Chapter Thirty-Two

"Daddy Dearest"

Something bothered me about that room.

The thought tapped on the walls of my mind even as I climbed the steps of cemetery gray that led up and away from it. I mean, of course there was the obvious, that being a dead woman who seemed to completely forget that she was supposed to be dead. A woman who resembled my wife in so many subtle ways, who recently had the misfortune of resembling her in one rather fatal way, who was now sitting behind bars on a hideous piece of upholstery and waiting patiently for me to come and see her so that she could show me just how real she was, as much as reality meant to me anymore. Yeah, there was all that, no doubt.

But despite all of that, it was the room itself that was on my mind. There was something about it that made it stick out somehow. What it was, I couldn't exactly say, because it wasn't obvious at all. There really wasn't a lot to go on. There was that ugly chair, and a ratty old bed in the corner. It had a funny smell, a sterile smell if you can believe it, but while all of these small details served to excite some little deja-vu center of my brain, none of them were enough to instigate a full-blown epiphany.

Whatever. When I made it to the other side of those bars, I might find out. In the mean time, all I could do was dismiss it as a fancy and concentrate on other matters. Matters like, where was I supposed to go now? There could have been other branches of that chaotic old hallway that I hadn't meandered down yet, but I didn't really think there were.

I passed through the steel chamber and was within sight of Picasso's pissed-off God, when I saw the room illuminated by a flash of light. It was very brief, but it was there. Before I had a decent chance to be confused, the light flashed again, this time repeatedly, before winking out for a moment. It gave the room a sort of strobe-light effect. It was the noise in the room that tipped me off to what was going on, a series of sharp, harsh pops that were as perfectly clipped as the flashes. When I looked past the pedestal, I saw the source of both, and my suspicions were confirmed. Near the alcove and ladder was an electrical box wired on the wall, similar to several I'd seen in this strange labyrinth already. Only, this one was wide-open, and damaged. Sparks showered forth from within, and it was bright enough that I could see why even without my own light.

Something was jammed into the circuit box, a tool of some sort. It looked like a pair of pliers or clamps, but I couldn't tell for sure, and even though they had moldings over the handles, I wasn't keen on grabbing them with my bare hands. I wasn't really keen on grabbing them, period, but given everything I'd encountered so far, one never knew when one might need something like this.

I took the rifle off of my shoulder and held it by its wooden stock. Carefully, I tapped the handle of tools with the barrel. It took several attempts, but finally the box gave a nice, angry shower of electricity and the tool fell to the floor. I holstered the rifle and bent down to pick it up. Once I got a look at what it was, it made a sick kind of sense.

Wire cutters.

It was so obvious, so blatant, that I couldn't think of it as anything else but a gift, be it from God or from something else I didn't know. Whatever or whoever it was, they were just recently departed, because the box had been shut and completely inconspicuous the first time I passed it by. Without knowing the source, I decided to thank my capricious luck for the leg-up and dropped the little deus ex machina in my pocket, then I mounted the ladder back into the septic tank from hell below.

I stepped off the ladder and into the scummy water, which I noticed had taken on a distinctly crimson tint. It was blood from the monster that assaulted me when I came by here earlier. At the time I wasn't able to see what it was, but now I saw that it wasn't something new and unusual, but rather something familiar and unusual. The straight-jacket struck the ladder as I was ascending, struck it so hard that I almost fell off, but by the look of things, the attack was quite the suicide strike. When it struck, its body folded up like an accordion, and its rear-end was sticking up out of the water, looking somewhat comical in its absurdity. The jaundiced old flesh underneath the cellophane-like outer skin peaked over the water line like a macabre little island, and it gave the monster's identity away. Its head was completely obscured by the water, but it wasn't likely to be a pretty sight. The pale red hue spread in a wide halo from its position, telling me all I needed to know, and certainly more than I wanted. I splashed down the flooded tunnel to the other ladder and climbed out.

