silent hill burning bed
A short story by Jamie Dodd
10 – 15/03/05
"Silent Hill®" is a registered trademark of Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, Inc.
You lie silent there before me,
Your tears they mean nothing to me….
- Akira Yamoaka
"Guilt is the source of sorrow, 'tis the fiend,
Th' avenging fiend, that follows us behind,
With whips and stings"
- Nicholas Rowe
HE AWOKE TO THE LAUGHTER OF CHILDREN. He couldn't tell how many, but it was more than a couple. He couldn't tell how close they were, but they weren't far. Yet the sound was muffled somehow, as if heard through a wall. When he raised his hands to rub at his tired eyes, the laughing abruptly stopped and was replaced by a metallic grating sound, like slabs of steel were grinding against each other. Then the shuffling of feet. A wooden clatter. Then silence.
He opened his eyes and raised his head from the pillow. When his vision cleared he saw that he lay on a dirty, grey mattress on top of a rusty frame, in the centre of a circular room. The wall surrounded him about six feet away and was grey, damp and old. The plaster was flaked and cracked and green patches of moss sprouted at its base. Around the centre, about five feet up from the floor were fourteen round plates, like metal portholes, except they were all closed off.
He couldn't see the roof. He squinted into the darkness above him, but it remained out of reach.
He pushed himself up into a seated position, the frail bed protesting beneath him. What was this place? How had he ended up here? He tried to think back, but his mind was a blank. His heart began to race quicker when he realised he couldn't even remember his own name.
Was this amnesia? Had he been in an accident? But this was more like a prison cell than a hospital room.
"Hello?" he said and his voiced echoed around him before finally disappearing into the nothingness above. There was no reply.
He stood up, turned around and saw the door. His bones and muscles ached with every step towards it. He was about 6 feet tall, but the door towered over him. It was metal and bolted in place like the portholes. There was no handle, just a keypad with dirt-encrusted numbers from zero to nine. Beside the keys, carved into the door in jagged strokes, was a message:
Four numbers.
The third is three times the fourth,
The fourth is one less than the first.
The first when multiplied by the second's half
Equals the second.
And they all add up to -
Here the writing tailed off and was unreadable.He thought for a moment and was surprised how easily the answer came to him. He rubbed his damp palms together and pressed the keys.
2. 8. 3. 1.
There was a soft mechanical whirring sound followed by a thud, before the door opened towards him. He looked back at the round cell, strangely feeling like he should stay there, alone and boarded up, but he didn't know why.
He stepped through the open door.
The air was thick and heavy in the corridor beyond. To his right, it stretched into darkness, but he could make out other cell doors on both sides. On the left, a little way ahead was a desk with papers strewn across it. Beyond that a thick metal gate that looked as impregnable as the concrete walls that closed him in.
He walked slowly towards the desk, but stopped and turned when he thought he heard whispering from behind him. He listened. Somewhere in the shadows, something moaned softly. A person? Or water running through pipes too old to contain it?
He walked on and reached the desk.Beside it, cast onto the floor once the papers had been removed, was a brown folder. He picked it up and read the typed wording on its cover.
"French, William. Cell 014."
A layer of the fog that seemed to have clouded his mind since his eyes opened, drifted away and he remembered, on some deep, instinctive level, that William French was his name. He looked down at the papers on the desk and was about to pick up the first one when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned quickly. A girl who looked to be about fifteen years old leaned against the wall just a few feet away, smiling a pretty smile at William and staring at him through large, brown eyes. Her hair was brunette and shoulder length. She wore a short, black skirt and a deep red sweater that was tight enough to accentuate her young curves, but it had a polo collar that modestly hid her slim neck.
"Who are you?" said William, the confusion thickening once again over his thoughts.
The girl tilted her head to one side, her eyes unblinking. "You can call me Elle."
"Elle," he repeated. "Where are we? What is this place?"
"It's exactly what it seems to be. A prison."
"Then what are we doing here?" William asked, gesturing to the time-eaten walls around him. "I haven't done anything wrong and, and you look too young to be here."
