04: Alone in the Town
A trail had led to a gate, and now another gate had led to another trail. This one may have also been a tidy little nature walk at one point, and before that perhaps a logging road, but now there were barricades, construction equipment, and other such encroachments of civilization. Instead of trees and thick undergrowth, I walked through a valley of bare dirt on either side, as if this part of the path had been recently dug up. I guessed that it was set to be paved. Sometimes the dirt wall fell away, leading into valleys that would take me God knew were, but these were all cordoned off by fencing, sometimes consisting of barbed wire strung between posts. None were more than waist-high, and I could have climbed over most if I wanted to, but that was okay. According to my map, I could follow this to Wiltse Road and, not far past that, into town. No need to go exploring through the brush.
However, though these things strongly suggested nearby population, they didn't prove it. Nobody manned the equipment or handled the tools. There were no sounds of speech, clashing of iron and rock, or the flatulence of heavy machinery. I saw more artifacts of development as I approached South Vale, among them a pickup truck and an old white panel van, but that was all. My encounter in the cemetery looked ever more anomalous. Where the hell was everyone?
The hills to either side fell away quickly, and my path was now bound entirely by fences and makeshift barriers, each one different in appearance. Abruptly, a much larger one appeared before me, this one made of stone and concrete. It was another overpass, if the guard rail on its rim was any indication. I had assumed such a convergence would appear on my map, and I was right. Above me was Nathan Avenue, the portion blocked off by the messy barricade near the scenic outlook. This meant that the town proper was just ahead. Knowing this made me quicken my pace.
This lasted a whole five seconds, because then I came to a complete stop, again listening for noises I was sure I'd heard. A few moments of this gave me nothing, but when I resumed walking, it was at a slower pace and with my attention still focused outward. And, this time, I did hear them. Footsteps, slower than mine and therefore outside of my rhythm. When I halted again, so did they, and when I moved, they moved. This happened again once after. This gave me the distinct feeling that I was being stalked, but nothing revealed itself to offer visual evidence. Nothing growled, though, or snarled. There was nothing animal in this, and though they began again, this was enough for me to at least try to ignore whatever it might be. When the muffled grit under my feet became the slap of shoe leather on concrete, the phantom footsteps ceased.
I had to follow the pitted, flaking construct a bit before I found the actual underpass. It was a mess of old newspaper and dry litter, stretching into a foggy void. Whatever lay on the other end was still out of sight. Some of those papers shuffled about, and one wrapped itself around my leg. I peeled it off and saw that it was the front page of the Silent Hill Tribune. The date was May 4, ten days ago. I let it fall to the floor and proceeded through a chain-linked gate bisecting the length of the tunnel.
The concrete floor of the underpass gave way to the ashy color of pavement. This was Wiltse Road, and though it seemed too narrow to support automobile traffic, a guard rail marked the edge of the street to my right. A good thing, too, because it was a long way down in that direction. Wiltse was little more than a narrow shelf carved into a nearly vertical wall of rock. I could look to my left and see what I'd probably see if I stood at the bottom of the cliff to my right. It was a strong suggestion of broken bodies, should any happen to bounce against its face on the way down.
There wasn't much to see as I made my way along Wiltse's gentle curves. Eventually, the natural barriers of rock gave way to fencing, first the ranch-style log kind you might see in an old western, then the slat-board kind that rose above my head, and then buildings, past which Wiltse Road came to an end. This was Sanders Street, and it was a real one as opposed to what was essentially little more than a paved track. The map told me that I could follow Sanders to Lindsey Street, and from there to Nathan Avenue, and that was what I wanted to do, because Rosewater Park was just off of Nathan. It wouldn't be very far.
The idea that Sanders Street was a legitimate artery of civilization seemed to be more theory than reality as I went along its sidewalk, and it wasn't a theory that I found comfortable at all. It wasn't the first unusual thing about this little adventure of mine, but it was the first that really unnerved me. I could reconcile myself with the chilly weather. It should be nice and warm, but a cold snap was hardly outside the realm of possibility even as late as mid-May. I've seen snow on the ground on Easter Sunday. The fact that I'd seen a total of one person since parking my car didn't raise any red flags either. I'd come in through the back door, after all.
But now I saw that it was more than that. Sanders Street was deserted. I don't use that word in place of merely sparse, but in the true spirit: there was no evidence that people inhabited this place. Nobody made their way along the sidewalks on foot. There were cars parked by the curb, but none moved. And, just in case I might fool myself into thinking that my limited vision was just preventing me from seeing the people who had to be there, my ears verified what my eyes suspected. Toluca Lake was, from where I stood, hundreds of feet distant in any direction, so I could not hear its laps and breaks, but other than that, I could close my eyes and easily imagine I was back at the outlook with my car behind me and quiet all around me, plausible quiet because I was still almost a mile outside of the town's fringes. So, this raised quite a valid question:
Where the hell was everyone?
