Author's Note: I know it's another short chapter, but it seemed like the best place to end it. I hope you all don't mind...

The message made no sense because it couldn't possibly be meant for her. Your fault? It couldn't be her fault because she didn't know what the hell was going on.

Someone in the bathroom was crying, and because she couldn't see who it was, she guessed they were lying in the tub, which was as large as the one she had seen downstairs. She stood in the doorway, her gaze skipping over the bathroom and its bloodstains. They glistened in the light let in through the window.

The room would be too small to use her shovel as much of a weapon, so she set it and the cord down by the door before she drew her gun and stepped forward, thinking it was better to be safe than... She looked down and saw that she was leaving footprints on the bloody floor. Flies buzzed around her in a roar. There must be thousands, she thought.

"Are you hurt?" A stupid question, but she couldn't think of another way to ask.

The crying went on, and Augusta crept forward, step by step, until she could look in the tub to see its occupant.

She saw a naked young man lying on his side, weeping and covered with flies, so many that he probably hadn't heard her question over their incessant whine and buzz.

She held her gun in one hand, in case – a picture danced through her mind of him suddenly rearing up and trying to bite her – and reached down with the other, slowly, to touch his shoulder. There was so much blood in the bathtub that it ran down toward the drain and disappeared down the pipe, and she could see its source. The young man had slashed his left wrist, and bright red gouts shot out in time to his heartbeat. He had probably done it in his bedroom on that summer day in 1920-whatever, then painted the hall and the bathroom, and probably his bedroom too before he died in the tub. His last act had been to write those two words, whomever they were meant for, on the wall.

When she laid her hand on his shoulder, he gasped and flinched, and rolled away from her, and a pall of flies took flight with a roar. In his surprise, his sobs hitched and he stared at her for a moment, blinking bloodshot eyes. His face was swollen from crying, and his entire body was smeared with blood.

He was thin and muscular, and looked to be in his late teens, or perhaps twenty or twenty one years old. Weeping Mary seemed to delight in the suffering of an awful lot of younger people, thought Augusta, and remembered from her reading at the library that was no surprise at all.

"Pearl?" the young man stared at her quizzically, as though he knew her, and then his eyes went wide. "Pearl, help me!"

Augusta holstered her gun, stood and grabbed a hand towel from the white shelves nearby, then dropped to her knees.

"It won't stop. It won't stop bleeding, and the blood won't dry. Help me," he begged, and began to cry again. He held out his arm. Blood sprayed from the cut across his wrist.

Augusta wrapped the towel around his wrist and tied it as tightly as she could, thinking it wouldn't do a damn bit of good. People who suffered in Silent Hill didn't stop suffering until someone stopped their tormentors. But this man had hurt himself... but for a reason, and he wouldn't stop bleeding until she had taken care of whoever had driven him to suicide.

Which meant he would never stop bleeding, because she still didn't think there would be any hope for anyone like you.

Who was Pearl? Who had he mistaken her for?

"Come on," she said, and had to work to be heard over his sobbing and the buzz of flies. "Come on and sit up, honey. Tell me what happened."

He let her help him up until he was sitting and resting his head against the edge of the tub.

She asked, "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"No." Beneath the blood and tears and snot, he was beautiful. "No, but Pearl, dad took him. Dad chased him out of here, and he said he'd kill him. You've got to go, too. You have to get out of here. Get the rest of your family out of here – out of Silent Hill, or else he'll come for you too. I'm so sorry... Go to Ashfield and get on the train and just go wherever you can. There's money in my bedroom you can have, but don't take too much or else they'll be suspicious–"

"Who?" she asked. "Who did your father take away?"

He looked up at her, blinking rapidly. Tears had beaded on his eyelashes. He had seen her through a film of tears, and maybe that was why he had mistaken her for Pearl, whoever that was.

Startled, he sucked in his breath and pushed away from her, slipped in his own pooled blood, and hit the other side of the bathtub hard.

"What? I'm sorry! I'm so sorry... I'm sorry, I thought you were–"

"It's okay. Fine. Don't worry about it, but let me help you. Tell me what's happened here."

His hands flew to his crotch to hide his penis. "But I'm... Who are you?"

"I'm here to help you, and that's all you need to know."

He stared at her for a moment, then hung his head. "Nobody can help me."

"You'd be surprised. I'm willing to try, at least."

