Augusta returned to her room feeling humiliated at having collapsed in
front of a stranger. She felt flushed, burning with shame at the thought
of a stranger comforting her – of being so helpless she needed that
comfort. Closing the door behind her, she snatched her backpack from its
place on one of the room's two beds and rummaged through it until she found
the card.
The address was unchanged. Lamb Avenue. Silent Hill, Illinois, with a postmark dated only three days before. Augusta remembered there had been three post offices in Silent Hill, the main post office downtown in Central Silent Hill, and two smaller offices in South Vale and East Silent Hill. And downtown, South Vale, and East Silent Hill were all gone, according to Amethyst – if all three places were gone, where could a card with a Silent Hill address have come from? And why, if Lamb Avenue, like every other street in the "Windowbox District" of North Silent Hill now lay buried beneath God only knew how many tons of dirt and rock, with saplings growing above them, why would the card have Lamb Avenue as a return address?
Augusta sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. Her stomach felt sour and there was a bitter taste in her throat. She was hungry but couldn't stand the thought of food now. Her head pounded. And she knew she had no choice. She would have to go to Silent Hill, or whatever remained of it. She had to see where this card had come from and who could have sent it. She wouldn't be able to live with herself until she saw the ruins of a town she loved with her own eyes.
And she wouldn't be able to rest tonight, however fitful any sleep promised to be, until she called the front desk and apologized to Amethyst, whom she was certain had better things to do than kneel and whisper soothing words with her arm around a woman she didn't know who stank of vomit. She stood and walked to the tiny table that stood between the beds, and picked up the phone.
*
Augusta passed the night restlessly, staring at the ceiling and only dozing now and then. When she slept, she dreamed of a black cloud bulging cancerously and pregnant with something awful – but it was shot through with spears of searing white light. She couldn't imagine what it might mean, and finally rose, tired and grouchy from her fitful sleep and confusing, annoying dreams, as soon as the sunrise touched the windows. She showered, brushed her teeth, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with a black-and-white print of one of the big stone griffins guarding the north entrance to the Grove Arcade Public Market back in Asheville. Then she chose a plain gray sweatshirt from her suitcase and tied it around her waist. Glad she had packed a comfortable pair of old white Reeboks, she sat on the bed and tied them tight. Then she stood and slung her backpack over her shoulders and left the room.
Nobody noticed her as she walked through the hall to the lobby and then to the glass double doors leading to the parking lot. Guests of the hotel sat in the lobby, watching TV, chatting amongst themselves, eating bagels and fruit from the continental breakfast, and riffling through brochures displayed in a big wooden bin by the doors. Two men sat at a table, telling jokes to their wives, whose laughter echoed in the large room. She thought back to her conversation years ago with Pastor Huntley at Mount Pisgah Baptist Church; she remembered watching people living normal lives she could only dream of that day. None of these people in the lobby had received a Mother's Day card from a dead child, postmarked from a town that no longer existed because it had been buried in a landslide. She envied them, but pushed open the doors and walked outside to her truck, started it, and drove away.
She had somewhere to go. Something to see.
Until Silent Hill was swept away, Highway 26 led from Brahms to Pleasant River, passing through Silent Hill. The road formed the southwestern boundary of Paleville National Park, which had curled in a fat crescent around Silent Hill, though Augusta supposed now the park was shaped more like a half-circle since its annexation of Silent Hill's ruins. As she drove through the morning, she remembered, thinking that all of Toluca County was as beautiful as the park, with hills and meandering creeks and rivers, thick forests and deep lakes painted in soft colors by the sunrise. She had loved living here, loved Brahms, Ashfield, South Ashfield, Silent Hill, and Pleasant River. Loved Paleville National Park. Loved the forests and the water in all its forms, in rivers and lakes and swamps and streams, that defined Toluca County. She had especially loved her job, enjoyed it as much as she had her job in Hot Springs and now in Asheville, at their visitors centers, explaining to curious tourists why they had made a wise choice in coming all the way to Hot Springs, or Silent Hill, or now Asheville. There were wonderful memories to be made, so much joy, so much love to experience...
Remembering that Silent Hill was no longer there to create special memories or give joy made her crushingly sad. Tears came to her eyes – for the thousandth goddamn time since yesterday morning, she thought.
Highway 26, now rerouted as she had expected, wound its way through the morning, a sleek blacksnake of new asphalt and freshly painted stripes slithering along the southwestern, and then the southern boundary of the national park, which had apparently annexed quite a bit more than just the remains of Silent Hill.
