Her shoes crunching on the crushed gravel as she sprinted along Summerland Cemetery's broad central pathway. The shovel heavy on her shoulder, a weight she wanted to throw aside if it would help her to run even a tiny bit faster – she knew she couldn't because the shovel was too valuable, and Silent Hill was too dangerous. Her backpack a slowing weight heavy like a stone bouncing on its straps. The knotted sweatshirt tangling around her legs. Mist drifting between the tombstones in their orderly rows. Trees, old and gnarled, planted along the gravel road, grown upward to meet high overhead in a Gothic arch.

And the sound, far off and lost somewhere in the fog, of a child fighting to get free of whoever was hurting her. The sounds of a struggle, the sobbing scream of a little girl who knew something bad was happening to her and who knew something worse would come if she couldn't run away.

Augusta would have taught her daughter to stay away from strangers, but knew that strangers were persuasive. No matter how well you taught your children, they could often be tricked. So Augusta would also have made sure her daughter knew, if somehow she found herself threatened by a stranger, she should fight, struggle, scream, make as much noise as she possibly could and draw as much attention to herself as possible, and get help from the nearest person wearing a name tag or a uniform.

There was so much she would have taught Mary-Elizabeth, if only she had let her live.
What if this was a second chance, and what if this second chance was being taken away? Weeping Mary had said Augusta could have her daughter back if only she suffered enough. And what hurt more than having a second chance ripped apart before her eyes? She thought of the impossibility of a dead child alive and well in a dead town and reminded herself again that nothing mattered except...

Someone was hurting her child, as she thought of the despair she had lived with for five years.

Someone was hurting her child, as she thought about tumbling back down into that familiar black hopelessness if this second chance was taken from her.

Someone was hurting her child, which meant she was not important. What she thought was not important. Nothing she had ever thought, done, felt, hidden, exposed, wept over, laughed over, or prayed about in her life was as important as stopping whomever was hurting her child.

So she ran, feet pounding on the gravel, forcing herself forward as the need for oxygen began a slow burn in her lungs.

She panted, and screamed out hoarse, "Don't hurt her, please! Take me – I'll suffer. Hurt me, please, do whatever you want, just stop hurting her! Don't make her suffer for what I did, please!"

The mist swallowed her voice and whatever was hurting her child ignored her. The sounds of Kitty fighting and screaming in pain went on, and Augusta burst into tears that were equally agony, frustration, and rage. She tripped as the world blurred around her, and nearly fell, then she forced herself forward. A second was too precious to waste.

"I'm coming, baby, "she gasped, "I'm coming, I'm coming..." From the distance came a furious sound, and Augusta stumbled in surprise. Kitty gave a final pained squeal and fell silent, and instantly Augusta thought the worst. Black spots began to dance across her vision, as she reeled and whispered, "No..." before her legs buckled. She pitched forward to land hard on the gravel.

Immediately she sat up, and felt as though encased in ice, head swimming. Her daughter was silent – and it was a terrible silence.

Maybe she had gotten away and was running to safety. Maybe someone had some to her rescue... but if so, Augusta would hear the sounds of a frightened child in need of comfort and reassurances that everything was all better now – sounds that were so much better than those of a child in pain. If Kitty was all right, surely Augusta would hear her daughter crying and calling for her.

So, maybe she was dead. A spear of terrified dread lanced through her, cold as winter, and she put her hands to her heart.

Oh, God, no. Please no. I'm so sorry I gave her up once, please I beg of You, don't take her away from me now.

The ground began to shake, and she froze. Kneeling, she felt the vibrations rolling up out of the earth, up through her knees and thighs, and felt the tiny bits of gravel in the path shifting beneath her. On the ground where her shovel had fallen, gravel rattled against the steel blade.

The furious sound came again, and she recognized it as a howl of rage from a deep-voiced man. High above, the tree branches slapped together, breaking off twigs that rained down around her.

She snatched up her shovel, climbed to her feet and stood, and clutched it tight, and screamed out her daughter's name.

Maybe she was just hurt, or maybe she had gotten away, she can't be dead, not again, please God not again, don't take her away from me because I'm so, so very sorry I gave her up once before.

What was the furious sound? What man was screaming, more anger in his voice than she had ever heard in any other voice before?

The ground pitched once, then the gentle rumbling resumed.

