Berkowitz's Department Store was a Silent Hill institution that had thrived uninterrupted since the day in 1883 that Moses D. Berkowitz opened an "Elegant Millinery for Fashionable Ladies and Gentlemen" in Old Silent Hill. Shoppers continued to parade through its doors even after the Silent Hill Town Center opened for business with JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, Sears, and Parisian rubbing shoulders with more than fifty other smaller shops. The arrival of Wal-Mart and K-Mart in separate strip shopping centers on Nathan Avenue hadn't fazed Berkowitz's. It had opened branches in Springfield, Decatur, Bloomington-Normal, and St. Louis, and by 1999 there had even been rumors of Berkowitz's opening a grand mega-store in the heart of Chicago's ritziest downtown shopping district.
The interior of Berkowitz's flagship store, on the south end of what was once an upscale street at the very edge of a spectacular district of Victorian mansions, was dank and black, and reeked of the tangy, woody smell of mildew.
She had consulted a store directory near the front doors. The heaviest merchandise in the store, housewares, including furniture, appliances, and heavy exercise machines, filled the first floor. The second floor was home to toys and children's clothing, the third to ladies clothing, lingerie, jewelry, makeup, and perfume, the fourth to sporting goods and shoes, the fifth to menswear and men's fragrances and accessories, and the sixth floor was reserved for store offices and storage. From the front of the store, the elevators were located straight ahead, in the center of the building, with a wide staircase winding around the central shaft.
As she made her way through the maze of merchandise, Augusta's flashlight beam fell on damp and stinking sofas, chairs, and love seats, dusty and grimy dining room sets and grandfather clocks, and soggy art prints curling behind glass.
She walked through the bedding section, past a row of half-beds arranged along a partition, decorated with comforters, sheets, and pillows, with fake windows on the partition framed by curtains to match the blankets and sheet sets. It all looked to have been well-gnawed by mice and rats; cotton batting spewed from pillows and comforters.
Next, the items for sale parted around the elevator and staircase, with appliances, patchy with rust, to the left, and bath goods to the right. She glanced toward the right to see stacks of towels speckled with fungus and a clawfoot bathtub filled with glass globes like large bubbles and another clear plastic mannequin like those in the windows up front, posed as if luxuriating in a bubble bath. Small square shelves like boxes turned on their sides, rose up behind, displaying soap dishes, toothbrush holders, and all the other accessories the stylish bathroom demanded, all draped in dusty cobwebs.
She turned away as the silent stench pressed down on her.
There were two elevators, two pairs of antique bronze doors slowly oxidizing blue-green. Potted palm trees, long dead, flanked each pair of doors; one had uprooted itself and fallen to lean on another, its fronds hanging down like scraps of moldy leather.
Augusta suppressed a shudder and started up the stairs.
At the second floor, the design of the staircase forced her to step off, onto the sales floor, and circle around the elevators to the stairs leading upward again. Teddy bears of all sizes clustered near the stairs as though they had gathered to watch, and all of them bled stuffing from wounds gnawed open by rodents.
Their eyes, some made of buttons, others of marbles, glittered under a layer of dust. They sat on wooden pedestals painted to look like the blocks a child would play with. As Augusta walked away, she turned to keep her eyes on them. The skin between her shoulder blades seemed to be trying to crawl in a dozen different directions at once.
The teddy bears, and the displays of toys stacked in shadows behind them, were replaced by racks of tiny dresses. Baby girls' dresses of moth-eaten velvet and lace., and not far away on a pedestal stood another mannequin, clear plastic like all the others, but tiny, and modeling a little girl's long-sleeved dress.
She turned away from it, found the bears' watchful button eyes upon her again, and started up the stairs to the third floor.
A trio of clear plastic mannequins greeted her at the top, wearing long, brightly patterned dresses and matching jackets, now faded and moldy. They held their arms above their heads in someone's idea of an artistic pose, with long strings of pearls looped and draped like a garland, drooping from wrist to wrist to wrist. Jewelry displayed in little black velvet cases and bottles of perfume stood on squat, fancy plaster columns spotted with black mildew and patches of fuzzy mold. As she circled the elevator shaft, passing by the dulled bronze doors, there were racks of dresses hanging limp and dusty and draped with ropy cobwebs. Augusta thought of a closet thrown wide on a woman's clothes, trying to choose a dress for that woman to be buried in.
It still wasn't as bad as the teddy bears, she thought. Or the little girl mannequin in her dress. That made her think of Kitty, and made her think that none of this needed to have happened. None of it. If she had just...