What made the park unusual enough to deserve its special status even amidst the beauty of Toluca County – Augusta had explained this to countless inquiring visitors at the Silent Hill Welcome Center – was a collection of peculiar stone ruins, apparently those of a large town, situated around a group of springs that poured forth the creeks and streams that later entwined and formed the Toluca and Illiniwak rivers, which ran southward into Toluca Lake. Known as the Paleville Ruins, they were nicknamed, and more popularly called, the "Macchu Picchu of the Midwest" because they stair-stepped up and down a series of large hills. Originally, they had been included in the estate of a wealthy early French settler of the area, Jean-Auguste de Paleville, but Paleville's ancestors later donated the land to the federal government, and thus stamped their names on Toluca's history, the new national park, and a neighborhood in the town that had flourished for years along the southern border of their former estate.
Silent Hill had been a resort long before the park's creation, spreading itself around the westernmost bay of gigantic Toluca Lake, with six neighborhoods on the north shore, trailing down via Paleville to the south shore, where South Vale gazed northward and contentedly regarded its fellow neighborhoods. The town had been responsible for the flood of Victorian wealth that had poured into Toluca County and transformed it from a hardscrabble backwater into a fashionable resort for the wealthy from all over the Midwest and South. Silent Hill drew the tourists, who brought the money that enriched the merchants, who in turn bestowed upon Toluca's villages their handsome downtowns crowded with beautiful brick store buildings, surrounded by splendid mansions and bedecked with grand churches and theaters, fine libraries, and even a museum or two.
But the birth of Toluca County had been unpleasant, as Augusta had explained so many times before. Toluca County, with its marshes and seeming overabundance of water, had been cast off from Logan County, which had cut away its northeastern quarter, and McLean County, which had thrown away its southwestern flank, in the early 1800's. Neither county wanted the land, dismissing it as a trackless swamp, but neither had realized the potential of a flower that grew only in the swamps of the new county. "White Claudia" grew in dense clusters around Toluca County's waterways, forming mounds and hummocks frothing with pale blossoms, emitting a chemical in its leaves and petals that naturally repelled mosquitoes. And it was because of the unusual flower that Silent Hill, on the sparse high ground amidst the swamps encircling Toluca Lake, was founded. Old Silent Hill came first, then Wrightwood high on its hill just to the north.
The creation of Silent Hill had been a contentious issue for more than century, from the first hints of prosperity in the 1870's until Silent Hill's destruction in 1999. Organizations such as the Silent Hill Welcome Center, Toluca Lake Chamber of Commerce (Proudly Representing Silent Hill and Pleasant River Townships Since 1948!), and Silent Hill Genealogical Society preferred to dismiss the first townspeople as dangerous cultists, whose strange religion was known only as "The Order" and whose infatuation with black magic and dark rituals had earned them well-deserved banishment from among even the most ardent practitioners of magic in New Orleans. But many residents whose ancestors had been among the first settlers had found a voice in groups like the Silent Hill Historical Society, who equated the founders' persecution with the torment suffered by the first Mormons, who had been forced to flee Nauvoo, in Hancock County on the Mississippi River in west central Illinois, for the wasteland that was later coaxed into bloom as Utah. The Welcome Center and Genealogical Society, among others, celebrated the missionaries and traveling "circuit-rider" ministers who had drowned The Order beneath the benevolence of Christianity and spread word of the delights of Silent Hill, which brought new residents, tourists, business, and prosperity. The Historical Society and its compatriots, meanwhile, nursed a grudge and presented in loving detail the history of The Order and its influence on Silent Hill, with paintings and presentations and voluminous documentations of the religion's beliefs and rituals, and of their "persecution" by Christians who had encroached and taken over a town on a beautiful lakeshore that was, and would always be, the rightful property of The Order.
Though the Genealogical Society and those who agreed with it, and the Historical Society and its sympathizers loathed one another, both agreed that moving north, the settlers and their religion had found no welcome anywhere along the Mississippi River, not in the rough-hewn settlements of Mississippi, not in Memphis, not in the towns and villages of southern Illinois. Finally, in the unwanted territory known as Toluca County, then home only to the impoverished hamlets of Brahms and Ashfield, the settlers found a home. "Swampy Toluca" was home already to outcasts and criminals, and thus a caravan of settlers whose magic had terrified even the voodoo queens of New Orleans was no more unusual than the murderers, rapists, swindlers and other unwanted souls who had escaped their pursuers in the dismal new county. And so Silent Hill had sprouted and grown within its ring of white flowers that kept away mosquitoes and their fevers and sicknesses, isolated even from Toluca's villages of criminals to the west and sheltered to the north by the Paleville Estate, whose master had grandly ignored the world beyond his property's boundaries even when it was still a part of respectable McLean County.
