Frank had not been seen since that terrible night in South Ashfield Heights. No trace of him had turned up. Some said that he'd been killed by Sullivan's ghost. Some said that he'd fled town to avoid being sued for allowing people to live in a building he knew to be severely in need of exorcism. Still others said that he'd killed himself, finally breaking after the loss of his son and daughter-in-law several years before, and this final blow. And a few said that, with nothing left in this world but his memories, he'd gone mad and run to Silent Hill to try to find them.

Given what she'd seen that night, his presence with Orosco on their doorstep didn't necessarily exclude the suicide theory…

Her hand pulled open the drawer in the doorside table and grabbed the gun that Henry kept there "just in case", and she opened the door a crack.

"Miss Galvin, may we come in?" Orosco was shivering. His thick black hair was plastered to his head.

She looked from one to the other. They didn't seem to be ghosts. Sunderland looked gaunt and tired, but very much alive.

"As long as you're not going to kill me."

Orosco smiled. "Scout's honor."

She opened the door, and admitted the two men. Her mind whirled as she took their wet coats, shook them off outside the door, and hung them up. Why were they here? Where had Orosco found Sunderland? And what was the emergency that brought them here so late?

"How did you find us?" she asked.

"A few calls to the local rental agencies. Nothing unusual."

"Weird. The reporters could have done the same thing, I guess, but they never showed up."

Orosco nodded. "We told them to leave you two alone. For once, they actually did what we asked them to." He snorted. "Even they have their boundaries."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

She showed them into the front room.

"Is Henry in?" Orosco asked. "This concerns him too."

"I thought it might," Eileen said. "Hang on, I'll get him." She motioned toward the kitchen. "Help yourselves. No dead cats in the fridge, I promise." Orosco gave a wry smile, but Sunderland just looked confused.

The door to the darkroom was closed. Eileen knocked.

No response.

"Henry…"

Still no response.

"Henry. Open up."

She heard a small crash, like something being knocked over, and then after a few moments the door opened. In the deep red light, Henry's face was strained. Usually there were prints hanging up to dry, trays of chemicals…but this time, it looked as though he hadn't been working at all.

"What is it?"

"We have company."

Henry just nodded and stepped through the door, and she followed him out.

The look on his face when he saw who was there was priceless. Orosco sat on the couch, elbows on knees, perusing one of Henry's car magazines, while Sunderland sat in Eileen's chair, sipping a diet soda and watching TV.

Orosco stood. "Henry," he said, extending his hand. Henry shook it mutely, jaw hanging open. "Good to see you again. Too bad it has to be under such circumstances."

Henry closed his mouth. "Yes…good to see you, too." He looked over at Sunderland. "Um…not to be rude, but what brings you here?"

Orosco sighed. "It's a long story."

"Yeah, I thought so."

Eileen sat on the couch next to Orosco, while Henry fetched the chair from the darkroom and placed it next to her. He picked up the remote and turned off the TV. Sunderland turned back toward the group, dazed.

"First thing is, I want both of you to know that I wouldn't be here unless it was absolutely essential," Orosco said. "I know that you two have probably been trying to forget all of that, and that my presence reminds you of it. I debated for hours about coming to you, but in the end I had no other choice."

He took a deep breath.

"I'm here because of Frank," he said, nodding toward Sunderland, who was staring at the pictures on the walls. "Ever since I talked to you two, I've been trying to find him to find out what he knew about all of this. I followed all the leads, investigated all the rumors…and earlier today, I found him. Sometime that night, he had gone to Silent Hill."

"Why?" Eileen asked, although she thought she knew the answer.

"Looking for his son," Orosco said. "He's been there all this time, wandering in the fog, trying to find him or his daughter-in-law."

"They're there somewhere," Sunderland said, leaning forward. His eyes were a little wild, but he sounded rational. "I know it. See, Jim's car is still there, and he never goes anywhere without his car. It's a piece of junk, but he loves it. And he never goes anywhere without Mary. They're there somewhere, and I know they're alive."

Henry leaned forward toward Frank. "Mr. Sunderland…" he said gently.

"Frank. Call me Frank. After all that I've put you through…"

"You didn't do that, Frank," Eileen said. "That was Walter Sullivan's fault, not yours."

Frank flinched at Sullivan's name. "I should have known. I should have known that something bad was going to happen to you, Henry. There was too much bad history in that apartment."

"You mean, Walter's birth, his parents abandoning him, the weird noises twenty-four years later, Joseph Schreiber's disappearance…yeah, I'd say that that was a lot of bad history," Henry said.

Frank put his head in his hands.

"John has filled me in on what happened to you two. Because of that man and that damn room. I don't know what I can say. 'I'm sorry' isn't enough…nothing could ever be enough."

"It's over," Henry said. "He's dead. We know what happened now. It was unavoidable."

Franks shook his head. "No. Maybe if you'd known...there's more," he said.

Eileen and Henry both stared at him.

"More?" Eileen asked.

