The Joseph-thing's eyes were milky blind but he seemed to stare at Augusta and know she was there. Weeping Mary giggled.
"That's delicious," she squealed, and Augusta started and turned to her.
Weeping Mary's hands dripped with red slime and she licked her fingers delightedly.
"Wonderful. This is your fear, your anger, your disgust, your resentment – do you see how you feed me now? Do you see what I'm taking from you since you've taken away some of the others who fed me?"
She held out her hands and a rope of slick red goo broke away, fell, and hit the wet marble floor with an unspeakable slap.
Augusta whimpered; she couldn't help it and hated the sound.
"That's right darling... be afraid for me. I love the way you taste."
The Joseph-thing stood motionless. Augusta turned and glanced at it and backed away. The thought of even standing in the same room as it made her skin crawl. That thing... it had come from inside Weeping Mary.
Weeping Mary, her gruesome stomach sagging low, inserted a finger in her mouth, slowly, languidly, looking like, Augusta thought, some whore in a pornographic movie.
Her finger emerged, and she said, "I don't think I've ever been called that before, but I don't object."
And suddenly her stomach shrank back into tanned and toned perfection with a vile sucking sound, and a pair of blood red high heels appeared on her feet, completing the image.
"Why would a 'good girl' like you ever watch pornography, anyhow?"
None of your goddamn business, Augusta thought, but couldn't say. Even 'good girls' were allowed to add spice to their sex lives.
"I wouldn't say I have a great deal of experience with good girls, but I'll take you at your word, dearest. I suppose they are."
"STOP THAT! Stop doing that!"
Weeping Mary clapped her hands like a delighted child, splattering her grin and her breasts with suddenly flowing red slime.
"Anger, my love," she said, "Anger and fear and resentment and disgust... What you feel here only goes to feed me."
Out of the corner of her eye, Augusta saw the Joseph-thing take a step forward, and she dropped her shovel and spun on her heel, raised the gun and fired at it. The Ruger kicked, and the last three bullets in the clip traveled in a line up from the spot where the Joseph-thing's heart might or might not have been. One struck its chest, another its throat and the last its face just beneath its nose. It had been hard to tell from the damage the bullet had done to Weeping Mary's breast, but they were hollowpoint after all, she saw; they entered through tiny pinholes and exited from craters that could have easily cupped a softball.
What remained of the Joseph-thing's head flopped forward, then fell off and hit the floor, but it still remained on its feet. Augusta's stomach heaved.
Weeping Mary sat forward, then reached up and tore away her sunglasses and threw them aside. They flew away trailing red slime like bloody mucus. She clenched her fists and the slime squelched, then vanished. Blood pumped from her gaping eye sockets.
"You, my dear, are very, very close to upsetting me. That wasn't really him, and when I said I wanted you to die worried, I didn't mean right now, you silly bitch. I'm not done feeding off you." She glared down at the headless Joseph-thing, then snarled, "The real dark man is still out there somewhere. I had to work hard to make this one and thanks to you now he's useless!"
She sounded like a cranky child as she hopped down from her throne and strode grumbling to the headless Joseph-thing. Her high heels clicked on the marble tiles. Augusta tried to back away as she crouched to pick up the shovel. Weeping Mary turned and seemed to glare at her.
Augusta's hand closed around the shovel handle.
"You know you can't hurt me. You may be able to hurt one of my creations, and even those in my army, but never me." She turned to the Joseph-thing and patted it on the shoulder. "I thought it was high time for you to suffer a bit to make up for what you've taken from me today. I had a special treat in mind, but you know something, dear? I think actually, you've made it better."
Augusta stepped back. Weeping Mary smiled cruelly.
"Go now, and make her suffer for me." She patted the Joseph-thing on the shoulder again and it stepped forward.
Augusta jammed the gun in her pocket and took another step away from Weeping Mary and the thing that had come from inside her.
The Joseph-thing's foot bumped against the ruin of its head lying on the floor, and kicked it aside. Its penis had sprung up long and hard, and bobbed with every step it took. Augusta saw it and shrieked. Weeping Mary doubled over with laughter, blood pouring from her empty eye sockets. She slapped her knees, her bloody breasts joggling as she howled her amusement.