According to legend, Silent Hill's name had come from a confrontation between The Order and an ancient man living in a crumbling cabin on the edge of the Paleville Estate, last of the Toluca Indians, from whom the county and its great lake took their name. The Order had learned, and interpreted it as a sign from their god, that the Tolucas had regarded the region as sacred, a place so infused with holy powers that even the spirits, devils and guardians alike, were silent with awe. And from that old man, The Order had learned how to enter a world of silent, reverent spirits. The White Claudia plants that repelled mosquitoes and kept away disease also opened doors to other worlds, though modern science since had peeled away a hundred layers of superstition to reveal those doors opened only because the same natural insect repellent in the beautiful white flowers was a powerful hallucinogen, more potent than LSD.
And some people, the Silent Hill Historical Society included, had wanted that fact publicized on the informative placards at Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens. Augusta never understood why. As if America's drug problems weren't bad enough, why make it known, especially when thousands of tourists from all over the country were passing through each year, that there was something else out there guaranteed to "expand the mind," literally ripe for the picking. Too many people had realized how to make use of White Claudia's peculiar properties as it was. Boil White Claudia blooms, stems, and leaves into tea, dry and crush them and snort them like cocaine, smoke them like marijuana and the effect was the same – Augusta remembered certain enterprising members of the community deciding to profit from Silent Hill's unusual flower. They sold it to tourists and citizens alike; bags of dried leaves to be smoked, bricks of white powder wrapped in plastic to be snorted. Silent Hill's dirty secret. And yet the Historical Society and more than few Silent Hillians thought advertising the strange properties of White Claudia wasn't a problem – why not, was their argument, when placards on the willow trees at the Gardens describe their medicinal properties? – while the mayor and police department fought but never seemed to win against the growing drug problem.
Had thought it wasn't a problem. Had fought but never won, Augusta corrected. There was no town anymore. No place to fight a drug problem, and no place for a drug problem to worsen. Augusta remembered by the time she had left Silent Hill, rumors were flying that The Order was still somehow alive and active, and responsible for the spiraling drug trade, though according to the Chamber of Commerce, historians at the Genealogical Society, and the more knowledgeable old-timers at the Welcome Center, The Order had finally ceased to exist in the early 1880's, with many of its followers carried off by an epidemic of scarlet fever that struck in 1883, and its ideology beaten to death by relentless migration of new residents, new churches, new tourists, and all the forces of Victorian modernization swirling through the bustling, booming little city.
By 1999, White Claudia abuse had been spreading out of control throughout not only Silent Hill and Toluca County, but in Springfield and Bloomington- Normal, and even increasingly in Illinois's other large towns and cities, even Chicago. It had crossed state lines to menace Davenport, Iowa and Evansville, Indiana, and St. Louis. What was worst about White Claudia though, Augusta remembered from police information seminars, was that addiction set in quickly, sometimes after only one or two uses, and White Claudia addiction was reputedly worse and more persistent even than heroin addiction. It brought on hallucinations, of course, but also delusions and a host of other symptoms. Possibly due to those delusions, Augusta remembered the police had announced, some White Claudia abusers in Silent Hill had become almost fanatical about "evangelizing," a term that had come to mean, in Silent Hill, creating new White Claudia addicts.
In 1997, Augusta recalled, a strange woman named Dahlia Gillespie was arrested for allegedly lacing salad bars and buffets at restaurants all over town with powdered White Claudia. One woman, a tourist from Rome, Georgia, had become violently ill due to an allergic reaction to the powder, consumed during a meal at the Lucky Jade's Chinese buffet. Tongues all over Silent Hill wagged at the possibility Dahlia Gillespie was acting for The Order, that she might be the Grand High Priestess (or whatever she would be called) of a revived Order, that she could even be conducting terrible, dark rituals in the basement of her downtown antique shop, the Green Lion – right under everyone's noses, if you can imagine. But then again, she had lived in Wrightwood, where it seemed all the strange people in Silent Hill had made their homes. It was, after all, an artists colony, where tourists could wander narrow, twisting streets that labored their way up Wrightwood Hill, browsing and buying paintings, sculptures, pottery, and more from shops run by dozens of artists out of the neighborhood's tiny houses, which seemed dropped at random from above, wedged in all along the streets at crazy angles, amongst scattered rocky gardens. If a bizarre cult could operate in Silent Hill, with a hidden church of followers adoring an evil, insane god, Wrightwood was the only place in town those weirdos might live.
Right?
By 1999, Silent Hill had been living in fear.
It was strange. Even remembering the unpleasant side of life in Silent Hill somehow caused happy memories to rise to the surface of her mind. In recalling the White Claudia epidemic, Augusta thought of her pleasant job at the Welcome Center, all her friends who had worked with her, and how they had all gossiped with one another about the news of the day, including the newfound infamy of the town's signature flower. She thought of Wrightwood, dismissing a thousand ridiculous rumors to instead recall soulful little houses and wildly twisting streets, and the beauty that could be bought there. She had loved that neighborhood, overflowing with character and the same bohemian free-spiritedness that ran wild in Asheville.
