Marie looked up at her teacher as her eyes began to droop. The lack of sleep at night was making everything difficult. She laid her head down on the desk and listened as the teacher droned on. Soon she was asleep and dreaming.
Rust covered walls surrounded her. She looked around and saw a path. She began down it when she heard a strange noise. Marie felt scared and pressed in upon. The noise sounded again and she moved away. She knew she had to move forward and be brave. But the noise sent her trembling once she realized what it was.
Marie covered her ears against the sound of those monsters that had killed her sister all those years ago. She let out a scream.
"Marie! Marie!" She heard a voice as someone jostled her shoulder. She shot up and saw that the whole class and the teacher were staring at her.
She looked away and shuffled her books together. It was embarrassing enough at home now it was happening in class. She didn't know how much longer she could take these nightmares. She got up from her seat and fled out into the hall. She was sure the other kids thought she was mad but what did they know? None of them had lost a sister before. Maybe some old relative they visited a few times out of the year. But not someone they saw everyday, and they never saw them be murdered right in front of their eyes.
Marie paused in front of the bathroom and stood there for a long while. Would any of it go away? She was tired of the nightmares, the sounds of those beasts pulling her sister down, her helpless screams, and that strange figure that she could never quite pinpoint. She'd see a vague shape and then like a sweep of wind it was gone. She had tried over the ten years to figure out what just she saw. And what about today on the bus? She was sure it was the same figure from her nightmares and memories.
No it was all in her head. All of it was in her head. That was what the various shrinks and specialists told her over the years. It was just her imagination. The gate, the creatures who killed her sister, the pool, that strange figure were all just something she created to cover what really happened. Everyone decided that Kristy had drowned. And that Marie was in too much shock to tell them where the body was.
She remembered men trying to bring her along on the search party. She had screamed and kicked until they let her go. She had ran into the house and burried her head under the pillow, screaming in pure terror. It took a sleeping pill slipped to her before she finally stopped screaming. But that day and many after she could never go into the woods again.
She moved away from the bathroom and stared out a window. The trees seemed to be encroaching upon the perfect lawn of the school grounds. They always seemed to be coming closer while she stared. She shook her head and stepped away from the window. Just then she saw the same figure, just standing there, on the fringes of the trees. She covered her mouth to keep from screaming. She fled down the corridor to escape the strange shadow who had always been in her dreams.
At lunch, Marie stared down at the slop they dared to call food. That morning's strangeness was all but forgotten. The other kids kept their distance and she heard 'freak' among other things they whispered to each other. She put them from her mind and brought out her sketchbook. Looking through the various drawings, she did over the years, she noticed a distinct change in her choice of art.
Before her sister's death, her drawings had been bright and cheerful. After though, they became twisted and very detailed. Though many would say it was impressionist, she knew what she had been drawing was real. She saw a drawing of the deadly creature that had killed her sister. It was a mass of flesh with fangs and claws. The eyes were what struck her the most. They looked almost human even though they were black as a shark's eye.
She snapped the book shut and shoved it deep into her backpack. Marie decided that she was slowly going insane. And no one could help her. Even if she wanted that help. She sat back in her chair and hid her face in her hands. Why couldn't it have been her and not Kristy that had met her demise that horrible day?
Marie held back the urge to sob and got up from her seat. The kids around her looked at her with undisguised suspicion. She ignored them as she dumped out the contents of her lunch and placed the tray with the others. Once that was done with, she left the cafeteria with a calm she didn't quite feel.
She headed for the library and booted up one of the computers there. Maybe this wasn't all in her mind. She looked up the newspaper archives and started sifting through the various articles on murders and lost children. She printed off some that seemed related to what happened to her sister and sifted through them.
Many were revolved around human murderers and she quickly discarded them. Then one article caught her eye. It was an unexplained murder of a middle-aged woman. She had vanished a while ago and then out of the blue turned up dead. There was no explanation of how she had been murdered. She looked through and found the town this was reported in. She blinked when she saw that the town's name was Silent Hill.
She remembered one of her dreams that hadn't ended up in a rusted place. She had been stuck in a car and she had passed a sign that said 'Welcome to Silent Hill.' She folded up the paper and placed it in her bag. Maybe it would give her a clue to her own horror story.