Please note that I've updated Chapter 20 – I added more to it after I initially published it, and after realizing the formatting screwed up when I re-posted the chapter with the additions from my home computer (which uses a different version of Windows than my work computer), I've fixed it so that it ought to be good and readable again. You might want to go back and reread it before starting on this one! Thanks.
The bronze double doors featured a fabulously detailed relief of ecstatic souls swirling up to the gates of heaven, where angels waited to welcome them. It was an awesome work of art that looked as though it belonged on display in the finest museums of Chicago or St. Louis. Giant bronze rings, fashioned to look like coils of rope, hung heavy. Give a hard pull and they would open the doors. Augusta stared at them warily.
Where was the name of the person buried inside? Someone who would build such a grand tomb for themselves would want everyone to know who they had been. Someone who would build such a tomb for another person would want everyone to know who had been important enough to deserve such a magnificent monument. This was Summerland Cemetery's Taj Mahal. So why was there no name on the tomb?
She chewed her lower lip nervously. The tomb and the cemetery were still and quiet. There was something in there that had wanted out. It had wanted to burst out and get her until the gardens bloomed and drove it back.
It seemed to be gone now, though. She reached out to touch the doors, marveling as she ran her fingers across the exquisite details of an angel's wing.
She heard nothing. She knocked on the doors and after the noise of her knuckles ringing on the metal faded, still heard nothing. She pounded on the doors with a tightly curled fist and still heard nothing at all.
Was it waiting, just on the other side? Would it jump out as soon as it saw the first bar of murky daylight?
The hell with it. She wasn't accomplishing anything just standing here. Her child was still out there somewhere, and she needed to get moving – there hadn't been a drop of blood on the shredded quilt, no sign of Kitty, and she had no idea where her daughter might have gone. The tomb might answer some questions. If nothing else she had her shovel, and if she couldn't fight off whatever might be lurking inside, at least she might be able to hit it, stun it, and run away.
"Famous last words," she muttered, grasped the rings and yanked open the doors.
The bronze doors groaned open onto a wonder of candlelight. The scent of dust spiced with flowers and incense wafted out, and she had to wipe her nose to ward off a sneeze. She stepped in, and the doors gently creaked closed behind her.
The tomb looked even larger inside than it did from outside. A cavern of gentle gothic gloom, it commanded reverence. Weak, watery light filtered in through the stained glass windows, all of which showed scenes of angels in prayer. In the cloudy light from outside, they radiated the faintest rainbow glow, but in direct sunlight, they would throw splashes of color like spilled paint wherever the light touched.
But the sun doesn't shine in this Silent Hill, Augusta thought.
Tall iron candelabras crowded near the walls, where black marble columns strained upward to support a ribcage of arches leading away toward the back of the tomb. From the apex of each arch, iron chandeliers hung from long chains and glowed with halos of flickering candles. The floor was a mosaic, dizzyingly intricate, of bands of black and white marble entwined that seemed to radiate outward from a grand central circle of black marble inlaid with a massive seal, probably a family crest, in some kind of yellow metal.
Surely not gold she thought, then as she gazed around the tomb, thought, why not?
In the center of the seal stood a long pedestal draped in swales of crimson velvet, and atop the pedestal sat a coffin.
A tomb this massive for a single person; it was bizarre. In all the other grand grave monuments of Summerland Cemetery a tomb like this would be the resting place of several generations of an entire family. Coffins would rest, layer upon layer, in large spaces set into the walls, sealed behind marble panels carved with names and dates. There would usually be a tiny altar in the claustrophobic little hall between the ranks of caskets, where a votive candle would gutter in a draft, and fading photographs of lost loved ones would peer out from behind dusty glass and tarnished frames.
The other fine tombs of Summerland were places of reflection, places to remember the lives led by beloved family who had gone on. This tomb was not. It was nothing more than arrogance in black marble. Augusta frowned, and shivered.