She drove slowly along familiar roads, ravenously hungry and eating stale M&M's from a half-full package she had discovered in her glove box. She finally reached Pleasant River, where she found that Highway 26 now merged here with Highway 73, as it once had in Silent Hill. Highway 73 now ran due north via an impressive new causeway across a narrow point of Toluca Lake and Highway 26/73, as it had in Silent Hill, snaked away to the east. Toluca County had obviously moved on without Silent Hill, with its highways rerouted and rebuilt, and the people, and probably the treasures, of Silent Hill redistributed. As she drove past the pretty little houses and quaint shops of Pleasant River along the old route of Highway 26/73, which now bore the name of Innsmouth Street, she wondered if the paintings and sculptures at the Public Art Gallery had been moved to safety before Silent Hill's destruction. If so, they probably now resided at the County Museum of Art in the county seat of Ashfield. She wondered if anything comparable to the Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens or Lakeside Amusement Park had been developed, or if any remnants, pieces of intricately carved wooden gingerbread trim perhaps, of the grand "painted ladies" of East Silent Hill ever washed ashore to be scavenged by someone in Brahms or Ashfield or South Ashfield whose palatial Victorian castle still stood, safe and sound. She wondered what had become of the rare books and maps and documents once housed at the central town library and its two branches.
The houses of Pleasant River, painted vibrant shades of blue, purple, green, red, yellow, and other cheerful colors, stood side by side in tidy rows along its streets. Past the intersection of Innsmouth Street and Plainfield Avenue, however, there were no more cross streets and the houses bled away, with gaps of forest between them growing larger and larger until there were only the trees, with Toluca Lake showing now and then between them, sparkling in the sunlight. A sign appeared, welcoming anyone who read it to Paleville National Park, and not far behind it, a sign announced that Innsmouth Street, if it was still called that, was a DEAD END.
Which meant it still led somewhere, though not Silent Hill, stopped at whatever it led to, and went no farther. Once it had led to a tunnel through Wiltse Hill, and burrowing through, emerged as Nathan Avenue in South Vale. At the tunnel there had been an observation deck overlooking the lake, with public restrooms and a stone staircase leading down to the Wiltse Memorial Greenway, and Augusta wondered what was left. Had it all been torn down? This was still a public road, obviously, with the park sign but maybe now it only led to a campground, or some sort of interpretive center with information about the reforestation project the desk clerk had mentioned. There was probably no trace of Silent Hill, and the sadness began to build again.
But several miles later, she had her answer. The tunnel, and public restrooms, a tiny parking lot for visitors to the observation deck, and even the stone staircase were all still there. A metal grate blocked the tunnel, however, and instead of a sign announcing the Wiltse Memorial Greenway, a National Park Service sign pointed the way to campgrounds, the reforestation project, and a ranger station, with a caveat that hikers entered at their own risk. If they were injured or killed exploring the ruins of Silent Hill, it would be their own damn fault, and the National Park Service would not be held responsible, Augusta thought. Which was as it should be, because to explore a ruined town she had loved seemed to Augusta even worse than graverobbing.
She pulled into a parking space, stopped her truck and climbed out, and noticed there was something else here as well. There were letters, large and black against what appeared to be square white plates attached to the grating that blocked Wiltse Hill Tunnel. Augusta slammed her door behind her, and saw as she looked toward the grating, the letters spelled a phrase.
WE COME
Which seemed strange. We come? She approached slowly. There were no other cars in the parking area, and no trace of anyone else nearby. The morning was peaceful and quiet, and Augusta heard only birdsong and the quiet, lazy sound of Toluca Lake slapping against its banks down the hill from the observation deck. Closer to the mouth of the tunnel, she noticed a metal plate with a letter that appeared to have fallen from its place among the others above. She bent down and saw a letter "L" inscribed not on a rusty metal plate but a large ceramic tile, cemented to the pavement, obviously fairly new and only artfully painted beneath its glaze to appear decrepit. And looking up at the other tiles, Augusta saw sunlight glinting off their glaze. Large ceramic tiles fastened to the grate, which itself was not the utilitarian blockade it had first appeared to be. It was constructed of sturdy steel cables woven like a basket, with letters that should have spelled, "Welcome."
An art project. A plaque fastened to a rock near the tunnel's mouth explained:
"WELCOME"
This artwork, by South Ashfield potter Sung Yoo Ling and Pleasant River metalworker Alana Vacchs, is dedicated to the memory of the town of Silent Hill, destroyed by the collapse of the City Reservoir Dam, September 23, 1999, and to the memory of the 87 lives lost in the disaster. Toluca County's beauty heals us as we honor Silent Hill, and we will always welcome those who journey to this special place. Silent Hill's legacy of hospitality will always live on in Toluca County.
Placed September 23, 2000, by the Toluca County Alliance of Arts Councils.
