RECEIVER
The pain stopped going away after his umpteenth time crawling through that repulsive tunnel. He considered it not a part of his growing insanity, but rather a side-effect brought about by submerging himself in that horrid place. He knew very well that every time he returned he brought some more back with him, but it was already there in the first place.
Going back would solve nothing now. He could do nothing more. Instead he sat at his desk and scribbled upon sheets of red paper. He wrote about abstract things and ideas, and all the while he could feel Her eyes peering down at him. His hands bled constantly because of that dreadful pen ripping through his flesh and they were splattered with ink and more scribbles.
His eyesight began to give way, but he could still see in his dreams, a man in a photograph with a bloodied axe and white shirt. He was there when they died, but he was not the murderer. The murderer was never there.
Sometimes he saw her too, the Mother, with that man from the photograph, and sometimes she was mutilated with him somewhere else. Probably back in that photograph.
He lost all sense of time after awhile, but maybe that what's the man had wanted. He made the clock stop working, that bastard.
But he still wrote, even as he lit another candle and had another of those godforsaken visions of the man from the photograph. He heard his name, but all he knew was that he was the last one.
The Final Sign.
…
The walls were too thick. Who made walls this thick? He couldn't warn the Mother about what would happen. Of course! It was that guy who made the walls thick. Sometimes he prayed that the man from the photograph would trap him in a room and make the walls thick. That would show him.
He could hear the people outside clearly enough, though, even if they couldn't hear him. He forgot that he'd promised that one guy that issue… that guy had a lot of those issues, but he was still obsessed with that nurse…
Didn't that one guy skin him? Something about a dead cat, too…
Oh! That guy. The one from 207. The one across from him. He did weird things over there. That guy was with the man from the photograph too, in that odd place where he knew he had stabbed that ghost with that sword in the room with the birthday cake.
The man from the photograph couldn't save him, but that was okay. He would save the Mother… wouldn't he? He was from a photograph; of course he would! He could do anything!
But it served that guy right. He yelled at that kid. But wait! That's no kid! It's the 11121… man…
No one's going to care.
…
Finally, the headaches went away for a few minutes. It was probably because the man from the photograph did something, but he was running out of time. He was number fifteen. The man from the photograph was twenty-one. He still had some time.
He tried to break down that wall, but he made it thick as well. How agitating! Or wait… maybe he did break it… but what was behind it that made him seal it back up? What was so horrible, that his salvation was right there, and it made him turn around and run away? But he was already dead… wasn't he? He had no idea. He no longer knew what was real, and what wasn't. Then again, he intended it for to be like that, right?
…
A woman named Cynthia appeared in some of his visions, but sometimes she was already dead and lying in that subway… She would mumble something about a person named Hen-
That boulder-what was it? The Mother Stone?-was there too, with a stuttering man sitting beside it. He was dead.
…
No matter how many candles he lit and put down, the room's condition still worsened. His medallions fell apart as time went on, and soon he could do nothing but sit there and speak to no one in particular. The man from the photograph would visit him sometimes, and this confused him because the door was still chained up. The man from the photograph said he broke the wall down, and that it was all there. Everything from the blood to the corpse to the crude crucifix and blade and bible and jars… He said the numbers were on the feet.
"You never talk this much in the visions," he would say, rubbing his eyes.
"I know," the man from the photograph would say, "but just remember what you have to do."
And then he would leave.
…
Silent Hill. Had he grown up there, had he grown up here? He'd been there before. The man from the photograph had been there. The Mother had been there. The superintendent's son had been there. The stuttering man had been there. A lot of people had been there. They had all been there. But… who was never going to go there? He didn't know.
…
The order was simple. Number one was Jimmy Stone, number two was Bobby Randolph, number three was Sein Martin, number four was Steve Garland, the owner of that pet shop where all the animals were murdered, number five was Rick Albert, number six was George Rosten, number seven and eight were Billy and Miriam Locaine, number nine was William Gregory, number ten was Eric Walsh, and number eleven was the man who made the walls thick and made the clock stop ticking. The guy who did all of this… What was his name again?
Number twelve was Peter Walls, number thirteen, Sharon Blake, number fourteen was Toby Archbolt, number fifteen was Joseph Schreiber, number sixteen was Cynthia Velasquez, number seventeen Jasper Gein, number eighteen Andrew DeSalvo, number nineteen Richard Braintree, number twenty Eileen Galvin, and number twenty-one, Henr-
…
There are handprints on the wall outside the room, but the superintendent never saw them.
…
He wanted to be with his mother, the poor kid.
…
The phone line is still cut.
…
The hole is still there.
A/N: Err… this is the weirdest thing I've ever written. (DISCLAIMER: I own not 'Silent Hill' and anything related to it; nor do I make any profit off of this work.)
