Sorry if the spelling is a little (and by little, I mean polite for a lot) off, but the dictionary and thesaurus (on which I rely heavily) have gone a bit wrong on my computer.

Once again, if you disagree with the facts on Silent Hill, check out Wikipedia. I've got the facts right I think. That thing about all the suffering to go on there in the civil war time, I DEFINATLY read somewhere officail. . . . Though I am entitled to a certain amount of creativeness . . . . right?

Also, the last chapter was kind of a prologue, and this is a kind of second prologue. Things don't get really 'other world' until after here. Though if you're pretty sharp, you can already figure out where I'm going to go with the fic, though the details are a bit all over the place...

(Also, you might noticethe name of the actual chapter is different from what I've called it in the drop down menue. I called it that to make it easyer to find the part of you like and the actualy chapter name is enclosed here.)

PART 1: LOST SOULS

The first sign that Silent Hill had been repopulated was a couple riding on a tandem bicycle that passed him as he parked his car at Jacks Inn. At first, he wasn't sure that he had seen it as the disappeared into the mist, but as he let the image absorb in, he slowly realised that it hadn't been some kind of bizarre imagery that the spirits resting in this place had portrayed to him. He HAD actually just seen a couple on a tandem bike! And they seemed to be in a hurry. . .

James locked his car (if there were indeed people here, he bet they couldn't be trusted) and found himself at a loss as to what to do next. He came to Silent Hill expecting yet another romp through the darkest recesses of his soul but instead had found that it was an ordinary town. Except. . .

-Was it his imagination, or was the mist getting thicker?

There was a clunking noise some distance behind him. James span around and saw a shape in the mist of what looked like a human being. He'd been through that before. Instinctively, he reached for the gun he had hidden in the inside of his jacket-

-but froze when he heard the jingle-jangle of keys in a lock. All of a sudden, James realised what he was seeing; it was a person locking their motel door. That was a relief. Kind of.

The person turned and made their way towards the exit – towards him – and then froze when it noticed him. It went to go back to its room, hesitated, then made its way toward the exit once more, only this time much more slowly. James titled his head slightly in bewilderment. Why did they do that?

More and more of the figure came into view. James saw that it was a young girl – about in her mid teens – with short black hair – about the same length as Maria's he impulsively noticed. She was wearing black leather jacket and pants with big boots. Her leather jacket was open to reveal part of a tight fitting white tank top with a small picture of a black and yellow butterfly on her bottom right hand corner of it. That seemed very familiar somehow. . .

But he didn't get enough time to mull it over as the girl yelled out:

"Hey! What are you doing out on a mist day?"

"Uh. . ." Was all James could say at such short notice.

"Didn't you hear the sirens? When you hear the sirens, that means get the hell in doors!"

"I don't know what you're talking about. . ."

She rolled her eyes and muttered aside to herself; "Must be a damn tourist." Then said to him. "When they brought in the new families six or so years ago, the put in this curfew, see. Apparently, there are some wacko cultists running around and whenever we get a mist day, they have this rather irritating habit of eviscerating anyone they come across. There's this watchtower on top of the historical society with a siren on it, and when a watchman sees the mist that's always in the centre of Toulica Lake coming in, they set it off. In the initial stages of the mist, things are okay, but apparently when it gets real thick, that's when all you hear all kinds of crazy things happen."

"What kind of things?" James said with interest.

The girl hesitated. There was a strange look on her face; something James didn't know the words to describe. It lasted momentarily.

"Well, I once heard there was this boy at my old high school – one of those real cocky types – who thought it would be a laugh to go out when the mist got real bad – you know – when you can barely see a foot in front"-

-"And he turned up dead?"

"No." Replied the girl, slightly agitated at his interruption. "Worse than that. He was rolled up in this tight little ball round the back of this here Inn covered in blood and gibbering to himself mindlessly. God. . . whatever he saw really messed him up. He's still in a secure unit in Brookhaven; that's where most people who've seen crazy things in the mist end up."

"You don't think it's cultists. . ." James slowly said, taking in the meaning of the 'whatever he saw' part of what she just said. The girl shrugged.