Augusta traced the words with her fingertips, and couldn't stop the tears. She wept – for Silent Hill, and for her daughter, and for everything else she had lost.
She had finally come back to Silent Hill.
The address was unchanged. Lamb Avenue. Silent Hill, Illinois, with a postmark dated only three days before. Augusta remembered there had been three post offices in Silent Hill, the main post office downtown in Central Silent Hill, and two smaller offices in South Vale and East Silent Hill. And downtown, South Vale, and East Silent Hill were all gone, according to Amethyst – if all three places were gone, where could a card with a Silent Hill address have come from? And why, if Lamb Avenue, like every other street in the "Windowbox District" of North Silent Hill now lay buried beneath God only knew how many tons of dirt and rock, with saplings growing above them, why would the card have Lamb Avenue as a return address?
Augusta sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. Her stomach felt sour and there was a bitter taste in her throat. She was hungry but couldn't stand the thought of food now. Her head pounded. And she knew she had no choice. She would have to go to Silent Hill, or whatever remained of it. She had to see where this card had come from and who could have sent it. She wouldn't be able to live with herself until she saw the ruins of a town she loved with her own eyes.
And she wouldn't be able to rest tonight, however fitful any sleep promised to be, until she called the front desk and apologized to Amethyst, whom she was certain had better things to do than kneel and whisper soothing words with her arm around a woman she didn't know who stank of vomit. She stood and walked to the tiny table that stood between the beds, and picked up the phone.
*
Augusta passed the night restlessly, staring at the ceiling and only dozing now and then. When she slept, she dreamed of a black cloud bulging cancerously and pregnant with something awful – but it was shot through with spears of searing white light. She couldn't imagine what it might mean, and finally rose, tired and grouchy from her fitful sleep and confusing, annoying dreams, as soon as the sunrise touched the windows. She showered, brushed her teeth, and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt emblazoned with a black-and-white print of one of the big stone griffins guarding the north entrance to the Grove Arcade Public Market back in Asheville. Then she chose a plain gray sweatshirt from her suitcase and tied it around her waist. Glad she had packed a comfortable pair of old white Reeboks, she sat on the bed and tied them tight. Then she stood and slung her backpack over her shoulders and left the room.
Nobody noticed her as she walked through the hall to the lobby and then to the glass double doors leading to the parking lot. Guests of the hotel sat in the lobby, watching TV, chatting amongst themselves, eating bagels and fruit from the continental breakfast, and riffling through brochures displayed in a big wooden bin by the doors. Two men sat at a table, telling jokes to their wives, whose laughter echoed in the large room. She thought back to her conversation years ago with Pastor Huntley at Mount Pisgah Baptist Church; she remembered watching people living normal lives she could only dream of that day. None of these people in the lobby had received a Mother's Day card from a dead child, postmarked from a town that no longer existed because it had been buried in a landslide. She envied them, but pushed open the doors and walked outside to her truck, started it, and drove away.
She had somewhere to go. Something to see.
Until Silent Hill was swept away, Highway 26 led from Brahms to Pleasant River, passing through Silent Hill. The road formed the southwestern boundary of Paleville National Park, which had curled in a fat crescent around Silent Hill, though Augusta supposed now the park was shaped more like a half-circle since its annexation of Silent Hill's ruins. As she drove through the morning, she remembered, thinking that all of Toluca County was as beautiful as the park, with hills and meandering creeks and rivers, thick forests and deep lakes painted in soft colors by the sunrise. She had loved living here, loved Brahms, Ashfield, South Ashfield, Silent Hill, and Pleasant River. Loved Paleville National Park. Loved the forests and the water in all its forms, in rivers and lakes and swamps and streams, that defined Toluca County. She had especially loved her job, enjoyed it as much as she had her job in Hot Springs and now in Asheville, at their visitors centers, explaining to curious tourists why they had made a wise choice in coming all the way to Hot Springs, or Silent Hill, or now Asheville. There were wonderful memories to be made, so much joy, so much love to experience...
Remembering that Silent Hill was no longer there to create special memories or give joy made her crushingly sad. Tears came to her eyes – for the thousandth goddamn time since yesterday morning, she thought.
Highway 26, now rerouted as she had expected, wound its way through the morning, a sleek blacksnake of new asphalt and freshly painted stripes slithering along the southwestern, and then the southern boundary of the national park, which had apparently annexed quite a bit more than just the remains of Silent Hill.
What made the park unusual enough to deserve its special status even amidst the beauty of Toluca County – Augusta had explained this to countless inquiring visitors at the Silent Hill Welcome Center – was a collection of peculiar stone ruins, apparently those of a large town, situated around a group of springs that poured forth the creeks and streams that later entwined and formed the Toluca and Illiniwak rivers, which ran southward into Toluca Lake. Known as the Paleville Ruins, they were nicknamed, and more popularly called, the "Macchu Picchu of the Midwest" because they stair-stepped up and down a series of large hills. Originally, they had been included in the estate of a wealthy early French settler of the area, Jean-Auguste de Paleville, but Paleville's ancestors later donated the land to the federal government, and thus stamped their names on Toluca's history, the new national park, and a neighborhood in the town that had flourished for years along the southern border of their former estate.
