Hi everyone! I would like to take this opportunity to thank my very first reviewer, Fallen Angel! (I knew that plate of cookies and milk I laid out would attract attention sooner or later) And now, on with the story.


Rachel made certain, damn certain that she was properly re-dressed when she arrived at the second floor women's locker room where Barry awaited her, but it seemed he had something other than her body on his mind when she entered. He stood before an opened locker, staring inside as if he'd just seen a ghost.

"Okay…I'm officially disturbed," he said.

"You're just now determining that?" She pushed him aside and looked for herself, only to be confronted with something that could not be described as anything but deeply disturbing. Inside the locker, the severed head of a woman dangled by its hair from a rod at the top of the locker. The mouth gaped open as if frozen in a perpetual look of terror. Scrawled across the two adjoining lockers was an ominous message, apparently written in blood.

This I present to thee, an offering,

St. Rachel, the Guardian

By these means may you find the true path

"Man this is getting weird," Barry said. "What do you think it means?"

"Who knows." She read the message over and over again until the words blurred and were no longer legible. It was eerie to say the least, especially considering how many people in this hospital were familiar with her. She did not let Barry see her unease, though.

"So…did you find anything interesting while you were looking around?"

"Well…" There was no doubt in Rachel's mind that the last twenty minutes had been far more eventful for her than they had for him, but he didn't need to know that. "I don't know a whole hell of a lot, but I do know that three patients, one of which my uncle, and the hospital director are still around here somewhere."

"All of which…suspects?"

She sighed. Surprisingly it was not the vision of her frail, confused uncle sitting in the hospital's garden that made her rethink her answer; it was that of Lisa, sitting beside her on the bed, sobbing uncontrollably as she recanted the circumstances that landed her in here.

"Yes…" she relented. She turned back to the door, and in the process noticed something else, an envelope on the table beside the lockers, addressed to her as always. Inside was a familiar-looking note:

The players are all in place. The game has begun. As for you, Rachel, you are both the King and the Queen. You are the most powerful piece, but all at once you must be protected at all costs. Unfortunately it is out of my power, so I'm counting on you as always. I will continue watching from afar, a mere spectator in this high-stakes game of chess.

"Man…" Rachel dropped the note on the table. "Is every person here a mental case?"

"Well, if they are then they're in the right place," Barry said. "So what next?"

She sighed. "I would suggest that we split up again and look, but every time we do that something weird happens to-" A horrific crashing sound cut her off at this point.

"What the hell was that?"

"It sounded like it came from downstairs," Barry said. The two detectives made a mad dash to the ground floor of the hospital, searching frantically for the source of the noise they had heard. They searched the front area with guns drawn in anticipation, but turned up nothing.

"Nothing…" Rachel said, slightly disappointed. "Maybe it was outside."

Just then, the sound of footsteps coming from somewhere close by caught both their attentions. They turned at once, guns readied.

"Damn, you guys really love pointing those things around, don't you?"

"Ernest?" Rachel holstered her gun and approached him. He looked like hell-not that he didn't before, but now he was disheveled and slightly dirty.

"I'm actually glad you're here," he said. "Someone has sabotaged my car. I just crashed through the wall of the underground garage."

"Well that explains the noise we heard," Barry told Rachel before turning back to Ernest. "Let's go have a look at your car."

Ernest hesitated for a moment. "Uh, okay. This way."

He proceeded to lead the detectives downstairs to the basement, and then through a set of double doors that led into a large underground parking garage, presumably for use by employees. It was fairly full of cars, including one that halfway protruded from a wall in the back. Ernest urged them to follow him to it.

"See? Come look. Someone tampered with my brakes!"

"Hmm…" Rachel studied the car. It was a late-model Cutlass, certainly newer than her 1970, only now in much worse shape. The front end completely crumpled in the crash, and a steady drip of brake fluid accumulated into a puddle on the concrete floor under the front left fender.

"Well here's the problem." She kneeled down and shone her mini-flashlight under the fender, illuminating the dripping brake hose. "There's been a hole punched in it."

"Isn't she great?" Barry gushed. "Looks, brains, and she's a car nut. I think I'll keep her."

"Listen to me." Ernest did not sound amused. "I saw a woman go running through here just after I crashed. She was holding something in her hand…probably whatever she used to punch my brake line."

"What did she look like?" Rachel asked.

"Um…she was blonde. Long hair. She was wearing a gown, like the ones our patients wear."