I suppose I may have called out to see if anyone would answer, but I was already making my way north along the street, and by the time it occurred to me to announce my presence, it occurred to me that it wasn't just the lack of people. I saw no dogs or cats, which I might not even on a normal day, but neither did I see or hear any birds, and in a town carved out of Maine's solid block of forest as this one was, bird conversation is practically inescapable except during particularly bad weather. That was, I think, what really impressed the situation upon me, even more than the apparent lack of human habitation. There were no jays warbling, no finches chattering. The loons usually wouldn't pipe up in force this early, but I remembered seeing probably six million gulls swarming the area like flies, their mournful shrieks a constant piece of the local melody, not even really shutting up at night. And they were all gone.
Realizing this, I felt a prick of fear. For the first time in my entire life, I accepted as fact a concept that I'd never had cause to consider before: it's incredibly unnerving to discover that you're alone in a place where you should not ever be alone, where you should, at all times, be in the company of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. A place which should be constantly populated did not, as a general rule, disappear without reason. Entire towns do not wake up one morning and collectively decide to take off for kicks. Something must have happened. But what?
There was also the letter to consider in all this, too. My capacity for accepting coincidence could not stretch far enough for me to believe that there was no connection at work. Yes, I did follow it, but I followed it mindful that it lacked any foundation in what I knew to be the truth. My wife was dead. I knew that there was no possibility of actually finding her, standing on the lakeside platform and waiting for my arrival. I was neither crazy nor stupid. It was entirely possible to rationalize my actions by stating what was very likely to be the truth: I never really coped with losing Mary. I had never been able to really come to grips, and it was wrecking what life I still had. If something drastic didn't happen, the cliff was dangerously close and I was going at it full gallop. Coming here was the drastic thing. Being here, in a place I knew to be special to Mary beyond any other, would be the salve my soul so desperately needed. I was here, as the preachers like to say, to be saved.
And, as wonderful as all that was, it meant nothing, because even though there was only one real flaw in my whole rationalization, it was tremendous. Fatal, in fact.
Where did the letter come from?
I couldn't account for it, and now, on an empty street of a town inexplicably desolate, I found it impossible to simply ignore. Where had the letter come from, and why did I follow it into such a place as this? What had happened here?
As if in response to my unspoken question, a dark green box materialized nearby. Silent Hill Tribune was etched down the side in peeling white letters. One of the papers remained in the faceplate, and though I didn't have any pocket change, I could still make out today's date through the dirty Plexiglas, next to Morning Edition—as if a little backwater like Silent Hill actually rated an evening reprise. So, whatever had gone down had gone down within the last handful of hours, probably as I hurrying toward it. And, though it seemed quiet and deserted, that could just be a farce. Maybe it was still going down elsewhere in town. This made me feel very little inclination to announce my presence to whatever might be out there, and I continued up the road now quiet and alert.
Within a few spans, I found what I thought was the answer, and it was one I had desperately hoped not to find. It was as if a great hand descended from the heavens wielding an enormous paintbrush, which it then dragged in what I thought was series of irrational swipes. Had this really been so, it would be possible to imagine that it was only red paint. Of course, it was not. Nor was it random, at least, not entirely. The bloody streaks were in a line curving to the right, onto Lindsey Street. Naturally, I looked in the direction to which it seemed to point, and when I saw the moving shadow, I at first dismissed it as just more sensory tricks, just the fog swirling in the wind and producing patterns of things that weren't there. I had, in all probability, seen a hundred such patterns since getting out of my car, and the only reason this one registered was because I really was looking for something.
Except, it did not vanish with the next gust, as I had wholly expected would happen, because it wasn't a mist mirage at all. It was a person, standing still on clearly unsteady feet for a second or two, and then moving away from me with a pronounced stagger. This time I did call out, all thought of caution gone buried under a profound sense of relief. Finally, I could get some answers, and better still, I now knew that the place wasn't abandoned at all. There were still people here, and maybe something had happened and a lot of people had gone away, but some had also clearly stayed behind. I took off after the retreating person, assuming that, at a jog, I would overtake them in seconds.
After ten of those seconds passed, my assumptions fell apart. Not only had I not caught up to the person, I hadn't even seen its shadow in the fog. I had, however, come upon another crimson swipe on the pavement. As the first one angled onto Lindsey Street, so too did this one hang right, into what seemed to be an alley. Another arrow of blood to point the way, and against my better judgment, I followed it.
