Sitting on the bench, Augusta held her head in her hands and stared down at
the bricks in the pathway at her feet. Slick from moisture, the path
appeared to have been mortared with moss. Her shovel lay on the ground
beside the bench. There was still no breeze; the air was motionless and
the leaves of trees in the park hung heavy with moisture, dripping
occasionally.
It happened every time she had ever experienced something intense – frightening, sorrowful, infuriating, joyful – she thought about it afterwards. Always. She envied people who danced through life never letting an experience trouble them, and wished she could learn to do the same. Instead, she thought it over, analyzed it, asking herself why and how and what it meant.
But, she supposed, it was people who never thought about their life experiences who could sleep at night after aborting their pregnancies, and she hated to think of herself becoming someone like that. Joseph had told her once that she thought too much, but he would say something like that.
As she sat, with Walter Sullivan murdering Billy and Miriam over and over in her thoughts, she realized they were all familiar, as if she had heard of them before. She realized she had, which hadn't occurred to her before in the shock of being confronted with a girl bleeding from a knife stabbed deep inside, and a dead man who wanted to rape a frightened little boy tied to his bed. She closed her eyes.
Billy and Miriam... Locane. And Walter Sullivan. The names were so familiar and she realized she had read them all before. She had made it a point to learn all she could about the three cities she had lived in throughout her life, as she would with any city she might move to in the future. Whenever she found them, any history of Hot Springs, Silent Hill, and Asheville held her attention from first page to last.
She knew about Hot Springs's history as the resort of choice for the mobsters of Prohibition-era organized crime. Employees long retired from the Fordyce Bath House, grandest of the Victorian bathing palaces on Central Avenue, remembered Al Capone always leaving large tips.
She had read of the Trail of Tears, forced death march of the Cherokee nation from its Western North Carolina homeland to Oklahoma, and how, despite thousands escaping or hiding from the brutality and later forming the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, a curse laid by those forcefully uprooted still haunted the land on which Asheville stood, and the mountains surrounding it. Because of that, or perhaps because it had always been a sacred place, Asheville was among the most haunted places on the planet. Legends told of monsters in the rivers, lakes, and waterfalls of Western North Carolina, and of more than a dozen races of fairies who had bedeviled even the Cherokee. To encounter a spirit, ghost, angel, or demon surprised no true citizen of Asheville.
She had learned all she could about Silent Hill as well. Like Hot Springs, where whores, gambling, and gangsters shooting one another in the streets had been as much as a fixture of the town as splashing fountains and elegant resort hotels, Silent Hill had a violent past. Like Asheville, where a headless orange cat haunted the gardens at Biltmore Estate and spectral suicides fell to their deaths again and again from the roof of the Battery Park Hotel, two ghosts out of a thousand or more, it was a city accustomed to the supernatural. Like the both of them, Hot Springs with its floods and fires sweeping through with alarming regularity, and Asheville with its ferocious storms, Silent Hill had known disaster.
The book was called "An Unwanted County," and Augusta had found it at the central city library. It explained how the city had come to its name, gave a short history of the Order whose followers had settled the town, and, mixed among chapters about who had built what and when, were stories of Silent Hill's violent and haunted past, written gleefully as if the author were telling the reader deliciously dirty gossip.
Walter Sullivan's murder of Billy and Miriam Locane warranted mention in a chapter about the changes that came to Silent Hill in the decade after the end of World War II. In 1947 a guest upset about a discrepancy in his bill attacked the famous Fairytale Music Box in the lobby of the Lake View Hotel with a baseball bat and was arrested. The city dedicated its elaborate Veterans Memorial Gardens in Yorkshire Park, along the lakefront in East Silent Hill, in 1949. The first supermarket came to town in 1952, comfortably settling itself behind several acres of parking on Nathan Avenue, the first example of the suburban sprawl to slither along the banks of the Green River in years to come. In 1953, two blocks of beautiful Victorian buildings around the South Park were demolished to make way for an ugly motel and several shops whose buildings were constructed with an ill-thought-out Western theme in mind. That same year a rundown and vacant but still elegant boarding house called the St. James Hotel was torn down in South Vale, replaced by Jack's Inn, a motel so unattractive it appeared as though its builder had stayed up late night thinking of ways to make the building uglier.
In 1954, Walter Sullivan, a trusted, long-time employee at Washington and Loretta Locane's small grocery store kidnapped their son Billy and after holding him prisoner for two weeks, killed him, and his sister Miriam. The book revealed that Miriam had been sexually mutilated and that Billy was beaten to death, though his autopsy had discovered inflamed kidneys and a perforated bowel, perhaps a sign of repeated sexual assault – all details not printed in the newspaper out of respect for Mr. and Mrs. Locane. The murders were classified only as brutal, and Augusta agreed; to be raped to death or stabbed was indeed brutal.
