As the Little Baroness heaved itself to port, its paddlewheel spinning
furiously, Augusta ran first to the little wheelhouse at the bow. There
was a dark cherrywood door with a brass knob and large glass rectangle that
allowed a view of a room full of dials and gauges, brass knobs and levers,
all of it beautiful in a strange, old-fashioned way. The wheel spun to the
left by itself, and Augusta wondered if she should be surprised to see no
one at the bridge. When she tried the knob, she discovered the door was
locked, and considered smashing her way through the window with her shovel
before deciding it was just as well – she had no idea how to steer the
boat. She sighed, defeated. The riverboat had been pointed east as it sat
at the landing at Rosewater Park; now it was turning and cutting a path
through the water to go west.
To go where? Behind her, already Rosewater Park had fallen away into foggy murk, and the trees along the lakeshore between Nathan Avenue and the water were all but invisible. I should have seen this coming, she thought, seething. I should have known this would happen.
She turned and stomped along the deck back toward the dining saloon. She laid her hand on the knob and studied the loops and swirls of wrought iron embedded in the door's large frosted glass oval windows. No one was steering the boat, though plainly the Little Baroness was on the move, and seemed to have a destination in mind. She thought surely there would be nobody in the dining room.
Never mind the beautiful waltz she had heard minutes before. If the Little Baroness could steer itself, it could probably play its own piano as well.
She opened the door cautiously and looked in. Just in case, because even if the Little Baroness could play its own piano, it also seemed that in Silent Hill now there were options beyond people and living creatures.
The dining saloon was as marvelous as she had always seen in pictures, more so to see it in color. She had seen the dark green velvet drapes with their gold trim from outside; they had framed tables set for lunch with dishes of china – a forest green pattern rimmed with gold – and sparkling crystal and polished silver. Peeking out from beneath lace tablecloths, the tables were made of the same dark cherry wood that trimmed and paneled the rest of the boat. The chairs sported dark green velvet upholstery fastened with brass tacks to frames of the same dark wood. Their arms and graciously bowed legs were almost black.
Rugs intricately patterned in dark green and yellow lay between the tables, but ahead was a wide expanse of polished parquet floor, an exquisite pattern in dark and light wood. Perhaps cherry and oak. The dark wood was reddish black, the light nearly blond. Beyond the empty expanse, a dance floor she realized, was a tiny, raised stage upon which stood a piano, its black wood fabulously decorated with carvings. There were five chairs for other musicians, and five tall brass music stands in attendance, but no instruments.
The silence in the dining room was absolute.
She smelled food. A delicious aroma that seemed to be coming from a table to the left of the stage. She looked, then stared. Steam rose from something on a plate, and the crystal tumbler was filled with black.
She remembered she had eaten nothing since lunch yesterday except half a bag of old M&M's, and her stomach, demanding attention, let loose a long, low growl. She stepped in and quietly closed the door behind her.
As she crossed the floor, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking softly on the polished wood, she studied the room further, sure that at any moment something would leap out at her and scream or gibber through a ferocious grin, slobber or shed dead pieces of itself.
Between every window, each framed in dark wood, was green silk wallpaper rising up to border of cherry wood and a ceiling of white plaster busy with carved garlands and rosettes. A crystal chandelier hung over the stage, with fancy gold and crystal light fixtures casting a soft glow over the rest of the grand room. Between the windows were gold wall sconces, each with three small light bulbs shaped like candle flames. The dining saloon blazed with electric light, and was bright, almost cheerful, despite its gloomy colors. To her left at the far end of the long room was a blank wall of the same green wallpaper above dark wood wainscoting. Three large oil paintings in gilt frames, their subjects too dingy and far away to make out, filled the spaces between four more sconces.
She saw what might have been a staircase in the far right corner, probably leading down to the kitchen.
