The latch clicked as the lock caught and Augusta had sealed herself into a dank black silence that rang in her ears and stung her throat with the tang of mildew. She turned slowly in the dark, putting the steel doors behind her, and trying to make as little noise as she could. As nice as it was to have some sort of barrier between her and Joseph, anything might be scuttling about inside the auditorium.
She remembered the dilemma faced in the Ridgeview Medical Clinic Building, seemingly so long ago -- use a flashlight to make her way safely through the darkness, or try to slip silently through that darkness and hope not to attract the attention of something gruesome and shambling? Or, she thought, have light enough to see to run away from anything inside or to whack it with the shovel, or fall off the stage and break my neck in the orchestra pit?
She swung the backpack around, unzipped it and pulled out the flashlight on its long strap, then zipped the backpack closed again and shouldered it back into place. The strap again went around her neck, and the flashlight swung gently against her hip. It switched on with a reassuring click, and Augusta discovered she stood in a narrow hallway behind the auditorium's main stage. There were several passages here at the back of the building, each lined with dressing rooms, offices, and storage closets, and their walls were covered with bulletin boards and posters. Each board had once sported a colorful slew of playbills, photos, and schedules tacked in place, though now, she saw, after five years of damp pouring in through the open doors (had they really been open all this time?), the bulletin boards were swollen and bowed. Everything they had once displayed had been reduced to soggy, tattered scraps.
It seemed somehow unutterably sad.
The floor was gritty with the accumulated filth and grime of abandonment; dried carapaces of dead beetles and roaches crunched underfoot. She passed by offices and dressing rooms where everything inside was rusted and decayed. In one, she saw a dressing table spread beneath a giant mirror, now blackened, ringed with bulbs. Jars of cosmetics, theatrical makeup probably, clustered on the tabletop, as though huddling together for safety. Their contents had probably hardened to the consistency of cement by now.
This is so wrong, she thought. Robert Black Memorial Auditorium had been home to the Silent Hill Community Theatre ("Be Shocked by SHCT!" had been their motto), one of the finest small theater groups in the Midwest. In between their wildly popular performances, the auditorium hosted graduations and lectures, especially contentious city council meetings whose crowds couldn't fit into the tiny auditorium at City Hall, and performances by the Silent Hill Symphony Orchestra and the Silent Hill Community Band. Like Silent Hill itself, the auditorium had always been so full of life, and like the city, it was decaying in the wet darkness now.
She again thought of websites devoted to the beauty and eerie grace of decay in abandoned buildings. She had seen sites devoted exclusively to hospitals, another to the handful of abandoned skyscrapers that loomed over downtown Detroit. One she had seen even chronicled a woman's motorcycle tour of the ghost city of Chernobyl in the Ukraine – from her Yamaha, her Geiger counter at hand, the woman had taken scores of pictures of the ruined shops and towering apartment blocks, many of which still had, twenty years later, laundry draped over their balconies and all of which were still stocked with furniture and clothing and everything else the modern Soviet family would have needed that horrible day long ago. Because of radiation contamination from the accident at the nuclear power plant, nothing was allowed out of the city and thus everything had been left behind.
Silent Hill reminded her of Chernobyl, she suddenly realized. As if here, like there, a hideous toxic cloud had swept down and sent its residents fleeing and then contaminated everything, every building and every object inside, left behind. Everything seemed to have been left untouched here, as it had been in the Ridgeview Clinic, and in every store and apartment she had passed by. Curtains left hanging in windows, paperwork left scattered on desktops, a playbill from a show five years ago on the floor in front of her.
She stopped and looked at it cautiously.
There was something strange about it. She played her light over it and watched a gleam bounce off its glossy paper, then she knelt to pick it up. Under her fingertips it felt new, with only the slightest bit of grit from the floor adhering. It couldn't have been here for long, less than a day even, because it hadn't wrinkled in the damp at all.
She read: "Emmy-Nominated Actress Lisa Groft Presents a One-Woman Show: The Tears of an Adult – Why my Mother Died Alone and in Pain"
Below was a picture of a stunningly beautiful blonde, unsmiling, with her chin in her hand, gazing into space.