I had passed a receiving yard a few yards back, but the gate closing it off was large and old. The figure could not have hidden within it, because I'd have heard it open and close without doubt in this quiet. Solid walls offered otherwise impenetrable borders. I thought again of the bloody streaks behind me, and my pace slowed involuntarily. What if, instead of a victim, I had encountered one of the victimizers? What if there was some dangerous, bloodthirsty psychopath lying in wait, unsated and gleeful at the prospect of another victim stupidly walking right into his clutches?
That should have been enough to turn me around and get me out of this alley—hell, out of this town—but the person I saw didn't seem a likely candidate for psycho-killer status. To judge by size, I had either seen a teenager or a small woman. Sure, it wasn't impossible for either category to engage in such behavior, but the odds didn't seem to suggest it. Besides, the staggering shuffle might have indicated injury, and wasn't it possible that I may have scared them in much the same manner? Enough maybe to spur an injured person to run? So, yeah, I kept going.
Paved road abruptly gave way to another path of dirt and another construction area, this one enclosed in a tall, chain-link fence. The gate shouted bright yellow warnings of CAUTION and an admonition to locate a hard hat. It was also ajar, and I could see the faint divots of staggered footprints in the soft earth, leading into the gap like a guideline. Really, shouldn't I leave well enough alone? The sign stressed CAUTION, and I had seen enough movies to have followed my pop-culture indoctrination. When you saw a sign like that in a high-tension situation featuring a lone protagonist, you always knew there was something to it beyond its laconic real purpose. That's where the killer lay in wait. That's where the bomb was, with ten seconds remaining on its timer. That's where you, as an observer in the audience, were perplexed by the character's ignorance of obvious danger. This was where you couldn't understand why this hapless idiot wouldn't turn around and run like hell and not stop until he was out of breath.
This wasn't a movie, though. This was real life, where unpredictability could, in fact, work in your favor. The general situation demanded care, but I was not about to believe that I was walking into a stupid movie trope.
I hadn't heard it at first, thanks to both distance and the ever-present moan of the wind, and even when it finally did register, I couldn't identify it for what it was. At first, I thought it was an air leak of some kind, but that would require an accompaniment of running machinery and there definitely wasn't any of that nearby. There was something else, though: a squeal which had no tone but did possess a flexible and irregular pitch.
And now, standing before yet another barricaded underpass, I tried to peer through the sloppy construction and see what was causing the racket, though I was pretty sure I knew what it was. The interior was gloomy, and a fence sealed the other end of the small tunnel entirely, but I was easily able to climb through the makeshift latticework on my end. Sure enough, a portable radio sat on an old drum, its screeching amplified by the close quarters. It was not the cheap cookie-cutter Chinese garbage you could find in a Wal-Mart these days but a classic transistor radio, heavy and elegant. I couldn't tell its make in this light, but it was undoubtedly similar to the beautiful old Realistic I'd inherited from my old man, upon which I'd listened to Cream and The Who and Bad Company until I got a turntable for my thirteenth birthday. I felt for the tuning knob and twisted it one way, then another, trying to pick up anything I could. I was hoping to catch a news report, though that was not much of an expectation. If Silent Hill's sorry state had become newsworthy to any degree, I would have certainly seen more than just a timid woman in a cemetery. I'd see news vans and authorities of every imaginable sort. It'd be a circus.
There was no news report. No music, either. Various frequencies gave me different kinds of static, but from one end of the band to the other, static was all I got. I shook it and slapped its plastic casing, applying the time-honored American imperative to make electronic appliances work through the application of violence. It practically never works and did not now. Was it broken? Maybe, but I had tons of concrete right above me, too. Getting out into the open might bring better results.
Just then, the shrilling grew louder, as it would have if I had thumbed the volume dial. That I had not brought me to pause, not sure at first if it was just me giving myself the creeps again. But, no, not this time. It wasn't just shrilling now, it was howling. Noise burst from within and bounced back off the walls and low ceiling to hit my eardrums like cymbals. The radio itself actually vibrated with the force of it. And even though the radio tried hard to deafen me, its high and tinny squalls couldn't mask the low grumble I heard off to my left.
The thing rose to its feet, its form a smaller silhouette emerging from the larger darkness near the end of the tunnel. It spoke in a wet, unintelligible gurgle, a sound not even close to being words of any kind I knew. Once it was upright, it seemed to be an effort to stay that way. A drunken sway marked its first step toward me, one that only by miracle did not sent it crashing back to the ground, and I backed away in kind. I couldn't help it. I had, over the course of the last hour, seen a lot of things I could generously term 'unusual' and freaked myself out by imagining all sorts of things.