There was a shape at the rear of the tomb. Augusta tensed, and stared at it, holding her breath... before she recognized it as a large statue of an angel, wings folded around its shoulders like a cloak, head bowed, its arms outstretched, hands cupped. A wisp of smoke rose from the cup of its hands as she watched – incense. An incense burner. Augusta stepped forward, bent to peer around the coffin presented like a museum exhibit in the middle of the tomb, and saw flowers heaped at the statue's feet.
"Okay," she said quietly.
So who's buried here? Why are they so damned important? She approached the coffin, almost on tiptoe. She imagined if she made much noise at all, something would burst out of the coffin and be upon her before she'd even had time to scream – she tried to chase the image out of her mind, and failed.
The coffin was made of rich, dark wood, inlaid with gold and sporting gold handles, hinges, and latches, and two long gold poles that would be used by pallbearers to carry it. There was nothing on the velvet-draped pedestal, nothing on the lid, nothing to indicate who lay inside. Which meant she would have to open it and see for herself.
Her heart sank, mired in cold.
"Oh, God," she whispered.
Why am I doing this? This is the part in all the movies where the moron heroine is about to do something catastrophically stupid that will let the monster out, and you're yelling at the screen through a mouthful of popcorn for her not to do it, but she does it anyway. The only thing I could do that would be any more idiotic would be to run away from whatever pops out at me, then turn my ankle, fall down, and just lay on the ground and wait for it to come kill me.
She took a step back, and then another, breathing heavily.
This tomb has something to do with my daughter – whoever is inside that casket has something to do with my daughter. She was here. I just feel that she was. That was her quilt outside and I heard her screaming for me. She's gone away somewhere, and I couldn't help her, but finding out who is inside that casket might give me some idea of what to do now. I might learn something I need to know to find her, help her, and get her back.
Once I get her back, I'll never let her out of my sight again. I'll never stop praying my thanks to You, oh God. I just want to find her and get out of here. Please.
I have to open that coffin – please protect me. Please don't let whatever's inside hurt me. Please just give me this second chance. Let me find my daughter and take her home. I just want to get out of this place.
She stepped forward and stood by the coffin for a moment before she tensed and squeezed her eyes shut for a final quick prayer, then opened her eyes. Clutching the shovel handle with her right hand, she reached forward with her left – the coffin lid was frigid – and flipped the latch and heaved open the casket.
The lid flew open, bounced on its hinges and nearly slammed itself shut again. It bounced several more times, quivered, stilled, and its golden hinges were bent. A sandy, peppery odor gasped out, but nothing more. The corpse inside was still.
Joseph appeared to have been dead for quite some time. He had not decayed well, but was perfectly recognizable – Augusta had no doubt. Joseph's clasped hands clutched a plaque, and though she didn't need to read it, she did anyway:
Joseph Bardino North
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear. – Isaiah 59:2
His name and a verse from the Bible, and nothing more. She stared, dumbstruck. His hands had mummified – his skin had been as dark as hers, but what little remained to cover the bones of his fingers had lightened to the color of sand. He looked shrunken inside what he had considered his uniform as manager of the Lake View Hotel – a white shirt and black slacks, shined shoes, braided leather belt, and a silk tie with a colorful, abstract design in red, black, and white. A sprinkling of dried, crumbled skin dusted his shirt where his hands clasped the plaque.
The flesh of his face had dried, tightened, and blackened, and it looked as though his face had been messily sculpted from tar. His mouth screamed open around his tongue, dried behind his teeth like a shriveled slug. There was his mustache and goatee. His eyes were gone, dried away, the sockets black and empty.
Augusta realized her mouth was open, and clapped it shut so hard her teeth clacked together as she reread the plaque. Your sins have torn you away from God and now he won't hear your prayers.
Joseph was mocking her. That had always been his way – find the softest spot, plunge in the knife, and give it a twist, and the guilt of the past five years now shot out at her like shrapnel, every twisted shard ripping through all the way to the bone.
Guilt that he had caused.
"I'm well aware of my iniquities," she said quietly through clenched teeth.
Then she screamed, "YOU SON OF A BITCH!! WHY ARE YOU HERE!!" and with a single vicious kick that vibrated up through her entire body she lashed out and sent Joseph's coffin tumbling from its perch and onto the floor.
She was furious, far too angry to be afraid now.