Lisa? Rachel thought, but said nothing.

"God…who would do this?" Ernest clutched his head. "I gotta get outta here before something else happens." He turned and fled to the door.

"Hey wait!" Barry called after him, but Rachel stopped him.

"Let him go," she said. "He's lying anyway. He punctured his own damn brake line."

"What?"

"Look." She shone her flashlight inside the open window of the car, revealing an ice pick lying in the front seat. "I'll bet you a round of drinks at Neely's that there's brake fluid on that thing."

"You're on." Barry grinned. Rachel opened the door and slid inside, examining the pick. Sure enough, a dark liquid substance was visible on the tip.

"Well before I hand over my tab to you, how can you be certain he sabotaged his own car? Whoever did it could have tossed that inside to make it look like he did it."

Her response was to shine the flashlight on the steering wheel, revealing dark smudged fingerprints that looked fairly recent. "He had the shit on his hands. And I noticed a few smudges on his shirt."

"Fair enough." Barry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "So then Detective Goodwrench, what reason do you think he would have for sabotaging his own car?"

She stared thoughtfully at the door at the far end of the garage. "Let's find out. Something weird is definitely going on, and I think that guy knows something."

Barry nodded his assent, and the pair headed for the door, but they barely made it across the garage before the doors flew open and another familiar face appeared.

"Stanley…" Rachel sighed, half expectantly. The wayward mental patient appeared winded, as if he'd been running at a full sprint for some time, and slowed to a jog as he approached them, eventually stopping and dragging in air. In his left hand he clutched a handgun, which Rachel eyed.

"Nice gun…a Browning BDM, if I'm not mistaken. Where'd you get it?" she asked, sensing Barry's perplexed look out of the corner of her eye. Stanley must have noticed it too, but he reacted a bit unexpectedly.

"Don't look at her!" he barked, pointing the gun at Barry. "Who the hell are you anyway? What are you doing with Rachel?"

"Whoa, calm down there cowboy," Barry said, holding up his hands. "It's okay, I'm her partner. You know, on the police force."

"Stanley, why don't you put the gun down now," Rachel said in her best calming tone. Stanley eventually relented.

"Please don't be mad, Rachel," he pleaded breathlessly. "I had to steal this from one of the nurses. I have to kill them before they kill me…"

"Who?"

"Leonard and Ernest."

"Leonard? Leonard Wolf?" Rachel's curiosity was piqued at this. "You know him?"

"Yes. He's your uncle, right? My condolences."

"Uh…yeah, okay. Anyway, why do you think he's gonna kill you?"

"Because he said he would. He's said it for years. But now I think he really will. He and that director are up to…something. I know what happened to the other patients and the staff here. I know everything, and they wanna get rid of me before I start talking."

"What are they up to, Stanley? What happened?"

"I can't tell you!" Stanley said, becoming increasingly agitated. "They'll know I told, and they'll kill you too. I don't really care if they kill me. I just don't want anything to happen to you, Rachel."

She hesitated. "Okay, I don't even know where to go with that…"

"We need to find Leonard too, Rachel," Barry said. "It's not safe here. There's a killer on the loose, and we need him alive. We still have to question him about your aunt, remember?"

"Don't you get it?" Stanley said. "Leonard is the killer. He killed his wife, and my roommate. He's killed many people, and he'll do it again. We have to stop him!" He immediately bolted for the door, but Rachel was in hot pursuit.

"Stanley!" She motioned over her shoulder for Barry to follow. The pair tracked the runaway patient upstairs, past the first floor, then the second, and even the third. At this point there was only one place for him to go.

"The roof?" Barry read the faceplate on the door. "He's screwed now. Not many places he can go from here."

"Not necessarily." Rachel drew her gun and flung the door open. The detectives emerged onto the roof, where not a whole lot awaited them. A large open roof area enclosed on all sides by a chain link fence, as well as another room, plainly labelled as the elevator control room, to the right of where they entered.

"He's gone…" Barry breathed. "What'd he do anyway, commit suicide?"

"Who knows." Rachel edged closer to the fenced-in area between the elevator room and the stairwell, and peered through the fence at the third floor roof below. No bodies were to be seen there, at least. If a person were to jump to their death from the roof, they'd have to fall further than that, she was certain.

"I like the rooftop. It makes me want to fly. You too?"