Elle smiled then began to turn away. She nodded down the corridor, towards the shadows. "Come on," she said. "I'll show you why you're here."
After walking some distance, passing several cell doors from behind which strange noises could be heard, Elle finally stopped by one of them. As far as William could tell, this cell was silent. That didn't mean it was unoccupied.
Elle gestured towards the steel plate that was bolted to the wall by the door. William read the single word out loud.
"Crimen."
Elle raised her eyebrows questioningly, but said nothing.
"Guilt?" William asked.
"Bingo," Elle answered, giving a short round of applause. She turned the heavy metal latch on the door and it began to open inwards. "Behind this door, you will have the chance to finally overcome that which has eaten away at you all these years."
She patted him on the back as he stepped through, not wanting to go, but feeling strangely obedient, as if this was something he felt he had to do. Elle closed him in, alone.
He looked around. This was no ordinary cell. The walls were not grey and crumbling, but flesh coloured and bloody and they appeared to expand and contract, slowly, smoothly, as if breathing. Beneath his feet the floor was made up of sheets of rusted iron and above him, the roof squirmed with indescribable life.
Something dropped onto William's shoulder forcing a short cry of fear from his dry throat. It was a ragged old doll, the fabric of its skin and red and black clothes, faded and worn away as if it had been loved intensely for years, then abruptly thrown out and forgotten. A thin rope was tied in a noose around the doll's neck, suspending it, swinging back and forth from the roof.
Swallowing hard, William reached for it. As his hand clasped around the doll's leg, a light bulb sparked into life in the centre of the room. What William saw made him recoil back in horror and disgust, fear thumping on the door to his heart.
Sitting in a chair was a mannequin in his own likeness. Dressed just as he was - blue jeans, a light brown, short-sleeved shirt. Biting, chewing, clawing away at the mannequin's stomach, tearing into the shirt and flesh coloured plaster was a creature the likes of which William had never seen, even in his darkest nightmares.
Standing several feet taller than William, the creature was human in nature in that it had two legs and two arms, but its skin was a mixture of greys and browns as if he had been painted with oils. From its hips to the top of its head, seemingly fixed into its skin, was a metal cage, like the bars of a prison cell wrapped around it, enclosing one arm, trapped against its side while allowing just enough space for its outstretched left arm and protruding jaws to scratch and claw. A monster, imprisoned in its own body.
Realising the light above it had been switched on, the creature stopped its feeding and looked up. Its eyes were clear white and without pupils. William, watching the animal over his shoulder, hammered the door with his fists and shouted to Elle to let him out. Whether the teenager answered him or not, William couldn't hear over the monster's bounding footfalls on the metal floor.
William leaped to his right as the creature's massive fist rammed into the door leaving a craterous dint in its centre. It swung again, this time into the living wall that convulsed violently at the monster's touch. Again, the fist flew, this time swinging high, narrowly missing William's head. He fell, scrambling on the floor, his palms grating against the grids of steel. And he felt it. His hand clasped onto something. A metal pipe. Old and rusty, but solid.
In an instant the creature was on him again, forcing William to roll aside. He scrambled his feet and saw that the monster's fist had smashed through the tough meshing of the floor and become snagged on the jagged edge. The creature growled in pain and frustration and was heaving its body back and forth to try and free itself, but without its other arm, the thing was temporarily incapacitated. William stepped towards it, raising the pipe above his head, before bringing it down as hard as he could.
The strike hit the creature at the base of the neck, but William feared that the cage around its body would have protected it. But the animal screamed in pain and William realised that the cage-like structure was actually a part of the creature's body and not just a fitted extension. He brought the weapon down again. Another hit to the back of the head and dark red blood leaped from the impact. Another hit. Again. And again. William, through gritted teeth, kept swinging and swinging, drawing strength from the sight of the creature's flowing blood and dying cries.