"You sick FUCK!!" she raged. "It figures you'd be arrogant enough to put yourself in a tomb like this. You don't deserve anything like this and you never did – you were a waste of oxygen, and I'm sorry I ever met you. It's because of you that I gave up what would have been the best thing that ever happened to me! You talked me into having an abortion, and I'll suffer for that the rest of my life –"
She threw her shovel aside and hurtled across the velvet-draped pedestal. Blood roared in her ears and pounded behind her eyes so hard her vision blurred with every heartbeat. She dropped to the floor beside the overturned coffin and heaved it upright. Inside it, Joseph was disintegrating. More skin had flaked off, including his entire upper lip, still bristly with the remains of his mustache. His nose had crumbled off.
She stood and kicked the coffin, watching with satisfaction as the body inside shifted stiffly from side to side.
"Where is my child?" she screamed at the body, and knew she would not be given an answer.
She glared down at Joseph, fuming, then she snorted, coughed and brought up the largest glob of mucus she could manage and spat it squarely into his left eye socket. She kicked the coffin again, and again, and kept kicking until her leg tingled all the way up to the knee as she watched Joseph jostle about inside.
Fists clenched and every muscle in her body as tight as wire, she stomped away from the coffin, around the pedestal to her shovel where it lay on the floor. She bent stiffly and grabbed it and stormed away.
She hurled open the magnificent bronze doors and thundered across the porch and down the stairs. She couldn't remember ever having been this enraged. If anything jumped out at her now, she would feed it its heart. She didn't know why Joseph was here, and didn't know why he would be sealed inside such a fine tomb, and she didn't give a flying fuck.
Her daughter needed to be found, and as far as she was concerned she had just wasted her time and her energy on Joseph, who wasn't worth the slightest bit of either. He was dead – she didn't know when or how, but again, as far as she was concerned, he deserved to be, however it had happened and however long ago.
But he had something to do with her daughter. He was somehow involved with the entire reason she was here. She didn't know how. Her daughter had sent her the Mother's Day card.
Hadn't she? Augusta stared into the mist swirling through Summerland Cemetery, teeth bared, her heart pounding.
The message written inside the card had addressed her as Mommy, but Kitty had called her Mama. She shrugged off her backpack, unzipped it fiercely, and tore through the items inside in search of the card. When she found it, she brought it out, snatched it from its pale pink envelope and opened it to read it again.
I love you Mommy. You are the best Mommy ever. Love, Mary-Elizabeth.
There it was. Twice. Mommy. And the signature. Mary-Elizabeth would have been called Kitty, just like Augusta's mother. Would she have signed a card with her full name and not her nickname?
Augusta studied the envelope, as she had only yesterday morning. Lamb Avenue, the street where the school that Kitty would have attended stood. If Kitty had sent the card from school, would she have been required to sign her full name? Augusta didn't think so. She remembered when she was in school, children who hated their first names went by their middle names, and children known by a nickname were free to go by that name from kindergarten on through senior year, college, and into the real world waiting beyond.
Something was wrong here. She turned, very slowly, to look at Joseph's grave in all its splendor. The self-important fuck. Demanding more than he ever deserved even in death.
When had he died? Maybe she should start caring, because something was very, very wrong.
Who had been pounding on the door, wanting so badly to come out and hurt her? Joseph? Who had screamed again and again, and made the earth tremble? Joseph?
A thought. Whose arms had pulled Kitty away into the darkness of Wiltse Hill Tunnel, and then pulled her through the woven cables of the Welcome sculpture and into this cool, damp hell?
Joseph's?
Suddenly, she was trembling so badly her knees knocked together and threatened to dump her on the ground. Something was watching. She could feel it. And whatever it was, it was extremely unhappy. Its rage was deeper and darker than anything she could imagine, and made her anger look as calm as a lake on a windless day.
Joseph?
She could imagine what he had wanted. She should have been not only awed, but intimidated by his grand tomb – the black marble palace he had conjured for himself. The flowers shouldn't have burst into bloom and driven him away from the door. He had wanted to roar out at her and tear her apart, but kept from that, even inside the tomb, she should not have kicked his coffin off its pedestal and spat on him.