Rachel and Barry whirled around at once to see Stanley standing behind them, gun in hand. Before he could fire a shot, Barry charged him, tackling him to the ground. As soon as they landed, the gun went off, fortunately firing toward the sky. Rachel crouched down impulsively, and watched in shock as the two men wrestled for the gun. Stanley was stronger than he looked, and eventually kicked Barry off of him, sending the middle-aged detective rolling across the roof to where Rachel was. Both cops got to their feet, and before they knew what hit them Stanley rushed them, sending Barry crashing into Rachel and sending both of them crashing through the apparently weakened chain link fence behind them. It seemed every area of the hospital was in poor repair, as evidenced when they then fell through the roof of the third floor.


"Ugh…damn, where are we?" Rachel regained her bearings long enough to find herself lying atop a pile of rubble from the roof-and beneath a stunned Barry.

"Well hey…" He raised himself up by his arms, but with his lower body still in contact with hers. "This isn't so bad. I could get used to this."

"Get off me, you horny old bastard." She shoved him roughly, sending him flying into a padded door, making it painfully obvious to her that they were back in the special treatment area.

"'Old?' I'm only eight years older than you!"

"I stand corrected." She rolled her eyes and got to her feet. "Okay, enough shit. We have four people to track down. Let's stick together and finish scoping out this floor."

"Right."

The pair returned to the patient wing hall. Rachel led the way, rechecking the doors she had been unable to open before, and trying the others. Most were locked, but they were finally successful when they reached S7. Unfortunately there was not much to be found inside the tiny room.

"Damn, this is where they keep the patients?" Barry said as he observed the cramped quarters, which were furnished similarly to the room that Rachel and Lisa had shared.

"What'd you expect, a four-star suite?" Rachel said as she eyed the bed, its worn and stained mattress devoid of linens. She was already so coated with the dirt and grime of the place that she no longer cared about getting dirty, but she still had no desire to come in contact with the soiled surface. She was, however, inclined to reach for a piece of paper that could clearly be seen protruding from between the mattress and the box springs; a crudely hand-written note. Barry read it over her shoulder.

She is an angel no one knows; only I can see the Lady of the Door

They cannot walk along her Bridge of Thread, they fall from the weight of their crimes

Like bloated and ugly corpses their sins, she devours them sin and sinner alike

She saves me; she is an angel

"Well this is surprisingly coherent to be written by a mental patient," Barry observed.

"Come on Barry, they're mental, not stupid," Rachel said, surprising herself with her defensiveness. "God, you're such an ass sometimes."

"Well excuse me Miss Politically Correct," Barry shot back, the corner of his mouth twitching to belie his seriousness, but she had already stepped out into the hall. "If I remember correctly, I wasn't the one who was-"

"Hey Barry…come here a second."

Barry immediately came out into the hall, and came to her side to see what she was looking at. She was standing near the elevator directly across the hall from the room, staring at the door to the stairwell. It demanded attention, seeing as how it was adorned with an elaborate painting. It was a remarkably detailed work, portraying a black-clad, brown-haired woman. The woman's hands were extended as if reaching to hold something, but were stained with the unmistakable crimson hue of blood.

"Hey Rachel, that looks like you," Barry said.

"How about telling me something I don't know?" Rachel did not get shaken easily, but just the sight of this macabre artwork was enough to chill her to the bone. She stared into the brilliant green eyes of the woman in the painting, and could have sworn she saw them move.

"Well...they certainly captured your ass perfectly."

She glared at him. "Speaking of asses, yours is gonna get kicked here in a minute." She started to raise a hand to point at him as she spoke, but quickly stuffed both hands in her pockets when she noticed how badly they were trembling. It seemed that Barry noticed it too.

"Hey, you're shaking," he said. "Are you…scared?"

"No," she answered, perhaps too quickly. "I haven't had a smoke in like two hours." She quickly reached into her shirt pocket and took out a cigarette, placing it between her lips as she searched for her lighter.

"There's nothing wrong with being scared, Rachel," he said. "I get scared."

"You're afraid of spiders," she pointed out. Thankfully she found her lighter, and quickly lit up her cigarette. "Look, I'm fine, okay? Now let's find out where this thing goes." She turned the knob, but the door wouldn't budge.

"Damn…locked."

Just then, the sound of the elevator arriving caught their attention, and they both turned at once and stared dumbly at the doors.