Walter Sullivan had fled to his mother's house in Pleasant River, where he confessed his crimes to his horrified mother and was later arrested. He committed suicide in the tiny jail at the Pleasant River Police Department by stabbing himself in the throat with a spoon.
It was all there, she thought. I read about it all. Why didn't I recognize what was going on?
She answered herself. Reading about evil is one thing, even if it's real evil that occurred behind the doors of buildings you pass by every day. Seeing evil – reliving it – is another.
Hell, she thought, staring at the bricks and moss, every book I've ever read about Silent Hill makes no secret about the fact that evil comes to Silent Hill fairly often. The only reason this town was even here is because a group of people who probably worshiped the devil finally found a place where they could sacrifice virgins – or whatever they did – in peace, where the dregs of society elsewhere in an unwanted county were too busy killing and raping one another to bother them.
But, really, what was so surprising about seeing a ghost in Silent Hill? Two ghosts? Three? Four if you counted the decaying man who had screamed at the man lying on the sofa in the Ridgeview Clinic, she thought. People became ghosts by losing their lives to encounters with evil, or so she'd always read, and like Asheville, ghosts had never been unusual before in Silent Hill.
Especially not in the South Vale part of town, which had once been home to the infamous Toluca Prison Camp during the Civil War, and afterwards, Toluca Prison. Worse even than the prison at Andersonville, Georgia, where captive Union soldiers had been systematically starved or worked to death, imprisoned Confederates at Toluca had been impaled or hanged, often for no reason at all. The brutality continued even after the defeat of the Confederacy when the camp was upgraded to an Illinois state penitentiary, and Toluca gained such a reputation for cruelty that prisoners often chewed open their own wrists or beat their heads against their cell walls until they dropped dead rather than be transferred there.
Toluca Prison's reign of terror had continued until 1894, when crusading journalists and editors from newspapers around the state, including the Toluca Tribune, launched an effort to horrify genteel Victorian readers and demand the state close the prison.
In "An Unwanted County," Augusta had read: "In an interesting coincidence, on August 18, 1894, the very day demolition of the prison was due to begin, the small peninsula on which it sat slid beneath the waters of Toluca Lake in a unexpected deluge that swelled the city's waterways, causing minor flooding damage along the Illiniwak River in East Silent Hill, as well as marked erosion of what was then a public bathing beach accessible from the fountain square that gives the South Park area of Silent Hill its name. Engineers concluded lake currents, especially those generated at the spot where Rosebush Creek empties into the lake, had been wearing away at the peninsula for some time, and that it was 'providential' the prison had been closed and vacated before the storm struck and washed the prison and the land it stood upon into the water once and for all."
A worn marble monument on the south end of Lindsey Street had once explained the history of Toluca Prison further. Though now so weathered it was unreadable and useless, it detailed how the area now occupied by the neighborhood of South Vale had once been swampland – called Blood Swamp because executioners from Toluca Prison Camp had washed their execution tools in the water there.
Blood Swamp had been drained, filled, and turned into South Vale by a Kansas City developer, Andrew Katz, beginning in 1895, and the monument was erected in 1900. Photographs of the dedication ceremony, with every letter carved on the tombstone-like slab stark and perfectly readable, had been stored in the archives of the Silent Hill Genealogical Society.
So why the hell wouldn't you see ghosts in South Vale? Blood Swamp? Toluca Prison? Perhaps Silent Hill resembled Asheville in another way, in that there were already so many spirits trapped there, they drew others in as the curse upon Asheville was said to work.
Lovely as it was – had been, Augusta thought – it wasn't as though Silent Hill was ever a bucolic paradise where people were never hurt or hurt one another. There were morbid monuments, most erected by the Silent Hill Historical Society, throughout Rosewater Park, dedicated to those who had died in various epidemics that had swept through the town during its history, a Silent Hill citizen who had fought and died in the Spanish- American War, and a woman named Jennifer Carroll, whose death had come about because of persecution by the "–ians" – Indians perhaps? – the inscription at the base of her statue, which appeared to be that of a praying woman, was too worn to read and there were no photographs anywhere, not at the genealogical society, historical society, or library that recorded what it might have originally said. Also, no book she had ever read about the history of the town could add more to what might have happened to Jennifer Carroll.
But, she thought again, to read about evil is one thing. To relive it is another. What else would there be waiting for her in this city she had once loved?
Augusta felt the sadness flow over her, a deep canyon of ache carving its way deeper and deeper. This was why she had tried so hard not to think about it...
A whistle shrieked earsplitting in the mist and as her eyes flew open, Augusta leapt to her feet with a scream. She searched, straining her eyes but saw only the trees and bricks of Rosewater Park, and the rolling fog. She listened, but could hardly hear a thing over her heart slamming in her chest.