If it gets me and tries to put that thing in me I'll go crazy, thought Augusta. My mind will pop like a balloon on a needle. She backed away, her fingers wrapped around the shovel handle. Where could she hit it? Ordinarily she could aim for the head, but she had already shot it off. That and she had put a bullet through its heart, if it even had one. How could she force it away?
When she tried to run, her feet skidded on the wet marble floor, then caught and she broke away to the left, skirting Weeping Mary and the lurching Joseph-thing to throw herself toward the iron staircase. She took the steps two at a time as the old iron beneath her feet squealed and lurched. When she felt the Joseph-thing's hand close around her ankle, she somehow expected it, fell, twisted, and turned to stab at its arms with her shovel.
It only squeezed harder, yanking at her foot as it tried to drag her down. Augusta grunted, digging until the blade of the shovel had stripped away a long, bleeding shank of muscle from the Joseph-thing's forearm. It let go, the bone of its forearm glistening and white, and fell back. Augusta turned, lurched to her feet, and pounded up the rest of the stairs to the second floor. Her flashlight gave a glimpse of ranks of shelves separated by wide aisles leading back into the darkness as she ran forward. Distant windows glowed with faint, gloomy light.
The Joseph-thing was coming up the stairs. She halted, spun and charged. As the Joseph-thing reached the head of the stairs, one arm hanging limply, blood pouring over bone, she swung the shovel with a keening wail. It hit with a smacking impact that shuddered all the way up to her shoulders. The Joseph-thing fell back, but grabbed the rail and launched itself at her again. She hit it again, then reared back, lunged forward, and stabbed the end of the blade into its stomach. It grabbed for the shovel and she pulled it back, then stabbed forward again, sinking the blade into the bleeding gash across its belly. Its knees buckled and it tumbled backward, landing on its back on the stairs with a heavy clang.
She should try to finish it off now, but there wasn't room on the stairs. For all she knew, it would grab her ankle, twist, and rip it off.
It was climbing to its feet. Blood pumped from the gaping rift across its stomach. She waited for it to climb toward her, then thrust the shovel into the wound, straining to push it forward, working to dig deeper. If she fell forward and it grabbed her it would kill her. It reached for the shovel again, and when she pulled the shovel forward, it pulled the Joseph-thing along. It wrapped its hands around the shovel handle and began to pull it from the wound.
Its hands were slick with blood, its right from that flowing from its shredded arm, its left from the gushing wound just beneath its ribs. Its fingers slipped and scrabbled along the steel handle. When Augusta thrust forward again, the handle slid through the Joseph-thing's fingers and the blade drove deeper inside. She felt it strike hard against its spine. If she could just drive it in hard enough to snap its spine...
It grabbed the handle, squeezed until its joints popped in protest, and began to pull the blade from its belly. Augusta screamed and forced it forward. The Joseph-thing tottered backward, its spine bending back. She realized that if the Joseph-thing's spine suddenly snapped and she fell forward, she would probably break her neck as she tumbled down the stairs.
She shoved forward, hard, one last time, and pulled back. The Joseph-thing's spine broke with a thunderous crack and its upper body flopped backward, its fingertips clutching at its ankles. Skin and flesh tore, and its stomach gaped open like a great red mouth, spouting blood.
It staggered, unsteady on its feet as if confused, trying to force its upper body upright. Augusta stepped back. The Joseph-thing's penis, still hard and throbbing, pointed at her like a dagger. It shuffled forward and climbed a step, then another, and then it stepped onto the second floor.
Augusta shrieked and swung the shovel, hit the splintered remains of the Joseph-thing's spine, and the bits of bone, muscle, and gristly cartilage that bound its upper body to its lower were sliced in two. The Joseph-thing's upper body hit the floor with a wet thump, splattering blood.
Unburdened, the Joseph-thing's legs began to walk forward, coils of intestines spilling out of the lower half of its stomach, swinging wet and heavy. Its upper body, trailing more coils, scrambled across the floor, pulling itself along with its arms. The sound of Weeping Mary's laughter rose up from below; she shrieked and howled like a lunatic.
