Prologue

'And as the guilty burn, they call out for their kindred, dragging them into the abyss.'

The Crimson Tome

The public toilet was in such a dilapidated state that Keith doubted the water running from the tap itself could possibly be clean. Yet he washed his face with it anyway, not wanting his fatigue to get the better of him. He peered into the cracked mirror and saw himself, as he hadn't seen himself for a long time. The dark circles under his eyes were testament to how many sleepless nights he had had ever since they had gotten on the road. Claire had offered him sleeping pills which he had politely declined- deciding that the less sleep he got the better. His short dark brown hair was ruffled and unkempt, though he decided not to do anything about it yet. Not until they would get to the hotel and get cleaned up properly with, hopefully, proper food for once. He wasn't really the kind who was picky when it came to food, but after three days straight on the road with nothing but diner food and bad coffee, he felt as if he could kill for a decent meal.

Either way, he had something else that he needed to do first. Taking a deep breath as though bracing himself, he stepped outside into the parking lot, where the lone black car waited for him with the engine still running. He walked up to the front passenger's window and tapped it softly, just loud enough for Claire to hear him. Upon noticing him, she opened the windows and turned down the volume on the radio before looking up at him questioningly.

"Where's Leo?" she asked impatiently. "The sooner we get into town the better. I'm dying for a hot bath."

Keith shrugged. "He's still in there."

And just as he uttered those words, a young man with long dirty blonde hair in a black leather jacket came out of the toilet with a look of severe frustration on his face. He walked up to the car and immediately went up towards the driver's side, opening the door before turning to look at Keith with an impatient look on his face.

"No fucking toilet paper," he said simply. "Hurry up and get in the car, man. The town's just across the bridge. We'll drop our stuff in a room and we'll settle your stuff after we've gotten food and a shower, okay?"

Keith shook his head in response. He glanced over his shoulder to look at the stairs from the parking lot leading down towards a fog-covered forest. Beside the stairs was a signboard which was too faded to read, but Keith remembered it all the same. "The cemetery isn't too far off from here. And from there I can just walk up to town. I'll meet you guys there later, okay?"

Leo looked at Keith curiously, his eyes narrowing. "Are you sure?" he asked.

Keith nodded simply, "Yeah. Keep your cell phone on so I can call you when I get to town. Don't wait up for me if I run late."

From inside the car, Claire leaned out slightly before she looked up at Keith and said, "Don't come in too late, okay? You want me to come with you? Leo and Sean can find their way around town easy enough with the map."

To this, Keith just shook his head. As much as the thought of the chance of being alone with her excited him, Keith had decided before they had left home, that this was something he needed to do alone. Although the idea of stopping in Silent Hill just so he could visit his mother's grave wasn't what the gang immediately had in mind when the road trip was planned two months before graduation, they had decided that sparing a day or two couldn't possibly hurt all that much.

Claire gave him that look that she always gave him during moments like these, moments when he wanted to be alone. There was that encouraging smile, and the way her eyes looked directly into his never failed to make him smile back. Then she leaned back into the car as Leo set himself into the driver's seat, Sean still snoring like a baby in the back.

"See you later," Leo said to him before the car drove off. Keith watched on for a while, and then turned away when it disappeared like a ghost into the fog.

Alone now.

As much as he preferred being alone most of the time back at school, suddenly he felt like it wasn't such a good idea after all. He couldn't exactly figure out why, but as he descended the stairs to the dirt path that led through the forest below, he couldn't help but feel like he was being watched. Of course, it was just his imagination. With the fog growing thicker and thicker, it was hard not to imagine hundreds upon hundreds of hungry eyes watching, waiting hungrily.

Nothing there. There was nothing there.

The whispers he heard were at the back of his mind. The sounds of footsteps trailing behind him were his own. The chill he felt running through his entire body was just the cold air. The sense of nausea was leftover from his motion sickness back while inside the car.

Nothing was wrong.

Most importantly, he wasn't lost. Five years hadn't left that big a scar on his memories, and he could remember the way well enough. The dirt path led in only one direction anyway- it was impossible to get lost, even with all the fog. All he had to do was keep his eyes on the path as he walked.

'Lost.'

He began humming a tune under his breath. He didn't exactly remember what song it was, it was just something he had picked up from one of those CDs Leo had been playing in the car. Some British band which he'd never paid attention to. Keith wasn't much of a music enthusiast to begin with, and truth be told he never got along that well when it came to-

'Lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost, lost!'

He hummed loudly, his steps growing steadily faster. As he walked his kept both hands in his pockets, his left hand gripping it tightly, like he always did whenever he got nervous.

'Hide and seek?'

And he stopped. Straight ahead was the iron gate leading into the cemetery, just by the well. It was covered with ivy now, like no one had opened it for years. It wouldn't have surprised him if it was the truth, though. He hardly saw the practicality of a road from the parking lot outside town leading towards a cemetery which further onwards led to the town itself.

Stepping into the cemetery felt strangely like coming home more than he would have liked to admit. The tombstones that greeted him as he closed the gate behind him weren't ones that he would know by heart, really. He had only been here just once, and he hadn't had the chance to come here again since then. His uncle would always find some excuse to tell him that going to Silent Hill was a waste of time. Keith didn't blame him, though. As heavenly as Silent Hill was to the naked eye, it had its share of unsettling stories as well. Not that everyone listened to them. There were those who loved it enough to call it 'heaven', just as much as there were those who left Silent Hill never to come back.

And of course, there were those who came to Silent Hill and disappeared altogether.

'Hide and seek! Hide and seek!'

Keith felt the hair at the back of his neck stand on end. It was when he saw his mother's tombstone that he saw, finally, where the voice was coming from.

He would have dismissed it as another figment of his imagination if it hadn't looked so real. From the green t-shirt down to the blue jeans that the speaker war, right up to the short brown hair that was combed neatly to the back of his head, their eyes met, and Keith realized that he was looking at someone he knew all too well.

The speaker had his voice, his clothes, his eyes, everything to the last detail except that his hair wasn't tousled and he was smiling, the kind of smile that Keith could never pull. The kind which a spider would give to a fly caught in its web- the insane smile of a predator.

'My turn to hide, brother,'

And then he started laughing.

As he laughed, he turned around and ran, disappearing into the fog with his laughter echoing behind him.

"Kyle," Keith murmured under his breath. His eyes fell upon his mother's tombstone for a while, then, he looked up and started running, following the sound of laughter wherever it would lead him.