Absurdly, when she stepped onto the stage, her first thoughts had not been of the hospital bed to her right, with its sheets crusted with scabs and dried shit, or to the ranks of seats in the auditorium, all of which were as deserted as she had expected. She only glanced at Lisa Groft's abandoned pistol, a Ruger .45-caliber semiautomatic, glinting meanly on the floor. Instead, she looked into the hot beam shining down from the spotlight and wondered, where is the power coming from?
Where was the power coming from? Was there a power plant somewhere, where a meter measured the electricity used to power that spotlight, where the technicians couldn't trace what it was trickling away to?
Then she considered, the Little Baroness could play a piano and a calliope and plenty more by itself, and in Silent Hill the natural laws that ruled the rest of the world tyrannically had ceased to mean much. Surely in a place like this, there was electricity enough somewhere to shine a spotlight. This meant nothing.
She turned her attention to the gun, and thought: fat lot of good it did Lisa Groft. Or maybe the actress had simply been a terrible shot. Augusta was not, and the thought of carefully aiming, pulling the trigger, and watching the top of Weeping Mary's head take flight brought a smile to her face. Of course, it was more complicated than that. It had to be, and for all she knew, bullets might just bounce off Weeping Mary or worse, she could catch them all, flick her wrist, and send them rocketing back toward Augusta.
Then again, a gun might be useful against Joseph, or against any more of the foot soldiers in Weeping Mary's army.
But then again, using a gun abandoned by a damned, and now probably dead, woman seemed like stripping a corpse of a fine outfit and wearing it out of the funeral chapel.
Then again a lot of things. There was a gun on the floor, hers for the taking. It was powerful – shoot something with a .45-caliber bullet, especially a hollowpoint bullet, and chances were good whatever had been shot would not be feeling chipper again any time soon. She walked to the gun and stooped to pick it up.
Hadn't the man who had lain on the sofa at the Ridgeview Clinic had a gun? Of course – he'd been aiming it at her when she first met him. What had happened to it? He'd left it on the stairwell floor, she remembered, when she hefted him to his feet and they had staggered away through the door and down the darkened hall.
She stood and stared at the gun in her hand for a moment, wondering where she could keep it but not send a bullet screaming through her body should she stumble and fall or be knocked down again.
Maybe she could find a holster somewhere once she made her way outside again. And bullets. Hollowpoint bullets. Until then...
Her pockets were empty because her wallet was in her backpack. She pushed the safety pin and slipped the gun, barrel-first, carefully into her pocket, then walked down the stairs from the stage to the orchestra pit. The auditorium was silent now, and her footsteps on the warped wooden risers echoed and re-echoed.
Beyond the beam of the spotlight, she switched on her flashlight. The tall windows pointing skyward like those of a cathedral were shuttered to blot out the light from outside. They always were – always had been – whenever a performance was in progress. She marveled at the ruined seats in her light. Springs had burst through fabric that had blackened and frayed. Several seats hosted healthy crops of mushrooms, and others had grown a fur of moss. Some appeared to have become nests for mice and other animals. On the floor near one seat lay what had been a bird. Long dead, its bones poked up through a putrid mound of old feathers.
Augusta wanted to be somewhere else. She let her light guide her to the doors at the back of the theater, and when she pushed them open they howled on rusty hinges. She cringed, and looked behind her quickly but the auditorium was quiet and black and decaying peacefully.
She left it behind and tracked clean footprints through the dust and filth on the lobby's vast marble floor, patterned with black-and-white checkerboard tile. Here the light from outside filtered half-heartedly through dirty windows, and fancy sofas and settees sagged and mildewed in shadows. A giant chandelier, its brass tarnished and its crystal pendants dulled by dust, dangled above, suspended from a long chain in a mirrored dome where most of the panels were still intact. Two or three had crashed to the floor at some point, however, and Augusta stepped around their shards, scattered across the great central circle of white marble where the tiles were inset with colored marble letters:
LET THE MAGIC OF THE STAGE SING TO YOUR SOUL
She thought, and didn't know why, that those had probably been the last words to ever cross Lisa Groft's mind. Or would be if she wasn't already dead.