The whistle had sounded familiar, almost like a train, but shriller. It was like... something else, something she had heard before...
It came again. She had heard it before. She knew it. It was coming from the water, to which the park flowed down in terraces overhung with arbors covered in flowering vines. Most of the monuments were close to the water, overlooking a broad brick landing with a wrought iron railing studded with coin-operated binoculars. A quarter bought a view of Paleville, and the South Park section of town, downtown, East Silent Hill, and like a little green sailboat adrift, Hermit's Island lost in the great western bay of Toluca Lake.
The whistle shrilled again, as though it were calling to her, summoning her. She bent to pick up her shovel and walked toward its sound. Another noise danced through the air, notes, music. An organ perhaps? It brought to mind songs she had heard in church.
They sounded so familiar.
Clutching her shovel, Augusta cautiously made her way through Rosewater Park, following the stairs and pathways down toward the lake. She remembered the man she met at the Ridgeview Clinic had said he stopped to rest here, and that the water looked pink. Pink from the bloody rivers and creeks flowing into Toluca Lake. She wondered what she would see, if Silent Hill tailored its horrors to each person it had deigned to torture. She imagined thousands of tiny, doll-like bloody fetuses floating in a stinking red soup, and felt her empty stomach knot.
Though the whistle remained silent, the music played on and as she drew closer she realized she had heard music like this before, but not at church. Perhaps on a merry-go-round. It wasn't an organ, but a calliope spilling a bright song into the drifting fog.
Where else could a person even hear a calliope, she wondered.
As she descended a final set of brick steps to the landing along the waterfront, something took shape in the mist ahead. It was long and bulky and must be floating beyond the black iron railing with its binoculars.
More than bulky, she realized. Huge. A boat, a ship of some kind... The calliope fell silent as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
It was a riverboat, she saw, afloat just beyond the railing. Augusta could only stare.
It was painted gleaming white, with dark green railings along its two galleries and trim around its windows and doors. Small brass lanterns gleamed in the murk. But there weren't any smokestacks, which seemed strange. Didn't all riverboats have those tall black smokestacks? She had spent part of a vacation in Memphis once and had seen a dozen riverboats lined up along the Mississippi River waterfront downtown.
She stood at the rear of the boat, where a giant paddlewheel sat idle, but dripping, as if the boat had just arrived to dock at the park. She followed the boat along the railing, fascinated. It seemed so plain, but elegant. Simple, but beautiful. There were two decks, each with their dark green banisters. She saw a staircase leading from the first to the second deck. Doors and windows marched along behind the first deck's railing, large windows, some arched, behind the railing of the second deck. A set of fancy double doors with large oval windows appeared on the second deck, then the windows continued.
A section of the iron railing was missing up ahead, and a wide gangplank lined with brass poles and dark green velvet ropes invited anyone strolling along the brick landing to come aboard. A banner hung from the railing of the second deck, white with large letters in fancy script.
WELCOME ABOARD THE LITTLE BARONESS LUNCHEON EXCURSION CRUISE
Augusta stopped, stunned. The Little Baroness?
In "An Unwanted County," it had been in a chapter about the wonderfully profitable years Silent Hill enjoyed between the end of World War I and the onset of the Great Depression. A story of a disappearance that had always, and probably always would, remain a mystery, and a fascinating story that would rise to mind every time one looked out over Toluca Lake and the tourists on their motorboats or the yachts in the marina in East Silent Hill.
Or especially if one ever enjoyed a sumptuous dinner or lunch aboard the grand riverboat that had plied the lake when Augusta lived in Silent Hill, and, if it had journeyed to safety in Pleasant River before the collapse of the City Reservoir Dam, probably still sailed the lake throughout the spring, summer, and fall. Called the Illinois Queen, it certainly had smokestacks, Augusta thought, and a giant red paddlewheel that was a delight to watch from the stern as it spun and churned and threw up spray and pushed the boat along.
Excursion cruises on Toluca Lake had a long, proud history, starting in 1906 when an enterprising banker from St. Joseph, Missouri who summered in Silent Hill discovered a decrepit steamboat built in 1885, unfit to sail and listing badly to one side, for sale on the St. Louis riverfront during a trip there. He had immediately bought it, dismantled it and shipped the pieces by train to the Toluca County station in Ashfield, then by truck to Silent Hill, then reassembled and refurbished the boat, christening her the Little Baroness when finished, and officially creating the Toluca Lake Steamboat Company.
Originally designed to carry up to a hundred passengers, only a handful of private suites remained. The rest had been gutted to create a grand dining saloon, though the wealthy could rent a suite and dine in private luxury as the boat cruised Toluca Lake, from Silent Hill to Pleasant River, and up and down the Toluca River to the reservoir dam and the Illiniwak to a waterfall that, while small, was still impressive for Illinois.