He stopped, breathing hard, his clothes stained with thick, arterial blood. The creature was dead and the room lay silent. Around him the walls had stopped breathing and the mannequin, motionless in its chair, looked less like William now. Had it been his imagination? Had he personified Guilt and the effect it had on him? No. The corpse by his feet was real enough and even through this blanket of amnesia that seemed to smother him, William was certain he had nothing to feel guilty about.
He heard the door unlock behind him. He dropped the pipe which clattered noisily on the metal floor, and walked out of the room.
Outside in the corridor, Elle leaned against the wall, biting one of her fingernails. She smiled as he approached.
"Well done, William. You've passed the first test."
Still breathing hard and unable or unwilling to argue, he simply looked at her. The teenager took his hand in hers, her pale skin smooth, but cold and led him further into the shadows.
She stopped by another cell door with a plaque to the right of its frame. It said: avarus. William's memories trembled with life inside his head.
"Greed."
Elle nodded and opened the door. From inside, William could hear a quiet humming and whirring noise.
"Greed," Elle said. "The thing that your Guilt kept in check."
She paused, looking down at her shoes. "Well," she muttered. "Most of the time."
She looked back up at William and waved him into the room. "Now your Guilt is gone, you're going to have to keep your Greed in check by yourself."
She closed the door and William looked around him. The light was already on this time. No hanging doll. The walls were not breathing either, but they were bruised and yellow like rotting flesh. Beneath his feet, more rusted, metal flooring. In the centre of the room was a desk with a dirty, stained computer on it, its screen flickering a greyish glow. Its inanimate hands resting on the keyboard, slumped in a chair, was another William-like mannequin. Its eyes were closed, yet it seemed to stare, transfixed at the screen. From where he stood, William couldn't see what his likeness was supposedly looking at, but to the side of the computer was a printer, whirring and clicking, blank sheets being dragged in and fed out.
From the shadows came a shuffling sound and slowly, awkwardly, a man stepped up behind the mannequin's chair. He was short, wearing nothing, but black shorts. His skin was moist looking and grey as if this man hadn't been out in the sun in years. His gut hung over the top of his shorts, restricting the movement of his legs. William couldn't see the man's face as it was covered with a black, executioner's mask. For a minute or so, the stranger stared through dark, emotionless eyes at William, but otherwise didn't move a muscle. Then, still staring ahead, raised his right hand and took hold of the dome shaped device attached to the chair's frame. Only then did William notice that the mannequin was sat in an electric chair. Its hands could reach the keyboard, but were strapped to the wooden arms. Below, its ankles were shackled also. The fat man lowered the half-helmet over the fake-William's head, then, slowly, with calculated intent, moved his hand to a lever on the back of the chair.
William took a step forward in protest, but his plea for the life of a mannequin was drowned out as the obese executioner cranked the handle and sent sparks cascading like fireflies through the air. Light danced across the walls and the bulb in the ceiling flickered and faded, came forth and then retreated. The computer screen exploded and the pages in the printer caught fire. The flames quickly burned themselves out as air was sucked from the room by the charge of electricity ripping into the mannequin. Through smoke and sparks, William thought he caught a glimpse of the model's head arch backwards in pain and its eyes snap open, but soon its features became too black to see, charred away to nothing.
The executioner pulled the lever back and the sparks stopped. The buzz of electricity was replaced by a hissing sound more sinister than any snake. The man's gaze had not left William the whole time and now he stepped forward, greedy for more violence.
The man shuffled and dragged his feet, before lurching clumsily. The attack was easily evaded and William looked around for a weapon. The executioner, with his back to William, wore a belt wrapped around his waist that had been concealed by his massive stomach. Slipped into a sheath by the small of his back, was a butcher's knife. William snatched the handle and pulled. He came away with the knife in his hand, but the fat man had already turned and grabbed William's arm. The pair went falling backwards into the thick, acrid smoke. William wrestled out of the man's sweaty grip and thrust the knife forward. Through the smoke he heard a scream and realised the knife had bore into the executioner's arm and pinned it to the blistered chest of the tortured mannequin.