A chair was pulled out from the table, away from what appeared to be a dish familiar to Augusta. Her favorite restaurant in Asheville served something very similar and though she had over time tried everything on the menu there, she found herself ordering that particular meal – a blackened tuna steak on a bed of rice and broccoli, drizzled with a spicy pepper sauce, and topped with onions, peppers, and mushrooms – again and again there. She had always reasoned that if she was going out to eat, she wanted her money's worth, and saw nothing wrong with ordering the same dish time and again if she knew for certain she would love it.
She saw that the liquid in the tumbler wasn't black but so darkly red it was almost black, and fizzed, like her favorite drink, a cherry soda only sold in North Carolina and a handful of nearby states.
There was a place card by the plate with a message written in elaborate calligraphy. She picked it up:
Reserved for Miss Augusta Rose Jackson, compliments of the Blue Lady
Augusta suddenly felt cold, and slowly lowered the card, and studied the dining room again. Again, she saw no one. There was only the long room of cherry wood and dark green.
Steam disappeared in the air above the food on the plate, and tiny bubbles rose and popped in the crystal tumbler. She glanced at the card again, and the message, though written in the same intricate script, had changed.
You must eat, or you will grow weak. You have eaten nothing of worth since yesterday
She gasped and dropped the card and wiped her fingers on the sweatshirt knotted around her waist, as though the place card had grown a coat of slime.
It lay on the floor at her feet, almost directly in the center of a dark wood square where two light strips of oak or whatever it might be, crossed in an X. The message had changed again, to something much shorter. Augusta looked away for a moment, and didn't want to, but knelt to pick it up.
It is safe
She crumpled the card, held it in her fist and shivered violently, then closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to uncrumple the stiff little ball.
She saw again that this seat at this table was reserved for Augusta Rose Jackson, compliments of the Blue Lady, and she dropped the card on the floor and flicked it under the table.
She stood. Blue Lady? Who was the Blue Lady? She looked down at the food on the beautiful green china plate with its gold rim. Her stomach growled again, its walls feeling as though they were grinding against one another.
Augusta grimaced, unsure of what to do. She was famished, but had been too busy to notice before. She had to eat. The food, the vegetables, sauce, and fish looked harmless, but God only knew what they might conceal. This was a dead ship, missing since 1918 and she didn't trust what it might serve her in its dining room, compliments of the Blue Lady or not.
Oh, God, I'm so hungry, she thought. If she didn't eat, how much longer could she go on before she began to weaken? How long would it be before she exhausted herself and couldn't go any further? She had read that the human body could withstand three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air.
But what would happen if her hunger distracted her?
Her stomach complained again, loudly, and finally she muttered, "Damn it," and sat down, and pulled the chair up to the table. She picked up the silver fork to her right and sliced through the tuna steak, which was as tender and perfectly cooked as the best serving she had ever eaten at the restaurant in Asheville. Steam rose, and with it came the wonderful aroma of blackening spices and pepper sauce. She brought the fork to her nose and sniffed at the morsel speared on the prongs. Nothing unusual. She stuck out her tongue and tasted it and found nothing unusual. She put it in her mouth and chewed carefully.
It was perfect. God help me, this is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done, she prayed, and ate.
The meal was excellent, perfectly prepared and cooked, and every bite danced with flavor. The tumbler was indeed filled with her favorite soda and she sipped it slowly, to make it last as long as possible. When she was finished, she glanced away, at her shovel leaning against a nearby chair, and marveled at how wrong it looked. It seemed out of place and out of its time, something modern and utilitarian in an elegant setting from another year. The shovel's handle was painted fluorescent orange, which seemed somehow an affront to the dining saloon in the Little Baroness.
When she looked back at the table, she found that her plate had been joined by a coffee cup, steaming and filled to the brim and setting on a small saucer, and a dessert plate occupied by a large slice of what appeared to be chocolate pie sporting a dollop of whipped cream.
She leapt up from the table, sending her chair crashing to the floor behind her. She whipped her gaze back and forth, searching for whomever could have brought her coffee and dessert. When she saw no one, she stooped and looked under the table, lifting its lace cloth for a view of the polished parquet floor and her place card wadded into a ball near one of the table legs. She stood, and shivered.