From 1910 when the rebuilding was complete, to 1918, throughout spring, summer, and fall, the Little Baroness had offered relaxing excursion cruises and unparalleled dining in its exquisite dining room. It had been among the can't-miss experiences for visitors to Silent Hill.
In November, 1918, the Little Baroness disappeared. She had set sail from the dock in South Park, carrying a wealthy South Ashfield family celebrating a birthday, who had chartered the boat especially for their occasion.
She never returned to the dock, and was never seen again. No trace of the Little Baroness or any of her passengers or crew was ever found, and investigators could only conclude that the riverboat must have sunk.
But here she was, placidly awaiting passengers, her paint and trim as fresh and new as they must have been in 1918. Augusta studied the windows, dull and lifeless in the fog. Apparently, the private suites were clustered together at the bow, with the kitchen and engine rooms to fill the space between their grand isolation and the big green paddlewheel at the stern. Above was the dining saloon, filled with tables draped with white lace cloths and plush velvet chairs. There would be electric fireplaces for those spring or autumn days that carried a hint of a chill, in the dining room and probably in the private suites as well. There would be dark cherry paneling, and lamps and chandeliers of gold and crystal. The tableware would be sterling silver, with beautiful china plates and crystal goblets and tumblers. In the private rooms would be exquisite oil paintings and tapestry sofas and settees. Throughout there would be the most beautiful parquet floors and oriental rugs.
Augusta could only stare. There was the gangplank with its brass poles and velvet ropes, seeming to wait for her. There was the banner, hanging limply. Where was the calliope she had heard? At the rear, where it summoned passengers to their meal from the shelter of a broad roof like that of the porch of a grand mansion.
Where were the whistles, to warn nearby ships of the Little Baroness' approach? At the bow on the second deck, where the boat was steered from a tiny bridge as encrusted with brass, gilt, and expensive wood paneling as the rest of the boat.
And there were indeed smokestacks, she saw. Tiny, like a pair of chimneys, painted dark green, jutting up from the center of the boat like devil's horns. They could barely be seen over the roofline.
Do I? She asked herself. What if Kitty is still here in South Vale? Where will this take me if I step aboard? Could I come back here if it sailed across the lake?
Music began to play. The richness of a piano soon joined by a feisty cornet and a mournful violin. A cello joined in and a flute trilled. As the sound drifted down from the dining room, she recognized it as a waltz, beautiful and flowing like a stream over smooth pebbles. Was there room to dance in the dining saloon?
Was someone there? Augusta hesitated, staring at the gangplank. She was relieved to see that it bridged only a space of lapping water without the pink tint of rivers of flowing blood. She looked up toward the second deck, at the endless windows and fancy doors of the dining room. The music poured from inside, warm and enveloping and seeming to show there was nothing to worry about onboard the Little Baroness. Once aboard, one only need eat and converse, dance and stroll the decks to view the beauty of a very special place called Silent Hill on its grand lake.
Augusta knew better. But what else was there to do? Please let me make the right choice, she said a quick prayer, hesitated a final moment, then stepped onto the gangplank. She trailed her hands over the green velvet ropes, amazed that they felt so new and soft. The brass poles were untarnished as she passed them one by one. Then she stood on the deck and looked back to Rosewater Park and its broad, blank brick landing, and its statues and monument vague shapes in the mist. Snowflakes fell softly here and there, still melting on the ground, and like the snowflakes, the waltz still drifted gently down from above.
Looking to her left, Augusta saw a staircase sweeping upward and to her right, doors and windows of the private suites. She chose the stairs, walked to them and began to climb, and noticed they and their railings alike were painted deep forest green. At the top the deck was broader than that below, wide enough for passengers to stroll and enjoy the view passing by. Behind the windows velvet drapes swooped down gracefully from valences above, bedecked with fringe and tassel. The drapes were dark green, the fringe and tassel gold. Behind the glass were the tables and chairs she had only seen in pictures. Each table was set for a meal.
To her left were the fancy double doors she had seen from below, their leaded glass ovals sporting an elegant filigreed design in wrought iron. She slowly approached the doors, and saw nothing through their opaque windows. She laid her hand on the polished brass doorknob.
And the whistle screamed and Augusta dropped to her knees in terror at the sound like a keening banshee so close and so sudden after the silence. And black smoke belched from the tiny smokestacks and the paddlewheel churned to life and slapped and slapped and slapped the water as the Little Baroness began to move.
And as she sprang to her feet and nearly threw herself over the railing in her haste, Augusta saw the gangplank and its poles and ropes tumble into the water below her as the Little Baroness pulled away from Rosewater Park and set sail.