I navigated much of this stretch of territory running in a blind panic, leaving me without much in the way of memory to rely upon, and though friend Pyramid Head hadn't tracked me as far as Maria's little room, I was all too aware of how close I was to his little house of horrors, and the possibility that he might be patrolling the area, and failing that, I didn't want to inadvertently stumble upon the ladders leading to said house of horrors. I guess it was these things that made my intuition tell me to go left, when in doubt, and when I came across the dead straight-jacket at the next impasse, I knew my intuition was still pretty sound.

Sure enough, I soon found myself looking through the creatively-blocked doorway. I pressed the blades of the wire cutters against one of the steel cables and squeezed. The cutters bit into the cables, but they were pretty thick, and I had to really put some power behind my effort. On the third attempt, the blades finally won the battle, and the cable snapped with a loud crack. They had been pulled so tight that the tensile wire lashed away once freed. I repeated this processes several more times, not clearing the entire entrance, but at least enough for me to duck through, and that was just fine, because clipping thick steel cable with simple wire cutters makes for some very sore hands before too long.

The wires obscured access to another ladder going down, and that's where I went. This one led to an area that was, thankfully, more like the last one, and less like the metal corridor before that. It was flooded with the same kind of slimy water, but here it was only ankle-deep, which made it far less likely that any enterprising straight-jackets would conceal themselves. On the contrary, this little parcel of territory seemed blessedly uninhabited. What it wasn't was direct. I felt almost certain that I had turned myself around in complete circles while navigating the damp undergrounds, and that provided a level of discomfort to replace the intensity and fright of an encounter with a straight jacket. The relief I felt when I finally saw a ladder was damn near palpable, a cool liquid salve, which of course lasted only until the old thinking meats reminded me that each new path was a thousand possible disasters in the making.

I was back in the dirty, pitted, old-building look, but this time in a small area, with a door in front of me. Likely, this is what I would have seen earlier had there been a door in place of the steel cables. Small as it was, the moving threat assessment stage of the routine was quick, but although this little space wasn't presently inhabited, there was a messy red splash staining the laminate floor, and I didn't need to touch it or even look closely to know it for what it was. Closer examination did reveal that whatever painted the floor with lifeblood wasn't here too long ago. The stain was still wet and tacky. Some of the more concentrated areas were congealing, and disgusting black clots dotted the scene like islands.

More compelling though was the newspaper, dropped in the middle of the mess as if some half-assed attempt at cleanup. The blood soaked through much of it, and it was firmly adhered to the floor because of that. It was the Community/Local section of the Silent Hill Chronicle, yesterday's edition. The headline was, fittingly enough, about a murder. The gore had soaked through so badly that parts of the article were illegible.

VICIOUS SLAYING IN SOUTH VALE, the headline screamed. The article told of one Thomas K. Orosco, 38, of the South Vale district. Mr. Orosco, employed by one of the local logging companies, was found slain in his bed, the victim of more than two dozen vicious stab wounds, in his throat, abdomen, and, poor guy, three right in the crotch, the penis almost severed. Police felt the killing was a passion crime, because none of his valuables were missing, and there were no apparent signs of struggle. Given his noted history of alcoholism and multiple instances of domestic problems (and one assault conviction, though not domestic in nature), they did have a lead, but the paper was too messed up for me to find out who this lead was. The only other item of interest was a sideline article about the local tourist industry, mentioning its resurgence since the drastic retreat of the once-rampant drug trade a decade past.

I opened the door and stepped into a long hallway, and immediately, I could tell that the scene in the room behind me was sort of an iconic prelude to what I found here. There was no blood here, but the walls and floor were pasted with newspapers, arranged without order or reason, just slapped on chaotically. I expected that they would be copies of the Chronicle page I just read. They were from the Chronicle, but they weren't yesterday's Local, they were all copies of the current edition, the same as the one I saw in the dispenser machine when I first arrived in town. They were everywhere, and each one was current. There wer so many that some of the pages repeated, leaving only small patches of pale earth-colored wall poking through the chaotic tapestry of small-town journalism. Not one of them mentioned even a word of Silent Hill's current state of affairs, but it was becoming apparent to me that there was far more to that then appeared to the naked eye. Far more. That I was where I was right now, that such a place could even exist, was the most compelling evidence, but far from the only example. It was sort of amazing that such an event could seem secondary to me, but that's what it was. Secondary to my goal, to finding Mary. There's no way the two events could even be slightly coincidental, and doubtless that if I ever did find Mary, I would probably also discover what was behind Silent Hill and its empty, ruined streets. I wasn't sure I really wanted to know. In fact, I was pretty sure I didn't want to know. I would be content just finding my wife. That itself was bound to raise so many more questions that I just couldn't find it in me to hold more than a passing interest in the destruction of this little lakeside town.