"I'm not going crazy," she said out loud, again scanning the room with her eyes, "I don't know what's going on, but I know it's real, whatever it is. I'm not imagining it. I'm in the dining room of a ship that sank in 1918, and I just sat here, in this dining room, and ate lunch, and when I turned away for just a few seconds, somehow a cup of coffee and a piece of pie appeared out of the air. There's nobody nearby and there wasn't any time for someone to bring it to me, especially if they had to come up from that kitchen over there, but it's here and it's real."
She stared down at the coffee and pie.
"And I'm talking to myself. I am going crazy."
She wanted to cry, but had to smile at the irony that she most craved sugar and obeyed the commands of her sweet tooth when she was upset. Chocolate pie. What the hell – why not? She righted her chair and sat down, and ate the pie and drank the coffee. Like her meal of fish and vegetables in pepper sauce, they were perfect and delicious. The coffee had been flavored with chicory, and the pie was light and silky smooth. When finished, she felt pleasantly full; the taste of chocolate lingered on her tongue.
I'm not going crazy, she told herself again. It's all real. Everything I've seen since I got here has been real.
But, she wondered, how was that supposed to be any comfort at all? How could it be comforting to think of the killing black arms, or the dead man in the Ridgeview Clinic who had spat worms when he screamed? What was comforting about the creature composed of dead white men, or Walter Sullivan torturing Billy and Miriam Locane fifty years after he killed them? How was it comforting to have a meal waiting for you at your reserved seat in the dining room aboard a riverboat missing since 1918?
She answered herself as she glanced at the scabs on the back of her hand. If any of it were real, so was Kitty. And she didn't care what might come, she would search until she found her daughter. If the Little Baroness took her across the lake and at the end of her journey she learned that Kitty was still back in South Vale, she would go back to South Vale even if she had to swim across Toluca Lake to get there, and even if every drop of water in the lake turned to blood while she did it.
Maybe I do think too much. I've been through this already. I already know what I'm doing here and why I keep going on instead of running hell for leather all the way back to the Wiltse greenway and up to my truck and driving away to someplace where things are still normal. I don't need to tell myself why I'm doing this.
But it's so strange. Nothing here makes sense! It's like everything is inside out... Nothing has made sense since I got into Silent Hill. Nothing's made sense since I got pulled through...
Stop it, goddammit! Just fucking STOP IT! She took a deep breath.
Augusta pushed back her chair and stood, and reached for her shovel. She turned and as she looked over the empty dining room, she heard only the hum of the engines on the lower deck.
"Okay," she thought of the Blue Lady, "Whoever you are, thank you. It was very good."
In response came a piercing sob. She turned, partly in surprise, and partly in alarm, and at the far end of the dining saloon, at the green wall with its three paintings, she saw the Blue Lady.
Augusta was so shocked, she dropped her shovel, which hit the floor with a clang. Her first thought was of Weeping Mary, the demon – what else could it be? – she had seen in South Vale. The monster who claimed to have Kitty, and demanded Augusta's suffering before she would ever let her go.
But even from this distance, the woman in blue by the paintings seemed different, despite her olive skin and her hair, like black silk, piled high atop her head with curls hanging down to frame her face. She wore a voluminous royal blue ball gown, and in her hair were the blossoms of some type of blue flower
Augusta knelt to pick up her shovel, and saw that it had nicked the parquet floor, and when she stood, she found herself walking closer and couldn't help it. She drew nearer and saw that the flowers in the Blue Lady's hair were roses. It was impossible. Blue roses didn't exist, and they must be silk, but somehow seemed real. She wore a necklace and earrings of some sparkling, bright blue gem. Bluer than sapphire. Perhaps polished lapis lazuli. She wore silk opera gloves of the same color as her gown, and wept into a dainty handkerchief the color of faded denim. All around her in the air clouds of blue formed and unformed, like drops of dye in water.
It seemed like hypnotism, some kind of trance as it seemed Augusta was commanded to stop just as she had been commanded to walk. There was nothing in the world but the Blue Lady sobbing pitifully, and the paintings on the green wall. As Augusta watched, the Blue Lady pointed, but it was as though she couldn't bear to look at the paintings, and Augusta's gaze followed the pointing finger clad in blue silk.