She pounded her fists on the dark green railing and screamed through bared teeth, "Shit!"
And again. "SHIT!"
Inside the dining saloon, the music ceased.
It happened every time she had ever experienced something intense – frightening, sorrowful, infuriating, joyful – she thought about it afterwards. Always. She envied people who danced through life never letting an experience trouble them, and wished she could learn to do the same. Instead, she thought it over, analyzed it, asking herself why and how and what it meant.
But, she supposed, it was people who never thought about their life experiences who could sleep at night after aborting their pregnancies, and she hated to think of herself becoming someone like that. Joseph had told her once that she thought too much, but he would say something like that.
As she sat, with Walter Sullivan murdering Billy and Miriam over and over in her thoughts, she realized they were all familiar, as if she had heard of them before. She realized she had, which hadn't occurred to her before in the shock of being confronted with a girl bleeding from a knife stabbed deep inside, and a dead man who wanted to rape a frightened little boy tied to his bed. She closed her eyes.
Billy and Miriam... Locane. And Walter Sullivan. The names were so familiar and she realized she had read them all before. She had made it a point to learn all she could about the three cities she had lived in throughout her life, as she would with any city she might move to in the future. Whenever she found them, any history of Hot Springs, Silent Hill, and Asheville held her attention from first page to last.
She knew about Hot Springs's history as the resort of choice for the mobsters of Prohibition-era organized crime. Employees long retired from the Fordyce Bath House, grandest of the Victorian bathing palaces on Central Avenue, remembered Al Capone always leaving large tips.
She had read of the Trail of Tears, forced death march of the Cherokee nation from its Western North Carolina homeland to Oklahoma, and how, despite thousands escaping or hiding from the brutality and later forming the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, a curse laid by those forcefully uprooted still haunted the land on which Asheville stood, and the mountains surrounding it. Because of that, or perhaps because it had always been a sacred place, Asheville was among the most haunted places on the planet. Legends told of monsters in the rivers, lakes, and waterfalls of Western North Carolina, and of more than a dozen races of fairies who had bedeviled even the Cherokee. To encounter a spirit, ghost, angel, or demon surprised no true citizen of Asheville.
She had learned all she could about Silent Hill as well. Like Hot Springs, where whores, gambling, and gangsters shooting one another in the streets had been as much as a fixture of the town as splashing fountains and elegant resort hotels, Silent Hill had a violent past. Like Asheville, where a headless orange cat haunted the gardens at Biltmore Estate and spectral suicides fell to their deaths again and again from the roof of the Battery Park Hotel, two ghosts out of a thousand or more, it was a city accustomed to the supernatural. Like the both of them, Hot Springs with its floods and fires sweeping through with alarming regularity, and Asheville with its ferocious storms, Silent Hill had known disaster.
The book was called "An Unwanted County," and Augusta had found it at the central city library. It explained how the city had come to its name, gave a short history of the Order whose followers had settled the town, and, mixed among chapters about who had built what and when, were stories of Silent Hill's violent and haunted past, written gleefully as if the author were telling the reader deliciously dirty gossip.
Walter Sullivan's murder of Billy and Miriam Locane warranted mention in a chapter about the changes that came to Silent Hill in the decade after the end of World War II. In 1947 a guest upset about a discrepancy in his bill attacked the famous Fairytale Music Box in the lobby of the Lake View Hotel with a baseball bat and was arrested. The city dedicated its elaborate Veterans Memorial Gardens in Yorkshire Park, along the lakefront in East Silent Hill, in 1949. The first supermarket came to town in 1952, comfortably settling itself behind several acres of parking on Nathan Avenue, the first example of the suburban sprawl to slither along the banks of the Green River in years to come. In 1953, two blocks of beautiful Victorian buildings around the South Park were demolished to make way for an ugly motel and several shops whose buildings were constructed with an ill-thought-out Western theme in mind. That same year a rundown and vacant but still elegant boarding house called the St. James Hotel was torn down in South Vale, replaced by Jack's Inn, a motel so unattractive it appeared as though its builder had stayed up late night thinking of ways to make the building uglier.
In 1954, Walter Sullivan, a trusted, long-time employee at Washington and Loretta Locane's small grocery store kidnapped their son Billy and after holding him prisoner for two weeks, killed him, and his sister Miriam. The book revealed that Miriam had been sexually mutilated and that Billy was beaten to death, though his autopsy had discovered inflamed kidneys and a perforated bowel, perhaps a sign of repeated sexual assault – all details not printed in the newspaper out of respect for Mr. and Mrs. Locane. The murders were classified only as brutal, and Augusta agreed; to be raped to death or stabbed was indeed brutal.
