Chapter Twenty-Nine

"Falling Cage"

James.

Yeah?

It's time to wake up.

What do you mean?
It's time to wake up, hon. You've been asleep forever.

Don't want to. I'm still tired.

Did you come all the way out here just to snooze your life away? Come on, you. Up and at 'em. There's so much to do.

What time is it?

Who cares? It's early, and time's wasting. Oh, but you're impossible sometimes.

Just a few more minutes, then?

No sir, not a minute longer. Come on now.

Yes, mother.

Ah, James, your sense of humor is already ahead of you. Ah, I think I know what will do the trick. I think I know what'll do the trick just fine. We don't need silly things like clothes to come between us.

Ahhh… yeah, you got me. That will most certainly do the trick.

You see? Am I ever wrong?

Never. What you are is beautiful.

Bet you tell that to all the girls.

No, only the one I'm married to.

I love you, James.

I love you too, sweetheart.

Mmm. Oh, look, someone else is awake down there, too. How wonderful!

Come here, Mary. I'm definitely awake now.

I pulled her towards me and held her close for a moment. Her lovely brown eyes gazed right into mine. Her hair, a gorgeous and natural auburn, shined even without having yet been acquainted with shampoo for the day. Her small, soft breasts lay against my bare chest, and my hands rested against the silky small of her back. Yes, in that moment, unlike any other, I realized just how fantastically beautiful Mary Sunderland was. She was no Cindy Crawford or Heather Locklear, and she'd never think to claim as much, but at that moment, no supermodel in the world, no Venus and no angel could even compare to the woman I held in my arms on this bed this morning. A feeling of nearly uncontrollable ecstasy crashed through me like a wave at high tide. I felt certain that this moment was the most wonderful of any I'd ever had, that this was the very acme of my entire life. Sad to think that it would never be matched, couldn't be matched, but right now, it didn't matter. Right now, nothing mattered except myself and my wife, vacationing in this neat little hamlet on the shores of one of the dozens of lakes in western Maine. It was her idea to come here. Right now, I thought it was the best idea anyone had ever had, ever.

Without warning, and with her still in my grasp, I turned and rolled over, coming to rest on top of her. She laughed, and then she gave me an unmistakably sexy look, an inviting look, an invitation to make love to her, to take her around the world and to the moon. It was an unspoken invitation, but it was there nonetheless, and it was not one that I had any intention of declining. I spread my arms and propped them on the bed, then I leaned forward to kiss her. The feel of her lips against mine was that of ultra-fine satin, and she didn't even have morning-breath, as I know I did; she must have freshened up for me. My tongue parted her lips and touched hers for a heartbeat.

Then I felt a sharp, sudden pain in the palms of my hands, and instinctively, I pulled them both back, not taking the time to realize that doing so would cause me to flop down and knock Mary's wind out. I did fall, and I did land and strike something, but it wasn't the cream softness of my wife's nude body. It wasn't soft at all. It was really hard, really sharp, and the force of it ended up knocking the wind out of me, earmarked by an explosive heave and followed by coughing. That hurt, too, but only for a bit.

When I opened my eyes, I hurt more. Exponentially more. Not in a physical sense. Yes, I scraped my hands and maybe bruised my chest a little, but that was just chickenshit detail. What hurt so much worse was the realization of where I was, or rather, where I was not. At that moment in time, I wanted to be nowhere else but in bed with my wife. I could feel my dick wide awake down there, pressing hard against the zipper of my jeans. It felt like someone stuffed a basketball down the front of my pants. It was a wholly-unwelcome reminder of the dream I was having. And that was the worst part of it, knowing it was a dream. Knowing it was a fantasy, a memory from long ago. Knowing that it actually did happen in the past did nothing to stop the pain now. Hell, if anything, it only made my anguish and longing more powerful. And having the hard-on that wouldn't die only made it that much worse. It made me feel embarrassed and awkward, even though I was alone down here, wherever here was. I was useless while it was there, so I just sat there with my arms around my knees, looking around and taking in the sights while I waited for it to go away.

There wasn't really much to see. I was in a cold, rocky place. Slabs and shards of slate and shale littered the ground, chunks of what seemed to make up the walls and ceiling too. Ancient wooden supports lined the short, rough shaft. It ended with a door in front of me, and three empty walls of rock and silt everywhere else. No guessing or experimenting required. I liked that.