That was disrespectful.
She should not have mocked his tomb, shouldn't have dismissed it as elegant idiocy in stone and bronze. She should have been properly frightened once inside the tomb, and properly horrified at having to open the coffin, and properly appalled at what was inside. She should have burst into tears and wrung her hands and wet her jeans. She should have declared she just didn't know what to do and break down and have a good weep, and then wander around the hell of Silent Hill until something ate her, or drove a knife up her vagina just as Walter Sullivan had done to Miriam Locane in 1954, or ripped her apart with its bare hands just as Joshua Blackwell had his brother's wife in 1918.
That was what Joseph had wanted. He wanted her to suffer and then to die, and nothing more.
Augusta was not interested in playing the part of the maiden too fair and delicate to do what needed to be done, and she never had been. If Joseph had wanted her here for no other reason than to terrify and torture her, he had obviously been rudely surprised.
But I'm good and scared now, she thought, backing away.
Who had been here first – Joseph or Kitty? She imagined Joseph, slowly drying in the confines of his casket, relishing a sweet cruelty and summoning her to Silent Hill, a city that no longer existed where the dead could call to the living to make them suffer for their sins. She imagined Kitty, her beautiful, perfect, dead little girl in Silent Hill all along, as delighted and surprised to suddenly find her Mama here as Augusta had been to find her child. And she imagined Joseph oblivious of Kitty's presence, surprised and slyly pleased in a repugnant, malignant way at having a splendid new way to rip out Augusta's heart.
Or maybe Kitty had lived in her mind all along, ridden along in her dreams all this time, springing to life in her Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt and her jeans with embroidered red hearts only now in the new, ugly world of Silent Hill. After all, Weeping Mary had thanked her for "bringing the child." Perhaps people who didn't exist could only come to life in a town that no longer existed. Perhaps Kitty had never set foot in Silent Hill until today.
Either way, Joseph must have been ecstatic at having a new way to torture Augusta.
Was that how it was? Was that how it had happened?
Tell me, oh God, tell me. Help me! Tell me what's going on here.
And please help me find my child. I have to find her and get her to safety. He'll hurt her too. Please, God, help me.
She turned and ran, circling Joseph's tomb. There was no sign of Kitty, and she hadn't thought there would be. There had been no blood on the shredded quilt. Kitty was somewhere else. If she had ever been here at all, she had gotten away.
Maybe Kitty had shredded the quilt as she escaped. But how would such a tiny girl have the strength? Augusta dismissed the thought. It was silly. The quilt had probably been used as a bed for some large, vicious animal chained to Joseph's tomb. Kitty had been here but had escaped.
No blood, not a drop anywhere. Maybe Kitty hadn't been hurt. Please, God.
I have to find her. Guide me. Take me to her, I beg of You.
Behind the tomb a giant hole had been ripped in the fence and the morning glory vines hung down like a curtain. She ran for the hole, burst through the vines, and discovered another hole in the fence directly ahead, just across the maze's corridor.
Behind her, she could sense something growing in the tomb, swelling to fill it. Joseph was not happy. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Augusta ran on.
From the tomb came a shriek of rending metal, and then the furious sound, the familiar, deep, throaty roar, cut short once more as the vines around her, blanketing the fence, exploded to life once again. Again, they thrashed, writhed, curled over and around one another, and a billion blossoms, blue, purple, and white opened up with velvety, silent trumpet blasts. The roar in the distance behind her became a howl of pain and she felt tears slipping down her cheeks. Thank You, God. Oh, thank You.
The holes torn through the fence took her all the way to Sagan Street, where she burst out of the cemetery, tripped over her own feet, and hit the sidewalk so hard she saw stars.
She curled up, bringing her knees to her chest, covered her face, and wept. Joseph was trapped in the cemetery and she was safe – as safe as one could be in Silent Hill. But at least Joseph couldn't get her out here. And he couldn't get Kitty. She would find her daughter and take her home.
And, she thought, she was finally beginning to figure out what was going on, and why she was here, and as terrible as it was, it was a relief.