Frank nodded. "I didn't tell you, Henry, because I thought you wouldn't rent the apartment. It was a terrible reason, and I was very weak…I'm sorry…" He took a deep breath. "But there's one other thing which I've never told anyone about until today. Not all of it.

"You know about my son and daughter-in-law. They disappeared several years back, before either of you moved in. That's all I've ever told people. That's all they needed to know. But there's a lot more to it than just that…

"A while before Walter Sullivan killed those ten people, my daughter-in-law became very sick. Very, very sick. It all happened so quickly…one day, she was healthy and happy, and the next, she was in the hospital, sicker than I'd ever seen anyone. I've never heard of anything like it. The doctors couldn't tell us what was going on, nobody told us anything, and Mary just got worse and worse.

"After a while Jim's medical insurance wouldn't pay for her any more. He had to sell their house. They had no money, so I let them live in 302. Just for a little while, we told ourselves, until she gets better and they're back on their feet again. She was in the hospital, so it was just Jim in there, but I helped them move their things in so he could set the place up for when she came home.

"But she didn't get better. Months passed. Jim went to doctor after doctor, and none of them could give him any hope. She was dying…Jim visited her every now and then. I got on his back about it. Told him he had to go see her more. But I think he couldn't bear to see her like that. She got angry, yelled at him, cried, begged him to stay, and he couldn't take it. He wanted to see her, but it was so hard on him…

"Finally, the doctors let her come home. Nobody said anything, but we all knew that this was the last time, that she was coming home for good. I still remember Jim carrying her to the bedroom. I can hear her… 'James', she said (I'm the only one who calls him Jim…even his mother called him James), 'James, now that I'm here, we can be together always.' It…" He put his head in his hands.

Eileen crouched next to Frank and put her hand on his shoulder. "Frank, I'm so sorry," she said.

Frank lifted his head after a moment and smiled weakly at her. "Eileen, I've known you and your folks since you were a little girl. You've always had the kindest heart of anybody I've known. James thought the world of you."

She smiled. "I remember him so well, when I was growing up. He and Mary seemed so happy together. I couldn't believe it when you told me he'd disappeared…I didn't know what to say…"

Frank nodded, then continued.

"Mary stayed with Jim in 302 for a few weeks. Her bad moods were almost gone, and she even was able to muster up a smile for her old father-in-law when I came by. But Jim…I've never seen a man as haunted as he was then. It was as if the thing that was eating Mary was eating him too. Around her, he was all smiles, and he treated her like a princess, but outside that bedroom, he was a shadow of my boy. He didn't do anything except go to work and sleep on the couch. He barely ate. Toward the end, he was about to lose his job…his boss had been very patient, but finally enough was enough, which Jim understood.

"Then, one day, I came by and they were both gone. Their things were still there, as if they had just gone out for a little bit. Jim left a note, saying that he had promised to take Mary back to Silent Hill one more time, and so he had.

"That was all. I never saw either one of them again. Nobody has. A few weeks later, those weird noises started coming out of 302. You know the rest."

Frank wiped his eye.

"They're still there. I know it. I've heard that things happen there when the fog rolls in…people get lost and never find their way out. I was hoping…hoping for what, I don't know. It's crazy. But it's all I've got now." He looked at Henry with a stricken face. "Henry, I'm sorry. I should have told you. But you..." He looked away. "You remind me of him sometimes..."

The room was silent. Eileen was aghast. She hadn't realized how much tragedy this man had suffered until now…he'd saved an abandoned baby from certain death, his son and daughter-in-law had disappeared in mysterious circumstances, his apartment building had been turned into a charnel house by a madman, and now he'd lost what little he'd had left and was reduced to trying to live in his past.

She looked at Orosco. Even he hadn't heard the whole story until now, judging by the expression on his face.

Henry seemed thoughtful, as he often did when reflecting on their night in hell.

"I lived there for two years before anything happened," he said, neutrally, shattering the silence. "Those were two good years. You know, when I first saw the place, I felt drawn to it, as if it was my destiny to live there. Unfortunately, I was right."

He leaned across the coffee table toward Frank. "It wasn't your fault that those things happened to Eileen and to me. Sooner or later, Walter would have brought me to the building to do what he needed to do. I would have ended up in 302, and things would have happened as they did. You couldn't have stopped that. You had no way of knowing what had happened."

"I should have figured out that something was wrong. There was too much going on. But I never did. After Joseph disappeared, I should have noticed the remodeling. He walled off the whole back of the apartment..."

"Now that I think about it, Henry, I don't remember seeing that ugly wallpaper in your apartment that everyone else had," Eileen said. "Sorry, Frank, but it was pretty awful."

"Joseph must have realized that he couldn't put it back up to conceal his work," Orosco added. "He must have removed all of it."

"A definite improvement," Henry replied. They smiled. Orosco grinned, too, and even Frank managed a small smile.

Henry turned to Orosco.

"I don't want to ask…but how does this involve us?"

Orosco's grin evaporated.

"Frank and I are going back to Silent Hill. We need your help."