"Since I was ten when me and my mom first came here I've been into the history of this town and stuff and I've read all kinds of strange stories. Nobody really seems to take any of it seriously but. . ." She paused and that odd look spread across her face again.

"What's wrong?" Prompted James.

"I've seen you before – I know I have. . ." She muttered to herself, though James could hear here quite clearly. She was clearly mulling it over, her left hand winding beside her concentration-filled head as if to charm out the information she sought. James shifted his weight uneasily onto his other foot as he waited for her to remember. Suddenly she snapped her fingers and yelled out. "JAMES SUNDERLAND!"

"What??"

"That's it! You're James Sunderland!! That dude that went missing here in Silent Hill years ago!"

"Uhh.. . . Yeah that's me. . ." James replied. "But how do you know my name?"

"You were the first case I learnt about!" Then aside to herself " My god how could I forget about that?" She then carried on talking to him. "Apparently you went missing here in Silent Hill. Your Dad sent some private detective in to look for you, but he came up with nothing. The search was called off because of Silent Hill's notorious history for people going missing. They reckoned you commit suicide because of what happened to your wife . . ." She paused, suddenly realising what she'd said. "Sorry about that."

James passed over her remarks. What had happened to Mary still hurt, but this girl wasn't really to blame for that slip of the tongue. Once a man is dead, the crimes he committed in life seem to become fair game for the media. . .

James changed the subject. "How much do you know about what's going on in Silent Hill?"

"Oh everything!" The girl said, noticeably proud with herself. "Back before settlers first came to this town from Europe, this was a sacred place where only the holiest of rituals were performed, but during the civil war when this place was used as a prison came and all these plagues broke out, they say that the mystical power the land held slowly absorbed the corruption and twisted into something quite sinister. Now – the legend goes – people with darkness held in their hearts – people who were once pure but have been corrupted just as this land was – are now drawn to this place. Pretty freaky, huh?"

"Yeah. . ." Said James, trailing off. When he though about how Silent Hill had called him there after what he did to Mary, it made an eerie kind of sense. Something inside him sank like a stone. . . "Where did you find out all that?"

"The information's lying around" She explained. "you just have to look for it, though FYI" She lent forward to him. "The reason I go out on mist days is because information has a creepy way of just turning up out of nowhere then. I've searched through the library in my old school after hours a million times for information and've come up with nothing, but I got caught in there on a mist day and this book called 'Lost Memories' where I learnt all that just fell out of the bookcase seemingly of its own volition, though I came back a few days later and the librarians said that they didn't have that book in there at all."

"So that's why you're going out now?" James asked.

"Yeah. You want to come with me?"

"What?!" James was startled. He'd only just met the girl. Was she nuts? "What makes you think"-

-"Weeeelll You've been missing for six years and I kinda figured you've turned up now either because you're looking for something .. . . . . Silent Hill doesn't often throw me a bone like this!" Her grin was unnervingly. . . like Maria's: Perky, but with an eerie kind of lifelessness that made you think something was wrong with her. . . but you couldn't quite put your finger on it. . . The girl started to skip off leaving James with little option but to follow her.

He could tell things were already going the way they did before, all those years ago. Once again, Silent Hill was about to string him along a pre-determined path of nightmares, just like before, only this time, the key was no longer Maria, but this odd little girl. As James jogged after her, he went –rather morbidly - over what he'd done wrong on his last excursion to the enthralling insanity of Silent Hill. He should never have let Maria out of his sights, even after her death. That's when Silent Hill decided to screw with his head, and it was all so easy for it:

Silent Hill knew what made you tick. It knew what made you squirm, it knew what made you cry and it had absolutely no remorse in clawing savagely at old wounds within your soul like a pillaging jackal. This girl. . . . Could one so young have the same horrific regrets as he had? Or was she just an innocent getting involved in the mayhem out of innocent, pure childlike curiosity? James had to know.

"What's your name?" James called out after the shape of the girl.

She paused, then turned.

"My name, is Myriam" She smerked with a cunning glint in her eye. "Do you trust me enough to flollow me now?"

James gasped, but wasn't entirely sure why. Was it because she knew his inhibitions? He didn't know. So he complied with her looslely said demand and continued to follow her happy frame into the continually thickening, mollevolant mist of Silent Hill