Reacting quickly, William leaped for the lever at the back of the chair, praying that power still ran to it. He pulled down on the handle and the room came alive again. Unlike the mannequin, the executioner felt every surge pass through him and screamed with every bolt of white-hot pain.
William woke in a soundless dark. His lungs hurt with the smoke he had inhaled, but the air now was clear. He must be in a different place, yet he had no recollection of having moved. Had he blacked out? As he waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, he felt the floor with his fingertips. It was smooth, wooden, varnished.
Chalk ran along a blackboard and William sat up to see a door immediately ahead. It wasn't cell-like as the others had been, just a normal door, painted a dark green with a square opaque window at head height. To the left of the door, the wall was a creamy colour. To the right was a blackboard, upon which Elle was writing in chalk. When she had finished she turned to William and flashed him another welcoming smile. The word on the board said: temptatio.
This one was simple enough, but William finally had to ask.
"Guilt, Greed, Temptation? How do I know Latin?"
"You really can't remember anything,can you?" replied Elle, shaking her head. "Don't worry, you will soon enough."
She stepped across to where William was still seated on the floor and handed him a board rubber.
She said, "You're an educated man. A teacher in fact, albeit a bitter one, seen as you're hardly lecturing university students."
William pushed himself up to his feet, searching his mind for remnants of the life he had seemingly lost. Elle was at the door.
"Still," she added. "You soldier on. Sometimes you even enjoy your work."
The door closed behind her and a light bulb flicked on. William turned around. A girl of about nine or ten was sitting on a school desk at the back of the room, her legs swinging back and forth over the edge. She was wearing a navy-blue skirt and white socks pulled up to her knees and what looked to be a maroon school blazer. She stared William straight in the eye while rotating a lollypop in her mouth with one hand and holding the edge of the table with the other. William stared back, confused and scared, and the girl giggled.
He remembered the board rubber in his hand. He didn't know what any of this meant or where it would all lead, but he decided to do the only thing that seemed to make sense. Reluctantly turning his back on the girl, William walked over to the blackboard and began to wipe temptatio away. When the board was clear, William dropped the rubber and slowly looked back. Only the desk stood in the spotlight, dusty and quiet. The girl had gone.
As William stood transfixed, not knowing which way to turn, the light bulb began to fade. Slowly the shadows crept from their hiding places and reclaimed the room with darkness.
When his eyes opened, he was back in his cell again with the portholes and the rusty bed. The moss and the mould. It was as if he had never left. Perhaps he hadn't? Elle leaned against the wall at the foot of the bed, looking down at a brown file like the one he had seen on the desk. William's head swam with images of monsters, schoolgirls and Latin words and still little made sense. Crimen. Avarus. Temptatio. Guilt. Greed. Temptation.
"Why?" William demanded, his voice rising. "Why would I be tempted by that?"
Elle eyed him almost pityingly. She opened the file in her hands and cleared her throat. To William's right, seemingly behind the wall under the first porthole came the muffled wooden noise he had heard earlier. Then the metallic grating sound as the door shielding the hole was dragged aside. Behind it was a glass panel, dirty and stained, but clear enough for William to see a child's face, and for that child to see him.
"Anna Mitchell, age seven," Elle read, introducing the newcomer. "After class, when you asked her to stay behind."
Another wooden knock - a stool being pushed into position on the other side of the wall. The second shutter was scraped aside and another girl's face appeared. She had long blonde hair and rosy red cheeks.
"Laura Beckitt, age nine. Detention."
Metal sliding, scratching, gnawing against metal. A playful young face.
"Sarah Willis, age seven. 'Comforting' her because she was being bullied."
As another stool knocked into place, William's fists clenched and he closed his eyes, tears snaking down his cheeks. A porthole opened.
"Katie Morrison," Elle read on, pausing now to look up at William, who had begun to rock backwards and forwards, his head in his hands. "Age six. A poorly tummy. Didn't want to go out and play with the other kids."