Too much to think about, and she couldn't let it distract her. Too much to do, and she was so close to seeing this whole horrible mess turn back on itself, so close to wrapping her arms around her perfect, warm, alive little girl, so close to taking her home.
So close. So damned close...
At the top of the stairs on the fourth floor was a long, low counter with mannequin legs cut off at mid-calf modeling shoes and socks, sandals, and high-heeled shoes and pantyhose.
A new pair of socks would feel good about now, she thought as she stepped onto the floor and circled around the elevators. Shoes gave way to a dozen bicycles of various colors posed in a row. Immediately, she wondered how much easier it would be to navigate Silent Hill by bike; she inspected the display only to find each bicycle was chained to the mount that kept it upright.
She grumbled absently, then skirted the display and began to weave through the stacks and shelves of items behind.
Two longs shelves stocked with everything one might need for tennis, with an aisle running between them; they held racquets, boxed kits for setting up tennis nets, cans of balls, duffle bags in every color, wristbands, an entire line of videos entitled "Play Better Tennis Now!"and much more.
Dust drifted through the beam of her flashlight and the cobwebs hanging in strings from the merchandise danced in the air as she passed. Guns and hunting supplies would lie at the back of the store, in locked glass cabinets lined up along the wall where doors here and there would open into the fourth floor stockroom.
The shelves broke for a cross aisle, and a short pedestal where two mannequins posed in dusty tennis apparel. Beyond was another long aisle between shelves holding enough racquetball supplies to line the aisle halfway along one side, and racks of skateboards, along with kneepads, helmets, elbow pads, and more lining the remainder. Make it Yours – Customize Your Board Today!, said a sign. Past another aisle there were shelves of inline skates. Another sign advised that these skates were for display only. Ask an associate for assistance.
Then came the wall, lined with sturdy glass cabinets behind a narrow aisle and waist-high glass cases filled with ammunition. No Customers Allowed Behind the Counter, said a sign, which added, Ask an associate for assistance.
Jackpot. She studied the guns lined up behind the grimy glass and saw hunting rifles, shotguns, and handguns. A rifle or a shotgun would be more powerful than her pistol, but would be heavier and slower. That, and if she could find hollowpoint ammunition, she would not only be able to fire the semiautomatic as fast she could pull the trigger, but the bullets would do an admirable amount of damage. It had only taken two to blow the head off the Joseph-thing in the library.
Too bad I can't get my hands on a machine gun, she thought. That and a belt of bullets a mile long. I'd turn Joseph into bloody pink mist.
Rifle? Shotgun? She debated, chewing her lip. Too slow, too bulky, she finally decided. She wanted to stuff her backpack with bullets, and if she had to split the space with shotgun shells...
Augusta began to inspect the glass cases. There were bullets of all calibers, copper jacketed and steel jacketed. As she worked her way from left to right, the caliber increased, until here were the .45-caliber bullets. Would there be hollowpoint ammunition? Was that even legal in Illinois?
Apparently it was, or had been in 1999. There were several boxes beneath the grimy glass. Augusta wiped the dust away with her hand to check again – .45-caliber hollowpoint ammunition from various manufacturers, including Ruger itself. Exactly what she was looking for. She looked up, glancing around the rotting store lit only by her flashlight and what weak light could filter in from far off windows, and noticed holsters displayed nearby and remembered she needed one. Then she looked back down at the glass case full of bullets.
She used the handle to break the glass, and winced as thunderous, echoing bangs shot out through the store. After jabbing downward twice, like a spear, the glass counter top cracked. Several more hard jabs and it cracked again. She checked the tiny foam rubber pad at the handle tip, saw no slivers of glass embedded that would cut her hands, then grabbed the handle and hit the glass with the blade as though trying to dig through it. Finally it split into thick, jagged plates and fell in on itself with a crash.
After nudging broken glass aside with the shovel blade, she reached in carefully and lifted out as many boxes of bullets as she could reach. The cabinet had kept the moisture out over the years; when she opened a box she saw the copper jackets had oxidized and dulled, but hadn't corroded. The boxes themselves were still crisp and sturdy. She swung the backpack around, unzipped and pulled out the pistol, reloaded and set it on the counter nearby, then stuffed as many boxes of bullets in as she could carry, taking care to remove the blue rose, then replace in carefully when she was finished. It seemed somehow important to protect it as much as she possibly could.
When she had zipped up her backpack and swung it around, she straightened and marveled at the added weight. She felt fortified, and carried four hundred bullets in her backpack, at fifty per box. That and the seven loaded in the gun, she thought as she picked it up, then headed for the holsters nearby, displayed on clear plastic mannequin parts, from torsos to ankles.