The door here squealed open, and Augusta switched off her light as she stepped out to stand again in the watery, misty light where the snowflakes fell and melted. Ahead Burke Square was lost in the fog, though she thought she could see a shape that was probably the fountain in its center.
A cast iron fountain she remembered, with three tiers, each smaller and higher up than that beneath, and a statue of a woman balanced on the ball of one foot, her other leg kicked out behind her, at the top. One arm was raised above her head, and in her hand she held a torch that had always glowed beautifully at night with a stained glass flame. Her other hand was held to her face, a finger raised to her lips in a shushing gesture.
Or, if viewed from the wrong angle, raised as if she were preparing to pick her nose. Either way, it had been a monument to some Prohibition-era mayor's notion of whimsy, and the tourists loved it. Had loved it, and so had the citizens of Silent Hill, who nicknamed the shushing iron lady "Silent Hilda." Augusta closed the door quietly behind her and walked down the wide brick steps, grown mossy over the years, to the sidewalk. There were trees in Burke Square, tall poplars clustered in groves at each corner that were black in the dampness. She wondered if they were dead. Silent Hill City Hall, a Victorian brick riot of towers, dormers, and turrets, spread its complicated facade along the west face of the square, while to the north was the art deco First Baptist Church with its dome and cupola that had together looked uncannily like a breast when viewed from afar. To the east, Silent Hill First Methodist Church faced off across the square with city hall, and looked like a grand Greek temple of yellow brick and tall white marble columns.
Staring into the fog as the snowflakes fell softly, she looked at First Baptist, which was nothing more than a vague dark shape in the distance, and realized, this is where I went to church.
It would be nice to go inside and pray until things made sense, she thought, but she didn't have the time. Weeping Mary wanted to torture her, and her only chance to survive or maybe even fight lay in the library. She had to learn more about Weeping Mary and her cult, and she had to learn more about the monsters of her army who had spilled Innocent blood all over this town. Know thine enemy.
Who had said that? She couldn't remember. Burke Square slowly fell behind, then disappeared altogether in the mist as she walked along Massey Street, heading east. The Methodist church pursued her for a block and then gave up the chase, while on her side of the street she passed by what appeared to be a row of professional offices. Several lawyers, plus one architectural firm for variety. At the intersection of Massey Street and Glover Avenue, with the back of the church stretching away up Glover to her left, Summerland Cemetery appeared ahead on her right, spreading east along the south side of Massey Street all the way down to the Illiniwak River. She couldn't suppress a shudder. The fence was still curtained with dead vines.
Why wouldn't it be? Glover Avenue ran northward, and on the far side across from the church were shops in a line of low brick buildings. Shredded awnings sagged from their frames and there was a pair of flags, the American and Illinois state flags, faded and washed-out, hanging sodden from poles that jutted out near the roof of the corner building.
She wondered if she might find a sporting goods shop or an army surplus store as she crossed the street. Some place where there would be bullets for the gun. Signs drifted out of the mist – The Teddy Bear Caboose. Olden Days Doll Emporium. Magic Loom Quilts and Rugs. A café or coffeehouse – it was hard to tell which – called Comfort Food.
She sighed. No bullets here, and so she walked on, but crossed the street because she absolutely did not want to walk on the same side of Massey Street as Summerland Cemetery.
The shops to her left were a solid wall. Their windows were smeared, dirty, or opaque with moisture condensed on the glass. Some of the stores had set stone planters by their doors, and though Augusta supposed they had once been filled with flowers, most now overflowed with weeds.
At the next intersection it seemed the land fell away and the Massey Street Bridge flung itself into space. To the right the cemetery continued down to the riverfront, and to the left was Silent Hill's main library, a grey stone manor on a squat bluff overlooking the Illiniwak.
The feeling of emptiness was overwhelming, though at last there was a sound to break the silence – the Illiniwak River slapping sedately in its banks as it flowed on to the lake. On a clear day the river would have been a solid field of dancing diamond sparkles, with the riverside park a green streak on the far side and the buildings of East Silent Hill's commercial street standing at attention in a line behind that.
