A.N. A while ago, I've written a Silent Hill 4fic re-telling the game's events faithfully. A few chapters later I re-read what I wrote and found it to be awful. It was filled with unnecessary details and made the story read like novel/walkthrough hybrid. I decided to re-write the fiction while leaving out certain encounters, areas and items that don't add much to the plot. Not only that, but I might give the plot a slight twist and see if I can come up with a better ending than what the game offered. I could tell this is where Konami screwed up most, as most of SH4 are about what happened after the ordeal, as if most players weren't satisfied with the ending(s). Don't get me wrong, I don't think I can outdo what Konami started - I'm simply trying to see if I can take it further.

Granted, I don't the names, characters or places. All I own is the fiction text.

Note: writing is a pleasure, but receiving feedback & reviews is a delight. Please, enjoy and indulge me.

When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake.

In a sense day and night no longer connected like links in a chain - that logic of time being linear no longer appealed to his common sense. He might as well toss logic out of the window if he could crack it open.
But for now, logic and windows didn't matter to the nodding figure sitting in the dimly lit hallway.

Though the tenants of South Ashfield Heights rarely saw much of Henry Townshend, they wouldn't mistake the sleeping being attired in a light slate blue shirt and jeans for a vagabond. Even with the slowly sprouting five 'o clock shadow.

His arms loosened in his sleep from crossing across his chest to falling limp in his lap behind his knees. His head bobbed slightly as his neck muscles followed his body into sleep, then tensed involuntary to tug the head back into position. This time they tightened too hard, and as a result the back of his head met the wooden door he was leaning against.

He slowly blinked at the grey moquette, brushing dark strands away from his eyes, and raised his gaze expecting to see the radio sitting on a bookcase in the living room, just a few meters away from him. Instead he was faced with a wall decorated with three rows of carmine handprints.

They held his eyes; until his mind worked that this wasn't the inside of his apartment, which was especially committed to memory during the last few days.

Indeed, he saw, as he found Room 303's door to his left and Room 301's door to his right that he was for once on the other side of Room 302's door. Sitting, eyes wide in mild surprise and disbelief and hands planted to the floor by his sides; sitting where he had longed to be.

But this was too easy - not more than an hour ago he was leaning against a chained door upon which he had unleashed an outburst of despair once it proved to immune to screwdrivers and hammers.

And then there were the handprints...

Henry stood to the curious graffiti on the wall. The building wasn't one of the most high-class in town, but never would the mild mannered superintendent tolerate such blatant vandalism. He certainly didn't wish to touch the eerie marks. Surely they belonged to a large hand.

A hand, perhaps, like one materializing stealthily from the door behind his back, cuffed with a dark coat sleeve. Henry barely turned his head to see the snaking arm in a wild blur, before it landed on his shoulder like a tarantula. His eyes skimmed along the lengthy black arm to its source. The door was sprouting several tiny lumps all over. With what sounded like knuckles cracking, one cluster of lumps flourished into fingers then extended into a hand that struggled to pull itself out of the door. Henry struggled to break from the hand that seized his shoulder. It desperately clung, digging its fingers into his shoulder, but it was one hand against Henry's two.

Finally he managed to pry its fingers, but barely managed to bolt before it reached for his collar, hooking one finger in. By now, several hands shot like homing missiles, each grabbing a shoulder, ankle, and wrist and yanked him back. More tendrils extended to restrain the struggling man, pulling him further back. He shook his head madly in attempt to shake off the hands that were resting on his head, covering his eyes and clamping his mouth. Even his kicks didn't stop the arms from pulling him back towards the door like a animal caught in a heavy net.

The hands melted back into the door, bringing their prey along.

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He jolted, staring wildly with one eye that wasn't hidden beneath his hair. It took a few moments for it to adjust to the light before it registered a mute radio sitting a few yards away. The sweeping end of one chain brushed his shoulder and caused him to shrink back to the side. But it dangled harmlessly from the tangle of chains that bound the door.

He rested his brow, moist with sweat condensation, on his hand, his chest heaving visibly. His half-closed eyes hazily stared into nothing as he came around.

Just another dream, he reassured himself inwardly. The ceiling light bathed his spot in a soft glow, aiding to wash the dread away. Henry was too weak, too weary to let despair take possession now. There will be time to dread, as there have been for the past few days. He tilted his head back, eyes closed, and leaned on the chained door, drinking in the sense of security his prison. At least he was left to breathe.

sigh

The ceiling lights blinked.

He opened his eyes and squinted at the artificial sun of his world.

They blinked again. All the side lamps around the apartment blinked simultaneously. The hallway leading to the bedroom, perpendicular to doorway where Henry sat, transmitted a shuffle of footsteps.

A boy walked into the living room, standing in the area the junctions the living room, the kitchenette, the doorway and the bedroom hallway from which he came. He looked into the living room, half turned so Henry could see the back of the sandy hair and navy sweater with grey horizontal stripes.