Silent Hill had been a resort long before the park's creation, spreading itself around the westernmost bay of gigantic Toluca Lake, with six neighborhoods on the north shore, trailing down via Paleville to the south shore, where South Vale gazed northward and contentedly regarded its fellow neighborhoods. The town had been responsible for the flood of Victorian wealth that had poured into Toluca County and transformed it from a hardscrabble backwater into a fashionable resort for the wealthy from all over the Midwest and South. Silent Hill drew the tourists, who brought the money that enriched the merchants, who in turn bestowed upon Toluca's villages their handsome downtowns crowded with beautiful brick store buildings, surrounded by splendid mansions and bedecked with grand churches and theaters, fine libraries, and even a museum or two.
But the birth of Toluca County had been unpleasant, as Augusta had explained so many times before. Toluca County, with its marshes and seeming overabundance of water, had been cast off from Logan County, which had cut away its northeastern quarter, and McLean County, which had thrown away its southwestern flank, in the early 1800's. Neither county wanted the land, dismissing it as a trackless swamp, but neither had realized the potential of a flower that grew only in the swamps of the new county. "White Claudia" grew in dense clusters around Toluca County's waterways, forming mounds and hummocks frothing with pale blossoms, emitting a chemical in its leaves and petals that naturally repelled mosquitoes. And it was because of the unusual flower that Silent Hill, on the sparse high ground amidst the swamps encircling Toluca Lake, was founded. Old Silent Hill came first, then Wrightwood high on its hill just to the north.
The creation of Silent Hill had been a contentious issue for more than century, from the first hints of prosperity in the 1870's until Silent Hill's destruction in 1999. Organizations such as the Silent Hill Welcome Center, Toluca Lake Chamber of Commerce (Proudly Representing Silent Hill and Pleasant River Townships Since 1948!), and Silent Hill Genealogical Society preferred to dismiss the first townspeople as dangerous cultists, whose strange religion was known only as "The Order" and whose infatuation with black magic and dark rituals had earned them well-deserved banishment from among even the most ardent practitioners of magic in New Orleans. But many residents whose ancestors had been among the first settlers had found a voice in groups like the Silent Hill Historical Society, who equated the founders' persecution with the torment suffered by the first Mormons, who had been forced to flee Nauvoo, in Hancock County on the Mississippi River in west central Illinois, for the wasteland that was later coaxed into bloom as Utah. The Welcome Center and Genealogical Society, among others, celebrated the missionaries and traveling "circuit-rider" ministers who had drowned The Order beneath the benevolence of Christianity and spread word of the delights of Silent Hill, which brought new residents, tourists, business, and prosperity. The Historical Society and its compatriots, meanwhile, nursed a grudge and presented in loving detail the history of The Order and its influence on Silent Hill, with paintings and presentations and voluminous documentations of the religion's beliefs and rituals, and of their "persecution" by Christians who had encroached and taken over a town on a beautiful lakeshore that was, and would always be, the rightful property of The Order.
Though the Genealogical Society and those who agreed with it, and the Historical Society and its sympathizers loathed one another, both agreed that moving north, the settlers and their religion had found no welcome anywhere along the Mississippi River, not in the rough-hewn settlements of Mississippi, not in Memphis, not in the towns and villages of southern Illinois. Finally, in the unwanted territory known as Toluca County, then home only to the impoverished hamlets of Brahms and Ashfield, the settlers found a home. "Swampy Toluca" was home already to outcasts and criminals, and thus a caravan of settlers whose magic had terrified even the voodoo queens of New Orleans was no more unusual than the murderers, rapists, swindlers and other unwanted souls who had escaped their pursuers in the dismal new county. And so Silent Hill had sprouted and grown within its ring of white flowers that kept away mosquitoes and their fevers and sicknesses, isolated even from Toluca's villages of criminals to the west and sheltered to the north by the Paleville Estate, whose master had grandly ignored the world beyond his property's boundaries even when it was still a part of respectable McLean County.
According to legend, Silent Hill's name had come from a confrontation between The Order and an ancient man living in a crumbling cabin on the edge of the Paleville Estate, last of the Toluca Indians, from whom the county and its great lake took their name. The Order had learned, and interpreted it as a sign from their god, that the Tolucas had regarded the region as sacred, a place so infused with holy powers that even the spirits, devils and guardians alike, were silent with awe. And from that old man, The Order had learned how to enter a world of silent, reverent spirits. The White Claudia plants that repelled mosquitoes and kept away disease also opened doors to other worlds, though modern science since had peeled away a hundred layers of superstition to reveal those doors opened only because the same natural insect repellent in the beautiful white flowers was a powerful hallucinogen, more potent than LSD.