Walter Sullivan had fled to his mother's house in Pleasant River, where he confessed his crimes to his horrified mother and was later arrested. He committed suicide in the tiny jail at the Pleasant River Police Department by stabbing himself in the throat with a spoon.
It was all there, she thought. I read about it all. Why didn't I recognize what was going on?
She answered herself. Reading about evil is one thing, even if it's real evil that occurred behind the doors of buildings you pass by every day. Seeing evil – reliving it – is another.
Hell, she thought, staring at the bricks and moss, every book I've ever read about Silent Hill makes no secret about the fact that evil comes to Silent Hill fairly often. The only reason this town was even here is because a group of people who probably worshiped the devil finally found a place where they could sacrifice virgins – or whatever they did – in peace, where the dregs of society elsewhere in an unwanted county were too busy killing and raping one another to bother them.
But, really, what was so surprising about seeing a ghost in Silent Hill? Two ghosts? Three? Four if you counted the decaying man who had screamed at the man lying on the sofa in the Ridgeview Clinic, she thought. People became ghosts by losing their lives to encounters with evil, or so she'd always read, and like Asheville, ghosts had never been unusual before in Silent Hill.
Especially not in the South Vale part of town, which had once been home to the infamous Toluca Prison Camp during the Civil War, and afterwards, Toluca Prison. Worse even than the prison at Andersonville, Georgia, where captive Union soldiers had been systematically starved or worked to death, imprisoned Confederates at Toluca had been impaled or hanged, often for no reason at all. The brutality continued even after the defeat of the Confederacy when the camp was upgraded to an Illinois state penitentiary, and Toluca gained such a reputation for cruelty that prisoners often chewed open their own wrists or beat their heads against their cell walls until they dropped dead rather than be transferred there.
Toluca Prison's reign of terror had continued until 1894, when crusading journalists and editors from newspapers around the state, including the Toluca Tribune, launched an effort to horrify genteel Victorian readers and demand the state close the prison.
In "An Unwanted County," Augusta had read: "In an interesting coincidence, on August 18, 1894, the very day demolition of the prison was due to begin, the small peninsula on which it sat slid beneath the waters of Toluca Lake in a unexpected deluge that swelled the city's waterways, causing minor flooding damage along the Illiniwak River in East Silent Hill, as well as marked erosion of what was then a public bathing beach accessible from the fountain square that gives the South Park area of Silent Hill its name. Engineers concluded lake currents, especially those generated at the spot where Rosebush Creek empties into the lake, had been wearing away at the peninsula for some time, and that it was 'providential' the prison had been closed and vacated before the storm struck and washed the prison and the land it stood upon into the water once and for all."
A worn marble monument on the south end of Lindsey Street had once explained the history of Toluca Prison further. Though now so weathered it was unreadable and useless, it detailed how the area now occupied by the neighborhood of South Vale had once been swampland – called Blood Swamp because executioners from Toluca Prison Camp had washed their execution tools in the water there.
Blood Swamp had been drained, filled, and turned into South Vale by a Kansas City developer, Andrew Katz, beginning in 1895, and the monument was erected in 1900. Photographs of the dedication ceremony, with every letter carved on the tombstone-like slab stark and perfectly readable, had been stored in the archives of the Silent Hill Genealogical Society.
So why the hell wouldn't you see ghosts in South Vale? Blood Swamp? Toluca Prison? Perhaps Silent Hill resembled Asheville in another way, in that there were already so many spirits trapped there, they drew others in as the curse upon Asheville was said to work.
Lovely as it was – had been, Augusta thought – it wasn't as though Silent Hill was ever a bucolic paradise where people were never hurt or hurt one another. There were morbid monuments, most erected by the Silent Hill Historical Society, throughout Rosewater Park, dedicated to those who had died in various epidemics that had swept through the town during its history, a Silent Hill citizen who had fought and died in the Spanish- American War, and a woman named Jennifer Carroll, whose death had come about because of persecution by the "–ians" – Indians perhaps? – the inscription at the base of her statue, which appeared to be that of a praying woman, was too worn to read and there were no photographs anywhere, not at the genealogical society, historical society, or library that recorded what it might have originally said. Also, no book she had ever read about the history of the town could add more to what might have happened to Jennifer Carroll.
But, she thought again, to read about evil is one thing. To relive it is another. What else would there be waiting for her in this city she had once loved?
Augusta felt the sadness flow over her, a deep canyon of ache carving its way deeper and deeper. This was why she had tried so hard not to think about it...
A whistle shrieked earsplitting in the mist and as her eyes flew open, Augusta leapt to her feet with a scream. She searched, straining her eyes but saw only the trees and bricks of Rosewater Park, and the rolling fog. She listened, but could hardly hear a thing over her heart slamming in her chest.
The whistle had sounded familiar, almost like a train, but shriller. It was like... something else, something she had heard before...