And very close by in the path ahead, something large erupted from the ground. It rose up, gravel falling away in a shower, throwing off rocks and clods of soil. Augusta recognized it as the fence that ringed Summerland Cemetery.

Black wrought iron tipped with fancy spearheads, ten-foot spans of spiked tines interrupted by tall iron poles, each crowned with a brass ball. It blocked the path, and in her surprise, Augusta screamed and stumbled backward. She turned as the rumbling continued and she saw another length of fence ripping its way out of the earth. To her left and to her right, shapes moving in the mist were more lengths of fence, and more iron poles topped with brass balls rising higher and higher up out of the graveyard soil. The fence along the perimeter of Summerland Cemetery was only seven feet high, but this fence, these new lengths rose further, ten feet, then taller, fifteen feet and kept climbing, twenty feet high and stopped, the spikes and every brass ball draped in cauls of dirt and grass.

Open-mouthed, wide-eyed and stunned, Augusta stood close enough to lay her hand against the fence, and found it cold and damp. Beads of moisture rolled down the metal. She turned away – this was not a cage, but a corridor. The ground had stilled.

There was only silence. She cried out her daughter's name again, "MARY-ELIZABETH! KITTY! Baby, where are you!" and heard nothing.

"Oh, God," she wailed and stabbed the shovel blade into the ground at her feet, hating the helplessness she felt. What could she do now?

She could walk away, and search and try to find whatever she could. Through the mist it was hard to tell, but she thought the sounds of Kitty's struggle had come from somewhere far ahead and to her left. She would go and try to find her daughter, and help her if she could.

The furious sound came again, a man's scream of hatred and anger, but the fog smothered the sound and there was no echo.

Augusta quickly discovered that Summerland Cemetery had become a giant maze, its twisting corridors marked off by the fence. It did no good to run because the new paths turned, and turned back on themselves, led in circles, and were blocked by gravestones everywhere she turned. She wandered, looking from side to side, hoping to catch a glimpse of movement, hoping she would see her daughter on the other side of the fence or better yet, in the path straight ahead just a few steps away. Every few steps, she screamed for Kitty. There was never a response.

Frequently, it was obvious that as the fence had shot up through the ground, it had carved its way through the vaults and coffins that lay beneath. Broken bones littered the ground, and shreds of cloth were caught on the fence – bits of the fine suits and dresses in which the dead of Silent Hill had been laid to rest. Thankfully rare, there were also gobbets of liquefying flesh oozing down the black iron bars, and at one spot there was what could only be a long, blonde wig blackened with mud and hanging limply.

In the distance, the furious sound wailed like a siren. The man's scream rose and reached a plateau that seemed to vibrate through the core of every bone in Augusta's body. As the scream split the air the ground quivered as if in fear. With every far off roar Augusta tensed, her muscles tightening, bracing herself and waiting for something from a nightmare to leap down on her out of the mist. With every scream she squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip to fight away the panic that threatened to well up, and then overflow inside her and drive her to throw herself at the fence and claw and tear at the bars until her fingers were bloody stumps. She had to keep going. Kitty might need her.

Over and over, Augusta screamed for her daughter and with every resounding silence that answered her, in the pit of her stomach a feeling of uselessness came to life, grew, and thrashed about like a writhing worm. If her daughter was still alive – and she had to be, she had to be, oh God, please – Augusta couldn't help her, wandering and lost as she was.

If she was still alive, she might be lying on the ground, her tiny life spilling out on the ground even now, bright red on the cemetery grass.

She clambered over a large tombstone blocking the way. Tilting to the right, it was made of creamy marble, gray streaked with white, and was topped with a blocky cross. Fat clouds of moss scudded across its face. The next grave behind had a tiny marker, white marble with the carved figurine of a lamb perched atop it. The lamb and tombstone were spotted with black lichen, and Augusta knew it was the grave of a child. She bent down to read the inscription:

Dora Anne Bachman

Born – May 11, 1897

Died – August 12, 1902

Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me

She ran her fingertips across the carved words and thought, this child was five years old. She stood and looked into the mist ahead, a look of desperation on her face. Snowflakes still fell gently and melted on the ground. She felt so weak. Helpless, as if there was nothing she could do but search in vain and run in circles while someone hurt her daughter, or while her daughter lay dying.

Or maybe they had already killed her. Any maybe they would again and again, while she watched or listened and could do nothing to stop it. This must be what hell was like. Maybe it was hell, she thought. Hell is repetition.

