Chapter 2: Macabre Dreams

The mountain air was cold, her breath materializing in the air in front of her. Julia had ditched the city clothes, opting for a dark blue pair of thick pants with a matching sweater. The large bag she carried contained a small tent, sealed foods and other things she thought she might need on an extended stay. People she dared ask about the town said it had been abandoned for the most part, but it seemed that people were always going there, either to see if it was really haunted or on dares and childish pranks. The more she learned about the town the more the feeling grew cold in her stomach that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe if she had passed off the strange clipping as some kind of mistake or coincidence, she would be getting up to go work right now. Making small talk with the office bitches just to avoid their politics, glad handing the boss, doing her job and getting out to relax with real friends and maybe a drink or two. Would that have been so bad? To just ignore the hinted at promise of the truth, live the life she had made for herself without anyone's help.

But there was no denying what she felt the moment she saw Jon in that picture. Or was his name Alex? Alex Stormson. Julia Stormson. Her parents, possibly, Jason and Emily. She kept the clipping in her back pocket, so small yet with such a devastating impact. It was her brother in that picture, her only link to the past. Everything she had imagined herself to be was a lie. She wasn't an orphan stranded by a cruel brother, she was an orphan whose family had been taken from her by some sadistic bastard and put somewhere safe by a traumatized youngster who had seen what no one should ever have to see. Somewhere in this desolate, remote place were her long overdue answers or at least a clue to them. It would be worth cleaning up the mess she had left on her way out of the city, just a few important phone calls to the only important people in her life. They would try to stop her, try to go with her perhaps. Walking down the winding mountain road in the fog, she would have preferred some company but it had to be this way.

The breeze was barely noticeable, meandering up the mountain at her. It was fairly cold, but she was warm in her clothes and the exertion from walking kept her body heat up. She was coming close to the town now, able to make out the taller buildings from the fog. Creepy, but she pressed on. When she finally came down into the streets of Silent Hill proper, that gut feeling grew worse. It was as if something had just come through and removed all of the people from what they were doing. Cars were left in the middle of the street, doors closed. One or two were smashed into a telephone pole or building, still no open doors to indicate maybe someone had gotten out. Everything was faded and dusty, the businesses and buildings without a single light on. The town lived up to its namesake, there were no birds chirping, no people moving, no wind rustling. It was perfectly quiet, oppressively quiet. Julia actually stopped for a moment dead in her tracks, considering turning back. Something clanked on a metal garbage can from around the corner, not too far away. She put the thoughts out of her head and went to investigate the sound, at least the fog seemed to not be as bad down here.

When she turned the corner, she could find no trash can or any sign there had been one. It was just another empty street with empty buildings running down it. Funny though, it sounded exactly like a trash can.

"Could use a few hours sleep." she said aloud, weaving a hand through her dark hair. There was a large building a few blocks over that was either a hotel or an apartment building from all the rooms and the style of the design. If nothing else, she could make that her base camp to go trying to find someone that could give her some information. The sound of her footsteps clipping across the worn street was the only sound around, despite herself Julia walked a little faster.

The building in question was an apartment building, not a shabby one by all means. If it could just get a little sun and maybe a few plants out front, it would be a nice place to live. Hell, this town would be a nice place to live if it wasn't rumored to be haunted and the fog cleared out from it a little bit. She had grown so accustomed to city life that she'd forgotten the simple pleasure of being out in nature, surrounded by trees and water instead of concrete and glass. Once she was done here, maybe she would come back to visit, to get away from it all.

Or maybe somewhere else that has people in it, she mused. There were stone steps leading to a row of mailboxes and the entrance. The wooden double doors into the apartments had a long piece of colored glass in the middle, one of them askew, inviting her inside. She stepped briskly past the door, hinges creaking as she moved them. A blue-gray carpet covered the floors, the gray enhanced by the dust. Ahead of her were a set of stairs with a white guard rail, the painting slightly cracked with age. Next to the stairs was a hall with rooms going down and turned, on her immediate left an open door with a small sign marked "OFFICE" and underneath "RENT DROP OFF - NO CASH". The office was cramped and stuffy, the one window in the corner had light leaking out from the sides of heavy curtains. Why someone would pull the curtains in such a small room she couldn't guess, but pulling them apart let the feeble glow from outside in. There wasn't much in the office, a desk with table light and green chair, some papers on it that looked like lease contracts. A filing cabinet with unmarked drawers and a small waste basket rounded out the rest of the office. Julia set her pack down and clicked the small lamp on, moving around to sit at the desk. The papers on it were indeed a rental contract, signed at the bottom. Strange, someone had put the day, 1/16, but not the year. She flipped through the pages in case whoever had signed them had slipped up somewhere, but next to every signature was the same 1/16. Why would someone do that with something that important? Courts were very picky about the legal aspects of those little details in case someone had to be evicted, she knew well. Maybe that's why the manager was looking at it, there was something wrong with this and he'd spotted it. One of the pages told her that it would be room 312 this person was staying at. She checked the desk drawers and found a set of keys, none of them with any identifying tag. There was only ten or so, it was better then having to find something to break down a door with. It would be easier to just find a room on the first floor, but she was curious about who rented 312. The signature was completely worthless as far as showing a name went, like a doctor's.