It came again. She had heard it before. She knew it. It was coming from the water, to which the park flowed down in terraces overhung with arbors covered in flowering vines. Most of the monuments were close to the water, overlooking a broad brick landing with a wrought iron railing studded with coin-operated binoculars. A quarter bought a view of Paleville, and the South Park section of town, downtown, East Silent Hill, and like a little green sailboat adrift, Hermit's Island lost in the great western bay of Toluca Lake.
The whistle shrilled again, as though it were calling to her, summoning her. She bent to pick up her shovel and walked toward its sound. Another noise danced through the air, notes, music. An organ perhaps? It brought to mind songs she had heard in church.
They sounded so familiar.
Clutching her shovel, Augusta cautiously made her way through Rosewater Park, following the stairs and pathways down toward the lake. She remembered the man she met at the Ridgeview Clinic had said he stopped to rest here, and that the water looked pink. Pink from the bloody rivers and creeks flowing into Toluca Lake. She wondered what she would see, if Silent Hill tailored its horrors to each person it had deigned to torture. She imagined thousands of tiny, doll-like bloody fetuses floating in a stinking red soup, and felt her empty stomach knot.
Though the whistle remained silent, the music played on and as she drew closer she realized she had heard music like this before, but not at church. Perhaps on a merry-go-round. It wasn't an organ, but a calliope spilling a bright song into the drifting fog.
Where else could a person even hear a calliope, she wondered.
As she descended a final set of brick steps to the landing along the waterfront, something took shape in the mist ahead. It was long and bulky and must be floating beyond the black iron railing with its binoculars.
More than bulky, she realized. Huge. A boat, a ship of some kind... The calliope fell silent as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
It was a riverboat, she saw, afloat just beyond the railing. Augusta could only stare.
It was painted gleaming white, with dark green railings along its two galleries and trim around its windows and doors. Small brass lanterns gleamed in the murk. But there weren't any smokestacks, which seemed strange. Didn't all riverboats have those tall black smokestacks? She had spent part of a vacation in Memphis once and had seen a dozen riverboats lined up along the Mississippi River waterfront downtown.
She stood at the rear of the boat, where a giant paddlewheel sat idle, but dripping, as if the boat had just arrived to dock at the park. She followed the boat along the railing, fascinated. It seemed so plain, but elegant. Simple, but beautiful. There were two decks, each with their dark green banisters. She saw a staircase leading from the first to the second deck. Doors and windows marched along behind the first deck's railing, large windows, some arched, behind the railing of the second deck. A set of fancy double doors with large oval windows appeared on the second deck, then the windows continued.
A section of the iron railing was missing up ahead, and a wide gangplank lined with brass poles and dark green velvet ropes invited anyone strolling along the brick landing to come aboard. A banner hung from the railing of the second deck, white with large letters in fancy script.
WELCOME ABOARD THE LITTLE BARONESS LUNCHEON EXCURSION CRUISE
Augusta stopped, stunned. The Little Baroness?
In "An Unwanted County," it had been in a chapter about the wonderfully profitable years Silent Hill enjoyed between the end of World War I and the onset of the Great Depression. A story of a disappearance that had always, and probably always would, remain a mystery, and a fascinating story that would rise to mind every time one looked out over Toluca Lake and the tourists on their motorboats or the yachts in the marina in East Silent Hill.
Or especially if one ever enjoyed a sumptuous dinner or lunch aboard the grand riverboat that had plied the lake when Augusta lived in Silent Hill, and, if it had journeyed to safety in Pleasant River before the collapse of the City Reservoir Dam, probably still sailed the lake throughout the spring, summer, and fall. Called the Illinois Queen, it certainly had smokestacks, Augusta thought, and a giant red paddlewheel that was a delight to watch from the stern as it spun and churned and threw up spray and pushed the boat along.
Excursion cruises on Toluca Lake had a long, proud history, starting in 1906 when an enterprising banker from St. Joseph, Missouri who summered in Silent Hill discovered a decrepit steamboat built in 1885, unfit to sail and listing badly to one side, for sale on the St. Louis riverfront during a trip there. He had immediately bought it, dismantled it and shipped the pieces by train to the Toluca County station in Ashfield, then by truck to Silent Hill, then reassembled and refurbished the boat, christening her the Little Baroness when finished, and officially creating the Toluca Lake Steamboat Company.
Originally designed to carry up to a hundred passengers, only a handful of private suites remained. The rest had been gutted to create a grand dining saloon, though the wealthy could rent a suite and dine in private luxury as the boat cruised Toluca Lake, from Silent Hill to Pleasant River, and up and down the Toluca River to the reservoir dam and the Illiniwak to a waterfall that, while small, was still impressive for Illinois.