Or maybe Kitty was alright, she told herself again, wanting a spark of hope. Maybe she had escaped and run away to safety.

Or maybe, if only she kept suffering, Kitty would be alright. Maybe if she suffered enough, Kitty would be set free – and Augusta would suffer until she died, and do it gladly, if there was a chance Kitty could go free. Anymore, it seemed Silent Hill had fallen out of the world outside, the world where tourists still poured in by the carload to see the joys and wonders of Toluca County, where taxes were paid to Springfield and Washington, and where she could drive east in her little red truck and eventually reach that city she now loved that was perched up in the clouds and forests of Western North Carolina.

If only she knew the rules of this new world. Could she trust a bleeding monster to keep her word? Where was her daughter and what had happened to her? Her child had died, and lived again – could she die again? Would she live again? Could she die and live and die and live, over and over?

Augusta thought of the serpent that devoured its tail, a symbol of infinity. There was a word for it, a name, but she couldn't remember what it was.

She walked on and screamed for her child again. As if to answer, the furious sound came as it had so many times before. Beneath her feet the cemetery trembled, as though the thing that screamed its rage was pounding its fists on the ground. How many fists could it have to cause the earth to shake, she wondered, then thought of the arms that had pulled her into Silent Hill.

She began to pray, and tried to run again, no matter the gravestones in her path and the twists and turns of the fence. As a reward for her troubles, she barked her shin against a nearby stone and pain sizzled up her leg. She howled her daughter's name and hobbled on.

Please God, if she's alive, keep her safe. Please, this I beg of You. Don't let her be dead. Not again. Please.

Keep her safe.

Clumps of dirt and grass stuck on the fence, which blocked her path at every turn.

Keep her safe.

There were bones on the ground, broken and splintered, and stained brown with dirt and age. This was one of the older parts of the cemetery, with only a few fresher graves scattered among the dead who had rested here since the late 1800's and early 1900's.

Keep her safe. Please. I'll never ask You for anything else ever again, if only You'll keep her safe and give me this second chance. Please don't let anything hurt her.

She heard the furious sound once more – and it was cut short.

There was another sound now, a whispering, a crackling, a sound like handfuls of grass being pulled from the ground. Startled, she looked to the fence, and saw vines clambering skyward along the iron bars.

Leaves opened, glossy green, as she watched. There were buds, which opened into trumpet-shaped flowers in purple, blue, and white, riding upward as the vines curled around and around and around the bars of the fence. The vines cloaked the fence, and tangled on one another and wove a green cloth as they wrapped around themselves in a frenzy to grow. At the top of the fence, the vines seemed surprised at having nothing more to climb and shot into the air, then drooped downward. They thrashed in the air, still growing, fresh with shiny leaves and velvet blossoms.

Morning glory vines.

A flash of color caught Augusta's eye and she looked down to see a golden carpet of dandelions sprouting at her feet. Shocked, she gasped and for a moment, forgot to draw another breath, staring dumbfounded as the world around her turned in an instant bright yellow, green, and white, purple, and blue.

Something was happening, and she didn't know what, but it seemed there was suddenly nothing to be afraid of. She began to run again, dodging gravestones, her shin throbbing. She stumbled on a footstone and fell against the fence, and discovered the morning glory vines were warm, as though the leaves and flowers had been touched by the sunrise of a bright summer morning. She wondered for a moment when morning glories bloomed. Spring or summer, and when would they bloom in North Carolina? When would they bloom in Illinois? She couldn't recall.

Her run was soon slowed again to a walk, as tombstones loomed suddenly out of the mist, or rose just high enough to trip her and send her tumbling to the ground. The corridors formed by the fence still wound in drunken, random Greek twists.

The tombs had changed from the more modest monuments of the middle class to more and more ostentatious statements in marble and granite. Simple crosses and carved slabs gave way to stone angels with moss in the marble curls of their hair, draped in dramatic mourning over carved scrolls spread wide bearing the names of the deceased. Tombs like miniature fairytale castles appeared. There were more statues, including one tall black marble pedestal with a severe bronze bust of the deceased peering sternly out on the world. More trees began to appear, and Augusta recalled that the wealthier sectors of the cemetery had always been the shadiest.

All the while in the distance, though seemingly nearer and nearer as she navigated the maze, was the furious sound. It seemed to be growing weaker though, as though something was crushing the life out of it, and now rather than furious, it had become almost fearful. Less a scream of rage and more a call for help.

