On Thursday, February 19, 1994, Becky Taylor, a fourteen-year-old freshman at Silent Hill High School, was not present for her first period class, English, which began at 8:05 AM. She was not present for second period, Civics, which started at 9:10, or third period, Physical Education, beginning at 10:15.
Lunch period for freshmen and sophomores began at 11:20, while juniors and seniors ate at 12:25. Becky arrived at school at 11:44, with a loaded double-barrel shotgun, two loaded automatic pistols, and her pockets and backpack stuffed full of ammunition.
Her first stop was Mrs. Ellroy's Advanced Placement English class. Silent Hill High School was a beautiful old castle of brick erected in 1925, and while it had been repeatedly modernized, the school still retained some of the quirks expected of an older building. Mrs. Ellroy's classroom was home to such a quirk: it tended to become uncomfortably warm and stuffy in the winter, whenever the building's central air was rumbling and growling in an effort to keep out the cold. Because of this, Mrs. Ellroy usually left her door open to allow the heat from the room to escape into the hallway.
Humming to herself, with a slight smile on her face, Becky stopped at Mrs. Ellroy's open door, listened for a moment to a lecture about the symbolism present in T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, then cocked her shotgun and fired indiscriminately into the room. Mrs. Ellroy died immediately, as half of her head flew into bits of bone and tissue and an explosion of bloody droplets. A girl named Adamina Katz was injured by lead pellets of shot, as was another girl nearby named Stephanie Bachman. Becky shot again and a boy named Abel Levin lost an arm.
The panic was immediate in Mrs. Ellroy's class, and instantly doors up and down the hall were being thrown open by teachers investigating the noise. Becky spun, raised a pistol, and fired, and the French teacher, Richard Lindsey, missed a shot to the chest by nothing more than luck. The bullet pierced a nearby locker and ricocheted inside a dozen times with a sound like something demanding to be let out.
The screams began. With the pistol raised, Becky neatly broke the shotgun, held it to her body with her arm as she pulled two more shells from the pocket of her jeans, and readied the gun to fire again. She began to fire the pistol down the hall, not aiming at anyone. She just liked the sound.
In Mrs. Ellroy's class, the students were divided. Some ran for the windows, threw them open and scrambled out to drop six feet into a holly hedge. Others ran for the door, despite Becky standing calm and immobile in the doorway. Still others ran to Mrs. Ellroy, crumpled beside the overhead projector on a tall metal cart on wheels. The eye that remained stared up at them, but didn't see.
Mr. Lindsey slammed and locked his door, and ordered every student in the class away from the door and its large square glass partition. Further up the hall, the door to the German classroom burst open and the teacher, "Frau" Harris leapt into the hall and screamed at the sight of Becky. As she tried to turn and run back into the safety of her classroom, she was shoved back out by two football players fighting one another in a panic to flee the building. Frau Harris fell to the floor as Becky took careful aim at the doorway with the shotgun, fired, and killed one football player and sprayed the other with shot. Other students in the German class followed those of Mrs. Ellroy in running to the windows and leaping out into the hedge below.
Becky ducked into a nearby bathroom – the girls' bathroom because the boys' bathroom was usually much dirtier and smelled much worse – reloaded her pistol and shotgun, and waited a moment as the hallway outside began to fill with panicked students and teachers shouting at them to get back in the classroom and shut the doors.
Few listened, and when Becky felt the hall was full enough, she emerged and began shooting into the crowd, which stampeded clumsily down the hall away from her. Students and teachers were shoved into lockers and walls, bounced off and stumbled back into the crowd. Some fell, and were trampled. A girl took a pistol shot to the back, and watched the bullet burst from her chest. It had missed her heart by less than an inch. Adrenaline numbed the wound and she stayed on her feet, pushing and shoving the people ahead.