"I thought you were somebody else," he said quietly.

"I know. You thought I was Pearl. Who is that? Who's Pearl?"

"The housekeeper."

Okay. The housekeeper. She could live with that.

He looked up at her suddenly. "You've got to go! You have to get out of here. I know you were just trying to help, so I won't tell anyone you saw me like this, but you have to leave now! If dad catches you here – if he knew you saw me – if he finds another Negro–"

The young man slumped and went silent, remembering something he had managed to forget for just a second, and his strength seemed to crumble.

"Oh God," he moaned. "Oh dear Jesus, Roddy... What is he doing to you now?"

Roddy. He was upset about someone named Roddy. Augusta watched him fall back onto his side in the tub, and begin to weep again.

Augusta reached down to brush her fingers across the young man's forehead, which was hot and wet to the touch. "Honey... let me help you. What's going on? Who is Roddy?"

"You can't help me," he sobbed. "Nobody can help me ever. He's dead by now. Dad's killed him by now, I know."

Whoever Roddy was, Dad had killed him almost eighty years ago. What was this?

"Tell me who Roddy is."

"He's Pearl's son, and he's – he's my... He's my... friend."

If Roddy was Pearl's son, that meant he was black. The young man's father was upset at Roddy. Angry enough to kill him. Why, though?

Friend.

Friend?

"Why doesn't it stop bleeding...? Why won't the blood ever dry? How long am I going to have to wait before I finally die?"

"Sweetheart, don't say that. Why would you want to die?"

He choked back his sobs, and his body convulsed with the effort. He raised himself up on an elbow, looked at her, and said as though he didn't give a damn if she knew, "Because without him, life isn't worth living."

That kind of friend? Would anything like that have happened back then?

Friend indeed.

If so, now she knew, and that also explained why he was naked. Maybe his father had found Roddy and him together on this fine summer day. Maybe he'd come home unexpectedly, when the two of them had thought they had the house to themselves and all the time in the world to enjoy it...

He nodded at her, and slowly lay back down. His breath blew in and out erratically, as it did when a person stopped crying.

"Is it that plain?" His voice had sunk into a monotone that sounded as though hope had died.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know you, so I can't really say."

"I don't care anymore. We were going to leave and go somewhere else. Chicago or St. Louis, or some big place. Maybe Detroit or New York. Maybe Paris, where they accept this kind of thing. Anyplace but here. Someplace where people didn't know us and where people wouldn't care."

In 1920-whatever, such a place didn't exist, probably not even in Paris, she thought, but kept quiet.

"It's over. He's dead and Dad killed him."

Dad was still killing him. Dad had been killing him for the past eighty years, and would go on killing him until the end of time. Augusta couldn't remember any one of the lynchings in Silent Hill occurring because of something like this. Was this one she'd never heard of?

"I know he hasn't," she said, and in a way, she did.

The young man was sinking back down into whatever place the suffering people of Silent Hill dwelled. His eyes had gone glassy, and he had begun to sniffle. Tears would return soon.

"Honey, I'll go help him." She would, and she would die trying. She knew it. This was what Weeping Mary had planned for her, but... This young man didn't deserve what was happening to him, and Roddy, wherever he was, didn't deserve whatever was happening to him there.

"You can't – help him. You can't – help me either, but – thank you for trying. He's – dead and I'm dead – too, but I wish – I knew – why I won't – stop bleeding..." The catch in his breath interrupted every other word, and he struggled to finish.

This was sick. Oh, sweet Jesus Christ, this was so wrong. No one should suffer like this. Augusta stood and looked down into the tub. The young man was crying again now, and the towel knotted around his wrist was turning red and wet. Flies alighted and took flight, alighted and took flight, again and again. Their constant drone was infuriating and they landed, one after another on the young man in the tub, searching for blood to feed on.

She put her hands on the lip of the tub and leaned down, and waited until the young man noticed and looked up at her.

"What's your name?"

"Mi–Michael – Riley. Michael J–J–John Ri–Riley"

Augusta tried to smile. "Well then, Mr. Riley, I'm going to go and do my very best to help your friend. I hope you and Roddy get to see each other again soon."

He shook his head and looked away, then shut his eyes tight and began to bawl.

Augusta turned on her heel and walked away, grabbing her shovel and cord from their spot by the doorway, and the sound of the young man, Michael John Riley, weeping followed her all the way to the stairs.