A sign advised that more styles were available, and that an associate would be happy to help one choose the best holster available. From those displayed though, Augusta could choose from leather or sturdy canvas, and from models that would hold a gun safely in place almost anywhere, from the ankle to the thigh to shoulder holsters that kept the gun safe and snug beneath one arm. Augusta picked canvas because the leather holsters were hairy with mold. The canvas holsters were filthy as well, but she was able to shake most of the grime from them, then slipped off her backpack and flashlight and fumbled with the holster until she was reasonably sure she wore it correctly. She wrestled her backpack into place, replaced the flashlight strap around her neck, then put the Ruger in the holster and clipped the pocket that held it shut.
She raised her arms over her head experimentally and discovered that between the two of them, the backpack straps and the holster looping in a figure-eight over her shoulders and crossing high up on her back just below the nape of her neck, the straps of leather and canvas snapped closed like a vise and squeezed hard enough to bruise.
It's a small price to pay, I think, for this gun not going off in my pocket and taking off a leg. It really doesn't restrict my arms enough to notice, so it isn't all that bad.
"Alrighty," she said quietly to herself, "Time to go." And she passed back through the skateboards and accouterments of racquetball and tennis to the stairs and the severed mannequin feet modeling shoes.
The dusty ladies in their dresses, draped in a rope of pearls still stood guard on the third floor, and the little girl mannequin and decrepit teddy bears still clustered near the landing on the second floor.
But something was very different on the first floor.
Her first clue was the smell. There was still the odor of a place decaying in mist, but it was now mixed with sweat and perfume and hairspray – the faintest hints lingering in the air.
She grabbed for her gun, fumbled with it until the pocket popped open and she snatched it out, thumbed the safety, and was ready to fire at the first thing that moved.
Vertigo struck, the same sickening, reeling feel that had assaulted her on the walk down the Nathan Avenue causeway from the Wiltse Hill Tunnel into South Vale. She sank to her knees with a nauseated groan, dropping the shovel as everything around her changed at once – lights snapped on, the veil of dust and cobwebs lifted and vanished, mold and mildew shrank away into pinpoints and then nothing at all, and the goods around her shifted, changed place and changed shape. Couches became recliners and loveseats became easy chairs, glass-topped dining tables replaced wooden tables, and wooden tables replaced glass-topped tables. In the bedding section, patterned Venetian blinds replaced the curtains on display at every fake window, and the bedding itself on the little half-beds changed patterns as the gnawed holes sewed themselves shut. In appliances, the microwaves and ranges and refrigerators shuffled in place and shed their rust and changed colors.
The potted palm trees snapped to attention, sprang to life, then shrank in size. The verdigris that stained the elevator doors disappeared. Sale posters and banners dropped from the ceiling and swung lazily in place. The floors, old red and black tiles, suddenly shone. The odors grew stronger and stronger, and joining them was the smell of cleaning chemicals and newness.
Then the silence was split by a murmur, rising and falling, that of a great many people in a single large space, talking amongst themselves. Augusta stayed on her knees, gasping.
The floor was littered with book bags, textbooks, and papers. The murmuring went on, the sound of many people alarmed and upset.
As the nausea broke and drifted apart like a noxious cloud, she reached down and picked up the nearest paper. Someone's homework or a test. Biology – Mr. Collins, written in the upper left and the date in the upper right.
February 19, 1994.
Oh, Jesus... Not again. The sounds went on, rolling over themselves. It sounded like people crying and yelling, other voices comforting and shushing, the occasional authoritative voice shouting over the din that nobody was the leave the store and that everybody was to stay away from the doors and windows.
"No, you can't, goddamn it!" a man's voice emphasized. "You'll stay in here with the rest of them, do you hear me?"
More wailing. Adult voices near panic. Younger voices crying and screaming – some from alarm, others from pain.
"He killed them, I saw it!" wept a teenage girl's voice nearby.
"It hurts... Oh, Jesus God it hurts..." a boy groaned.
"Oh, Jesus, oh, God... Oh, God this can't be happening. Oh, Jesus..." a woman's voice.
"ARE WE SAFE IN HERE? TELL ME, ARE WE SAFE IN HERE?" a man, roaring.
School books and homework and backpacks scattered on the floor... Teenaged girls and teenaged boys weeping and screaming and yelling to one another. Men and women shouting in alarm.
Biology – Mr. Collins February 19, 1994
1.) Explain photosynthesis in your own words.