Windows in classrooms along the hall were thrown up and students began to pour out of the school into the street, and onto the sidewalk that ran behind the main school building and the gymnasium, auditorium, and library. Mr. Lindsey, having ordered his class out the windows, began leading his students, and anyone else who would follow, away from the school and toward Berkowitz's Department Store, which loomed behind its parking lot across Ferris Street. Once inside the store, everyone could take shelter away from the rear entrance and its glass doors – there were no windows along the first floor at the rear of the store building.
Frau Harris, having followed her students out the classroom windows, saw students frozen by fear and shock clustering on the sidewalk, and started gathering any who would listen to her, and herding them toward the department store as well. A boy whose collarbone had been shattered by a bullet leaned heavily on her, his right arm draped around her neck. Between his neck and his left arm, blood spurted from a mush of bone chips and muscle, onto his clothes and onto Frau Harris's light blue dress.
Silent Hill High School stood three stories high, and was shaped like a long, fat letter I. Language classes filled half of the first floor, with offices and the school cafeteria occupying the remainder. Stairwells were located at either end of the building, and at the north side of the building was an elevator that was only to be used by teachers, and students who were not physically able to climb the stairs. Just last year, however, seniors, as part of their package of privileges, had been allowed to use the elevator as well.
Students still inside the school were fleeing toward the north end of the building.
On the second floor, the gunshots were muffled to nothing more than sharp thumps, but the sound was enough to clench a fist around every teacher's attention.
Someone pulled a fire alarm. Becky walked calmly down the hall toward the cafeteria, passing the language classes – French, Spanish, German, Japanese, and all five English classrooms.
On the second floor, home to science, math, history, and all the civics courses, some teachers buzzed the office. Others decided the fire alarm was more important to heed than the mysterious muffled thumps. They emptied their classrooms and led their students toward the stairs. Some seniors, in a panic, ran instead for the elevator, slammed into one another and began to crush against the doors.
On the third floor, where the fine arts, business, computer, home economics, and elective courses were located, at the sound of the fire alarm, teachers who had not heard the thumps on the first floor gathered their students and led them in a march toward the stairs. A few seniors bolted for the elevator but were ordered away by Mr. Rendell, the business teacher, who had a voice like an exploding bomb.
A long, straight hallway ran from end to end on each floor of the school, with an entrance at each end. Students and teachers from the second floor began to pour from the rear stairwell, into the first floor hall. Becky turned and calmly fired her pistol, not wanting to waste her shotgun shells on the space between herself and the far end of the hall. Mrs. Koontz, a history teacher, was shot in the stomach.
The students, suddenly screaming, shoving one another aside in a terror to get out the doors, instead began to pile up.
On the first floor, the hall ended at the door to the cafeteria and its kitchen, which lay ahead beyond the school offices. The elevator, north staircase, and north entrance to the school were located inside the cafeteria.
A member of the wrestling team tried to take advantage of Becky's turned back and rushed forward from the crowd bunching at the cafeteria doors, to tackle her. Becky turned – almost elegantly, as though she were dancing – and shot him in the face from no more than a few feet away. The wrestler fell down dead, his head reduced to fragments.
Becky encountered the principal and his secretary as they hurried out of their office, and raised her shotgun, and both were peppered with shot. In another office, the guidance counselor screamed and slammed her door on the horror in the hallway, then shoved a heavy filing cabinet against the door to barricade herself and the school registrar inside. Other administrators ran to their office windows, hurled them open, and jumped out.
Becky stepped over the principal, playing dead, and his secretary, mewling in pain on the floor, and into the principal's office to reload, then emerged and hurried to the cafeteria. What with the fire alarm, the people inside had probably all run out the north entrance already. If there was no one to shoot still inside, she decided she would climb the stairs to the second floor and search for anyone upstairs.
She walked calmly to the cafeteria doors and yanked them open...
Becky Taylor methodically prowled through Silent Hill High School, floor by floor, hall by hall, and room by room. Nine students, including two who had been dragged to safety across Ferris Street and through the rear entrance of Berkowitz's Department Store, and two teachers died. Eighty-one students, eight teachers, and the principal and his secretary were injured.