I walked slowly down the papered hallway, still scanning some of them to spot any different ones. Suddenly, I heard a sharp noise, one that I couldn't automatically place, and it put my tired body on red-alert. But it was only a second later that I heard English words accompany the noise, and I identified it for what it was.

A woman's moaning shriek.

"No, please! Daddy, no!"

A woman. And her voice was coming from someplace very close by, seemingly almost in front of me. And that's when I saw that it was. There was a door right in front of me, so obscured and concealed by the haphazard wallpapering job that I didn't even realize it was there. I felt around for a knob, and I found it, a pulp-papered lump. I tore the paper turning the knob, and opening the door ripped several pages apart. I took no notice.

I entered a room completely like any other I'd yet seen. The footing was spongy, and made a revolting squish under the weight of my footsteps. A few feet above my head, the walls were lined with cylindrical holes, spaced about two feet apart and ringing the entire room. Within each hole was what looked like a piston, thrumming rhythmically in and out, some faster than others. The walls themselves were made of the same material as the floor, soft and pliable and of a color that suggested one very obvious material.

But, I had no time to hypothesize about the unusual décor. I could hear the radio hissing in my pocket, but I didn't need it. I could very well see what made it agitated. For a moment, I thought it was a straight-jacket. It was definitely similar in some ways, but what I saw in front of me right now was easily double the size of the straight-jackets I'd seen, far larger, far more muscular. It was hunched over and facing away from me, and I could see an enormous fleshy mass writhing and pulsating on the creature's back. An oily sack of flesh stretched over top of all of it, giving the pulsating mass a strange, amorphous appearance similar to that of the straight-jackets. Stranger still was that it looked to have an odd bone structure, one that was large and rectangular, growing out of its hips and serving as the basis for its massive torso.

My light shined upon the new monster, but it didn't seem to take notice of me right away. It seemed more interested in whatever was in the corner, and whatever was in the corner was obscured by the monster's considerable bulk. But of course, I knew what was in the corner, or at least, I thought I did.

Sure enough…

"Daddy, please!" the voice screamed, "Please don't hurt me! I'll be good! I won't… just…" The owner of the voice was a finger away from falling into the gorge of total panic, and who could blame her? It was a voice that seemed familiar.

Of course. Of course it was familiar. Because the last time I heard that voice, it was saying the same thing. And then, the words were directed at me. The girl cowering in the corner was-

"Angela!" I yelled. I didn't expect her to respond, and she didn't. I was more interested in drawing the monster away from her. It wheeled around, turning on a dime and doing so far faster than its bulk suggested it could. Seeing it from the front immediately cancelled any notion that this was a straight-jacket. For one, it had two stubby arms (or front-legs? It didn't really seem like it was naturally bi-pedal) and a head, of sorts, though its head was nothing but an enormous, circular mouth. Fleshy lips oscillated like a readout of radio waves. It looked hungry. Pleased, perhaps, for now it had a two-course meal. I pulled out the pistol and aimed at the mouth just as the monster charged.

I squeezed off a shot as it did, but I certainly didn't send it down the monster's throat as I'd planned. I don't think I got it at all, but I had no time to check. I darted to the side. A fraction of a second later, the monster charged past, so fast and so powerfully that I was sure that the momentum would send it into a forceful kissing session with the hideous pink wall.