Augusta opened the flyer and began to read. Apparently, Lisa Groft, presenter of the one-woman show, was from nearby Monticello, Illinois, between Decatur and Champaign-Urbana. From childhood, she had always aspired to be an actress, and began her ascent in high school when she appeared in every performance that had room for her, including 'Peter Pan' (as Wendy) and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (as Titania, Queen of the Faeries).
Augusta didn't care. She skimmed onward.
Degree in drama from the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem – Augusta raised her eyebrows at that – leading roles in 'Anything Goes' and 'On the Night of January the 16th' while enrolled there...
Performances at this playhouse and that theatre throughout the Southeast for a few years after graduation...
Moved to Los Angeles at age twenty-eight and immediately found work in a supporting role on a sitcom Augusta remembered as being especially insipid, though she had only watched it once or twice.
Still performed in plays and shows, most of which Augusta had either never heard of or didn't care about, throughout Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.
Let her mother die alone. Here it was.
"While Lisa pursued her career, garnering accolades every step of the way, her mother, Geraldine Miller-Groft, remained behind in the tiny town of Monticello. Mrs. Groft was especially proud of her daughter's accomplishments because, when her husband abandoned the family when Lisa was still an infant, she had been forced to raise Lisa in a poverty-stricken, single-parent household.
Eventually, however, Mrs. Groft's health began to falter and then to fail due to a combination of diabetes and, later, stomach cancer.
While her diagnoses grew more bleak, Mrs. Groft's attempts to contact her daughter were always unsuccessful. Cards and letters from her mother were usually thrown away unopened by Lisa, and messages left on her answering machine were deleted immediately the moment Lisa first heard her mother's voice squawk from the speaker.
Lisa was uneager to be reminded of her childhood in a town and a state she considered beneath her talents. She would have liked nothing more than to have been born and raised in Hollywood by two glamorous parents who had scores of glamourous friends and acquaintances with connections in the movie industry. She was, and remains, a selfish bitch –"
Augusta paused. What was this? Who could have written this?
"– who would rather die than allow the tabloids to sink their talons into a juicy story like this, especially after her role as the kindly Sister Mary Ambrose in last year's box-office smash, 'Nun of Your Business', though most especially after her mother's death in April of this year. Lisa would prefer it not be known by the public that not only was she unaware that her mother had died, she was also ignorant of her mother's colossal suffering and loneliness in the last years of her life.
Until now.
Join us as Lisa discusses her feelings and her motivations for allowing her mother to die a slow and painful death all alone. Don't worry that Lisa might not show up to appear in this rollicking performance – she'll be here if she doesn't want her mother's agony screaming from the front page of every tabloid in America. Not to mention People Magazine, and the lips of a thousand news reporters who love nothing more than a nice tidbit of gossip. We guarantee you'll get your money's worth. Lisa wouldn't miss it for the world.
We know you wouldn't, Lisa. We know you'll come and put on a FINE show.
Love,
La Llorona"
Some get letters, the man who had lain on the sofa so long ago in the Ridgeview Medical Clinic had said. Some get phone calls, and he himself had received emails. Some get Mother's Day cards, Augusta thought, and some get glossy flyers.
She turned it over in her hands, and saw on the back nothing more than a tiny map showing the location of the Robert Black Memorial Auditorium in downtown Silent Hill marked with a bright blue star, as well as the auditorium's daily hours of operation. Below was the address as well as the legend inscribed in colored marble inlaid into the floor of the auditorium's regal lobby:
Robert Black Memorial Auditorium
1 South Burke Square
Silent Hill, Illinois 61723
"Let the Magic of the Stage Sing to Your Soul"
Just like every other playbill and flyer for every other performance put on by SHCT. Augusta dropped the flyer. She didn't want to look at it any more. She honestly didn't give the first damn about the lives and doings of famous people, and abhorred gossip, but this was appalling. She was familiar with Lisa Groft's nothing-short-of-angelic reputation. Everyone was.
But what was most offensive, she thought, was that the flyer looked so normal. The same shiny, high-quality paper, the same tiny map on the back, the dates and times and the legend from the lobby floor right where they had always been. It was unusual to find so much information about a single performer in a flyer, but Augusta couldn't remember anyone ever putting on a one-person show at the auditorium. Maybe if they had, their life would be outlined inside just like Lisa Groft's.
