Ok, I'll admit it. This chapter is for Saddened Soul. The rest should be pretty self-explanatory. The only other point I want to make is that some descriptions are thinly veiled attempts to describe the creatures from Silent Hill 2 (especially towards the end.) While I didn't want to put them in the story as creatures, who's to say what Richard finds?
"I can't take you to the Keeper!" The Janitor gasped. "You don't know how powerful he is! If he kills you I won't be able to escape!"
Richard sighed. "What's your name?" He'd tried to read it from the man's uniform earlier, but the lack of light and intense grime on the man's clothing had stopped him.
"That's not like you William." The man said frowning. "It's me, Charles! How could you have forgotten like that?"
"For the last time, I'm not William!" Richard said much too loudly for the situation he was in. In response, the radio flared slightly and the static began to grow steadily.
The Janitor looked at Richard with surprise as a steady stream of expletives came from his mouth. "That's not like you either William!" He breathed finally.
"We need to move." Richard whispered as he pointed the Beretta behind him. "We need to move NOW!" There was not the slightest chance that he wanted to have a pitched battle with more than one of those creatures in his lifetime, and from the sound of the radio there were several moving towards him.
"I think you've got a busted walkie-talkie William." The Janitor said, brushing his uniform off. "Either that or a bad channel…urgh!"
Richard had heard enough. With a sudden burst of speed, he grabbed the Janitor's hand and jerked the old man around. Together they ran down the hallway, Richard leading and the Janitor stumbling after him.
"What are you doing William?" He asked several times. "Stop running! Old Charles's bones won't take this abuse! Why won't you slow down?"
With him nearly dragging Charles behind and having to try nearly every door to see if it was unlocked, the creatures caught up with them before Richard found an unlocked door. A scream of rage was all the warning they had before three of the creatures ripped through the darkness, fingers extended to rip both men to shreds.
"Get this door open!" Richard screamed before opening fire, the penlight being eclipsed by the bursts of fire from the barrel. Shots ripped the school apart, missed bullets sending shards of metal and splinters of wood flying through the air. Two of the Jersey Devils fell back screaming in pain as the flying shrapnel ripped through them, the other surged forward and jumped over Richard, its target being the Janitor.
The ragged claws found their target only an instant before Richard was able to put a bullet into the creature. Ten bloody slashes appeared on the Janitor's face and throat before the Jersey Devil's chest exploded in gunfire.
With no time to see how badly the Janitor was hurt, Richard turned his attention back to the other two creatures to see them running back down the hall. Three more shots from his pistol brought one down, but the other managed to escape.
Ejecting the nearly empty clip from his weapon, Richard slammed in a fresh one and only then did he turn and see how his "friend" was.
The Janitor had taken a claw to the face, and one across the throat. While he would survive the one that had cut his face, the other one had shredded his throat and left a small gurgling noise in his throat.
With the Janitor dead, Richard had no idea what he had meant by calling him William. He could only imagine that he'd been in a different delusional world than anyone else around him. The man had barely registered the gunshots nor had he had anything to say about the bloody water and destruction around him.
Still, Richard hadn't been able to avoid liking the man in the few minutes he'd known him, and he had certainly deserved more than the painful death he'd received. It was a shame, but one that Richard couldn't have avoided.
Trying to avoid looking at the man's now ruined face, Richard searched his pockets trying to find keys. Most of the doors he'd tried on his desperate run had been locked or jammed. Hopefully the Janitor would have some keys on him that would take care of that.
His search paid off, and in the man's lower left hip pocket was a bulging key-ring. On a whim, Richard flipped through the dozens of keys and found one in particular that interested him.
"Weapons locker?" He asked aloud. "What does a school need with a weapons locker?"
The dead man gave no answer, something that Richard was eternally thankful for, and so Richard had no choice but to stand and return up the hallway. He'd seen a few posters that he thought might help him on his run down that direction, but now would have more than a fleeting glimpse to investigate them.
He struck the jackpot halfway back up the hallway from where he'd begun his run. A grungy map of the school was plastered on the wall for guests, along with several locations marked. A yellowed star marked Richard's present location, and while he couldn't see a weapons locker he did find several places he wanted to go.
The first on his list also happened to be the closest. Down in the basement he saw the plans for a boiler room. He hoped that if he went down there he could manage to turn on the electricity. While he was nervous about finding any more Jersey Devils or even the Keeper, he knew he'd stand more of a chance with more than just a failing penlight that now needed batteries in the worst way.
Walking back to the third door on his right, Richard checked several keys until he found one that said First Floor Stairwell. It fit easily into the door lock and clicked gently. With a fast motion Richard opened the door and swept the pistol across the room. The dimming light revealed nothing besides twin staircases, one leading up and the other leading down.
Going to the second floor was out of the question, something had cleaved through the concrete stairs, collapsing them after the sixth and leaving them broken until what Richard thought was the fifteenth. It was too far for him to jump, and also wouldn't help him get the lights back on. As quickly as he'd cleared the room, Richard moved down the staircase sweeping the light in front of him with every step.
From above him, Richard heard a faint skittering noise. Jerking the pistol overhead, he saw nothing that interested him at the moment. He did notice that even the ceiling had been gouged to splinters by the Jersey Devils. Several locker doors had been jammed through it also, showing their remarkable strength.
'It could have just been a spider.' He tried to tell himself. 'But I really don't want to meet the spider that puts out that much noise.'
Knowing that he was wide open in the stairwell, he continued moving down the stairs to the boiler room. Along the way he saw only the same decay and destruction that he was becoming numb to. The thought that it was beginning to leave him unaffected both thrilled and terrified him.
