"Hey!" Alex screamed. But whoever it was that she saw was gone. She slowly came to a halt and doubled over, breathing deeply.
"Shit."
She had no idea where she was; the fog covered everything. The person she had followed was probably standing in the shadows laughing at her, she thought. So she straightened herself up and turned right onto the sidewalk. That way she figured she had a better chance of finding an information post or tourist office. If she could just find a map...
She squinted as she looked around, taking a proper look at the town for the first time. It was a clean place but then again, there weren't any people around to mess it up. The detail that unnerved her the most was the fact that the shops seemed, well...modern. A couple even had neon signs, although tthe tubing had shattered, scattering glass on the pavement below. By pressing her nose up to the window of a nearby Travel Agents, she saw that it was empty. Papers were scatteredall over the floor and a pen dangled off the end of a tarnished desk, still chained to the surface.
"What the hell happened here?" She asked herself. It reminded of a book she had read once. Well, one of Zach's books. The enitre population ofa whole town had just vanished into thin air. She laughed for thinking this. That was just a story, fiction...it wasn't real. This was. The feeling of helplessness that over came Alexis at that point was overwhelming. Maybe this wasn't real. Maybe she had died and this was hell. Alex believed that hell was a place where your greatest fears became manifest, and her greatest fear was being alone.
As if someone heard her silent plea for company, a strange buzzing sound emanated from around her waist. Startled, she automatically dropped her hands to her side and realised that the radio had suddenly sprung to life. Her hand had barely moved to unclip it from her belt when she heard something out in the fog. She let her hand drop as the radio spurted more and more static out, the pitch rising every few seconds. But she didn't care about the radio anymore, because someone was out there, she could see them now. A leg appeared through the thick curtain offog, followed by another. Then, a torso, and...
Alex screamed.
Silent Hill had always been a happy resort town, Officer ThomasAnderson knew this.So when his search for the missing ambulance brought him to Silent Hill, he was glad. At least she would be safe. But something wasn't quite right this time. He admitted to himself that he hadn't visited Silent Hill for nigh on twenty years, but a place couldn't change in that long. Of course, there were the religious fanatics and the odd nutcase, but overall it was a peaceful lakeside resort.
He didn't know what it was that made him feel uneasy. Maybe it had something to do with the disappearance of Officer Bennett all those years ago. She, like so many other people, had made her way to Silent Hill and was never seen nor heard from again. But that was then and this was now.
The reason that he had postponed his vacation was because of another disappearance near Silent Hill. An ambulance was taking a comapatient from Brahams general hospital when the paramedics were no longer answering their radio. A driver who saw the ambulance in question had told police that he had seen it driving towards the Silent Hill turn-off. No doubt it was taking a short-cut. The police had first discovered a bashed-in car, it's driver dead, by the roadside and pulled over to take a closer look. They followed skid marks on the road to find the ambulance, which had been driven over the ledge. It was a sorry sight. All three paramedics were dead, but the patient was nowhere to be found.
"It must mean that she's still alive," Officer Anderson told the others. He stood beside the ambulance and looked around, desperate to find a sign of the missing woman.
It wasn't the fact that the ambulance had disappeared near Silent Hill that had caused Officer Anderson to drop his vacation plans and head on out. It was the patient that was being transferred. Her name was Alexis Sanderson, and she was twenty-six years old. Three years ago her husband passed away and she drove her car into a lake at his funeral. The doctors managed to save her, but she was in a deep coma. They were transferring her to a specialist hospital in the next town when they disappeared.
Of course, Officer Anderson knew Alexis. It must have been, what, twelve years? But he remembered it as if it was yesterday.
"I want you to know that everything will be alright," he assured her. She was terrified, a young girl of just 14. Her mousy brown hair was tangled and torn from where she had pulled at it.
"How can you say that?" She asked him. He couldn't understand, he was just a cop.
"Because I am going to make sure that it will be. I will look after you." But the girl just laughed. She turned to look at him, her eyes bloodshot from the tears.
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Stanley let out a scream. He'd been yelling for what seemed like hours, but there was no answer. If there was anybody there, they weren't going to help him.
"I though this was supposed to be a nice place!" He yelled the last two words, causing them to echo eerily off the surrounding buildings. There was something strangely familiar about that place, he realised. He approached one of the dilapidated buildings and attempted to open the door. To his surprise, it opened straight away. It was a tourist information office, so there wasn't much to see. The only furniture in the small room were two chairs against the wall on the right, and a huge map of the town adorned the back wall. The map had an arrow pointing somewhere with the label 'You are here' inlarge, red letters hovering above it. He couldn't make out the street names, but the signs outside wereworn, so it wouldn't reallymake any difference. He began tracing a finger along the streets. He could make out the names of the buildings no problem.
"Church...Fire Station," he read aloud. "What? Ridgeview...The medical clinic?" He tried to think...why did that name mean something to him. Why? The harder he thought, the more painful it was. Something obviously didn't want him to remember. But whatever it was, it was failing.
"Are you alright?" Stanley asked asDiana clung fearfully onto his arm.
"Who the hell was that?" She panted, reluctantly reliquishing her borther's arm. Stanley didn't know any more than she did. He had actually preferred it when that place was empty. But that...person.
They had wandered into Silent Hill, neither of them knowing what to look for when it became obvious that someone was following them. They heard the footsteps, and then a low, guttural growl. They never saw their stalker, but ther heard him picking up the pace as they sought refuge in the nearest building. It was a medical centre.
"What the fuck happened to this place? Where is everyone?" Diana screamed. Stanley shusshed her and opene the door a fraction of an inch. Whoever had been following them was gone.
"We're alright," he reassured her, but she was already terrified. Somehow she knew that things would only get worse.
Alexis screamed, paralysed by fear as the figure drew closer to her. The radio on her belt squealed and hissed manically with every step the thing took. It moved forward again and she could see it clearly now. It looked human, but it couldn't have been; it's anatomy defied every physical law. Its arms moved as if it wear tearing its own skin off, but she could not see its hands; the armswere held to its body by thick tendons which pulsatedas it moved and the hands were buried underneath its decaying flesh. Its head and shoulders twitched violently and every few seconds it leaned backwards and its shoulders seemed to dislocate itself. As it jerked forwards again, thin layers of its skin fell to the ground.
Alex backed up until she hit something cold. It was a tall, metal fence. It took hera few seconds to move, side-stepping away from the creature, holding onto the fence for support. She cried out in terror as it lurched slowly in her direction, screaming and moaning from a hole she could only assume was its mouth. Skin pulled tightly over this hole, and everytime it opened the skin ripped and the horrifying sound came out.
"Please..." Alex sobbed, moving faster. Her hands fumbled clumsily along the fence until they rested on a metal pole. It was the end of the fence, and the next section was collapsing. Without casting a look back at the horrifying creature, she squeezed herself between the two sections of fence and ran to a building on the opposite side, the creature screaming at her as she went.