Instead, it came to a complete halt inches away from impact, and wheeled about to face me again. No slouch, this one. I aimed again and fired two more shots. Both hit paydirt, but neither got it in the face, either. Twin splotches of crimson blossomed upon the writhing fleshy hump, but it might as well have been spitballs fired through a straw for all the good it did. It charged again, and again I juked aside to avoid it. Only, this time I didn't juke fast enough. The monster's rectangular, door-like midsection smashed into my side, just above my right thigh. My balance hadn't been that good to begin with, and the terrific power of the beast's blow packed a cataclysmic wallop, sending me damn near airborne. I spun on my one planted foot and twisted as I crashed to the ground. I was stunned less by hitting the soft floor than by the attack itself, but an acute lightning bolt of pain ripped forth from my hip. I grabbed it in spite of the imminent danger, rubbing it furiously and kicking that leg about. Thank sweet merciful God that it wasn't broken, the leg moved well enough, but it was still a danger and…

I caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye. Angela, that is. She sat, hunched on the ground, arms looped around her knees. Her skin was almost alabaster white, and she sat there watching my battle in a complete daze. Her eyes, though wide open, had a lifeless, catatonic quality, as if she were suffering from deep, acute shock.

I turned around, gripping the floor and trying to force myself back to my feet. I didn't really think I could defeat this thing, but I could at least try to grab Angela and get the hell out of this nightmare of a room. That too did not seem like a very likely prospect, what with her obvious disconnection with reality over in the corner, but I had to try, I had to do something, otherwise…

When I did turn, I found myself face-to-mouth with the door-monster. I screamed. I sounded like a little girl doing so, shrill and full of rich terror, but thoughts of dignity were as far away as they would ever get in my life. It pinned me down with its deformed arms, sending fresh new shockwaves of pain across my upper body, and it leaned down towards me as if to kiss me. Or, perhaps, tear the skin right off of my face.

Whatever got me moving could have been nothing but blind instinct or panic or sheer self-preservation. I lashed out with my good leg and kicked the door-monster in its underbelly. I did it again, this time folding my leg and using my knee. The monster reared back and roared, a sound like a full-grown male lion with a severe bout of bronchitis, the guttural growl wet and sticky. I yelled, a wordless yell of complete abandon, and I kneed the monster again and again, like a jackrabbit. The monster growled and staggered backwards, probably not harmed to any great degree but clearly not expecting my onslaught. It retreated several steps and looked confused.

I wasn't, though.

Panic had my senses sharp and my synapses firing on all cylinders. I struggled to my feet and brought the Glock to bear on the monster's face, the muzzle just inches away from that terrible mouth. There was no possible way I could miss. And I didn't. I fired five shots altogether.

The first two were perfect. There was no way they couldn't be, having the pistol practically down the monster's throat. The next two hit it in the hump (which was now thrashing very wildly, perhaps in panic itself?), and the last hit nothing. Blood fountained from the first two shots, some of it splashing me in the face and chest. I staggered back away from the monster, hurriedly wiping the mess from my face with my good sleeve. The door-monster moaned and growled, though now the sound was a definite octave or two higher in pitch, and even wetter than before, no doubt because it was choking on its own blood and viscera. It fell to the floor in a lump, coming to a rest in a turtle-like position. The mass on its back thrashed about in agony, as if trying to escape from within, but soon it slowed, moving as if drunk or drugged. It didn't cease completely, but it definitely seemed to have the fight knocked completely out of it. I fell back against the spongy wall, collecting myself and trying to catch my breath.

A wordless cry came forth from the other corner. Angela rose to her feet and approached the fallen monster. Gone from her eyes was that glazed, disconnected look, gone completely. In its place was a piercing, ice-cold look of sheer hate, of loathing and revulsion. I had about forty pounds and a good five inches on her, but that determined, almost murderous cast on her features frightened me, and made me glad that I wasn't the target in her cross-hairs.

She said nothing, but she wasn't quiet. More formless cries issued forth as she reached the still-writhing monster. A shrill cry tore forth from her as she leaned back and delivered a forceful kick to the monster's hump. The monster groaned in weak protest, but it was too hurt to do anything else to stop her. She kicked it again, and again, and again, throwing all of her weight and strength into each kick. The last kick was rewarded with a painful crack from within the hump, and it sagged inwards, looking almost deflated, and came to a final rest.