The record for deaths held until the apocalyptic massacre at Columbine High School in April, 1999. The record for injuries was never broken. Becky at last barricaded herself in the home economics kitchen on the third floor, where a class had just baked cookies. She shot through the windows at students and teachers running from the gymnasium, auditorium, and library behind the main school building, and then at police officers, all the while eating cookies, until she ran out of ammunition. She then threw her guns through the broken window, took from her backpack a large white sheet on which she had written I SURRENDER! in large letters with a magic marker, and hung it from the windowsill.
She waited for police to reach her, was arrested quietly by officer Guillermo Gucci of the Silent Hill Police Department, and when later asked why she had done it, responded simply, "I was in a bad mood."
Eleven dead of gunshot wounds. Ninety-one injured from bullet wounds, from being crushed against walls and doors, from being trampled, and one from falling down the stairs between the third and second floors.
"I was in a bad mood."
Two days later, Becky Taylor sheared off her ears as she forced her head through the bars of her cell in the Silent Hill Police Department's jail, then twisted suddenly and violently once to the left, and broke her neck.
I was in a bad mood.
Augusta remembered there had been a public outcry reported on the national news when wearing t-shirts bearing that slogan became all the rage at dance clubs in Chicago and St. Louis.
When she stepped through the rear doors of Berkowitz's Department Store and into its parking lot, she jumped at the sudden silence and felt the shovel handle bounce on her shoulder. As the glass doors swung slowly closed behind her, the din inside ceased – all the screaming, wailing, crying, pleading, and shouting sealed away, leaving her alone in the softly falling snowflakes and silent rolling fog.
The mist was thick enough to blot out the red brick bulk of Silent Hill High School rearing up across Ferris Street from the block that Berkowitz's filled with its parking lot and store.
The school filled the next block up as well, she realized. Though south of Massey Street, the blocks that fronted Pickton Street and the Illiniwak River were mostly very narrow, most of the blocks all along Ferris Street were as wide as two of the blocks along Pickton. The high school filled an entire large block, and from where Augusta stood, the old main building was to the right, and the gymnasium, library, and auditorium to the left, one behind the other.
Augusta looked to her left to see fog sighing softly over a handful of cars left behind in the lot. Hilley Street ran between Pickton and Ferris for only that single block. Across Schaefer, the next street up from Hilley, was what had once been one of the large open squares that were the soul of East Silent Hill. At some point, it too had been claimed by the school, and was home to the Silent Hill High School football field, soccer field, and baseball diamond.
Ten years ago, Becky Taylor had never left the main school building. She worked her way from the first floor to third, and shot from the third floor home economics kitchen at anyone who tried to leave the gym and library.
Augusta thought back, dredging up details. The national news media had swarmed Silent Hill and the shooting held America's attention for a full week.
She remembered. Nobody died in the auditorium, gym, or the library. Students from the school bolted across Ferris Street for the safety of Berkowitz's Department Store. Most students in the auditorium, library, and gym, fleeing bullets raining through the large windows of all three buildings, had run across Schaefer Avenue and huddled on the playing fields.
Except for the two who had died inside the store, Becky Taylor and her victims would almost certainly be inside the main school building, Augusta decided.
She wondered what it would take to kill Becky Taylor. Walter Sullivan wouldn't die until she had prayed and a red devil had sprung up to drag him into the depths of a pool of his own blood. Joshua Blackwell lived with his heart cut in two, until she had scooped up his severed head and tossed it into an oven. As far as she knew, the Joseph-thing was still alive and by now might have pulled the two crushed halves of its body out from beneath the heavy steel shelf at the library.
Weeping Mary couldn't be killed, and she only had a hunch that Joseph could die.
God only knew. Augusta studied the parking lot. Four cars that she could see, scattered here and there, and a couple of dark shapes in the distance that might be more. Large trees lines the edges, along Hilley Street to the left, Ramsey Avenue to the right, and Ferris Street at the far end of the lot, straight ahead. She jogged to the left, to the trees along Hilley Street. Between them and the trees in their planting squares alongside the street, the sidewalk was little more than a tunnel.