Leaving her pack behind, Julia creaked up the stairwell. Thankfully windows had been installed at each end of the hallways, allowing enough illumination to see well but not completely dispersing the shadows. It wasn't as dusty as she thought it would be, just a thin enough layer to be gross. She had an uneasy feeling about this, as if she was doing something she shouldn't be. Why not? There was no one around to argue. Technically it was trespassing, but who was going to arrest her when it was obvious no one was there to press charges or even make the arrest.

312 was right by the staircase as she came up to the third floor, down a little ways. She heard a faint sigh from the building ahead of her, like someone had shifted their weight off a certain spot. It might have been the building, it was certainly old enough to make noise by itself. Regardless, she called out "Hello?" Only silence answered her back, Julia shrugged it off and tried the handle to the room. It was locked, as she suspecting it would be and she set about trying all of the keys on the ring. Four attempts and the metal slid perfectly into the lock. With a smug grin, she clanked the lock open and pushed open the door.

Nothing could prepare her for the sight that greeted her eyes. The room was small, sparsely decorated with furniture. Light was coming in from large windows in the living room that had a good view of the surrounding buildings, but that wasn't what got her attention. The room was absolutely spattered with blood, covering the lone couch, tables, carpeting and even the ceiling. There were bodies lying pools of blood that had seeped into the floor, six or seven of them strewn about the apartment. They seemed to have been rent by claws or a large teeth, limbs broken off at the joint and scattered around. Worse, they didn't seem to be human bodies at all. Some were missing parts like heads, but instead of a severed portion at the neck it was flat and undamaged, as if the creature never had a head to begin with. Julia was paralyzed with fear, staring at the ghastly scene in front of her. The memory of the noise she had shrugged off moments ago hit her like a brick and she bolted into action, jumping down the stairs, not even bothering to close the awful door. She ran from the stairs straight of the building, only remembering then that her pack was still in the office. The images of what was above her and the terror she felt overrode the rational part that told her she might need the supplies, so she ran on. The buildings loomed around her menacingly, the fog containing hordes of those deformed creatures that she couldn't see. Julia didn't stop running until she was going up the mountain road again, her lungs and legs burning in pain. She looked over her shoulder to make sure nothing was following her and kept going, at a slow jog. Her breaths were ragged and heavy, but she was quickly out of sight of that horrible place.

She turned the corner to see a welcome sight, her car still parked where she left it. There was no way she could get it all the way back to Brahams, but at least it hadn't been messed around with. She was sweating but still felt cold, sitting down in the driver's seat to regain her breath. It hadn't occurred to her 'til now that someone else driving down this way might run right into her car. Then again, who was stupid enough to come out here besides her? The old woman's warning came back to her, just like Julia promised she had seen trouble and was getting the hell out of here. Moving on, she kept a good pace back up the hill. Going out for runs at night was one of her exercises back in the city, it was paying off now. She was still planning out how long it would take her to get back to the main road running by the Silent Hill turn off when she stopped in her tracks. No, this was impossible…

The road had been cracked by a gaping maw of a canyon. It was as if something had come through and torn out the earth, chunks of road and rock strewn about the ending of the road or edge of the cliff she realized. Gingerly she stepped out to the ledge and looked over. She couldn't see the other side of the canyon or the bottom, mist shrouding everything. She had seen this in a movie once, she picked up a large piece of road and tossed it over the side, waiting to hear the sound of it hitting the bottom. Moments passed and nothing came back up, which meant the bottom was so far she couldn't even hear the stone hit. It was too crazy to be real, like a bad nightmare she couldn't wake up from. What the hell was going on here? What had she done?

Julia had been alone most of her life, she was tough, smart and uncompromising. Every challenged she faced she overcame with her intellect and her stubborn will, refusing to be defeated. This time, she simply sank to her knees and started crying. Everyone had tried to tell her, warned her and tried to stop her from coming here, but like always she wouldn't take anyone else's control and came anyway. Now she was stuck, defenseless, clueless, hopeless in a town that was only beginning to frighten her with its true nature. She didn't know what to do, where to go and she was scared out of her wits.

She cried.