She pointed first to the painting on the left, and it was a scene of a woman in an old fashioned dress, cowering on a floor, on a rug with a pattern of vines and leaves in front of an obviously antique sofa of yellow and green velvet. A large hat bedecked with rosebuds and a veil lay on the sofa, and a man towered over the woman with an axe raised above his head. His face wore an expression of unimaginable hatred.
The Blue Lady pointed to the middle painting, and in it the man was bringing the axe down. The woman appeared to be screaming or weeping, or both. Her arm was raised as if to ward off the blow, and she already wore a deep red slash across her palm.
The Blue Lady pointed to the third painting, on the right, and it depicted the axe buried in the woman's shoulder, where it must have cleaved through her collarbone. And the Blue Lady pointed to the painting on the left once again.
Then to the middle, then to the painting on the right, then the left, and the middle, and the right, over and over again. Her arm moved in a blur, impossibly fast, but Augusta followed its movements, at the subject in each painting as it changed every time she pointed. Augusta found herself thinking of a flipbook as she watched.
The man raised the axe and brought it down, and raised the axe and brought it down, and raised the axe and brought it down. It struck the woman on her arm, opening an artery that jetted scarlet. It struck the woman in the red canyon it had opened in her collarbone and cleaved it deeper. It struck her on her chest, and sliced open the bulge of her right breast in a spray of red. Blood poured from her wounds and she screamed and cried, and begged and pleaded.
The man raised the axe and brought it down, and the hatred on his face never dimmed. The room began to turn red.
And at last the woman was bathed in red, her body and clothing in tatters, and she lay still on the carpet whose pattern was lost to her blood. Her head had lolled to the side and it looked as though she peered from the painting directly at Augusta. Her lips formed words.
Please stop. I'm sorry.
The man threw his axe aside and dropped to his knees to beat the woman's face with his fists. Five times. Ten. A dozen. A hundred, and when he was finished her face was a swollen ruin.
He tore aside her blouse and layer after layer of undergarments beneath, all of them wet and red. When he reached the flesh hidden beneath, it was scored with flowing bloody trenches.
She was still alive. The woman slowly closed and opened one eye, the other was gummed shut with blood.
The man thrust his hands and arms into the woman's belly and tore at what he found inside. Her intestines and viscera were like ropes and he tugged and pulled them out and threw them aside, and stabbed his arms deep inside again.
When he was finished her belly lay open like a bright red flower, and her bones showed, and her innards lay in a horrible, grotesque mound. He seemed to pant, exhausted, but slowly climbed to his feet, a ghoul in scarlet. He wiped his hands on the green and yellow velvet sofa, but only smeared the blood that had spattered there. He bent to pick up his axe and walked away to the left, out of view.
Dimly, in the back of Augusta's mind, she realized she should have thrown up at the sight of it all. She felt oddly calm, almost peaceful.
The Blue Lady was still sobbing into her handkerchief, but when Augusta turned to look, she was gone. But her sobs still resounded through the air. Augusta felt dazed, as if waking up from a fitful sleep. She felt she needed to look at the paintings again, and when she did they had changed yet again. Together, the three of them now depicted nothing more than a fancy parlor. There was no blood, and no hideously mutilated woman on the floor.
Something was different, though... Standing close enough to touch the paintings, Augusta reached out and couldn't bring herself to be surprised when her hand passed through empty air beyond the gilt frames. These were no longer paintings, but openings. The room beyond was quiet, still, and dim.
The dining saloon of the Little Baroness was gone and in its place, blackness. She stood on a tiny patch of parquet floor, its edges broken off in a stairstep pattern as though every wooden square beyond the remaining few had fallen away. Before her was the green wall with its gilt frames and gold sconces. The rest was a blackness pierced by unfamiliar constellations and milky swirling galaxies. The Blue Lady's sobs sounded as though they were coming from under water.