Lisa Groft, like so many others, had been called to Silent Hill to suffer for a sin, however. Who summoned her, though, Augusta wondered – her mother? Someone else? She thought of Joseph, the discolored, crumbling mummy in a coffin in a grand black tomb, still able to lure her to Silent Hill solely to torture her. Probably to death, because he had called her here for no other reason than that he hated her.
But would a mother, even one as mistreated as Lisa Groft's had been, call her child here to this wet hell and have her suffer through all the nasty surprises it could vomit out for her to find? Augusta couldn't imagine it. She wouldn't put her child through this even if her child had shot her in the stomach and giggled and kicked her while she bled to death.
But your child didn't kill you, a cheerful voice shrieked in her mind, you killed her! Of course the anesthetic had kicked your ass through the doors to dreamland by the time they did it, but I imagine they pulled her out in pieces! Do you suppose any part of Kitty was developed enough to feel that?
Augusta felt herself go cold.
"Oh, God," she said quietly, and put a hand over her stomach.
Think about something else. I'm wasting time, and there's something else to consider: Weeping Mary feeds on suffering, and whenever I stand in a decaying hallway like this, alone, afraid, worried, and guilty, Weeping Mary is probably rolling it around on her tongue like a fine wine, savoring the taste.
A mental itch had begun, but Augusta couldn't quite scratch it. If the guilty were called to Silent Hill to suffer for their sins, the act of punishment would free the soul of whoever had been wronged by the sinner, and Weeping Mary would have one less tormented soul to latch on to like the parasite she was. But the guilty soul would remain, perhaps even wallowing in guilt from now until the end of time. Perhaps she was simply trading one for another.
Did it make sense? Did anything make sense in Silent Hill?
And what was La Llorona? Augusta had heard of that somewhere once before.
It came to her: La Llorona... A ghost, or perhaps a mythical creature haunting the legends of Mexico and the American Southwest. The Weeping Woman. She had read about it in a book of ghost stories from around the world.
Weeping Mary. Weeping Mary had called Lisa Groft (of 'Nun of Your Business' and much, much more) to Silent Hill. Hell, she had even signed her name. La Llorona – the Weeping Woman. She had lured her to Silent Hill to scare her and tease her and feed on her fear, and then perhaps feed on her guilt.
But in the process an innocent soul, that of Lisa's mother, went free and Weeping Mary seemed the type who would more enjoy the torture of the innocent. The Innocent, even. Maybe she could only feed on the suffering of the Innocent if they had been wronged in Silent Hill itself some time in its history. Maybe for those who merely had some connection to Silent Hill – those who had vacationed there, or passed through, or lived there and later moved away, or lived and died there but who had been hurt elsewhere – she had to settle for the suffering of the guilty, meting out a punishment that trapped the guilty and freed the innocent because she couldn't ensnare them both.
Maybe there were rules to follow, and if there are, where do I fit into this, she wondered.
Maybe I'm giving things too much thought again. I need to get going.
She shook her head, and wiped a wrist across her forehead before looking up from the floor where she had been staring at nothing in particular while she mulled things over.
At the end of the hall was a single door, open now, but which was always kept closed during performances to halt any errant noises that might issue from the offices, or God forbid the bathrooms, opening onto the hall where Augusta stood. For quick costume changes, actors and actresses hurried to private booths in the wings backstage. The stage itself was actually a giant circular platform, divided down the center by a high wall. It could accommodate two sets at once and could revolve to reveal one set as another spun out of view.
She suddenly heard the familiar grind of gears as the stage beyond the door began to move. The stage and the clockwork used to turn it were both actually very old, original to the auditorium, which had been completed some time in the 1890's, and when completed, the stage had been regarded as something of a minor engineering marvel. To turn the stage a crank off to one side backstage, out of view of the audience, had to be turned by hand, and Augusta remembered sitting in her comfortably padded seat in the audience watching while actors and actresses scurried into the wings in the darkness between scenes as the gears clanked and caught the pegs underneath the stage and passed them from one to another to turn the stage and reveal the next scene's set.
So, who was turning the crank and why?