She probably was. Augusta turned and ran. Off-balance, the Joseph-thing shambled after her, the legs frequently tripping and falling, the upper body pulling itself along with slow, horrible determination.
Shelves upon shelves, tall metal bookcases crusted with rust. The floor here was carpeted and puffed with mold with every step. The light faded as the bookshelves parted around a reading area with ruined sofas and chairs and tables with mildewy magazines still laying open.
At the edge of the reading area, where the shelves closed ranks again, Augusta leapt onto a bookcase and quickly clambered to the top. She trained her flashlight on the two halves of the Joseph-thing padding drunkenly along toward her. The upper half reached the shelf first, leaving a wide, wet streak of blood behind it, and began to climb. The legs trailed closely behind. Augusta hopped down on the far side of the bookcase, landed in a crouch, then sprang up and threw her weight against the shelves.
They were bolted to the floor.
She strained, groaning, feeling her pulse exploding behind her eyes, hearing it roar in her ears, feeling her scalp throb, until the bookshelf shifted, lifted up from the floor with a creak, and tumbled forward just as the upper half of the Joseph-thing threw an arm over the top. She heard bones break as the bookcase crushed the Joseph-thing, heard books spilling from the shelves with a sound that seemed like the noise a waterfall choked with ice would make. She rode the bookcase down and cracked her head hard against the edge of a shelf when it hit the floor. She lay where she fell, eyelids fluttering, breathless from the pain ricocheting through her skull. Clouds of dust and mold spores swam through her vision.
Weeping Mary, now clothed in her jeans and chunky sandals, and not-quite-bikini top, suddenly leaned down into the beam of Augusta's flashlight, grinning beneath her sunglasses.
If she tried to move or speak, Augusta was sure her lunch would come up in a stinking flood, so she stayed still. If Weeping Mary wanted to kill her now, she could, and could do it easily. Augusta was too dizzy, nauseous, and in pain to stop her.
"Wasn't that fun?" Weeping Mary giggled, "Wanna do it again?"
Then she vanished and Augusta heard a loud pop as air rushed in to fill the void where she had stood.
The Joseph-thing squirmed weakly beneath her, crushed under the bookcase. After several long moments, Augusta staggered to her feet, gagging once, and stumbled away from the fallen shelves, leaning heavily on the shovel. In the reading area, she lowered herself carefully into an armchair that enveloped her in the odor of wet decay. She leaned back and sat still, her body wrapped around the uncomfortable lump of her backpack, until the pain in her skull faded to a dull, throbbing ache. Then she sat up carefully and reached around to the front pocket of the backpack, unzipped it and felt inside through a jumble of lip balms, eye drops, a crushed box of Band-Aids, an almost empty tube of Neo-Sporin, until her fingers closed around a small bottle of Advil. She withdrew, took four pills from the bottle and swallowed them dry, then put the bottle back into the pocket and zipped it closed again.
She waited, then stood and took a deep breath. The air stank, like a floating fog of sickness, of the library serenely rotting around her.
I think I'm in shock again, she thought, otherwise I'd be bawling like a baby and clawing at my own eyes. I should have gone crazy, but I guess this is better. This has happened before. I should have gone insane a dozen times over since coming here.
On Weeping Mary's orders, the Joseph-thing had wanted to rape her. If it managed to free itself from beneath the bookcase, it would probably still try, crawling after her broken and bloody and half-crushed to pulp.
She refused to think about it because to do so would paralyze her. She had fought it off and for the moment at least, it was no longer a threat. That would have to be good enough for now. She should leave before it wriggled free.
She finally noticed that she was bathed in its blood. It had sprayed all over, and her clothes were cold and wetly sticky. It streaked her arms and face; that would definitely have to go. If she could find a rag and some water that hadn't gone stagnant, she would definitely have to wash that off. Meantime, though, she thought as she walked away, I need to figure out how to get out of this place with Kitty. I have to get out of here.