There seemed to be nothing more to do but step through the empty frames and into the fancy parlor. When she did, clambering through the central frame, she felt the vertigo sweep over her and lost her balance. She dropped her shovel and it seemed that it fell a very long way before it hit the parlor carpet with a thud. And when she tumbled forward, it seemed she fell a very long way as well before landing on the green and yellow velvet sofa.
It was surprisingly soft, and she wanted to close her eyes until the dizziness went away.
To go where? Behind her, already Rosewater Park had fallen away into foggy murk, and the trees along the lakeshore between Nathan Avenue and the water were all but invisible. I should have seen this coming, she thought, seething. I should have known this would happen.
She turned and stomped along the deck back toward the dining saloon. She laid her hand on the knob and studied the loops and swirls of wrought iron embedded in the door's large frosted glass oval windows. No one was steering the boat, though plainly the Little Baroness was on the move, and seemed to have a destination in mind. She thought surely there would be nobody in the dining room.
Never mind the beautiful waltz she had heard minutes before. If the Little Baroness could steer itself, it could probably play its own piano as well.
She opened the door cautiously and looked in. Just in case, because even if the Little Baroness could play its own piano, it also seemed that in Silent Hill now there were options beyond people and living creatures.
The dining saloon was as marvelous as she had always seen in pictures, more so to see it in color. She had seen the dark green velvet drapes with their gold trim from outside; they had framed tables set for lunch with dishes of china – a forest green pattern rimmed with gold – and sparkling crystal and polished silver. Peeking out from beneath lace tablecloths, the tables were made of the same dark cherry wood that trimmed and paneled the rest of the boat. The chairs sported dark green velvet upholstery fastened with brass tacks to frames of the same dark wood. Their arms and graciously bowed legs were almost black.
Rugs intricately patterned in dark green and yellow lay between the tables, but ahead was a wide expanse of polished parquet floor, an exquisite pattern in dark and light wood. Perhaps cherry and oak. The dark wood was reddish black, the light nearly blond. Beyond the empty expanse, a dance floor she realized, was a tiny, raised stage upon which stood a piano, its black wood fabulously decorated with carvings. There were five chairs for other musicians, and five tall brass music stands in attendance, but no instruments.
The silence in the dining room was absolute.
She smelled food. A delicious aroma that seemed to be coming from a table to the left of the stage. She looked, then stared. Steam rose from something on a plate, and the crystal tumbler was filled with black.
She remembered she had eaten nothing since lunch yesterday except half a bag of old M&M's, and her stomach, demanding attention, let loose a long, low growl. She stepped in and quietly closed the door behind her.
As she crossed the floor, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking softly on the polished wood, she studied the room further, sure that at any moment something would leap out at her and scream or gibber through a ferocious grin, slobber or shed dead pieces of itself.
Between every window, each framed in dark wood, was green silk wallpaper rising up to border of cherry wood and a ceiling of white plaster busy with carved garlands and rosettes. A crystal chandelier hung over the stage, with fancy gold and crystal light fixtures casting a soft glow over the rest of the grand room. Between the windows were gold wall sconces, each with three small light bulbs shaped like candle flames. The dining saloon blazed with electric light, and was bright, almost cheerful, despite its gloomy colors. To her left at the far end of the long room was a blank wall of the same green wallpaper above dark wood wainscoting. Three large oil paintings in gilt frames, their subjects too dingy and far away to make out, filled the spaces between four more sconces.
She saw what might have been a staircase in the far right corner, probably leading down to the kitchen.
A chair was pulled out from the table, away from what appeared to be a dish familiar to Augusta. Her favorite restaurant in Asheville served something very similar and though she had over time tried everything on the menu there, she found herself ordering that particular meal – a blackened tuna steak on a bed of rice and broccoli, drizzled with a spicy pepper sauce, and topped with onions, peppers, and mushrooms – again and again there. She had always reasoned that if she was going out to eat, she wanted her money's worth, and saw nothing wrong with ordering the same dish time and again if she knew for certain she would love it.
She saw that the liquid in the tumbler wasn't black but so darkly red it was almost black, and fizzed, like her favorite drink, a cherry soda only sold in North Carolina and a handful of nearby states.