She jumped and let out a yip of surprise as someone suddenly shrieked in pain and horror and the auditorium beyond the door erupted in applause. Augusta ran toward the door; someone out there might need help. But who the hell could have been clapping? It sounded as though the auditorium was filled to capacity.
Great cloth walls of blackout curtain hung from steel rods high above on the other side of the door. Most were fuzzy with mold and moss, and one had torn away from its rings and lay on the warping floor in a heap. Sounding far away, someone on the stage was sobbing in hoarse screams.
Augusta ran to her left to skirt the blackout curtains, and her flashlight beam bounced wildly off stacked moldering set pieces in the wings – a wing chair with rusty springs bursting from its seat, a grim oil painting peeling out of its gilt frame – and the dressing booths tucked against the far wall. Most of their doors hung askew. As she ran the floor squeaked and bounced under her feet; it was hardwood and the boards had peeled up and swollen.
And then her right foot caught beneath one of the warped, bowed boards. She felt herself falling forward, saw the undulating floor rushing up to meet her, and managed to turn so that her back, and her backpack, took the force as she hit the floor. She looked at the beam of her flashlight reaching up to disappear in the blackness amid the rafters high above.
"Mother, I'm so sorry," howled the voice, that of a woman, from the stage.
From the audience came a sound that suggested it had just collectively seen something utterly adorable. A sort of sighing, "Awwww..."
"I didn't mean for this to happen," said the voice. "I didn't mean for it to end up like this."
Laughter, great gales of hysterical screaming laughter poured from the seats of the auditorium, but as it died away another voice murmured a reply to the crying woman.
Augusta rolled over, feeling boards poking at her through her shirt and jeans. Thank God I didn't land on any upturned nails or tacks, she thought, then realized there were two people on the stage, and considered perhaps she should stay hidden.
Maybe Lisa Groft and her mother were talking, and Augusta suddenly saw, perfectly clearly, that it was not her place to interrupt. It was almost as if a voice had spoken audibly, "No."
Whatever was happening on the stage was meant to play itself out without interference. She crawled backward, further into the darkness behind the ruined wing chair.
"Mother, I'm sorry. I love you, and I always did... It's – It's just that the life I lived here and the life I live now don't fit together and–"
The audience booed enthusiastically.
"SHUT UP!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Augusta imagined Lisa Groft spinning around, through from what she didn't know, her blond hair flying out in a golden fan, to face the seats in the auditorium, which were almost certainly empty.
There was silence for a moment, then laughter from the auditorium and helpless sobs from Lisa Groft.
"Please be quiet..." begged the voice.
More laughter. Hell with a laugh track, Augusta thought.
Helpless sobbing, then, "Please, mother, will you forgive me?"
A murmur, weak and barely there at all.
A scream that crumbled into weeping: "MOMMIEEEEEE!!"
Wild applause from the audience. Hoots and whistles and cheers.
Sudden silence broken only by Lisa Groft's weeping. Then a loud click that Augusta recognized as a spotlight being switched on, as the barest slants of light spilled over the tops of the blackout curtains and lit her hiding spot with a dim glow.
A familiar voice, and Augusta felt her head swim.
"And the award for Best Actress goes to," said Weeping Mary cheerfully, "...why, YOU, Lisa Groft! What a performance! Very impressive."
Spirited applause from the audience.
Weeping Mary's voice became a menacing growl. "Your mother may forgive you, and in fact a lot of people might forgive you, but I won't. You're here because you're damned, girl, and I'm the one who'll see to it that you're properly punished for being such a heartless, selfish, wretched, stinking cunt."
The applause grew louder.
"Come here, Lisa Groft."
A strange, gasping, high-pitched scream. "Who are you?"
"La Llorona."
Above the clapping and cheers came a sound, like high heels clicking across a stage, then a thump and a squeal, as though Lisa Groft had tried to back away, then fallen hard on her ass. A muffled scraping as though Lisa Groft were scooting backward across the floor.
Weeping Mary giggled. Her high heels clicked smartly on the floor. The audience roared its approval.
"You're in my realm now, my dear, and I rule it absolutely. It's far, far too late for you now."
A screech, and then gunshots. Perhaps Weeping Mary had removed her sunglasses. Perhaps Lisa Groft had a gun.