As he made the final stair, he heard a loud scraping sound coming from behind the door to the boiler room. He quietly moved to the door and peered through a gap in the planked boards. Any previous thought he'd had of becoming adapted to Silent Hill quickly faded into horror.
A creature that could only be the Keeper stood beyond the door. It stood immensely tall, what Richard could only guess as seven to eight feet tall. The scraping noise he had heard before came from the gigantic cleaver it held in both hands, it was so large that the tip drug on the floor, casting sparks out as the creature moved.
Bodies lay strewn in various stages of death around the room, several impaled on meat hooks on the wall. Many still twitched from their brutal murder from the insanely large cleaver. Yet the creature in the middle of the room ignored the carnage, instead using the blade to quarter the bodies and throw them into a large furnace in the middle of the room. With each swing of the large weapon blood spurted around the room, drenching his already dripping clothing. Only a few spots showed their original dingy white color.
Still the most surprising part of the creature was a large steel pyramid that covered its head, nearly half as tall as the creature itself. Richard had no explanation of what kept the pyramid from crushing the creature's shoulders into powder, but again his memory sparked briefly at the sight of the creature…one that he now knew the name of. They were the servants of Sammael himself, and known as Pyramid Heads.
The Pyramid Head was the Keeper and somewhere in that room was Sarah. Richard knew that he would have to enter the boiler room, would have to fight the creature amid the bodies, and would have to defeat it…somehow.
He knew the insane power of the creature, had watched it cleave lengthways down a body with its massive blade. Pyramid Head was supernaturally strong, holding the weapon with only one hand. Even though Pyramid Head used two to swing it, the cleaver would be almost impossible for Richard to use even if he happened to have four arms.
With a deep breath, Richard turned off his penlight. It would serve no purpose in the furnace room. He also took off his leather jacket, placing it on the floor next to him. While it would get dirty it had already proved that it wouldn't stop the Jersey Devil's claws and the chances of it stopping the cleaver seemed immensely slim.
He moved behind the wall and crouched down, checking how much ammo he had ready. Two clips, including the one in his pistol, were full and the third was almost empty. Pulling a box of ammo out of the jacket lying on the floor, Richard quickly began to reload the third clip. He'd nearly finished when his shaking hands dropped a bullet, sending it to hit the concrete floor with a metallic PING.
A quick glance assured him that the Keeper was still doing its job with the bodies. It had set the cleaver down and was now throwing two sets of legs into the furnace the damage to the bodies causing them to jerk a twitch grotesquely.
Richard had turned his head and put the last three bullets in the clip when he heard the sparks from the cleaver again. The creature was moving again, though the sound wasn't coming any closer. Reaching for the bullet that had fallen from his hand, Richard suddenly heard the cleaver leave the ground.
Diving forward, he felt the air rush just over his legs as the cleaver smashed through the wall, slashing lengthways the entire distance. Had Richard still been crouching the attack would have cut him in half.
Rolling over, he saw the cleaver slash through the wall twice more, collapsing a ten foot section of the brick. There, backlit by the furnace was a creature that looked invincible.
"My turn!" Richard shouted through clenched teeth, ignoring the burning pain that shot through his shoulder. He raised the pistol and opened fire, sending bullets spiraling into Pyramid Head. Each bullet struck flesh, sending the creature jerking backwards in a macabre dance.
After countless booms in the darkness, Richard squeezed the trigger to a dry click. In a flash he dropped the steaming empty to the floor and slammed in a fresh one. The room again became deafening as bullets again slammed into the still standing Keeper.
With the last shot from that clip, Pyramid Head teetered and collapsed to the floor. Putting his final clip into the weapon, Richard walked into the furnace room through the hole in the wall. Pyramid Head lay on the ground several feet in front of him, cleaver beside him.
On the chance that thirty bullets hadn't killed the Keeper, Richard reached down and drug the weapon away from his side. He had been wrong on the weight, and while it still was heavy beyond imagining, he was able to move it.
He was still moving it when the Keeper stirred on the ground. As the gargantuan stood, Richard saw that no blood leaked from the bullet wounds on its body instead they showed smoking black holes in the bloody smock it wore.
As the creature gained its feet, it reached back behind it and pulled a jagged metal spear from behind the furnace. The weapon was nearly as tall as the Keeper was, and also stained with blood, rust, and decay.
With a roar, the Keeper charged Richard. He had no chance of avoiding the weapon, taken completely off guard as he was by the speed of the creature without the heavy cleaver.
Richard felt a punch in his gut, and looked down to see the spear jammed through the left side of his stomach, pinning him to the wall. With adrenaline pumping through his veins, he screamed and brought the cleaver up. With all the strength he had left in his body he swing it across, catching Pyramid Head in the swing.
He watched as the Keeper stumbled backwards and fell apart, arms dropping off its body and its torso sliding off from its legs. The metal pyramid on its head smashed into the floor with a metal clang, splitting the boards and allowing the upper body to fall through to a lower basement. Several bodies tumbled after the creature, one even rolling to the furnace and catching fire.
Pain finally began to flare out from Richard's body, the spear pinning him to the wall finally registering in his brain. Blood ran down his left leg, pooling on the floor.
From his right side the radio flared again just as a Jersey Devil crept into the room. At some point Richard had dropped the pistol and he couldn't find the strength to raise the huge cleaver again. As the creature drew closer his vision began to blur and he waited for the painful end.
The final thing he saw was the creature jerk from a blow behind it. Just as blackness overtook him he heard a very familiar voice say something.
"Let's get you to the hospital 'Richard'." Walter Sullivan hissed. "I think the nurses will be interested in you."
Then the world went black.