There was a place card by the plate with a message written in elaborate calligraphy. She picked it up:
Reserved for Miss Augusta Rose Jackson, compliments of the Blue Lady
Augusta suddenly felt cold, and slowly lowered the card, and studied the dining room again. Again, she saw no one. There was only the long room of cherry wood and dark green.
Steam disappeared in the air above the food on the plate, and tiny bubbles rose and popped in the crystal tumbler. She glanced at the card again, and the message, though written in the same intricate script, had changed.
You must eat, or you will grow weak. You have eaten nothing of worth since yesterday
She gasped and dropped the card and wiped her fingers on the sweatshirt knotted around her waist, as though the place card had grown a coat of slime.
It lay on the floor at her feet, almost directly in the center of a dark wood square where two light strips of oak or whatever it might be, crossed in an X. The message had changed again, to something much shorter. Augusta looked away for a moment, and didn't want to, but knelt to pick it up.
It is safe
She crumpled the card, held it in her fist and shivered violently, then closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to uncrumple the stiff little ball.
She saw again that this seat at this table was reserved for Augusta Rose Jackson, compliments of the Blue Lady, and she dropped the card on the floor and flicked it under the table.
She stood. Blue Lady? Who was the Blue Lady? She looked down at the food on the beautiful green china plate with its gold rim. Her stomach growled again, its walls feeling as though they were grinding against one another.
Augusta grimaced, unsure of what to do. She was famished, but had been too busy to notice before. She had to eat. The food, the vegetables, sauce, and fish looked harmless, but God only knew what they might conceal. This was a dead ship, missing since 1918 and she didn't trust what it might serve her in its dining room, compliments of the Blue Lady or not.
Oh, God, I'm so hungry, she thought. If she didn't eat, how much longer could she go on before she began to weaken? How long would it be before she exhausted herself and couldn't go any further? She had read that the human body could withstand three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without air.
But what would happen if her hunger distracted her?
Her stomach complained again, loudly, and finally she muttered, "Damn it," and sat down, and pulled the chair up to the table. She picked up the silver fork to her right and sliced through the tuna steak, which was as tender and perfectly cooked as the best serving she had ever eaten at the restaurant in Asheville. Steam rose, and with it came the wonderful aroma of blackening spices and pepper sauce. She brought the fork to her nose and sniffed at the morsel speared on the prongs. Nothing unusual. She stuck out her tongue and tasted it and found nothing unusual. She put it in her mouth and chewed carefully.
It was perfect. God help me, this is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done, she prayed, and ate.
The meal was excellent, perfectly prepared and cooked, and every bite danced with flavor. The tumbler was indeed filled with her favorite soda and she sipped it slowly, to make it last as long as possible. When she was finished, she glanced away, at her shovel leaning against a nearby chair, and marveled at how wrong it looked. It seemed out of place and out of its time, something modern and utilitarian in an elegant setting from another year. The shovel's handle was painted fluorescent orange, which seemed somehow an affront to the dining saloon in the Little Baroness.
When she looked back at the table, she found that her plate had been joined by a coffee cup, steaming and filled to the brim and setting on a small saucer, and a dessert plate occupied by a large slice of what appeared to be chocolate pie sporting a dollop of whipped cream.
She leapt up from the table, sending her chair crashing to the floor behind her. She whipped her gaze back and forth, searching for whomever could have brought her coffee and dessert. When she saw no one, she stooped and looked under the table, lifting its lace cloth for a view of the polished parquet floor and her place card wadded into a ball near one of the table legs. She stood, and shivered.
"I'm not going crazy," she said out loud, again scanning the room with her eyes, "I don't know what's going on, but I know it's real, whatever it is. I'm not imagining it. I'm in the dining room of a ship that sank in 1918, and I just sat here, in this dining room, and ate lunch, and when I turned away for just a few seconds, somehow a cup of coffee and a piece of pie appeared out of the air. There's nobody nearby and there wasn't any time for someone to bring it to me, especially if they had to come up from that kitchen over there, but it's here and it's real."