William lifted his feet onto the bed as a fifth window was revealed and another child climbed up to observe him and be counted. He grabbed the pillow and held it close, biting into it to suffocate his heaving sobs. "Stop," he whimpered. But Elle didn't hear him, or wasn't listening.
"Sophie Layne, age seven. You assaulted her at her own birthday party."
"Stop!" yelled William, images of bedrooms and quiet classrooms, stock cupboards and changing rooms flashing before his eyes, wafting away the amnesiac fog that before had plagued him, but now he wanted it back. "Stop."
"Sorry, William?" asked Elle, sneering. "You want me to stop? A four-letter word you've heard uttered so many times? "Stop." "Please, sir, stop.""
Elle chuckled and around her the remaining portholes slid aside until all fourteen were open and filled with watchful eyes.
"The rest you invited to your home," Elle explained though she knew, as William cried into the pillow, that she no longer had to. "One by one, of course, on separate occasions. You were never that brave."
She walked slowly around the bed, the file swinging in her hand by her side, as if she was on a leisurely walk through a park.
"You used to ask them if they wanted to change out of their school clothes in the bathroom. After all, they didn't know you could see them through that secret hole behind the picture."
William groaned and tightened his grip on the sheets. He could feel the eyes of children baring down on him. Staring into him. Elle stopped by his side and whispered in his ear.
"They're watching you now, William. Fourteen pairs of eyes, watching you like you used to like watching them."
She stood up, tossed the file onto the bed and clapped her hands together, her mood completely changed. "Still, you've passed the tests. You've proved yourself. You're free to go."
William stopped crying and looked at her through blood-shot eyes. Was she serious? He tried to speak, but he couldn't. He tried to move, but his limbs felt heavy. His muscles were suddenly relaxed and free of stiffness and his eyes started to close. A comforting warmness, unlike any he had ever felt before, swept over him, bathing him in an invisible glow. The portholes, the children, the prison cell and Elle, cheerfully grinning and waving, slowly faded from view.
"You didn't really think I was going to let you go, did you?" came the mocking voice, slicing into his warm and pleasant dreams.
His eyes flicked open and he found himself stood in the centre of a room, furnished in maroon with plush carpets and varnished, antique furniture. A four-poster bed lay behind him, a desk with writing instruments and a lamp to his right. A sofa and coffee table in front. Looking out of the window at a calm blue lake, was Elle, arms folded, her gaze impassive. Her head turned to him and she smiled.
William's brow furrowed with growing anger. "Who are you? Where am I now?"
It had to be a dream. How else could his whereabouts change without him having travelled?
"Welcome to the sight of your first crime. The first time you sinned. The first time you - " Elle's voice seemed to catch in her throat and she bowed her head. "Welcome to the Lakeside Hotel, Silent Hill."
William remained voiceless and rooted to the spot.
Elle, her head still turned away from him said: "Doesn't it ring any bells?"
William's mind raced for answers, but found only emptiness.
"You came here with your wife and eight year old daughter for a holiday one summer," she explained. "You had a wonderful time."
Elle's gaze finally met his. Her eyes were watery and they flashed with anger. Through clenched teeth she spoke and gestured towards the bed. "A wonderful time."
William turned around and saw a young girl sitting on the four-poster bed. The image was hazy, as if viewed through a thin curtain. The girl was wearing a pink t-shirt and a blue denim skirt, embroidered with colourful flowers. Her legs were tucked underneath her. She was humming a quiet tune.
William looked back at Elle, startled and confused, but the teenager's attention was back on the lake. William then heard his own voice say: "Noelle?"
He spun back around to the bed and saw a younger version of himself appear from nowhere and sit down beside the girl. William was seeing a glimpse of the past, when they had visited Silent Hill that summer. Memories fluttered like wounded butterflies in his mind.
"Mummy's gone to the shops," said the younger William. "She won't be back for a hour or so."
Noelle nodded and bounced a little on the bed. The younger William stroked her dark brown hair.
"How would you like to play a game?"