"COME HERE, WOMAN," Weeping Mary roared, and it shook the walls and floor. High above, dangling rusty chains and ruined banks of lights clinked lightly together. From the audience came cheers and whistles, and the applause rose and fell like waves crashing on a beach.
Lisa Groft began to scream and seemed unable to stop. Weeping Mary laughed, and then there was the sound of something large being dragged.
The laughter grew louder, and Augusta realized with horror that Weeping Mary was approaching.
"NO, NO, PLEASE, NO... OH DEAR GOD, NO, PLEASE..."the screams became words.
More applause from the audience, and a shout for an encore.
It couldn't be right to hide here. It couldn't be right to hide while Weeping Mary did... whatever... to Lisa Groft. Weeping Mary was coming closer, and Augusta switched off her flashlight, tightened her grip on her shovel, and prepared to leap out at her. If she could surprise her, maybe...
She felt an arm around her stomach, suddenly, and a delicate hand over her mouth to stifle the scream that tried to spill out. The scent of roses washed over her. Looking down, she saw a woman's hand over her mouth. Its fingers were bedecked with silver rings set with blue jewels and there was an arm in a blue denim sleeve curling away to her right.
"Be still. Be still, child," said a warm voice close by her ear. Again Augusta heard the mysterious accent she couldn't quite place. Cuban or Mexican. Something Hispanic. "She mustn't see you now. She'd kill you."
The Blue Lady spoke with the same accent as Weeping Mary.
The Blue Lady held Augusta in place, on her knees crouched behind the rotting wing chair, as Weeping Mary stalked into view, dragging Lisa Groft by the hair. She kicked and screamed and begged and cried and pleaded. Weeping Mary wore a glittering scarlet evening gown with a slit up to her thigh on the right that flashed open with every step to reveal a perfect length of toned leg and a pair of stiletto heels, blood-red to match the dress, on her feet. With every step, a puff of smoke rose from beneath her shoes as she scorched a footprint into the wooden floor. She wore a satisfied grin, and had indeed taken off her sunglasses. The blood that poured from her eye sockets matched the color of her dress exactly.
Lisa Groft wailed her terror, and Augusta squeezed her eyes shut. Apparently the Blue Lady's hair now hung free; it fell over Augusta's face in a sweet-smelling curtain. She felt the Blue Lady kiss her cheek lightly, comfortingly.
"There, there," she whispered, "Just be still until she passes by."
Augusta felt tears slip down her cheeks.
Lisa Groft's screams ceased, as did Weeping Mary's malevolent chuckling and the applause from the audience, when the door behind the hanging blackout curtains slammed loudly, violently shut. The silence was shocking, and Augusta twitched in surprise. In an instant, the sensation of the Blue Lady's hand over her mouth and arm around her stomach vanished, and Augusta leapt to her feet, hurtled forward and spun and switched on her flashlight to see that there was no one behind her. The Blue Lady was gone.
Augusta stared, blinking and feeling her breath huff out in little gasps. A single blue rose lay on the floor where she had hidden. She ignored it and ran to the door.
The knob refused to turn, and when she put her ear to the door, she heard nothing from the other side. Weeping Mary was gone, and with her, Lisa Groft. Augusta wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, then balled her fist and smeared away her tears.
There was nothing she could do.
She had to get out of here.
Augusta ran away from the door, around the curtains to the wing chair. She shone her light on the rose on the floor. The Blue Lady had her child, she remembered. She had Kitty. She was here, then gone.
Had Kitty been here? Where was she? Augusta walked forward, knelt, and picked up the blue rose. As she held it in the beam of her light and gazed at it, a feeling of peace swelled inside her, a nub that became a bud that blossomed into a magnificent flower. A blue rose, perhaps. Kitty was safe with the Blue Lady. Infinitely safer than she would be with Augusta, at least until Joseph was sealed in his tomb again, or was destroyed or burning in hell.
"Take good care of her, please, until I can come get her," she whispered and wondered if she had just said a prayer.
She stood, swung her backpack around, and unzipped it and placed the blue rose carefully inside, then shrugged it back into place and walked away with her flashlight and the faint glow from the stage, spilling over the tops of the curtains like the first rays of sunrise above the horizon, to guide her.