Disclaimer: I do not own Silent Hill or any of its characters. The only thing I own is this plot and my original characters, including Henrietta Sunderland. The directions mentioned in this chapter can be found in BradyGames' Silent Hill 2 strategy guide.

A/N: You might have noticed that Henrietta's reactions to bizarre situations seem odd—this is actually deliberate on my part, as there are a number of reasons behind her behavior. These reasons will be revealed later.

Also, the beginning of this chapter has lime-ish M/F content. If you are not comfortable with this, please feel free to skip over it.

Thank you for those who reviewed my last chapter! Remember, constructive criticism is always welcome.

Dreams are indicated by DDD and italicized words. Thought is indicated by '…'

Chapter Two: He Disappeared

DDD

She felt as though she was drifting through a sea of fog. Her mind couldn't seem to settle in one place, she was so drowsy. Blinking slowly, Henrietta regained consciousness. Looking around in confusion, she tried to remember where she was. The memory of Henry and the South Ashfield Heights apartments came rushing back to her, causing her to gasp. Frantically, Henrietta tried to remember what had happened.

She remembered that the corpse-like Henry had pushed her into the strange hole in apartment 302. What had happened to Henry? Who had killed him, and caused the apartment building to turn into a monstrosity? Her mind raced; she remembered also that she had heard her grandfather's voice coming from the hole. Was he here now, wherever she was?

Looking around again, she tried to take in the room around her. She did not recognize it at all, though that was not saying much, as the room was pitch black, save for a small sliver of moon light coming in through the window to her right. From that little amount of light, she could tell that she was laying on a king sized bed. The bed sheets seemed to be black, but it was hard to tell, and all of her cloths seemed to be in order. By her side, near the window, was a small table which had nothing on it. Besides these things, it was almost impossible to see the rest of the room, though she had the impression, from the lay of shadows, that it was fairly large.

The sheets where very soft and comfortable, though they had a strangely musky scent to them, almost like an animal slept on them regularly. For reasons she could not explain, the smell was almost attractive.

Cautiously, Henri swung her legs over the side of the bed, and moved to stand. She had walked no more than a foot from the bed when she was yanked back abruptly.

Startled, she looked behind her to see what was holding her back, and was surprised to see that her right wrist was shackled to the bed post. Incredulously, Henri looked at the two feet of chain that connected her to the bed. How had she not noticed THIS before?

The shock of seeing the chain seemed to remind Henri that she was in a very strange situation. She still did not know where she was, or what had happened to her grandfather Frank. Where exactly had that hole taken her, and who had cuffed her to a bed?

Just when she thought she was finally starting to calm herself down, the light from the moon dwindled even more as the sky became overcast. It was about this same time when Henri heard the sound of a door in the room she was in open slowly.

Standing completely still, Henri listened anxiously as the heavy, slow foot steps came closer. A familiar smell reached her nose, and a part of her mind realized that this was just like the smell of the sheets. It would appear that the resident had returned.

The figure, bathed completely in shadow, come ever closer. The vague outline appeared to be a tall male, with a lean, muscular build. His smell was beginning to make her feel…weird. Against her will, her body began to shake ever so slightly. Her fear began to rise, but she could not look away from the approaching figure.

He finally stopped within inches of her. Though she could not make out his features, she was sure he was staring down at her. She tried to open her mouth to speak, but her will seemed to fail her, and she remained still and silent, looking up at where she thought his face would be—a good foot above her own. She felt a subtle heat rising from his skin, and her shaking increased even more. She was starting to panic—why could she not seem to take control of herself?

She was startled from her reverie when she heard a deep sound above her. Had he just…growled? It had not seemed like a human sound at all. What was he? Come to think of it, she had never heard of a human having such a musky scent. It wasn't the unpleasant smell of a man's sweat after all, but an actual, animal-like musk. A heady smell…Her mind was drifting again, but she was brought back swiftly when she felt large hands (yes, hands) fall on her shoulders.

Henri could almost feel herself break into a cold sweat when he lowered his head down to the level of her neck. He seemed very interested in this particular area, and began to… 'Is he sniffing my neck?' she thought, incredulous. Whatever he smelled seemed to please him, and he let out a contented growl. 'This guy…he's really not human at all, is he?' Henri thought, worry increasing tenfold when she was abruptly pulled against a warm chest.

The creature, whatever he was, buried his nose farther down her neck, and promptly bit, causing Henri to jump in surprise. He had a set of fangs! He seemed to have bitten just hard enough to draw blood, and Henri could feel him lapping it up. As her mind tried to adjust to this new problem, Henri heard another sound coming from his chest. He seemed to be…purring?