In the summer it had been beautiful.
If Becky Taylor was still searching with dead eyes for someone to shoot, the trees arching over the sidewalk along Hilley Street provided excellent cover with their interlocking branches. Augusta stepped out between two trees and onto the sidewalk, creeping along Hilley Street toward the school, listening. She would hear gunshots easily but for anything more subtle, such as the cocking of a shotgun, she would have to be careful.
What if Becky Taylor was somehow able to escape the school and roam free? Walter Sullivan had apparently been able to walk back and forth between the building that had housed Locane's Grocery, and his basement apartment at Suttcliffe Place.
But he had done that in life. Calm down. Part of the torture of Billy Locane had been the horrible, interminable waiting for the raping to begin again and again. Becky Taylor never left the school.
A shot cracked through the air. Augusta bit back a squeal as she dropped to her knees. She hadn't heard the bullet hit anything, hadn't seen it hit anything.
She waited, heard nothing, then slid the shovel handle down her back beneath the backpack, which held it in place with the blade pressing against her neck. She began to crawl on hands and knees along the sidewalk.
In their growth, the trees' roots had buckled the sidewalk and it rose and fell like frozen ripples. It was cold and slick, and water dripped from the branches above as snowflakes melted there.
Another gunshot, and again it didn't seem to hit anything nearby.
Another few broken squares of sidewalk, another gunshot. A shotgun blast. Augusta froze, and counted silently to herself until she heard another shot. Three seconds. She waited and counted again. Three seconds. Very faintly, she heard a sound that might have been a bullet ricocheting off metal.
She crawled on. Ahead, the street corner was clear of trees. Exposed. Augusta stopped, waited a moment and slid the shovel out from beneath the backpack, then climbed to her feet and snuck ahead, hugging tree trunks. The gunshots resounded. At the last tree before the corner, Augusta clutched the trunk and looked ahead. The sidewalk and street signs looked unharmed – no pits in the sidewalk where a bullet would have struck, no puckered holes in the signs where bullets would have passed through.
Silent Hill High School rose up across Ferris Street in rust-red brick. The gym next door to the main school building was newer, and was built of brick the color of dirty phlegm.
There was the Ferris Street entrance, on the south end of the fat letter I. On the second and third floors above the wide set of double doors were large windows that seemed to have all their glass intact – which meant Becky had not shot them out. There were smaller windows to the right and left, in sets one above the other. That would be the stairwell and bathrooms.
Another shotgun blast. They seemed to be coming from the rear of the main school building, as though Becky were still barricaded inside the third floor home economics kitchen, still shooting at the gym and library and auditorium. Augusta reached for her pistol and pulled it from its holster, said a prayer, and darted across the street and up a set of broad cement steps to the south entrance of Silent Hill High School, where she set the shovel to lean against the wall and dropped to a crouch beside the doors.
Another gunshot from the rear of the building upstairs.
The doors were made of thick steel and each had a square window threaded through with wire mesh and a handle and thumb-bolt. Augusta carefully reached for one from her hiding spot, careful to avoid the window, just in case. The left-hand door was locked. The thumb-bolt refused to give and rattled in place with an indifferent metallic click.
She reached farther and found the door to the right unlocked.
Another gunshot, still from upstairs.
The door opened, amazingly, silently. Still crouching, Augusta pulled it open, and risked a peek inside with her flashlight, which she still wore around her neck. Decay. An old tired building swelling and crumbling in relentless mist.
She stood and pulled open the doors and entered. Becky Taylor was still upstairs.
She stepped inside.
The crust of age and rot, the smell of dampness, mold, and mildew, was ripped away like a droplet of blood in a whirlpool. Fluorescent lights buzzed to life overhead. Rust evaporated. Warped, splintered wood healed itself.
Scarlet splashes of blood stood out on the floor and walls amid a storm of scattered papers, books, and backpacks.