She stared down at the coffee and pie.
"And I'm talking to myself. I am going crazy."
She wanted to cry, but had to smile at the irony that she most craved sugar and obeyed the commands of her sweet tooth when she was upset. Chocolate pie. What the hell – why not? She righted her chair and sat down, and ate the pie and drank the coffee. Like her meal of fish and vegetables in pepper sauce, they were perfect and delicious. The coffee had been flavored with chicory, and the pie was light and silky smooth. When finished, she felt pleasantly full; the taste of chocolate lingered on her tongue.
I'm not going crazy, she told herself again. It's all real. Everything I've seen since I got here has been real.
But, she wondered, how was that supposed to be any comfort at all? How could it be comforting to think of the killing black arms, or the dead man in the Ridgeview Clinic who had spat worms when he screamed? What was comforting about the creature composed of dead white men, or Walter Sullivan torturing Billy and Miriam Locane fifty years after he killed them? How was it comforting to have a meal waiting for you at your reserved seat in the dining room aboard a riverboat missing since 1918?
She answered herself as she glanced at the scabs on the back of her hand. If any of it were real, so was Kitty. And she didn't care what might come, she would search until she found her daughter. If the Little Baroness took her across the lake and at the end of her journey she learned that Kitty was still back in South Vale, she would go back to South Vale even if she had to swim across Toluca Lake to get there, and even if every drop of water in the lake turned to blood while she did it.
Maybe I do think too much. I've been through this already. I already know what I'm doing here and why I keep going on instead of running hell for leather all the way back to the Wiltse greenway and up to my truck and driving away to someplace where things are still normal. I don't need to tell myself why I'm doing this.
But it's so strange. Nothing here makes sense! It's like everything is inside out... Nothing has made sense since I got into Silent Hill. Nothing's made sense since I got pulled through...
Stop it, goddammit! Just fucking STOP IT! She took a deep breath.
Augusta pushed back her chair and stood, and reached for her shovel. She turned and as she looked over the empty dining room, she heard only the hum of the engines on the lower deck.
"Okay," she thought of the Blue Lady, "Whoever you are, thank you. It was very good."
In response came a piercing sob. She turned, partly in surprise, and partly in alarm, and at the far end of the dining saloon, at the green wall with its three paintings, she saw the Blue Lady.
Augusta was so shocked, she dropped her shovel, which hit the floor with a clang. Her first thought was of Weeping Mary, the demon – what else could it be? – she had seen in South Vale. The monster who claimed to have Kitty, and demanded Augusta's suffering before she would ever let her go.
But even from this distance, the woman in blue by the paintings seemed different, despite her olive skin and her hair, like black silk, piled high atop her head with curls hanging down to frame her face. She wore a voluminous royal blue ball gown, and in her hair were the blossoms of some type of blue flower
Augusta knelt to pick up her shovel, and saw that it had nicked the parquet floor, and when she stood, she found herself walking closer and couldn't help it. She drew nearer and saw that the flowers in the Blue Lady's hair were roses. It was impossible. Blue roses didn't exist, and they must be silk, but somehow seemed real. She wore a necklace and earrings of some sparkling, bright blue gem. Bluer than sapphire. Perhaps polished lapis lazuli. She wore silk opera gloves of the same color as her gown, and wept into a dainty handkerchief the color of faded denim. All around her in the air clouds of blue formed and unformed, like drops of dye in water.
It seemed like hypnotism, some kind of trance as it seemed Augusta was commanded to stop just as she had been commanded to walk. There was nothing in the world but the Blue Lady sobbing pitifully, and the paintings on the green wall. As Augusta watched, the Blue Lady pointed, but it was as though she couldn't bear to look at the paintings, and Augusta's gaze followed the pointing finger clad in blue silk.
She pointed first to the painting on the left, and it was a scene of a woman in an old fashioned dress, cowering on a floor, on a rug with a pattern of vines and leaves in front of an obviously antique sofa of yellow and green velvet. A large hat bedecked with rosebuds and a veil lay on the sofa, and a man towered over the woman with an axe raised above his head. His face wore an expression of unimaginable hatred.