She crossed Denyer Avenue, which ran north from Massey Street in front of the library.
THE CENTRAL LIBRARY OF THE CITY OF SILENT HILL was carved on the arch above the great double doors, and an elegant pair of lampposts, each with six white globes, stood to either side in a narrow strip of land running along the front of the building. Holly bushes planted along the front had run riot and bulged out over the sidewalk, shoving one another aside and fighting for space. Their green bulk mostly hid the first floor windows, which were square. The second floor windows were tall and rectangular and those in a row along the third floor were tall and arched, and a wide and very tall window divided the building in half, rising from just above the arch over the door to just beneath the roofline.
The copper mansard roof, pierced at intervals by dormers shielding round windows like beady eyes, had long ago turned green and the green had run in streaks down the gray marble walls. At each corner of the roof copper eagles spread their wings and above each arched window on the third floor marble faces peered from keystones, staring with carved eyes at nothing.
The doors were sheathed in copper as green as the roof, studded with rosettes, panels inset into panels, and when Augusta grabbed their handles and pulled, she at first thought they must be locked. Then they gave a little, and a little more, and finally burst open with a shriek that must have echoed all over town.
"Damn it!" she whispered, then jumped inside and wrestled the doors closed again. At some point a deadbolt had been installed and she turned it to lock the doors, and felt a little better.
Back into the quiet, she thought, and already missed the sound of the river. But the feeling of space had followed her inside. Three stories above, the odd snowflake made its way into the library through holes punched in a great glass dome. Augusta looked up and wondered what could possibly have broken the glass. She followed a snowflake down, past the third and second floors, each ringed with columns and iron railings, and watched it melt on the floor, where the tiles, in red, brown, black, and cream, formed a sunburst pattern with a thousand rays.
She looked to her left and saw the old wood checkout desk, swollen, warped, and splintered. A stack of books left behind there five years ago had ballooned in size from constant moisture and had grown mossy. To her right was the check-in desk where patrons returned their books, and more books lay scattered there, all of them mossy, fat, and ruined.
Crap, she thought, put her palm to her forehead, and wondered if everything in the library was ruined. Every breath she took smelled of rotting paper, mold, and mildew.
Maybe, the further away from the spot where the moisture leaked in, the better the books would be preserved. Plus, she realized, most of the information she would need would be set aside in the Illinois Room or the Toluca Room, where books of local history were kept. Or, the books she needed might have been put into the library vault, where rare and historic items in the collection were sealed away.
If the doors to the Illinois Room and Toluca Room had remained closed and undamaged, the books inside might be in much better condition than those in the rest of the library. It could be as simple as that.
When she stepped forward, the echo of her footsteps sang off the iron railings above her, and off of the iron staircase spiraling upward straight ahead.
A lovely building. One of many in a town that made its livelihood from being lovely. A gift from a rich person long dead, like most of the civic buildings not only in Silent Hill, but in all of Toluca County. There had been no better place in all of Silent Hill to spend a rainy day.
Moss grew on the books. Most were green with mold. The shelves had once been made of oak or some other noble wood, Augusta supposed, but at some point they were replaced with steel bookcases painted a bland grey – rust had blossomed everywhere. Several of the floor tiles had cracked, and wherever a tile had shattered, water puddled.
How many books had been in the town library system? Just over a quarter-million. The city had been proud of that fact, and advertised it in the brochures they printed up for the tourists. The vast majority had resided here at the main branch, while the other two branches had tended to only stock the most popular books.
Past a bank of shelves was a study area with wooden tables and chairs in orderly rows, though a shelf to her right had toppled and now rested against one of the tables at an odd angle. Its cargo of books moldered on the floor. The light from the window and glass dome had faded away this far back into the ranks of shelves, and Augusta switched on her flashlight, which was still slung over her shoulder on its strap.
The library was rotting and it broke her heart.
At the rear of the library, beyond the study area and beyond row upon row of shelves stood a long table with a line of ruined computers and twelve chairs on each side. The reference desk lay behind, in front of windows that showed a view of rolling mist. The Illinois Room lay to the left, while the Toluca Room was to the right, both buried in their corners against the back wall of the building. Their doors were closed.