This should have been the same, because it defied rationalization. I could not see the figure as anything but a moving shadow, but that was enough. If it was a person, they were wrapped tightly in a bag of some kind, constricting the entire upper body. Its head grew right out of its shoulders, and those shoulders were just rounded ends. The arms were missing. And, with all this being true, it was the way it moved which denied any idea that it was human. Even as it took another step in my direction, the entire upper body contorted with great, jerking lunges, as if electric current pumped into it at random intervals. One such lunge seemed certain to knock it on its back, yet it seemed to find some kind of amazing, impossible balance.
I heard the wet hiss a fraction of a second before the air was filled with spray. This sent me stumbling back, half in a blind panic, and a damned good thing I did. Droplets of this mist came to rest on my hand, which immediately came to life in a thousand tiny pinpricks of fire. It had spit at me, and it burned like acid. I ground my hand into the folds of my jacket to get it off, and then I cried out as I backed into something solid. I whirled around, certain that another one of these… these monsters… had crept up on me, and trapped between two of them…
But, no—it was the barricade. Independent of any conscious thought, I'd gripped one of the boards. It was loose, wiggling like a tooth, and I yanked it free. Oh, no, man, I thought, you're not doing that. Climb back through and get your ass out of here! But, I couldn't do that. Maybe it could run, too. It was all herky-jerky movement now, but how did I know it couldn't run? Did I want to find out the hard way?
And if I was wrong, would I live to regret it?
This wooden plank wasn't much of a weapon to look at, but it gave an evil whistle as I lashed out. Any remaining illusion I had of this creature being human evaporated when the plank struck it what should have been its neck, because no set of human vocal cords could ever produce a cry like the one I heard. It was a mournful sort of sound, the kind that you might hear from two pieces of overstressed metal grinding against one another. That was almost enough to make me strike again. Seeing it lean back the way it did provided the rest. This time, I brought it down overhead, like a sledgehammer. It was a square blow, and powerful. I cried out and spun away as something splashed my face, dropping the stick and slapping at my face like some kind of maniac, certain that I'd been shot in the face by its venom, feeling it eat through my eyelids—and they wouldn't last long, would they?
It wasn't acid, though. When I brought my hands away, my face stung a bit from me rubbing on it so hard, but that faded quickly. Then, I remembered bringing down the wooden plank, the moment of impact as it connected with the creature's head—and the awful sensation of downward motion resuming as its skull caved in. What happened from there was only obvious.
That thought, calm as it was, made my gorge hit the ceiling, and I twisted around just in time to prevent splashing myself as my stomach roiled and then evicted everything that was in it. There wasn't much, but that only made it worse, because it wanted to let go of more than I had, and by the end of it, I was on hands and knees, coughing, sucking breath, coughing again, sucking breath again, and praying that it didn't make me pass out. The creature didn't concern me anymore. I was sure I'd killed it. If I hadn't, I'd have known it by now. One thing at a time.
Subjectively, a week passed before I felt ready to try standing again, but I managed without much trouble. I couldn't see the thing at all now, but it hadn't gone anywhere. A magnificent reek pervaded the tunnel to let me know it was still there, something wet and oily and thick enough to gag, the ripe stench of thick rot under a beating sun. It was time to get gone from here, if not for the sake of the aroma, then for the vague shape I saw leaning against the fencing at the other end. I didn't know if it was just my imagination telling me that I saw a man's body slumped against the mesh, or if it was my senses telling me that perhaps my fallen foe had company. Either way, I had no interest in finding out. I climbed back through the latticework—but not before I retrieved the wood plank. I needed all the reassurance I could get.
The fog was no less claustrophobic than it had been, but five minutes in the tunnel gave it a roomy appeal it hadn't had before. The air was cold but fresh, and I took a few great gulps of it to rid myself of the experience. It helped a little, but I couldn't ignore the dark red splash marking the business end of my new weapon.
I had, however, forgotten entirely about the radio. Throughout the course of events, it ended up in my jacket pocket, and had decided to go quiet since then. Fiddling with the volume dial made the steady hiss grow and shrink, but a steady hiss was all I got. Static dominated the AM band as it had before, but it wasn't the intense screeching it had been.
The needle stopped just past 1100 mHz, because that's when I heard the voice. It could barely break through the static, and most of what I heard was the tone of a person's voice rather than any distinct words. A few did, most of them being hash and garble. Only one word sounded clear, not just enough for me to hear the word but for me to recognize the voice, which could have never happened unless it was a voice long familiar to me. This brought my heart to race even more than had the attacker in the tunnel, because the speaker on the radio was my wife. The one word I caught wasn't a word, but a name.
My name.