Photosynthesis is the process where plants...
Augusta dropped the paper, grabbed the shovel, and shot to her feet. She knew what was going on.
"Are you okay? Did he hit you anywhere? Is that blood yours?"
She shook her head and forced away the last shreds of nausea.
"MY SON IS OVER THERE!! IS HE HERE? IS HE STILL THERE?"
This was the furniture department, full of fake living rooms and dining rooms, basking in sudden spotlights. The merchandise was new and clean... and was ten years old.
"What's going on? What's happening?"
She ran past the elevators and the stairs, past the clawfoot tub, no longer filled with glass globes and a relaxing mannequin. Instead towels in various colors were draped over the edge in a rainbow display.
"How many people got shot? Are there people still inside?"
More towels on a low, broad table. They were stacked in columns of various heights, taller and shorter, a spectrum of colors, with a sign reading, Treat Yourself To A Warm Bath And A Warm Bed This Winter! It's The Berkowitz's Bath and Bedding Sale!
"Oh, Christ, you're bleeding... Put pressure on it. Here, let me get a towel. Just lay still."
Bath goods gave way to exercise machines. Treadmills, rowing machines, exercise bikes...
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, he's still alive. Oh my God you can see his brain, he's still alive... Oh my God..."
A young man lay on the floor in the middle of the aisle ahead, with a sleek gas range on one side of the aisle across from a row of excercycles on the other beneath a sign, dotted with elaborate drawings of snowflakes and suggesting, Shed Those Winter Pounds! that hung from the ceiling.
Augusta holstered her gun, dropped to her knees and lay the shovel aside, and bent over the boy on the floor. He couldn't possibly be older than sixteen or seventeen. A high schooler. A junior, maybe a senior.
She could indeed see his brain. His eyes opened and closed, and his mouth opened and closed around a froth of blood. Twin trickles of blood wandered away from his nostrils and down his face. A large patch of the left side of his skull was missing, peeled back but still attached to a flap of scalp and hair. The brain tissue bulging from the hole looked wet and gray and fragile. Blood had pooled on the tiles where his head lay.
"Hurts," he choked as his eyes found Augusta's. "Hurts. Help."
"Oh, honey..." Augusta gasped. She didn't know what to do.
He was another ghost, like Miriam and Billy Locane and Deanna Blackwell... He had to be. He had to be, and she knew what had happened to him. The only way she could help him would be to hunt down his murderer, his tormentor. That had helped the Locane children and the people on the Little Baroness. That had set them free.
"Hurts." Tears spilled from his eyes. "Help. Please."
There was nothing else she could do. She struggled with her backpack, which caught on the holster, until she could unzip the front pocket and take out the bottle of Advil.
She opened it and poured the pills into her hand.
"Here. This will help. Take these, okay?" I hope it helps. Nothing can help this.
He opened his mouth, and she poured in the pills. He swallowed them, along with a mouthful of his own blood.
"There... that'll start to work in a little bit. Just hold on til it starts to help." Please keep it down, don't choke, don't throw it back up...
Was there anything else? She strained, reaching to run her fingers through the items inside the front pocket. The crushed box of Band-Aids, the tube of Neosporin, eyedrops, either a lipstick or Chapstick... nothing else that would be helpful. She threw the empty bottle aside.
"Close your eyes and just lay still til it stops hurting," she said and the boy closed his eyes. She picked up the shovel and stood, looking for anyone else nearby, eyes wide, lips set in a thin, determined line.
There was another low table stacked with merchandise nearby, toasters displayed on rising tiers, some of shiny steel, others a snowy white... A smear of blood decorated the side of one white toaster. A teenage girl who looked younger than the boy on the floor was slumped against the table. She had been shot in the neck.
Augusta ran to her, knelt and looked into her eyes, a deep and beautiful blue that rolled from side to side before finally locking onto Augusta's.
The girl opened and closed her mouth. Blood trickled from a corner.
"I can't feel anything," she rasped, "I can't move anything."
Paralyzed. Shot in the neck and paralyzed.
Every time she opened her mouth, Augusta heard a wet click, the sound of her choking.
"Is the ambulance going to be here soon?" the girl asked.
"Yes. Just hold on til it gets here." The ambulance had never arrived, and never would. This girl had been dead for ten years. She must have bled out, right here on the floor of the appliances department at Berkowitz's.
"Close your eyes and rest, okay? Wait for the ambulance. I need to see if anyone else is hurt."
She stood. There were other people hurt. Plenty of them. Augusta knew what this was.