And some people, the Silent Hill Historical Society included, had wanted that fact publicized on the informative placards at Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens. Augusta never understood why. As if America's drug problems weren't bad enough, why make it known, especially when thousands of tourists from all over the country were passing through each year, that there was something else out there guaranteed to "expand the mind," literally ripe for the picking. Too many people had realized how to make use of White Claudia's peculiar properties as it was. Boil White Claudia blooms, stems, and leaves into tea, dry and crush them and snort them like cocaine, smoke them like marijuana and the effect was the same – Augusta remembered certain enterprising members of the community deciding to profit from Silent Hill's unusual flower. They sold it to tourists and citizens alike; bags of dried leaves to be smoked, bricks of white powder wrapped in plastic to be snorted. Silent Hill's dirty secret. And yet the Historical Society and more than few Silent Hillians thought advertising the strange properties of White Claudia wasn't a problem – why not, was their argument, when placards on the willow trees at the Gardens describe their medicinal properties? – while the mayor and police department fought but never seemed to win against the growing drug problem.
Had thought it wasn't a problem. Had fought but never won, Augusta corrected. There was no town anymore. No place to fight a drug problem, and no place for a drug problem to worsen. Augusta remembered by the time she had left Silent Hill, rumors were flying that The Order was still somehow alive and active, and responsible for the spiraling drug trade, though according to the Chamber of Commerce, historians at the Genealogical Society, and the more knowledgeable old-timers at the Welcome Center, The Order had finally ceased to exist in the early 1880's, with many of its followers carried off by an epidemic of scarlet fever that struck in 1883, and its ideology beaten to death by relentless migration of new residents, new churches, new tourists, and all the forces of Victorian modernization swirling through the bustling, booming little city.
By 1999, White Claudia abuse had been spreading out of control throughout not only Silent Hill and Toluca County, but in Springfield and Bloomington- Normal, and even increasingly in Illinois's other large towns and cities, even Chicago. It had crossed state lines to menace Davenport, Iowa and Evansville, Indiana, and St. Louis. What was worst about White Claudia though, Augusta remembered from police information seminars, was that addiction set in quickly, sometimes after only one or two uses, and White Claudia addiction was reputedly worse and more persistent even than heroin addiction. It brought on hallucinations, of course, but also delusions and a host of other symptoms. Possibly due to those delusions, Augusta remembered the police had announced, some White Claudia abusers in Silent Hill had become almost fanatical about "evangelizing," a term that had come to mean, in Silent Hill, creating new White Claudia addicts.
In 1997, Augusta recalled, a strange woman named Dahlia Gillespie was arrested for allegedly lacing salad bars and buffets at restaurants all over town with powdered White Claudia. One woman, a tourist from Rome, Georgia, had become violently ill due to an allergic reaction to the powder, consumed during a meal at the Lucky Jade's Chinese buffet. Tongues all over Silent Hill wagged at the possibility Dahlia Gillespie was acting for The Order, that she might be the Grand High Priestess (or whatever she would be called) of a revived Order, that she could even be conducting terrible, dark rituals in the basement of her downtown antique shop, the Green Lion – right under everyone's noses, if you can imagine. But then again, she had lived in Wrightwood, where it seemed all the strange people in Silent Hill had made their homes. It was, after all, an artists colony, where tourists could wander narrow, twisting streets that labored their way up Wrightwood Hill, browsing and buying paintings, sculptures, pottery, and more from shops run by dozens of artists out of the neighborhood's tiny houses, which seemed dropped at random from above, wedged in all along the streets at crazy angles, amongst scattered rocky gardens. If a bizarre cult could operate in Silent Hill, with a hidden church of followers adoring an evil, insane god, Wrightwood was the only place in town those weirdos might live.
Right?
By 1999, Silent Hill had been living in fear.
It was strange. Even remembering the unpleasant side of life in Silent Hill somehow caused happy memories to rise to the surface of her mind. In recalling the White Claudia epidemic, Augusta thought of her pleasant job at the Welcome Center, all her friends who had worked with her, and how they had all gossiped with one another about the news of the day, including the newfound infamy of the town's signature flower. She thought of Wrightwood, dismissing a thousand ridiculous rumors to instead recall soulful little houses and wildly twisting streets, and the beauty that could be bought there. She had loved that neighborhood, overflowing with character and the same bohemian free-spiritedness that ran wild in Asheville.