Having finally reached her limit, Henri abruptly shook off what ever was preventing her from fighting him. With a determination that took up every last ounce of her will, Henri put her hands on the creature's chest and pushed with all her might. He stumbled back only slightly, and Henri had an idea that it was surprise which drove him back rather than her measly strength. "Back off!" she yelled in a shaky voice, trying to back away from him.

Unfortunately, she was quickly reminded of her first problem when the chain would not let her back up any farther. Feeling her heart pound, she realized that she could not escape him. The creature gave a far more menacing growl after he realized that she had pushed him away.

He swiftly grabbed her shoulders and threw her onto the bed. The strength in the throw caused her to bounce briefly once her back hit the bed. Once her vision had cleared, she noticed that he had jumped onto the bed after her, and now kneeled above her. She stared up at him, trying to put on a brave front even as she shook with fear on the inside. At this angle she still could not see his face clearly, but she noticed that he seemed to have long hair which brushed past his shoulders. Maybe it was just her imagination, but it almost looked like his eyes were glowing a faint red.

Once settled, he pinned her free hand above her head. He deftly forced her thighs apart and maneuvered his hips between them. He gave a sensual growl, and lowered his mouth to her neck again, nipping and sucking. To her great embarrassment, she realized that her body was beginning to respond to him, and she had to force herself from wrapping her legs around his narrow hips and bringing them down closer to her body.

He somehow seemed to know how she felt. The purring had started once again from his chest, and he ran his free hand from her hip to underneath her knee. He raised her knee up, hooking it around his waist, pushing down into her at the same time. Now fully pressed up against him, she gave a startled gasp as pleasure coursed through her. Even to a virgin like herself, there was absolutely no doubt what was pressing insistently between her legs, even through her pants.

His breathing accelerated and his smell became even more prominent. 'Pheromones…?' some clear part of her mind wondered. His mouth wandered down to the junction of her neck and shoulders. He suddenly sunk both fangs into her flesh. A mix of both pleasure and pain forced Henri to give a stained moan. Overwhelmed, Henri felt herself fall into unconsciousness.

DDD

Henri woke up with a start. She glanced around feverishly, noticing that many things had changed: she was not in a bedroom, it was not night, and she was certainly not in a compromising position with a male humanoid. Blushing profusely, she realized that she had just hadthe first erotic dream everinher life. 'What does it say about me that my first ever erotic dream was about a non-human?' Henri wondered, sardonically.

Trying to forget the bizarre dream, Henri shook her head—only to notice that something was lying by her leg. The steel pipe. So, THAT part had not been a dream. She was obviously outside somewhere—it was so incredibly foggy that Henri really couldn't tell what was around her. She stood shakily and walked forward, only to bump into something. It was a grave stone. Squinting into the area beyond, she realized that she was indeed in a graveyard.

How pleasant.

She turned briefly and walked behind her. There was a pair of massive iron gates behind her, but they would not budge. More to the point, it looked as though the lock on the gate was fused shut. "Not leaving that way," Henri said to herself, letting out an exasperated sigh.

Turning again, she picked up the steel pipe that Henry Townshend had given her and wandered around the graveyard, looking for an exit. She finally found another pair of gates to the left of where she had awoken. Exiting through the gates, she walked cautiously up the fog-choked dirt road, occasionally passing an empty car. She finally drew close to a fenced in area, and learned where she was when she read the sign nearby: "Silent Hill Ranch".

"Silent Hill?" Henri wondered out loud. "It figures…I'm probably going to disappear just like Uncle James. What the hell is wrong with this town? Why did that hole take me here?" Henri was beginning to wonder whether or not her grandfather was here at all. Maybe some sadistic force had been toying with her mind and made her imagine that she had heard her grandfather's voice from the hole. And, if Grandpa Frank was here…how on Earth was she going to find him? Determined to find some answers, Henri walked on past the ranch, and eventually walked past a dry river bed.

The pathway merged into Wiltse Road. The long walk eventually led her into the town proper, and Wiltse merged into Sanders Street. If anything, the fog had gotten worse. She could barely see three feet in front of her. Perhaps what worried her most was that, despite the fact that it was about noon (according to her watch) the town seemed to be deserted. Silent Hill was a resort town, and for it to be deathly quiet and almost cold in the middle of the summer was extremely unnatural. Then again,' Henri thought, 'what about this day has not been unnatural?'