August smiled.
Until she saw the Illinois Room. She had chosen it first, walked to its door and peered inside through the large glass panel set into the old wooden door. A window in the Illinois Room had shattered, and had been broken long enough to allow vines and plants from outside to come in. The walls were wrapped in vines, and moss and a green slime that must be algae coated every surface not hidden by leaves. A bush, though she couldn't be sure what kind, had taken root in one corner where a shelf appeared to have collapsed and spilled its books to the floor. She thought it might be an azalea, and if the seasons still held sway in Silent Hill, it would sprout a thousand bright new leaves to complement its dull old ones in the next week or two, and would bloom in late June.
The Toluca Room looked much better. Through the glass set into the door, it looked dusty but untouched. She tried the knob and it turned easily. The Toluca Room was smaller than the Illinois Room, wide enough to accommodate one window to the right and two along the back wall. Augusta stepped inside and closed the door behind her. It couldn't be locked, she discovered, and feeling of unease came and went in an instant.
Old wooden bookcases fronted with closed glass doors stood along the left wall, but just to her left was a counter with three microfiche machines and three chairs collecting dust. A waist-high bookshelf ran along the far wall under the windows and along the wall to the right. Dead houseplants in pots had mummified in front of every window, sitting atop the low shelves. A round table with four chairs filled the center of the room, and Augusta wondered at the research that must have been conducted there.
She turned, then stopped to stare at a large laminated map of Silent Hill tacked to the wall above the microfiche readers. South Vale, Paleville, South Park, Old Silent Hill, Wrightwood, downtown, the Windowbox District, East Silent Hill...
She looked at parks and cemeteries marked in green. The largest were Jesperson Park downtown, Yorkshire Park along the lakefront in East Silent Hill and Midwich Park on the south side of Old Silent Hill, running along the west side of Bachman Road until Old Silent Hill gave way to South Park. Then came Rosewater Park in South Vale and Settlers Park, bisected by I-55, holding at bay the tangled streets of Wrightwood, which looked like a dozen spider webs haphazardly strung together, from the tiny but orderly grid of Old Silent Hill. There was Silent Hill Wetlands Gardens sandwiched between downtown and the Windowbox District, spreading up from the Toluca riverside to the elbow where the grid of the Windowbox District met the streets of the north side of downtown, which ran at forty-five degree angles. There were the orderly squares, nine of them, of East Silent Hill, where the Victorian mansions looked down into green oases modeled on the famous squares of Savannah, Georgia.
There were the narrow bands of green along every riverside, where the greenways ran and could be reached by staircases leading down from every bridge in town. Jesperson Park bled into the Wetlands Gardens by way of a greenway. There was Lakeside Amusement Park, a gigantic swath of green in the Paleville neighborhood.
There was Summerland Cemetery on the south side of downtown, and Springwood Cemetery, where members of Silent Hill's Jewish community were laid to rest, on the north side of the Windowbox District, separated by only a few blocks from the national park. There was Swan Point Cemetery (formerly the Colored and Indigents Burial Ground) on the northern edge of Wrightwood, where the poorer people had always lived anyway. It was not located on a point and was not especially a haunt for swans, but it was separated from Paleville National Park by nothing more than the width of Shelley Road.
Augusta looked at the map and was flooded by memories. She thought of her favorite stores, including J. Porter and Sons' Candy Kingdom in South Vale, and Just Cats, on Crichton Street beside the main post office downtown, and the boutique in East Silent Hill that sold the only comfortable pairs of high-heeled shoes she had ever found, along with a damn nice matching bag.
She thought of her favorite restaurants, and of leading tours of Summerland Cemetery while the tourists snapped photos and asked her questions ranging from thought-provoking to ludicrous. She thought of the rainy days she had spent in this library, and of checking out books while rain pattered and ran in patterns down the glass dome above. She thought of the Wetlands Gardens in the spring, and how they seemed to come to life overnight. She thought of the Veterans Memorial Gardens in Yorkshire Park, with their carpets of flowers planted in patterns and sometimes even words – PEACE in white daisies against a background of scarlet poppies.