"Come on, let's hide!" Rachel said, dragging Barry by the arm back to room S7.

"What for?" he asked, but in the end he had little say in the matter. The pair peered out through a crack in the door into the hall. They witnessed a man whom Rachel immediately identified as Ernest stepping off the elevator and stopping just outside, directly in front of the door painting.

"What the hell is he doing…?" she said, more or less to herself as she watched him rummage through his pockets, becoming increasingly flustered as he failed to turn up anything. He looked over his shoulder as if sensing someone nearby, and then started to walk down the hall. It was then that she noticed he was carrying a gun in his hand.

"God damn it…what's he up to?" Rachel ground out the rest of hercigarette on the floor, andquietly pushed the doorbeforesteppingout into the hall.

"Rachel! What are you doing?" Barry hissed.

She turned around. "Stay here and don't come out until I tell you to." She then took off down the hall after Ernest.

"Ernest, wait up."

The director whirled around quickly, looking startled. "Oh, Rachel…am I ever glad to see you."

"Likewise." She eyed the revolver he clutched in his left hand. "Hey…isn't that a Ruger Blackhawk?"

Ernest looked perplexed, almost frightened, for a moment. "Y-yeah…I hope it's okay that I have it…you know, like, legal. I have a permit. It's just…I leave here at all hours of the night sometimes, and you know what kind of weirdos come out after dark."

"Of course, I know all too well. I am a cop," she said, and added, "I'm rather fond of the Ruger myself. Never leave home without it." She patted the holster at her side, and Ernest started to relax.

"I'm just scared. I don't know what's happened to everyone, but there are dangerous people running around this hospital. The only thing on my mind is getting outta here alive."

"I know," she said. "Well it's bad now, and it's only gonna get worse. I'll help you get out of here while you still can."

Ernest contemplated this. "Well…I guess so. But first…there's something I gotta do. I left something…something important. It's in the basement. Will you come with me to get it?"

"The basement?" Something about this struck her as suspicious, but she humored him. "Fine, let's get going." She started to head back to the elevator.

"No!" Ernest blurted out.

"What's wrong?"

"Um…" He hesitated. "I just remembered, that elevator is broken. It only goes up. We'll have to take the stairs."

Once again the warning signals were going off like crazy in her head, but she went along with it. "Fine, I need the exercise anyway. Now come on."

She walked with him the rest of the way down the corridor to the double doors at the end, and pushed open the door to peer outside, keeping her gun readied.

"All clear. Lead on." She urged Ernest to go ahead of her, staying behind just long enough to gesture for Barry to follow. The elder detective did as he was told, keeping a safe distance from the pair as they made the trek down three flights of stairs, coming to a stop on the first floor landing.

"What's up?" Rachel asked.

"I need to think…where could I have left it…" Ernest mused to himself.

Rachel stayed near the stairs, glancing out of the corner of her eye at Barry, who waited just around the corner at the top of the stairs, gun drawn.

"Well, let's go down there and find it already," she said.

"No, it might be dangerous. You stay here and I'll go check it out."

"No, I'm a cop. I should go with you in case there is something dangerous down there."

Ernest cocked his head to the side as he studied her thoughtfully. "What is it, Rachel? Don't you trust me?" Before she could answer he added, "I don't know why I'm asking that though. It's fairly obvious that you don't. Why else would you have your partner tag along?"

It took a moment for this to register in Rachel's brain, but it certainly did when Ernest cocked the gun and raised it in Barry's direction without even looking.

"Come out here and face me like a man, you cowardly bastard."

Several seconds passed with no response from Barry. Finally the detective emerged from around the corner, gun still drawn.

"I see you don't trust me either," Ernest said, observing the weapon. "That's Silent Hill's police force for you. "I shudder to think what might've happened to some of my patients if they had gone to jail instead of coming here."

"That's funny, because I shudder to think what might've happened to them here," Rachel said. "I'm not stupid, Ernest. I know you're up to something. You've been acting weird ever since I met you in your office. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You start talking, or I'll be forced to take you into custody."

Ernest scoffed at this. "I'm afraid the only person who's going to be taken into custody is you, my dear." With that, he raised the gun and fired a shot in Barry's direction. Barry let out a shriek of agony and fell to his knees, clutching his left hand.

"Barry!" Rachel barely had time to call out to him before she was pistol-whipped across the back of the head, and collapsed to the landing. Fortunately her last thought turned out the lights before it left.