Across the street from the intersection of Wiltse and Sanders was a flower shop. She tried to open the doors, but they were locked. The section of Sanders St. to the east of the flower shop resulted in nothing but two dead ends. Going west on Sanders St., Henri felt her unease grow. Shops and private homes lined the street, but every thing was locked and deserted. The fog continued to impede her vision, and the chill in the air only grew.

Dressed for the July heat as she was, in only a light pair of cargo pants and a tank-top, Henri was forced to wrap her hands around herself. She shivered in the cold, damp air, and wished she could find a building to take shelter in. When she came to the intersection of Sanders and Lindsey St., Henri turned left. She was shaken abruptly from her worries about the cold when she looked down at the pavement in front of her and found what appeared to be significant streaks of blood heading down the road in front of her…as if a body had been dragged.

Going deathly still, Henri wondered whether or not she should proceed. Raising her pipe slightly, she walked down the street. She soon reached an unnatural-looking dead end. The street ended abruptly when a series of boards blocked the road between two buildings.

And in front of this blockade was the body of a man.

A chill ran through Henri's blood as she moved closer to the corpse. The trail of blood led to him. His eyes where opened wide, his mouth twisted in an expression of horror. He lay sprawled on the ground, his chest torn open. It looked like something had begun to eat his intestines, but then decided it did not care for them and abandoned the body. He was starting to emit the smell of decay.

Flinching back in disgust, Henri was about to back away when noticed something else about the wall behind the man. It looked as though the man's blood had been used to scrawl a message on the boards.

"'Here lies the Key of Rebirth'," Henri said the words out load. "What does that…" Looking down at the body, Henri realized that there was a key clasped in the hand. "No way." As much as she would have liked to ignore this disturbing event, Henri had the unnerving feeling that this scene had been placed for her benefit. She tentatively approached the body, taking the key out of its hand. Apparently, the man had died within the last day or so, because she had to pry the figures apart, as if the body was still in rigor mortis. It wasn't a comforting thought.

Looking closer at the key, Henri noticed that word were etched into the head: "WP: cell 2-5". "Cell? Like a prison cell?"Henri wondered. Did this mean that she would find something significant in a prison? But what prison? She had never heard of a prison in Silent Hill. And what was "WP"? Hooking the key onthe key ring in one of her pockets, Henri turned and walked away from the body. She paused at the end of the street, unsure where to go from there. She eventually turned left onto Sanders once again.

Her stomach was starting to growl. 'How long has it been since I have eaten?' She asked herself. Come to think of it, it was the beginning of the afternoon in Silent Hill. It had been eight o'clock at night when Henri had gotten to South Ashfield Heights Apartments, which meant that she had to have been unconscious for at least seventeen hours in that cemetery.

Although, it did seem strange that she had not been cold when she had awoken, even though she had been laying in the freezing graveyard for so long.

'It has been at least a day. I only had had breakfast before I went to South Ashfield,' she realized. Continuing slowly down the street, she did find Gonzale's Mexican Restaurant and Bar Neely's across the street, but both where closed and locked. Across from Bar Neely's was a Happy Burger. She was extremely happy to find that the door to Happy Burger was unlocked.

Walking inside, she was relieved to feel that the building was much warmer than outside. The inside was tidy, but there was still no sign of human life. Walking behind the counter, she was happily surprised to see that there were slightly warm fries in the container next to the fryers, and chicken fingers in the heating ovens. The soda fountains where even working.

Sitting down at a table with her food, Henri thought over the events of the past day. It had all started with her mother's frantic phone call at one in the morning. According to her mother, Jamie Sunderland, Henrietta's grandfather, Frank, had not called in over three weeks, and had not responded to any of the phone calls made by Jamie one week ago. This was strange because Frank usually called both Jamie and Henrietta at least once every two weeks, some times twice. He was as paranoid about the safety of his family as Jamie was.

Neither of them had been so paranoid before seven years ago. That was when, about one week after his wife Mary's death, James Sunderland had disappeared in the town of Silent Hill. Mary had requested to be buried in Silent Hill, so James' family had at first believed that he had hidden himself away there until he could cope with his wife's death.

However, one month afterwards, no one had heard one word from James. He had neither called nor written to his beloved twin sister Jamie, his father Frank, or his workplace. It was very unusual for him because he and Jamie had been very close, and he loved his young niece Henrietta. Jamie and Frank had gone to Silent Hill personally to search for him, but came up empty handed. Even the workers of the Lake View Hotel, James' and Mary's favorite place, had not seem him since before Mary's death.