She was descending the stairs, feeling them quake beneath her feet and thinking she certainly wouldn't trust them to take her up to the third floor, when she realized that she hadn't gotten all the information she had wanted to find in the Toluca Room. She had learned plenty about Weeping Mary and her influence on Silent Hill, but next to nothing about those under her influence – the murderers, rapists, and other monsters parading through the city's history. There hadn't been much about any of them outlined in blue for her to read.
She refused to go back to the Toluca Room. She wanted out of the library. The mold and the mildew and the shadows were too much to bear. Maybe it wasn't important to know any more names. Walter Sullivan, Joshua Blackwell... monsters. That was all they were, and all they needed to be called. Weeping Mary created monsters, and maybe nothing more needed to be known. She stepped over the scattered books that had been Weeping Mary's throne as she crossed the thousand-pointed marble star, looked up at the broken dome high above, and shoved open the doors to step outside into the mist again.
Denyer Avenue lay still and damp in the softly falling snowflakes. Augusta stepped down from the sidewalk into the street, searching the mist. Weeping Mary seemed to have decided to leave her alone for the time being, and of course there was no sign of Kitty or the Blue Lady, and thankfully no trace of Joseph.
I don't know what to do now, she thought. I don't know where to go. I think if I can stop Joseph somehow, that might be enough to get out of here, but I don't know. I don't know where my child is, or exactly what I need to do to get her back, and I don't know if I can even leave this place because Weeping Mary, or whatever it really is, wants to torture me until she's fat and happy again.
Maybe I should kill myself.
She sank to her knees and gently lay the shovel on the pavement beside her, put her head in her hands, and tried to stay still and breathe deeply, and prayed until she felt better.
Dear God, I don't know what to do now. I figure You're the only thing keeping me sane through all this, and for that I thank You, but even so I don't know how much more I can take. Whatever is left that I need to go through, please just point me in its direction. I just want to get through it so I can leave. All I want to do is take Kitty home. I know she's in the care of one of Your angels, but please just tell me what to do so I can have her back.
I know that Joseph and Weeping Mary are more evil than anything I ever knew existed before. I know that both of them want to hurt me. What I don't know is how to keep them from doing that.
Augusta sighed, opened her eyes and looked up into the mist. A snowflake melted on her face, and then another. Well, what now?
Weeping Mary had said she couldn't hurt Kitty, but that someone else could. That probably meant Joseph. Which meant Augusta would have to stop him.
Which meant she would have to kill him.
Augusta picked up her shovel and stood. That would take bullets. Nothing powerful enough to build itself a tomb of black marble in Summerland Cemetery would be taken down with a shovel. If she could stop Joseph, she would remove the most dire threat to Kitty.
But would she even have to? The Blue Lady was an angel. Couldn't an angel protect a little girl?
She wanted to scream but knew that if she did, it would call anything lurking in the mist right to her.
"Don't know what to do? Let me help," said a deep voice behind her.
She jumped at the sound, and spun around to see Joseph standing with his hands in his pockets, leaning against one of the fancy old wrought iron lampposts nearby.
"Didn't I always used to tell you that you thought too much? Look where it gets you. You can't even make a simple decision. You're paralyzed."
Just as friendly as you please. He even smiled as he said it and chuckled, amused. He looked alive. Healthy. He wore his black pants and white dress shirt, and the red, black, and white tie.
"You stay away from me," Augusta thrust out the shovel to ward him off. "Just let me take Kitty and go."
"Nope." he never stopped smiling.
"Why! What did I ever do to you? Why are you doing this? How are you even able to do all this? You're dead!"
Joseph shook his head good-naturedly. "Lets take those one at a time. Why? Because I hate you. What did you ever do to me? Well... Hot Springs is not that large a place, and after what happened here in Silent Hill I had to find a new job. There was an opening for an assistant manager at the Arlington Hotel –"
The pleasant amusement burst like something dead on a highway in the baking sun.
"–the goddamn ARLINGTON HOTEL, Gussy."
Gussy. A nickname she had always hated, which had attached itself to her like a parasite in elementary school, until in the sixth grade she had been called by it one time too many and had shoved the offending bully headfirst into a cement wall.