It was a long, torturous wait to feel right again, in that way, anyway. Every second I spent waiting for that throbbing distraction to take a hike was a drawn-out eternity of remembering the dream-fantasy that brought it about in the first place. I had never given it much thought until Mary died, but the worst part, the hardest part of it to deal with and forget about, it was those kinds of memories. The good memories. The best of times. I had always thought the grieving widower would be tortured by thoughts of regret, of time wasted by fighting and arguing. Not so at all. Mary and I had our share of arguments, but few of them were memorable in the slightest, and none of them caused me even a smidgen of worry, even now.

No, the memories that really stung, as it turned out, were all the ones I treasured most. Memories of our nights at the movies, holiday gatherings, and of course, our excursions to places like Silent Hill. Silent Hill always meant more to Mary than to myself, but that was hardly to suggest I didn't like the place. I was very fond of the little town as well. Room 312 of the Lakeview Hotel had perhaps the single most comfortable bed I had ever slept on. It was, without a doubt, the most comfortable bed upon which I ever made love to a woman. And, the best lovemaking of my life was made in that room, on that bed, with my wife. That was the sort of fond memory that was a soft summer rose before her death, and a searing whip of thorns since. The only possible way to live with them was to do everything I could to suppress them, to keep them down and out of my mind as much as possible.

Both of my personal battles concluded within minutes of each other, and though I felt drained, I did have enough to finally trek forward and open the door in front of me. Because, it was the only door. It would have to open. And, thankfully, it did.

And when it did, I laughed. It wasn't very funny, but I laughed anyway, because it certainly was a joke, or at least, someone's blatant idea of irony. The door opened into a small room. I suppose it might have been a latrine of sorts once upon a time, as there was a hand sink attached to the wall. Opposite it was a painting, a rather nice little subdued landscape, though yellowed and ruined by its environment and the ravages of time.

And spanning the distance was absolutely nothing. I could see a ceiling above, from which a plain old light fixture was suspended. But below?

Nothing but a void.

By looking at the walls, I could see that there had been a floor here in the past, but now it was history. Maybe they took it in to get it cleaned. Now, all four walls, instead of coming to a conclusion near my feet, continued ever downward, finally disappearing into the wide-open maw of oblivion.

There was a floor here. Now there was a HOLE. Another fucking HOLE. This was starting to get ridiculous, damn it. Was this to be my fate? Would I meander around here forever, God knows how far beneath the earth, exploring dark and forgotten places until I find a HOLE that just takes me to the next one? And by now, I was no longer willing to suspend disbelief enough to believe that I was really descending into the earth. There was absolutely no plausible way that such a place would be built so deep in the ground. Even the bunkers of NORAD, which supposedly had enough natural cushioning to sustain repeated nuclear attacks, wasn't this far underground. I had to be almost a quarter-mile beneath the surface. No argument existed that could convince me to accept the possibility of anyone excavating over a thousand feet of solid earth and bedrock to construct something as mundane as a prison. The alternate possibilities were many, and each was just as implausible as the next.

And now I looked into a HOLE that would only take me deeper. I would leap into this HOLE, no doubt about that. And, as I fall, I will black out. When I wake up, I will be disoriented but unharmed, presented with yet another nightmarish artery to explore.

I backed up a few steps and took a jogging leap into the HOLE. As I fell, I wondered just what sort of new nightmarish artery I would be exploring when I awakened at the bottom. I also tried to ignore the sensation of free-falling, attempting to hold my concentration instead. Hopefully, that would allow me to remain conscious, and perhaps then I would be able to witness whatever sort of weird transition takes place when I fall down these HOLEs. My flashlight showed the texture of the HOLE's side whizzing by in a blur, and it was that upon which I kept my attention, keeping an eye out for a change or alteration that would

It's getting dark, James. We'd better get back to the room soon.

What's wrong, baby?

It's my stomach again. Ah hell James, it wasn't supposed to be like this. We were supposed to come here to relax and have fun and forget about everything. I…

Mary, please, don't get upset. I brought your meds, they'll settle your stomach.

Meds. Of course. I hate this, James. I hate being a slave to pills. I never took pills all my life! I've swallowed enough aspirin in my life to count on both hands! Now it's pills all day, shots every week, getting poked and prodded like some damn science experiment! I've had it right up to here with all of it!

Yeah, I know, but we can't do anything about it right now. You have to do these things to get well.

Oh, come off it. I know that. I'm not an idiot and I don't need you to be my mother.

Mary, you know that's not it. I'm worried about you, even more because we don't know what we're dealing with. Am I acting like a nursemaid? Sorry. I can't help that. I love you and I care about you. That's why I seem overprotective.