She thought of strolling through the squares of East Silent Hill and of how, as much as she loved the brownstone she shared with Joseph, she still liked to pretend she lived in one of the fairytale castles with their turrets topped with copper weathervanes and their eaves and porches trimmed with awesomely intricately carved gingerbread. She thought of going to church each Sunday as often with Joseph as without at First Baptist Church, and of ascending the steps while bells rang out in the cupola that looked, from afar, like the nipple of a colossal breast.
And suddenly she hated Weeping Mary more than ever. It was bad enough to lose a place as special as Silent Hill. It was like swallowing bleach, in fact, she thought, in that it burned a hollow place inside, and then kept burning. But for a monster called Weeping Mary to have been here all along, to have listened to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Bell pealing mournfully out over Toluca Lake, and to have skulked in shadows watching hungrily as children gathered to listen to the Fairytale Music Box at the Lake View Hotel... To have been here watching, and feeding, as generation after generation of residents and tourists came and went and laughed and cried and ate and shat and slept and made love and celebrated Christmas and went to church and went to work...
Augusta realized she was clenching her teeth so hard her jaw felt as if it might crack, and that she had balled her left fist hard enough to drive her nails into her palm. Her right hand was curled so tightly around the shovel handle her fingers were cramping. She HATED Weeping Mary, who had never, ever, ever deserved to set foot in this beautiful place when it was alive and sure as a sizzling fuck didn't deserve to be here now that it was dead.
Now that it was dead, Silent Hill should be allowed to rest in peace, she thought, and wanted to burst into tears. She fought it down, and felt something throb in her scalp under her hair, and wondered if this was how it felt to have a stroke.
Glass exploded behind her and she screamed as she spun around, bringing the shovel up to swing it, in time to see a book hurtle across the room. It rose in an arc that crested just beneath the ceiling, then hit the table in the middle of the room with a smack like the slam of a door. It had come from one of the shelves on the left side of the room, and the shattered glass door swung out and slammed against the neighboring bookcase, then fell of its hinges and hit the floor with a crunch. The door it had struck now had a crack running up and down its length of glass pane.
The next book burst out from another shelf behind glass and sent a jet of glittering splinters whickering through the air. The book rose, then fell, and hit the table with the same loud bang as the first.
The first book's cover had flown open and its pages were turning. As she watched the second book fell open and the pages began to turn.
The third book blew open the doors of another bookcase and the fourth flew out of a shelf beneath a window. Their covers opened and their pages turned.
The doors of every bookshelf to her left began to flap open and closed, slamming against each other until the glass had burst from every frame and the frames themselves were splintering and shaking apart in pieces. The potted plants atop the shelves beneath the windows hurtled toward one another, collided, and exploded in gouts of dry dirt, dead leaves, and shards of their ceramic pots. Every book burst out of a set of shelves beneath a window and tumbled over themselves across the floor while the brass light fixture hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room bounced up and down on its chain until it snapped and the whole thing crashed to the table below.
One of the microfiche machines on the counter behind her surged forward trailing a severed electrical cord, tipped, and fell to the floor with an almost resigned-sounding crash. At the table in the center of the room, and at the counter where the microfiche machines sat, chairs slid out and slammed back under as though someone were pulling them out and kicking them back into place.
The large map of Silent Hill popped free of its tacks and peeled away from the wall with a crackle of plastic, and fell over Augusta like cold, stiff cowl. She shrieked and spun away from it and nearly tripped and fell before she remembered the glass on the floor and the gun in her pocket and jabbed the shovel down like a spear into the floor. She held onto it while her feet tried to shoot out from beneath her and while trying to keep her balance, she found herself crazily thinking of those strippers who took off their clothes while clinging to a stainless steel pole.
There had been a strip club in South Vale, her mind helpfully supplied. Heaven's Night, on Carroll Street. Joseph had liked to go there.
She lost her fight to stay on her feet and sank to one knee into the broken glass on the floor. At the sound of the crunch, she realized the rest of the room had fallen still. Whatever had just happened, it was over.
And then she realized she could hear, and feel, her heart slamming in her chest. It drummed in her ears with every beat.