The maze cut through a grove of trees where the fence had sliced open many of the tree trunks as it had erupted. In the center of the grove was a statue of an angel standing atop a pedestal, an arm outstretched as though offering its hand, smiling serenely. There were benches nearby, where one could rest and look at the statue – the fence had shot up beneath one of the benches and split it in half. The pieces lay on the ground.

Augusta walked on and the people buried beneath her feet were no longer merely wealthy, but extremely wealthy. There were tombs draped with ivy, with statues of angels standing guard by bronze grille doors. There were tombs with stained glass windows.
There were family plots enclosed by fences of their own, some of which had been ripped up when the cemetery fence split the ground, and had been hoisted high into the air and now dangled from the spikes and the poles with their brass globes, wrapped tightly now in a heavy green shawl of morning glory vines.

A statue of an angel stood atop a grave, holding a marble sheaf of wheat in one arm and pointing heavenward with her other hand.

Gravel paths wound in and out of the corridors formed by the vine-covered fence. There was a tomb guarded by twin marble sphinxes, and another like a tiny Gothic chapel, with an angel peering out from a mantle of ivy atop the roof. The snowflakes fell and mist breathed through the air. The furious sound had died away, though there was something not very far away like a whimper.

Soon, even that was gone.

Now, the tombs and monuments were by far the grandest in the cemetery, so fabulously crafted and majestic that tourists had come to marvel and snap pictures – just one of the many things there had once been to see and do in Silent Hill. As they were everywhere else throughout Summerland Cemetery, every stone was pocked with lichen, or soft with moss, or curtained with ivy. As they were elsewhere through Summerland Cemetery, the trees were fat and tall, many with tombstones at their bases leaning crookedly, shoved aside by their roots.

Then the maze opened up on the grandest tomb in the cemetery, and it was one Augusta had never seen before. This was the largest open space she had seen in the cemetery since the fence had ripped through the ground, and it was filled by a magnificent house for the dead that looked like a small Greek temple.

It was made entirely of black marble, glistening slick with moisture in the fog. At the head of a short flight of stairs was a broad porch behind a colonnade of black pillars, and beyond the porch was a massive set of bronze double doors. Augusta counted them – a procession of seven life-size bronze statues marched up the stairs to the doors, mourning Greek goddesses trailing garlands of bronze flowers, and at each corner of the roof knelt a bronze angel, wings folded tightly in reverence. At the peak of the roof atop a tiny cupola stood another angel, wings unfurled in triumph, a giant bronze cross in the crook of an arm.

It was big enough to be a church, Augusta thought. From where she stood she could see a row of large stained glass windows leading away down the left wall of the tomb. They filled the spaces in between the columns, matching those along the front, that were carved into the tomb's outer walls. There was a small memorial garden enclosed by a short iron fence on this side of the tomb, and as she walked along the front, staring in amazement, she discovered its twin on the other side. And of course, she thought, there are the windows and columns to match.

Who could this belong to? This hadn't been here before. She had taken walks in Summerland Cemetery – had led tours of Summerland Cemetery, and knew the tombs and the statues and monuments. She knew the famous names of the cemetery, and had known the resting places of most of them. Koontz, Rendell, Sagan, Matheson, Bradbury, Ellroy, Wiltse, and others... all the old, wealthy families of Silent Hill. This tomb was not familiar, but was somehow important. The maze had led her here, and it seemed to be the central focus of the entire Summerland Cemetery labyrinth – in the vine-covered fence around the edge of this space there were more openings where more corridors undoubtedly wound away through the cemetery.

So who rested here and why were they so important? Was this where Kitty had been?
There was a splash of color at the foot of the steps. She crept closer to inspect it and discovered on the ground, at the feet of the last statue in the procession up the stairs, what had been a patchwork quilt. It lay in tangled shreds, bright fabric ripped to pieces. She picked up a scrap and looked closely – these were her stitches. This was her handiwork. She would have made a quilt like this for her daughter. The tight, perfect, looping stitches and nearly invisible seams that made it appear that all the squares of the quilt had simply come together of their own accord. This was Mary-Elizabeth's blanket and Augusta had made it for her. She had probably lain on the steps of this tomb, wrapped tight in this blanket.

Now it was ripped apart as though by something with vicious, giant claws... and there was the glint of metal under the shredded quilt. Augusta threw the cloth aside, her breath catching in her throat, close to tears and close to panic.