Joseph yanked his clenched fists from his pockets and shook them at her. His breath snorted out in furious bursts.
"The ARLINGTON. You remember it I'm sure. Right at the head of Bathhouse Row, right there on Central Avenue. Five hundred rooms. The place Al Capone used to stay. But you know what? Word had gotten around. I guess you told all your whiny-loser-bitch friends, and they told God knows who all else, and because of YOU, half of Hot Springs thought I was the devil incarnate."
Augusta opened and closed her mouth, but couldn't find words to speak.
"You cost me a good job, you BITCH. That's what you did to me." He stared at her, chest heaving. "That's what you did to me. Now, why am I doing this? See above. And, how am I able to do this even though I'm dead? Look around you, idiot! Do you think 'dead' means a damn thing in this place anymore?"
"But-but... that was five years ago!"
He waved a hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Five years, and during those five years I moved to Florida and got a job as an assistant manager at the Breakers Hotel down in Palm Beach. It's sort of their answer to the Arlington. Thing is though, I wanted the job at the Arlington. Therefore, it really doesn't matter how long ago it was or where I worked until I wrapped my car around a palm tree in Boca Raton. The problem is, I didn't get the job I wanted. I wanted the job at the Arlington, Gussy, and because of you I didn't get it."
Augusta swallowed.
"You know where I was going in Boca Raton?" His voice rose from a growl to a scream, "I was going to the International-fucking-Museum of Cartoon Art!"
"I didn't cause that!" she cried. "That wasn't my fault! And I didn't go around town in Hot Springs telling everyone what happened. It wasn't my fault my friends told other people! They just wanted to know why I was so depressed!"
He stared at her.
"Why won't you just let me take Kitty and go?'
"Did we not just go over all that? I'm not letting you go because I hate you and because I am going to get my pound of flesh from you. Actually, hell, what do you weigh these days? I'm guessing one-twenty-five, so that means I intend to get my one-hundred-and-twenty-five pounds of flesh from you, baby."
"Then will you let Kitty go? She doesn't have anything to do with this."
"Of course not! You know, I have to thank you for bringing her here. A lot of what you find here now you find first in your own heart. She didn't exist until you came here and up she sprang. When I dragged her away that was enough to keep you going. I hadn't planned on that."
Augusta gasped, "What did you do to her – did you hurt her? If you did, I'll–"
"You'll what? You won't do dick, you bitch. You can't. You can't hurt what's already dead."
"Did you hurt her?" she screamed, and tightened her grip on the shovel.
"If I didn't, it wasn't because I didn't try. You worked a surprise into her. All you had to do was imagine it once."
She bounced on the balls of her feet, wanting to leap at him and kill him and tasting her pulse in her throat. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but if you hurt her I'll die making you pay for it, you sick, vicious, evil son of a fucking bitch!"
When he spoke, it was a roar that rattled the windows of the buildings nearby, and set Augusta's ears to ringing. She felt the ground vibrating beneath her feet. Joseph's clothes burst from his body in shreds. His skin blackened and in an instant a thousand arms – a thousand night-black arms – had sprouted, their fists clenching and unclenching, waving furiously. Reaching for her.
"YOU'LL DO NO SUCH THING, WOMAN. FUCK WITH ME AND YOU'LL BATHE IN SALTWATER AS I STRIP THE SKIN FROM YOUR FLESH. I'LL FEED YOU YOUR OWN HEART. I'LL FIND THAT BRAT AND YOU'LL WATCH WHILE I EAT HER UP IN BIG, BLOODY BITES. FUCK WITH ME AND YOU'LL PRAY FOR DEATH, YOU WRETCHED CUNT!!"
His upper body rode above a writhing cloud of arms, and he looked down at her smugly. Echoes bounced and rebounded off the buildings.
Augusta turned and fled. To kill him she would need bullets, enough so that even if she couldn't kill him she could at least blow him to pieces. He had hurt her daughter.
As she sprinted down Denyer Avenue, she heard the sound of a thousand black arms scraping across the pavement behind her. Joseph was following.