"Where's your mama gone, where's your mama gone?"

"Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep…"

The voice sang within the sub conscious mind of Alex Ashby, a shy yet melodic voice. Just like the one the matron used to sing to him at the Wish House orphanage, a song that always put him to sleep. Even now as an adult, the whispered voice kept him in a deep slumber, just as if he were a child again.

Caw, Caw!

The young mans eyes suddenly opened, welcomed to the image of a crow hopping beside him. Alex stared at the crow, not yet fully aware that he was conscious again, his body numb as he watched the blackbird carefully edge towards him, twitching its head. It glared at him with its beady black eyes for which seemed like an eternity, and then as Alex blinked, the bird fluttered its wings and flew off.

Rolling from his side and onto his back, his eyes strained shut as his head pounded from migraine. Reality soon hit him as a tingling sensation returned feeling to his body. He laid in confusion, breathing heavily as he looked up at what was a white mist like sky. Carefully, he positioned his hand behind him, lifting himself into a sitting position. His head swiveled left and right, taking in a view of his surroundings, not quite sure where he was or how he got there.

Alex was sitting in the middle of a road. An abandoned street that had small story buildings and stores on either side. The street was succumbed by a thick white mist that stopped him from seeing any further than about thirty feet.

"Am I...dreaming?" he muttered, whilst lifting himself to his feet.

In a groggy manner, he began to stumble forward, his legs still tingling as he tried to take in everything at once, not sure whether he was in a dreaming or conscious. The street was empty, and there was an eerie silence, with most of the buildings boarded up and decayed as if they had been abandoned for years. If people had left town, they had to have been in a hurry Alex thought to himself, noticing that there were still plenty of cars parked along the pathways, all old models.

Yelling out for help, Alex stumbled down the street through the fog, hoping for a response. Moments passed as he continued to call out, but still to know avail as he made his way down the street, walking along the pathway and passing a few cross sections as he did. He soon came to a halt as he looked at his reflection in one of the store windows.

Alex was twenty four years old, and was an average looking guy. His skin was fair, with hazel hair and matching eyes. He had a slight stubble, and looked quite casual, wearing a pair of jeans and a sleeveless white vest top. Yet he looked like pretty roughed up, quite dirty looking from where he had been lying on the road for god knows how long. He continued to gaze at himself in the mirror, completely lost in thought. Thousands of questions raced through his mind, as he wandered what the hell was happening. Everything was so surreal, yet it felt so real. The last thing he could remember before waking up in this strange place, was going to sleep in his cell, in exactly the same clothes he was wearing now.

Gasping out loud, Alex turned around, pressing himself against the glass of the store as he heard a rustling, and the sounds footsteps in the near distance. Alex stared down the narrow street as he saw a figure disappear into the mist. Recovering from the sudden fright, Alex stepped out into the middle of the road.

"Hey!" he yelled out after the figure. "Help!" He called out again, but to no avail.

The sound of running foot steps soon drowned into a silence as Alex looked on puzzled and scared, not too sure whether he wanted to run after whatever had sneaked past him. Looking down, he noticed that the culprit had left a trail behind, something that definitely hadn't been on the road before.

"What the hell?" he asked himself as he crouched down and picked up a very large, thick grey feather. There were other feathers scattered in front, making a trail that disappeared into the fog. Knowing there was no other option to choose from, Alex began to follow the clues.

Alex traveled through the eerie town, soon entering the residential area. The houses were quite luxurious, with a Victorian influence which seemed to fit in with the creepy surrounding. Following the trail across front lawns and back onto the road again, Alex soon came to the end of the trail and slowed down as an impossible image came into sight. He thought to himself over and over again that he had to be dreaming, because there was no way it could be possible.

Stumbling forward with his mouth dropped in shock and awe alike, he stopped at the very edge of what was a broken, torn away road. The road had crumbled, the mist making it impossible to see if what was below the edge. The huge gap spanned from each side of the last houses, making it impossible to get to the other side, if there even was one. But what really disturbed Alex, was that at the very edge of the destroyed road, were thick metal bars fixed to the ground every two feet apart. The bars reached high into sky, the mist making it impossible to see where they ended. Alex placed his hands on the decayed bars, his hands feeling their rusted textured as he looked left and right, seeing that the bars stretched as far as he could see, as if the town was placed in a cage.

Alex strained his eyes as hard as possible, but he could not see the other side of the destroyed road, the mist so thick that it made it impossible to look too farther ahead or above. Looking around for other nearby roads, he caught glimpse of something he had not noticed before.

A large wooden sign was stood on a patch of grass, positioned to face directly towards the iron bars. Trying his best to decipher the chipped peeling paint that displayed the name of the town, he whispered to himself the place he was most familiar with.

"Silent Hill."