I know.

So then don't be upset with me.

Oh James, I know it's not your fault, but I can't keep going like this. Even here in Silent Hill it's bothering me so much. Isn't that funny? Coming here always used to wipe away all of my troubles about the mundane world. I thought if I came here again, this damn illness would at least wait outside the door for me to come back. That's so silly, I know, but…

No, it's not silly. I felt the same way.

It didn't work. Our troubles followed us. They

My eyes opened. I closed them again right away, because they emerged to find themselves blinded by the glare of my flashlight. It lay on the ground next to my head, and it was aimed directly at my face. It must have fallen out of my pocket as I fell.

Once again I had landed safely, despite all logic. I was flat on my stomach, and had I really landed in such a way from any kind of real height, I would be a paraplegic, unless I was lucky enough to break my neck and die. But, after standing up and examining myself, I found all of the bumps, cuts and bruises I had gathered throughout my adventure, but nothing that hadn't been there the last time I checked. My shirt was slightly damp from the trace moisture on the ground, but that was it. I hadn't stayed aware long enough to notice any sort of transition. Even still, I was more convinced than ever that there was something inherently unnatural at work here, though that's about all I knew. But at least I could be certain of that, and I was, because I looked up instead of around this time.

All I saw was a rocky ceiling. There was no hole for me to fall through, none of any sort at all. Either I had found a way to transmute through solid bedrock, or there was far more to these HOLEs than human logic could account for.

This time I found myself in what looked like part of a mineshaft, sort of like what had been above, though this part looked far less rough. The walls were tiled with old granite slabs and braced with wooden beams. There was also a door to the side, a very heavy wooden door so old that most of the paint had flaked and peeled off. What was left gave the door the appearance of a burn victim. The door was sealed shut and barred with a giant board. Years of water and mineral runoff combined to form some kind of cement-like deposit that fused the bar beam to the iron bands that held it. I couldn't even begin to budge it.

There was one that actually had no door, and I walked towards it, peeking inside. It seemed to lead into a really odd sort of cage, one apparently designed to keep whatever was contained from escaping through the top, for while the sides were also heavily barred and laced with chain-link fencing, I could see only chipped, dirty shale rock behind those bars. Looking through the ceiling bars, I saw nothing but darkness.

I stepped inside slowly, wondering if I could find something here that would allow me to move on. The cage itself was completely empty, and each of the other three walls showed nothing but naked rock behind steel bars. I saw no escape hatch for the ceiling, and if I had to guess, the only way up was by scaling untold heights of completely vertical rock, which certainly wasn't a skill I'd acquired in life. A dead end, in other words. Oh well, it wasn't the first time and it wasn't bound to be the last. There was still that door with the calcified beam. There might be some way to pry it open. It didn't seem likely, but neither did this weird-looking cage.

SLAM!

I jumped even as I spun around to see what the noise was, landing awkwardly and nearly falling over myself. No movement caught my eye, but I immediately saw something else that grabbed my attention like a vise grip.

Oh shit!

The door had closed itself. And it was locked tight, which I had surmised even before reaching it. A few hard pulls and twists to the handle only confirmed my fear. I took several steps backwards, in a sort of daze, and I sat down in the middle of the cell. Sat down hard, too. It was more of a graceless fall on my ass, jarring my entire body and making my teeth click, but I wasn't paying attention. I was trying to come to terms with this latest predicament, and work out a solution to escape it.

A series of successive bangs and clanks jerked me out of my reverie. I leapt to my feet, searching for the source of the racket, and then the floor gave way beneath me. For a moment, I thought that it opened, so as to dispense me into yet another HOLE, but that wasn't the case this time. Instead, it was just a bounce, but it was hard enough to knock me off-balance and send me to the floor. I landed on my ass again, but harder this time. I stretched backwards on the floor, lying flat on my back to ease the sudden shock and pain.

The room jerked again, and with it, the noise. And before I could devote my attention to it, I felt another completely unexpected sensation: descent. Not a free-fall down the HOLE this time, though. A controlled descent, like an elevator ride.

And then, through the locked gate in front of me, I saw the small shaft rise, moving up and out of my sight within seconds. Looking ahead now showed me nothing but more of that naked rock, moving steadily skyward.