Angela wasn't finished yet, though. She was in a state of complete, deadly piss-off, and I felt it safer not to interfere. She calmly walked over to another corner of the room. There, I saw a small wooden stand, and upon it, a small television. It was one of those wood-paneled models, pretty vintage, and quite heavy, even in the small, tabletop sizes. She reached down and heaved it into the air, struggling a bit as she hauled it across the room. Upon reaching the monster, she lifted it over her head, and brought it down right on the hump. I could hear bones being crushed and cracked underneath the television's weight. The picture tube smashed, filling the room with a shotgun-like blast of sound, and the screen shattered, sending razor-sharp fragments cascading over the dead creature. Angela staggered backwards, saying nothing, just staring at the door-monster. Her face was set in a grim, considering gaze. There was just the slightest hint of satisfaction visible on those haggard features. She couldn't have been more than twenty years old, but right now, she looked like she was on the wrong side of forty. Suddenly, she shuddered, her whole body quivering, and she burst into tears.

I walked over to her, to place a comforting arm around her.

"Angela!" I said, "Calm down, relax. It's okay."

She turned to face me, and she brought the loaded look with her.

"Shut up! Don't you order me around!" she yelled as she backed up and pushed my hand away.

"But I'm not trying to give you orders." I said. The look on her face told me she was completely unconvinced. If anything, the loathing, hateful look I got was worse that that which she gave the monster.

"Oh yeah? So what do you want, then, huh?" she asked, her voice all sarcasm. "I know what you're doing. You're trying to be nice, you're trying to butter me up! Do you think I'm stupid?" She stood still and now seemed to be looking past me, or through me. "It's the same as it always is. You're just playing nice because you want. You want. And all you want is that one thing you always want. It's always the same."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, "That's not true at all!"

"Why do you have to lie, huh? Why can't you just be honest for once? Just go ahead and say it!" Now she looked down at the floor, avoiding my gaze. "Or, you could just force me, you know. Push me around, maybe. Slap me around, punch me, beat the crap out of me. That's what he always did." Now her body seemed to soften, to lose all of the steel constitution that brought her to assault the monster. She fell to her knees and leaned forward. One hand supported her, the other shot to her mouth. Retching, gagging gasps came from her, and she coughed and heaved.

I reached forward to help her, but she just leaned away. "Don't you touch me," she said with a choking sob, "You make me sick, you disgusting pig. You pig!" She dry-heaved again, and I stood motionless as she righted herself and stood once again to face me.

"Didn't you say your wife was dead? Mary? You said she was dead, didn't you?"

I nodded. "She was really sick."

Her face contorted in anger again, looking almost like the Grinch in that Christmas cartoon, where his morose, contemplative green face curled into something completely devilish as he had the epiphany that inspired him to become Santa Claus and steal Christmas from the Whos. That was funny and comical. The look on Angela's face was not comical in the slightest. It was horrible. She wasn't an extraordinarily pretty girl to begin with, but this look was just plain ugly.

"You LIAR!" she screamed, so forcefully that I recoiled instinctively. "I know all about you! You got rid of her, didn't you? You didn't want her around anymore! You used her up and pushed her away! You bastard, you stinking bastard! You found someone else, I bet! You screwed around on her! I know what you're all about because you're all the same! It's always the same!" Having unleashed her rage, she stormed past me, throwing open the door and stalking out.

I just stood there, completely shocked by the encounter, and the completely baseless accusations. I didn't do any of that. I didn't screw around or anything. I was a good husband, a good husband, goddamnit! Who the hell was she to say things like that? She didn't know me! The bitch was half-cocked and crazy and full of horse shit. Which, unfortunately, did nothing to explain why I felt so drained and browbeaten.

I looked down at the dead monster, the one she called Daddy. And as I did, I felt unconsciously for the knife I had hooked onto my belt in the rear, the blood-stained knife she had given me way back in the apartments. I had almost forgotten about this knife, but Daddy made me remember it. Daddy, and the newspaper article I found in the pool of blood.

Stabbed several times in the throat, torso and groin. Crime of passion. Violent drunk. I couldn't help but wonder, was that newspaper lying there just a random page, as were those covering the walls of the hallway outside, or was it a sign of some sort? Was the blood on this knife that of one Tom Orosco?

Maybe I should ask her if I saw her again.

8