She drove slowly along familiar roads, ravenously hungry and eating stale M&M's from a half-full package she had discovered in her glove box. She finally reached Pleasant River, where she found that Highway 26 now merged here with Highway 73, as it once had in Silent Hill. Highway 73 now ran due north via an impressive new causeway across a narrow point of Toluca Lake and Highway 26/73, as it had in Silent Hill, snaked away to the east. Toluca County had obviously moved on without Silent Hill, with its highways rerouted and rebuilt, and the people, and probably the treasures, of Silent Hill redistributed. As she drove past the pretty little houses and quaint shops of Pleasant River along the old route of Highway 26/73, which now bore the name of Innsmouth Street, she wondered if the paintings and sculptures at the Public Art Gallery had been moved to safety before Silent Hill's destruction. If so, they probably now resided at the County Museum of Art in the county seat of Ashfield. She wondered if anything comparable to the Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens or Lakeside Amusement Park had been developed, or if any remnants, pieces of intricately carved wooden gingerbread trim perhaps, of the grand "painted ladies" of East Silent Hill ever washed ashore to be scavenged by someone in Brahms or Ashfield or South Ashfield whose palatial Victorian castle still stood, safe and sound. She wondered what had become of the rare books and maps and documents once housed at the central town library and its two branches.
The houses of Pleasant River, painted vibrant shades of blue, purple, green, red, yellow, and other cheerful colors, stood side by side in tidy rows along its streets. Past the intersection of Innsmouth Street and Plainfield Avenue, however, there were no more cross streets and the houses bled away, with gaps of forest between them growing larger and larger until there were only the trees, with Toluca Lake showing now and then between them, sparkling in the sunlight. A sign appeared, welcoming anyone who read it to Paleville National Park, and not far behind it, a sign announced that Innsmouth Street, if it was still called that, was a DEAD END.
Which meant it still led somewhere, though not Silent Hill, stopped at whatever it led to, and went no farther. Once it had led to a tunnel through Wiltse Hill, and burrowing through, emerged as Nathan Avenue in South Vale. At the tunnel there had been an observation deck overlooking the lake, with public restrooms and a stone staircase leading down to the Wiltse Memorial Greenway, and Augusta wondered what was left. Had it all been torn down? This was still a public road, obviously, with the park sign but maybe now it only led to a campground, or some sort of interpretive center with information about the reforestation project the desk clerk had mentioned. There was probably no trace of Silent Hill, and the sadness began to build again.
But several miles later, she had her answer. The tunnel, and public restrooms, a tiny parking lot for visitors to the observation deck, and even the stone staircase were all still there. A metal grate blocked the tunnel, however, and instead of a sign announcing the Wiltse Memorial Greenway, a National Park Service sign pointed the way to campgrounds, the reforestation project, and a ranger station, with a caveat that hikers entered at their own risk. If they were injured or killed exploring the ruins of Silent Hill, it would be their own damn fault, and the National Park Service would not be held responsible, Augusta thought. Which was as it should be, because to explore a ruined town she had loved seemed to Augusta even worse than graverobbing.
She pulled into a parking space, stopped her truck and climbed out, and noticed there was something else here as well. There were letters, large and black against what appeared to be square white plates attached to the grating that blocked Wiltse Hill Tunnel. Augusta slammed her door behind her, and saw as she looked toward the grating, the letters spelled a phrase.
WE COME
Which seemed strange. We come? She approached slowly. There were no other cars in the parking area, and no trace of anyone else nearby. The morning was peaceful and quiet, and Augusta heard only birdsong and the quiet, lazy sound of Toluca Lake slapping against its banks down the hill from the observation deck. Closer to the mouth of the tunnel, she noticed a metal plate with a letter that appeared to have fallen from its place among the others above. She bent down and saw a letter "L" inscribed not on a rusty metal plate but a large ceramic tile, cemented to the pavement, obviously fairly new and only artfully painted beneath its glaze to appear decrepit. And looking up at the other tiles, Augusta saw sunlight glinting off their glaze. Large ceramic tiles fastened to the grate, which itself was not the utilitarian blockade it had first appeared to be. It was constructed of sturdy steel cables woven like a basket, with letters that should have spelled, "Welcome."
An art project. A plaque fastened to a rock near the tunnel's mouth explained:
"WELCOME"
This artwork, by South Ashfield potter Sung Yoo Ling and Pleasant River metalworker Alana Vacchs, is dedicated to the memory of the town of Silent Hill, destroyed by the collapse of the City Reservoir Dam, September 23, 1999, and to the memory of the 87 lives lost in the disaster. Toluca County's beauty heals us as we honor Silent Hill, and we will always welcome those who journey to this special place. Silent Hill's legacy of hospitality will always live on in Toluca County.
Placed September 23, 2000, by the Toluca County Alliance of Arts Councils.
Augusta traced the words with her fingertips, and couldn't stop the tears. She wept – for Silent Hill, and for her daughter, and for everything else she had lost.
She had finally come back to Silent Hill.