A collar on a chain fastened to the slender ankle of the last statue in the procession.

Dropping her shovel, Augusta clapped her hands over her mouth to smother the scream. Be calm, some part of her mind tried to advise. Stay calm. The quilt looks like it was clawed to pieces, and there's a collar on a chain. Maybe Kitty wasn't chained up here. Maybe it was an animal. Maybe there was a big dog, or a big cat – what would have claws like this, a tiger, a lion? – chained here. There's no blood. Not a trace – maybe this is just an animal's bed.

But why would it have Kitty's blanket? Why would it have the quilt Augusta would have made for her daughter? Who could have even gotten it to use as a bed for the animal? This quilt didn't even exist. Not in the real world, at any rate. Of course, here where mists rolled on and the snowflakes fell, and flowers bloomed out of season, where a monster made of dead white men could devour the man who had lain on the sofa, she could hold the shreds of the quilt in her hands. She stood and dropped the ruined bit of the quilt and glanced frantically at the tomb, the fence with its morning glory vines, and everything else in sight. This tomb was important – it had to be because the paths of the maze led to it. And, it seemed to her this was where Kitty had been. The gates of Summerland Cemetery were far behind her and the tomb was to the left of the gates – far ahead and to the left, and it was from far ahead and to the left that Kitty's screams seemed to have come.

A thought – how had Kitty known Augusta was passing by the cemetery gates? The mist was as thick as it had been since she was pulled into Silent Hill, and it still stole from sight everything more than a few yards away. "Oh, God," said Augusta and put the heel of her fist to her forehead as a tear of frustration slid down her cheek. "I don't know what's going on, but please let me find her. Please let her be alright. Please help me, dear God."

She snapped to attention as a hollow banging sounded from the tomb. She was still holding her shovel, she realized as she instantly brought it up, ready to swing. Her nostrils flared as she grimaced and stared at the tomb's fancy bronze doors. Something was pounding hard on the doors from the other side, from the inside of the tomb. Something wanted out.

She thought immediately of Kitty, but whatever was pounding on the doors seemed far too large to be her tiny daughter. It was something strong and angry. Perhaps the thing that had screamed so furiously so many times as she had stumbled her way through the cemetery maze. Or perhaps the thing with such large claws as to have shredded a well-crafted quilt.

In between blows landing on the door at the top of the stairs from where she stood, wary and armed with her shovel, Augusta heard a sudden rustling. It came from her right, then her left. She spun to her right, ready with the shovel – the rustling seemed to be coming from the tiny gardens beside the tomb, and it seemed to be the sound of leaves whispering against themselves in a breeze – but wasn't because as she watched, a large azalea bush behind the low iron fence grew a fur of lozenge-shaped green leaves, then burst into flame red blossom.

It was simply the sound of the garden coming to life. The other memorial garden on the left side of the tomb was doing the same. She stared as the plants inside the garden fences grew and leafed and flowered. Hollyhocks rose up on tall stalks, their flowers popping open one after another. There were more azaleas, of all colors, and gladiolas with their frilly blossoms and leaves like green blades. As the flowers grew the pounding on the door grew angrier, more frantic, but weakened until it was a tapping. Then it was gone.

Augusta stared, waiting, but heard nothing more. The deadly stillness of Silent Hill had returned while fog swirled around the new bright flowers of the memorial gardens. Care to see what's inside, she asked herself. Something in the tomb had definitely wanted to come outside to see her – something that must have been affected by the sudden burst of growth in the gardens, though she wondered how that could be. An image formed in her mind of the thing that had pulled her through the sculpture at the mouth of Wiltse Hill Tunnel, with its hundreds of black arms lashed to the ground and rendered harmless by morning glory vines. Wouldn't that be nice, she thought bitterly, and stared angrily at the tomb.

It was important; every path in the maze led to it. Her daughter's quilt lay in rags on its steps. She was sure it was from here she had heard her daughter's screams. There was something inside that had wanted to come out to get her, probably kill her, but was thwarted by the flowers in its own gardens, which was a surreal thought, but she couldn't find another way to explain it.

Maybe seeing who's inside will help me figure out what's going on here. Maybe seeing who's buried inside will help me figure out how to find Kitty – because she's not here, not that I can see.

She realized her knuckles had blanched around the handle of the shovel, and relaxed her grip. She scowled at the tomb, then walked to the foot of the stairs and started up.