"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Henry wanted to ask, but barely managed to utter a dry "..H.. ha...". The boy turned, startled, and stared with his liquid doe eyes.

Henry tried again to speak, but found his throat too parched. The boy only regarded him with timid curiosity, and then turned again to the living room, forgetting Henry's existence.

"Wait," Henry tried to call with an outreaching hand, hindered by the loss of his voice. He stood in an attempt to follow the boy, but suddenly found the doorway path stretching before him for yards and yards - the kitchenette, hallway and living room shrinking in the distance. The door behind him was assaulted with a series of thuds, and he groaned in pain as each bang seemed to hammer in his head. "Mom," a distant child's voice called, followed by a series of louder bangs on the door, "mo-om, let me in!"

The loud knocks grew more urgent, and before the trembling door Henry lay curled protecting his head in vain from the sharp blows that matched each knock.

"Mom! Mom! Let me in!"

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Henry realized he was lying curled to the side in his bed.

His vision blurred as he came to. Three transparent layers of the spinning ceiling fan shifted like cards dealt around. It hurt his eyes and he blinked once and twice, lest his vision will straighten. The three fans gathered into a neat stack of a solitary ceiling fan, stained and hanging from a bloody ceiling with
What the...?
the walls being equally red, rather like the pipes within them imploded and bled rust. Wallpaper bubbled with the building humidity, cracking and rotting, infested with fungus; which is exactly what he hoped the case would be. Otherwise it seemed more apparent a human size organism was present in the room and exploded - a fountain of blood and a rain of organ shards.
Everything seemed equally tainted with shades of crimson. Then again the smell of rust is almost identical to the taste of blood.

He was suddenly aware of his motion - light, floating. Almost beyond his control. A scream sounded in his ears, as if it was emitted from within him. However he knew well his mouth didn't move to utter such a wail.

What's with this room ? It's covered in blood and rust.

Henry looked around, but couldn't locate the speaker. It sounded rather close, low like a hushed whisper, clear as a bell's ring.

This is my room. But what the hell has happened to it? This room - is it really my room?

Regardless of the physical state of the room, the atmosphere was distorted, as if the room he was in had somehow been overlapped by another room, a place almost the same but not quite.

The air is so heavy... My head hurts...

He ran for the door.
The hallway was narrow - he could easily cross to the bathroom door that was in front of him. The white bathroom door greeted him, as well as noise
Static?
emitting from the living room. Three steps and he turned to observe the TV that was the source of the ruckus. The stereo on top of the book shelf participated in the chaotic symphony of white noise.
He would have proceeded to turn them off if something hadn't sprung around the corner of his eyes.
Spring might be the most accurate description, though it's not entirely correct. It was more of a sudden awareness of a presence.
It can happen sometimes that something had been present all along yet to the person not recalling such a presence, it "springs" taking the person by alarm to realize the presence of the object.
Amongst the chaotic stains and peelings of the paint on the wall was a certain pattern. It was like one of those eye tricks he had seen people bring out in photographs: a cloud of rising smoke that looks like a grinning demon. It took keen observation to make out something out of a random pattern.
But this couldn't escape the glimpse naked eye.

Creepy. It looks like a face.

It was a profile of a weeping man, glaring and distinct, engraved into the wall. More accurately it seemed as if the man was trying to escape from within the walls and his face left a scar of despair on the walls that contained him.
There's a hypnotizing pull, a mesmerizing effect to these horrid images that forces one to stare longer than one would wish. But the spell broke.

A stirring at the door?
No, it was only his hypersensitivity that lead him to believe so. Yet he was grateful his attention was brought to the door.
The chains, the locks - they had disappeared. Verily they left their marks on the door. But now there were gone.
He started for the door.

The TV and Radio went silent.
The sudden silence stopped him in his tracks and for a moment he thought his he heard his pulse in his ears.
Or not. Rather he heard something else. But he needn't strain his hearing if he was to turn around towards
the weeping man
the wall.
The face was gone and in its place on the wall were two black stains.
Whatever liquid it was, any drop of stain normally would land on the surface and spread, proceeding to scale itself to a larger circle. But this was different.
It was as if these stains spread ample veins along the wall.
More and more black stains furiously bubbled from beneath the layer of wallpaper.
Such an abomination granted an opening for an arm to extend. Then came the head of a specter covered in strings of slime, like a man climbing out of a tar pit.
Finally the specter, in the form of an aged bald man, was able to pull itself free from the wall and proceeded to float.
Forthwith it dropped on its hands and knees, falling into a series of convulsions, letting out a series of grotesque moans.

Henry's vision began to fail. As hard as he tried to shake his head and blink, a dark rim infested his field of vision and swallowed his sight.

All was black.
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