The Blue Lady pointed to the middle painting, and in it the man was bringing the axe down. The woman appeared to be screaming or weeping, or both. Her arm was raised as if to ward off the blow, and she already wore a deep red slash across her palm.
The Blue Lady pointed to the third painting, on the right, and it depicted the axe buried in the woman's shoulder, where it must have cleaved through her collarbone. And the Blue Lady pointed to the painting on the left once again.
Then to the middle, then to the painting on the right, then the left, and the middle, and the right, over and over again. Her arm moved in a blur, impossibly fast, but Augusta followed its movements, at the subject in each painting as it changed every time she pointed. Augusta found herself thinking of a flipbook as she watched.
The man raised the axe and brought it down, and raised the axe and brought it down, and raised the axe and brought it down. It struck the woman on her arm, opening an artery that jetted scarlet. It struck the woman in the red canyon it had opened in her collarbone and cleaved it deeper. It struck her on her chest, and sliced open the bulge of her right breast in a spray of red. Blood poured from her wounds and she screamed and cried, and begged and pleaded.
The man raised the axe and brought it down, and the hatred on his face never dimmed. The room began to turn red.
And at last the woman was bathed in red, her body and clothing in tatters, and she lay still on the carpet whose pattern was lost to her blood. Her head had lolled to the side and it looked as though she peered from the painting directly at Augusta. Her lips formed words.
Please stop. I'm sorry.
The man threw his axe aside and dropped to his knees to beat the woman's face with his fists. Five times. Ten. A dozen. A hundred, and when he was finished her face was a swollen ruin.
He tore aside her blouse and layer after layer of undergarments beneath, all of them wet and red. When he reached the flesh hidden beneath, it was scored with flowing bloody trenches.
She was still alive. The woman slowly closed and opened one eye, the other was gummed shut with blood.
The man thrust his hands and arms into the woman's belly and tore at what he found inside. Her intestines and viscera were like ropes and he tugged and pulled them out and threw them aside, and stabbed his arms deep inside again.
When he was finished her belly lay open like a bright red flower, and her bones showed, and her innards lay in a horrible, grotesque mound. He seemed to pant, exhausted, but slowly climbed to his feet, a ghoul in scarlet. He wiped his hands on the green and yellow velvet sofa, but only smeared the blood that had spattered there. He bent to pick up his axe and walked away to the left, out of view.
Dimly, in the back of Augusta's mind, she realized she should have thrown up at the sight of it all. She felt oddly calm, almost peaceful.
The Blue Lady was still sobbing into her handkerchief, but when Augusta turned to look, she was gone. But her sobs still resounded through the air. Augusta felt dazed, as if waking up from a fitful sleep. She felt she needed to look at the paintings again, and when she did they had changed yet again. Together, the three of them now depicted nothing more than a fancy parlor. There was no blood, and no hideously mutilated woman on the floor.
Something was different, though... Standing close enough to touch the paintings, Augusta reached out and couldn't bring herself to be surprised when her hand passed through empty air beyond the gilt frames. These were no longer paintings, but openings. The room beyond was quiet, still, and dim.
The dining saloon of the Little Baroness was gone and in its place, blackness. She stood on a tiny patch of parquet floor, its edges broken off in a stairstep pattern as though every wooden square beyond the remaining few had fallen away. Before her was the green wall with its gilt frames and gold sconces. The rest was a blackness pierced by unfamiliar constellations and milky swirling galaxies. The Blue Lady's sobs sounded as though they were coming from under water.
There seemed to be nothing more to do but step through the empty frames and into the fancy parlor. When she did, clambering through the central frame, she felt the vertigo sweep over her and lost her balance. She dropped her shovel and it seemed that it fell a very long way before it hit the parlor carpet with a thud. And when she tumbled forward, it seemed she fell a very long way as well before landing on the green and yellow velvet sofa.
It was surprisingly soft, and she wanted to close her eyes until the dizziness went away.