They had tried to place a missing persons report with the local police, but the cops claimed that there was no evidence that James had not disappeared of his own accord, and, as a fully grown man, he was able to take care of himself.

'It's been quite a long while since I thought of Uncle James,' Henrietta thought mournfully. James had been as close to a father figure that Henri had ever had, as Henri's biological father, whoever he was, had disappeared before she was ever born. It had been extremely difficult for a scared, jobless high school grad like Jamie Sunderland to raise a child by herself. She had even once admitted to Henri that she had contemplated having an abortion, but her twin brother James had talked her out of it.

James had helped his sister to raise Henri from the very beginning, helping Jamie care for the baby, babysitting, even helping financially. If it where not for the money saved away for Henrietta by James and Frank, Henri doubted she would have even been able to go to college right out of high school.

Henri had been fourteen when James disappeared, and it felt like she had lost her father. Her mourning had been as great as either Frank's or Jamie's. However, she realized that she had to shake it off if the family ever wanted to move on.

Jamie was no help; even now, seven years later, she still showed signs of the shock of loosing her brother. Two years after James disappeared, Jamie was finally capable of going to work and taking care of herself. Before that, Henri had had to work part time, go to school, help to pay the bills, and look after her mother's mental health.

Grandpa Frank helped with the money, but life for the teenage Henrietta was still very difficult around her weak mother. It had been the worst two years of her life.

And now here she was, possibly in the same situation as her Uncle James had been. Henri was about to embark on a mission to find her grandfather. Had Uncle James been searching for someone too? She'd often wondered, privately, if he had killed himself under the strain of his wife's death.

Sighing heavily, Henri threw away her trash and prepared to leave. She hesitated at the door, looking at the fog-covered street outside. She really did not want to leave the restaurant, but what choice did she have?

She was about to step outside when she heard a strange sound behind her. Turning quickly, Henri paused for a moment, listening. It sounded almost like…sizzling. It was coming from behind the counter. Walking back, Henri noticed that one of the deep fryers had suddenly, and apparently spontaneously, come to life.

Henri approached slowly. Seeing nothing that seemed dangerous, Henri turned the fryer off. Looking into the cooking oil in the fryer, Henri could vaguely see something in the bottom of the fryer's basket. Lifting the basket, Henri found that it was another key. Looking closer at the key, Henri could not find any indication of what the key unlocked. Somehow not surprised by the strange placement of the key, Henri put this key too on her keychain.

Stepping outside, Henri continued westward on Sanders. After only a few moments, Henri felt something wet and light fall on to her nose. Looking up in question, Henri could barely believe her eyes. It was snowing! Snowing for God's sake, in the middle of July! Now even more uncomfortable with her choice of clothing, Henri wrapped her arms around herself. The chill was becoming unbearable.

She came almost immediately to the intersection of Sanders and Neely. She decided to turn left on Neely. Just as she was about to reach the intersection of Neely and Saul, she received yet another shock; just past the intersection, Neely Street just—disappeared. Walking to the edge, Henri looked down incredulously. A wide chasm encompassing the entire street gaped before her. It was like someone had opened a volcanic fault line; she swore she could see molten lava over the jagged edge.

Despite everything her grandfather had ever told her…apparently, the sidewalk did end. Abruptly. Turning and walking away from the chasm, Henri walked onto Saul Street. There wasn't much left of this street; most of the surrounding buildings were virtually destroyed. This street too ended in a boarded up dead end, similar to the one that blocked Lindsey Street. All that remained intact was a small white trailer. She walked up to the door and knocked. Receiving no answer, Henri turned the door knob. It opened without hesitation.

The interior was well-kept. She noticed a large folded paper on the couch. Picking it up, she noted it to be a map of Silent Hill. The map had a series of markings, and told Henri that she was currently in the neighborhood of South Vale. There was a circle at the entrance of the Blue Creek Apartments on Monson Street, one at a Texxon Gas station, one at the Silent Hill Historical Society, and another at the Lake View Hotel across Toluca Lake. There was a square around a building on the North end of Lindsey Street called South Silent Hill Fire Station, as well as a triangle around St. Stella Church on Nathan Avenue.

"Maybe there will be some clues as to what is happening around here in these places," Henri said aloud. "Or maybe just traps." The closest marked area to her was the Blue Creek Apartment complex on Monson. Because Saul was blocked off, she would have to try going through Katz St. She would have to go North on Neely, as she had noticed that Harris Street, between Saul and Katz, was also blocked.

She exited the trailer and headed towards Neely, beginning her journey deeper into the deserted town.