"Yeah!" said the girl excitedly. "What kind of game?"
The William of the past smiled brightly down at her.
"It's a special, Daddy-Daughter game. It can be our little secret."
William, in the centre of the room lifted his hands to his face and wept. The scene from the past faded out of view. He wanted to think about nothing. He wanted to curl into a ball and lie there forever. But his mind wouldn't let him. Instead it flashed images through his head, from a past that he had somehow forgotten. A past he had denied to the extent he no longer believed it. And then something dawned on him.
He wiped his eyes and looked across at Elle.
"Noelle?"
She turned her head, smiled, and raised her hand in an almost cheery wave. "Hi, Daddy."
Images tore through his brain and in front of his eyes. A bedroom, a rope, a chair kicked aside. Police, ambulance. Priest.
"But you - " William uttered, his voice barely audible.
Noelle looped a finger over the polo-neck collar and pulled it aside. A red, bruised rope burn spiralled around her throat.
"Afterwards I threatened to tell my mother. You said it was my fault and she'd be mad at me. You tried to make me feel guilty. But I could see you felt guilty yourself. After all, you didn't know why you'd done it. Was it the pictures someone showed you from a foreign magazine? Was it just a moment of madness?"
Noelle gave a short, cynical laugh. "Or are you one of those textbook clichés? Your mother hugged you too much or not enough. Your father beat you everyday, oh please."
Her gaze was fixed on the lapping water beyond.
"I held it in for seven years, feeling guiltier and dirtier everyday. Until, I couldn't take it anymore."
She stroked the back of her slender neck.
"Well, you know the rest.".
William felt weak and his voice trembled as he spoke.
"But what about the kids back in that cell? They'll be older now. They didn't all - ?"
"Top themselves?" Noelle finished off handedly, like it was just some throwaway remark. "No. In fact none of them did. They're all living normal lives somewhere, I expect. But they never forget. You took a piece of every one of them. A piece of their soul they can never get back. And it's that part of them that is here now, trapped and alone. Watching and witnessing."
She sighed. A long one, full of pain and regret. William's head dropped and the tears began to flow again.
"There, there, Daddy," said Noelle, sadistically echoing the past. "I won't tell. It'll be our little secret."
William opened his eyes to find he was back in the circular prison cell, with Noelle at the foot of the bed and fourteen children each staring with growing excitement from their windows. He was sweating. The warmth of his sleep had stayed with him and seemed to be growing warmer.
He tried to move, but he found his arms and legs buckled to the bed with leather straps.
"Let me go!" he growled with growing anger. "What more do you want from me? I've done everything you asked!"
Noelle smiled that calm, beautiful smile. "Indeed. You overcame the greed that has never allowed you to stop. You overcame the temptation you felt everyday. And for these things I am proud of you."
She stepped around to his right side, looked down on him and grinned. But the grin quickly turned to a ferocious scowl.
"YOU OVERCAME YOUR GUILT!" she screamed, her face inches from his, her spittle lashing him like wires. "The guilt you felt everyday. The one thing that held the temptation back, that held the greed back! YOU. OVER. CAME. IT!"
Her voice seemed to rock the very foundations of the room. Plaster began to dislodge from the cracks, her yells echoed up to the roofless void like thunder. The children, still watching, could barely contain their grins and chuckles.
William was sobbing now and his body had become almost unbearably hot. Still, Noelle continued.
"You should never overcome your guilt! It should stay with you, eat at you, burn inside you and around you until the day you die!"
And suddenly Noelle began to laugh and then, with his mind clearer than it had ever been, William French realised that the warmth he had believed to be salvation, was actually from the growing flames beneath his bed.
As the fire began to lick over the edge of the mattress and the sweat that coated his shackled body began to boil, William looked around the room, darting from window to window, searching for aid and forgiveness where there were none.
He began to scream. And scream. And scream. He screamed until his throat was raw and his lungs were full of the smoke from his own burning flesh. Until he could scream no more and the only sounds left, were the crackling flames and the laughter of children.