small indent in the ground, but that was all. They'd been standing there for an hour and a half. "I don't think digging a hole was the brightest idea you've had so far…"
"It wasn't my idea, exactly," the redhead shrugged lightly. "All they told us was to find evidence. Find some kind of proof of The Coming…you know this is the best we've found so far."
"We haven't even found it yet, Roth." The young girl of twenty-eight frowned and knelt down, running a slim finger through the clumps of dust coating the tombstone they stood over. "Who knows what our so-called evidence will look like when we finally find it?"
"It hasn't been that long ago," The older one reminded her, eyeing the sky thoughtfully. "Not really long at all."
"He was young when his death came," her voice seemed distant, attentive. "And they just…laughed. They laughed at him, Roth. Can you imagine what he felt like? He died, having to hear their laughs of mockery. His body could be nothing now. Nothing but decay…this could all be a waste of our time."
"No, no, Ryland…" Roth's eyes narrowed as he looked down to the words imprinted on the tombstone they lingered beside. "No…believe me, I have a feeling this will be much worth our time."
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The walls were crawling with worms. Raephin couldn't identify them with the same, gentle earthworms he'd seen in many of the biology textbooks he'd studied as a younger adult. They were long and wiry, shaped like tapeworms but writhing this way and that, the ends spurting bits of red and a nauseating yellow. They crawled in and out of the wall, as if sinking inside the flat surface one moment and coming out solid the next. They were massed in piles atop the wall—and he was both confused and quite surprised to see that not one had fallen to the ground below.
However, these creatures were not the source of the odd noises he had heard from the other side of the door. He turned his head, and then he knew. Yes. This was the… thing responsible. What exactly was it?
Its four-legged, canine-like body was bound in bandages, which were caked in a fresh covering of grime. In some places the creature's putrid, bulging skin—lightly sprinkled with what looked to be gray fur—found its way through the wraps and flopped uselessly at its sides while the beast moved. Raephin couldn't catch sight of the face of this frightening thing, but he could hear the sickening rips and tears, the crushing of powerful jaws as it grinded up its food. He stepped back, ready to turn and dash out as quickly as he possibly could.
Two heads whipped around in a chillingly swift motion, their little eyes—four of them, each in pairs—ablaze with hunger and an excitement for the kill they had just proclaimed. Ragged ears, the color of the little bristles of fur, which hung to the hanging skin, were laid back flat against bony skulls. Indeed, the faces of the two heads looked much like dogs. Same long snout, same lolling tongue…only, this creature had two necks attached onto one body, and the faces atop these necks did not look the least bit satisfied with their first meal. Raephin wasn't sure he could compare this thing entirely to the kind of dog he was used to.
One of the dangerous jaws clutched a slab of draping flesh, the sharp tip of bone sticking out from the end and fingers like little sausages decorating the other side—it was obviously an arm, with the hand still attached. A pudgy palm, with a few golden rings gleaming with chew marks on the top—probably a guard's arm, he figured. Nonetheless, it made him no more reassured. He didn't like the guards. But he also had a feeling that he wouldn't be on friendly terms anytime soon with this…this dog as well. Or, was it rather 'these dogs'? He didn't know if the thing was two beings, or one.
"Got to get out of here," he reminded himself, shifting his body so that he was ready to turn on his heels and leave, but as this was done, he noticed that the canine-thing had leapt for his back, both its mouths wide open in eager catch. His reaction was slow…never did have the quickest replies or actions or words. Couldn't have been his entire fault.
One of the jaws had latched onto his hand, its jagged-shaped teeth digging savagely past the surface and into the core, where the bone lingered, where the muscle broke tenderly. It caused his blood to bubble and flow out like a lazy fountain that wishes not to raise its sprout—just to collapse over the edge and splat to the ground where it lay to stink. His palm twitched this way and that, trying to escape from the dog-thing's grasp, all the while attempting to avoid the other head as it snapped at his chest.
It hurt like hell, that thing's tooth lodging itself against his fragile finger bone—the covering of the creature's teeth felt like multiple grains of sand. The kind of grain where it's been stepped on for so long, it starts to lose its warm, sun-tickled touch. He wouldn't doubt if the canine's tongue felt solely like the worst of sandpaper, either.
The creature's head jerked with every lashing yank he gave, holding on firmly and letting out a rumbling, menacingly low growl. With one, final pull, he wrenched backwards and fell, landing on his rear roughly with a howl of agony. Reaching up with a shaking hand, he watched as the gaping hole of what used to be his middle finger spat out thick fluids of crimson and infectious black, dripping down his palm and creating a small puddle beneath his quivering form. There was no time to think…no time for the unbearable pain that was stabbing at his nerves.
The creature leapt, swallowing what it had taken in only a second's time, and landed firmly onto Raephin's left leg, both heads making themselves comfortable as they clung to the bloody white pants with their uneven fangs.
It only taken him a moment, out of pure instinct, to reach down and snatch one of the forks he had been carrying when searching the halls—and obviously had dropped earlier when the thing had attacked him. His knuckles looked as if they were gasping for breath, white as they were, holding that handle like it was the last string of his dear life. One mistake, one slipping move, and that string would be snapped in half.
He slammed the fork down with all the force he could muster, aiming it carefully and scoring right into the left eye of the right head, the eyeball inside exploding and juices spilling over the socket. There was a loud, screeching yelp as the creature twisted away, one side of the creature half-blind and the other snarling at its companion to quiet it down. The clumsy thing staggered, tripped, and scrambled out of the kitchen—he could hear the shrieks all the way down the hall, and for this, he was almost amused. The loss of a finger prevented him from laughing out loud.
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They were vibrant colors, these childish drawings of flowers and small furry animals on the surrounding walls. They lightened the mood of such a dreary place, and although such a place did not have the same giggles and shrieking laughter as it did before, Fifty-Two could not help but crack a small smile.
Toys scattered the floor. They ranged from teddy-bears with the stuffing poking from buttoned eyes, to trains with most of the tiny windows cracked open and knocked off crooked plastic tracks. There were dolls with golden curls, and balls that had been beaten until the air was rushed out of them. Numerous cribs, maybe five or so, were stacked here and there, as if frozen in time, ready to be taken and set for the arriving, squealing babies. The creaking of a nearby, wooden swing broke the stretching peace.
In the center of all this, a small house made of timber was built firmly to the ground, as if it had been rooted as many of the tall and withered trees around the area had been. A dim, flicking light hung above the door—something to welcome. It welcomed all who approached such an old sight—a sight that claimed the name 'Hope House', or later changed as 'Wish House', which was scratched onto the wooden sign in front, which hung at the entrance as a sort of mark.
Fifty-Two let out a small sigh. For some reason, it felt just like home.