It wasn't a cell or a cage at all. It was an elevator! One without buttons or controls of any sort that I could see, but I couldn't argue with what I was seeing through the gates and mesh. I was going down again, though this time, I was taking the luxury cruise down the HOLE. Maybe this time I would manage to stay awake and observe the process. Maybe, maybe not. I would try, though.

I walked over to one of the corners and leaned against it as I waited for the elevator to reach its destination. I thought about the strange memories I was having while falling down the HOLEs. Some of them were really happy, some of them were melancholy, and all of them hurt to think about, but they felt strange to me because, for reasons I couldn't comprehend, I hadn't remembered any of these things in ages. Sure, I had a rough blanket of memories even now that covered most of my life, but when I actually thought about it, I couldn't remember consciously recalling any of these kinds of memories before coming to Silent Hill this afternoon. And with that realization came another. It wasn't just old memories, but recent ones. I retraced my steps, from here to the hospital to the apartments to the toilet overlooking the lake. All present and accounted for. Then I went back farther, to the road trip, to the restaurant, to the "WELCOME TO MAINE" sign I passed while driving up Interstate 95, to my car in the driveway of our house. I remember deciding to come here. I remember reading the letter, and the strange delivery method by which it arrived. I remember sitting in bed last night, playing with the Colt. I remember feeling distinctly shitty or scared out of my mind throughout the entire series of events. But, I couldn't remember anything particular before that. I couldn't remember waking up yesterday morning, or going to bed the night previous. I couldn't remember anything in particular that I did, even over the last few weeks or months. Hell, now that I thought about it, it seemed like much of the last several years were draped in a sort of insubstantial fog, just like that which made Silent Hill such a suddenly opaque place to live. The thought scared me no small amount, and what was most frightening of all was that even though I just now realized this, it had been like this the whole time. Why hadn't I noticed sooner? Was I such a mess that my brain decided it no longer felt like recording my life to memory anymore? Or was it just selective? I mean, I could remember vague things, everyday things that I would know anyway, like paying bills or buying groceries, but there was so precious little of importance or note, so little that was out of the absolute ordinary. And the time period seemed to coincide with the death of my wife. I remember the hospital visits, the treatments, the pain and heartbreak digging in deeper by the day. I remember Mary's small, lovely face deteriorating, scabbing over with sores, growing gaunt and hollow and utterly joyless. I remember the nights spent in bars, drinking my sorrows away, and then, as things got worse, I simply brought the booze home and escaped reality in the privacy of my own home. All of that was more clear than I wanted it to be.

It was only the years since her death that were this hazy blur. Realizing it was a sort of boon, but it only raised a dozen more questions, and I didn't need that. I had far too much on my plate as it was.

I was so lost in my contemplation that I forgot to watch for any HOLE-like shifting effects until I felt the elevator shudder. The machinery, operating despite every shred of logic telling me it shouldn't and couldn't, squealed and shrieked like a banshee

or a straight-jacket

as it applied the brakes and came to a stop. Soon enough, I saw a new room come into view from the bottom of the lift. Once lined up, the elevator hissed and came to a quivering rest. The iron bars in front opened on their own with a dry shick! I stepped through them, musing that if I had indeed gone down a HOLE while on the elevator, this time I managed to stay awake. Maybe it was from not paying attention, as I was lost in thought through most of the ride.

My new surroundings at the bottom of the earth were markedly different than the elevator's upper terminus. Whereas that room had looked like a slightly more livable mineshaft, this place here looked even more civilized, in a strange sort of way. The floor was still rough rock and gravel and soft earth, but the walls and ceiling were another matter altogether. The walls were plaster, colored a dim tan cream, with wooden paneling coming up to my waist. I could see old copper and lead pipes running along the ceiling joint, coming out of the walls in various places and re-entering in front of me, above a door. This door was unlike any I had seen in awhile, looking exactly like any one would find inside of a building, or perhaps in the administrative area of a prison. There was an electrical box next to the door with a large light switch. I flipped it, and nothing happened, but it was still strange to see such a thing down here. I could hear an odd sort of ambience. It sounded hollow and metallic and completely atonal and seemed to cycle, almost like a sinister heartbeat. It was punctuated periodically by a sharp hissing noise, like pressurized air being ventilated through a pipe. It could have been some kind of air circulation system, another quick look at the walls did reveal a rusty old vent by the ceiling, but the air felt very still and very stagnant. It sounded like the air was moving, but it sure didn't feel like it.

The door was the only one there, and the only way to go unless I fancied another elevator ride. I didn't. The knob turned, and I pulled the door open, wondering where I found myself this time.

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