From 1910 when the rebuilding was complete, to 1918, throughout spring, summer, and fall, the Little Baroness had offered relaxing excursion cruises and unparalleled dining in its exquisite dining room. It had been among the can't-miss experiences for visitors to Silent Hill.
In November, 1918, the Little Baroness disappeared. She had set sail from the dock in South Park, carrying a wealthy South Ashfield family celebrating a birthday, who had chartered the boat especially for their occasion.
She never returned to the dock, and was never seen again. No trace of the Little Baroness or any of her passengers or crew was ever found, and investigators could only conclude that the riverboat must have sunk.
But here she was, placidly awaiting passengers, her paint and trim as fresh and new as they must have been in 1918. Augusta studied the windows, dull and lifeless in the fog. Apparently, the private suites were clustered together at the bow, with the kitchen and engine rooms to fill the space between their grand isolation and the big green paddlewheel at the stern. Above was the dining saloon, filled with tables draped with white lace cloths and plush velvet chairs. There would be electric fireplaces for those spring or autumn days that carried a hint of a chill, in the dining room and probably in the private suites as well. There would be dark cherry paneling, and lamps and chandeliers of gold and crystal. The tableware would be sterling silver, with beautiful china plates and crystal goblets and tumblers. In the private rooms would be exquisite oil paintings and tapestry sofas and settees. Throughout there would be the most beautiful parquet floors and oriental rugs.
Augusta could only stare. There was the gangplank with its brass poles and velvet ropes, seeming to wait for her. There was the banner, hanging limply. Where was the calliope she had heard? At the rear, where it summoned passengers to their meal from the shelter of a broad roof like that of the porch of a grand mansion.
Where were the whistles, to warn nearby ships of the Little Baroness' approach? At the bow on the second deck, where the boat was steered from a tiny bridge as encrusted with brass, gilt, and expensive wood paneling as the rest of the boat.
And there were indeed smokestacks, she saw. Tiny, like a pair of chimneys, painted dark green, jutting up from the center of the boat like devil's horns. They could barely be seen over the roofline.
Do I? She asked herself. What if Kitty is still here in South Vale? Where will this take me if I step aboard? Could I come back here if it sailed across the lake?
Music began to play. The richness of a piano soon joined by a feisty cornet and a mournful violin. A cello joined in and a flute trilled. As the sound drifted down from the dining room, she recognized it as a waltz, beautiful and flowing like a stream over smooth pebbles. Was there room to dance in the dining saloon?
Was someone there? Augusta hesitated, staring at the gangplank. She was relieved to see that it bridged only a space of lapping water without the pink tint of rivers of flowing blood. She looked up toward the second deck, at the endless windows and fancy doors of the dining room. The music poured from inside, warm and enveloping and seeming to show there was nothing to worry about onboard the Little Baroness. Once aboard, one only need eat and converse, dance and stroll the decks to view the beauty of a very special place called Silent Hill on its grand lake.
Augusta knew better. But what else was there to do? Please let me make the right choice, she said a quick prayer, hesitated a final moment, then stepped onto the gangplank. She trailed her hands over the green velvet ropes, amazed that they felt so new and soft. The brass poles were untarnished as she passed them one by one. Then she stood on the deck and looked back to Rosewater Park and its broad, blank brick landing, and its statues and monument vague shapes in the mist. Snowflakes fell softly here and there, still melting on the ground, and like the snowflakes, the waltz still drifted gently down from above.
Looking to her left, Augusta saw a staircase sweeping upward and to her right, doors and windows of the private suites. She chose the stairs, walked to them and began to climb, and noticed they and their railings alike were painted deep forest green. At the top the deck was broader than that below, wide enough for passengers to stroll and enjoy the view passing by. Behind the windows velvet drapes swooped down gracefully from valences above, bedecked with fringe and tassel. The drapes were dark green, the fringe and tassel gold. Behind the glass were the tables and chairs she had only seen in pictures. Each table was set for a meal.
To her left were the fancy double doors she had seen from below, their leaded glass ovals sporting an elegant filigreed design in wrought iron. She slowly approached the doors, and saw nothing through their opaque windows. She laid her hand on the polished brass doorknob.
And the whistle screamed and Augusta dropped to her knees in terror at the sound like a keening banshee so close and so sudden after the silence. And black smoke belched from the tiny smokestacks and the paddlewheel churned to life and slapped and slapped and slapped the water as the Little Baroness began to move.
And as she sprang to her feet and nearly threw herself over the railing in her haste, Augusta saw the gangplank and its poles and ropes tumble into the water below her as the Little Baroness pulled away from Rosewater Park and set sail.
She pounded her fists on the dark green railing and screamed through bared teeth, "Shit!"
And again. "SHIT!"
Inside the dining saloon, the music ceased.