05: A World of Madness
I decided to hold onto the radio.
The encounter with the thing behind the barricade negated any possible attempt for me to simply dismiss what I'd heard as a hallucination of the ear. There was no way to know whether I really had been stalked by some hungry thing up on that trail, but monsters turned out to be intuition rather than imagination. That was the sort of thing that shot arrows into the heart of cynicism, and not just about monsters. After that, I could really believe that Mary had somehow transmitted a message to me through this radio, even if the message itself was lost to me, and if I could believe that, I could also believe that my letter was legit. This was why when I reached the mouth of Lindsey Street, I went north instead of south.
I made my way up the street lacking any pretense of casual strolling. There was no Boris Badenov-style sneaking involved, but I made sure each step taken was as careful and quiet as I could. Squinting into the fog brought my headache back with a brass band, and paid little in the way of dividends. Each shifting, amorphous imprint could be another one of those things, and even though none of them actually were, I was already building a vast stretch of paranoia. The only real freedom I got out of this was that anything that really did move could be considered a threat.
That was a thought of which I no longer had any doubt. Whatever happened to Silent Hill appeared to be pervasive. I had managed to steal glances at shop doors or windows, seeing dark, vacant interiors and "Sorry! We're Closed!" signs on display several times. They were closed, too, and locked. The place should be crawling with cops at the very least, considering the state of things. If I could get to a telephone, I could call them myself—or could I? The lack of official response argued strongly that making outside contact wasn't possible. Not that I exactly wished to make any such contact. I did have a job of my own to do here, and selfish or not, if Silent Hill became a nationally-known crisis on CNN, it went without saying that my search for Mary would run into some rather profound roadblocks.
Concerned over what might be the most profound emergency situation in American history, and focusing visually on trying to see anything in motion that I didn't want near me, I very nearly found out the hard way that Lindsey Street would not be taking me to Nathan Avenue—not today, and probably not any time in the foreseeable future. I'd seen news footage of a sinkhole in Atlanta last year, and that was bad even on TV. What I saw here was far worse, because its depths were lost in the fog, as was the opposite shore of the abyss. I assumed there was another shore, but perched where I was, how could I know for sure? For all I could tell, this was the precipice of world's end, the 20th Century ideal of what ancient men believed existed beyond the horizons.
When I want, I can exhibit a vigorous single-minded approach to certain goals. This is why, in spite of Silent Hill being in the midst of what had to be its worst day ever, I traced the fissure from one end to the other in hopes that there still existed some way around it. Everything thus far suggested very strongly that I should be running in the other direction, as fast as I could, over the river and through the woods, back to my car and, from there, anywhere on Planet Earth but where I was. Nonetheless, what I cared about primarily was getting to Rosewater Park.
It wouldn't be by way of Lindsey Street. Whatever had created this colossal divot cared nothing for keeping it between the curbs. On either side, the rows of houses had been abbreviated quite savagely, torn in half as if by giant hands, each with one half gone forever and the other half still standing but ceasing abruptly in a ragged fan of aluminum siding and broken beams. So, that was that, for this street, at least. A look at my map showed me Neely Street, two blocks over after I backtracked a bit. It didn't seem likely that it suffered the same apocalyptic damage as this, but how dumb would I have to be to simply assume so? Nevertheless, I wouldn't know until I saw, and if it was intact, it would take me where I needed to go.
A hissing came from my pocket. I reached in and pulled out the radio, a flower of excitement blossoming in my stomach. I hadn't gone very far from where I'd found it, but sometimes that was all it took to move from a dead radio zone to total clarity. The station was set to 710 MHz, where I'd left it after Mary's attempt to reach me through it. I raised the volume and held it close to my ear, straining to hear in case this message came through garbled. The radio grew louder as the seconds passed, but there were no words hidden within the curling static. I held it away now, hesitating a bit and then played with the tuner. Pops, hisses and squeals sang a dissonant chorus, but this was a song without lyrics. Was there anything I could do? There was an antenna, but the angle of its tilt had no effect I could tell.
Or, maybe it did. There came a tapping sound, and initially, I believed it came from the single tinny speaker. It was a single, simple rhythm, as if someone was tatting a slow and even beat on a snare drum. However, when I moved the tuner knob again, the tapping remained constant against the shifting waves of white noise.
Things fell into place rapidly after that. First, I understood that it wasn't the radio producing that sound. By this point, the source itself betrayed its point of origin: somewhere in front of me, rather than the little plastic box in my hand. From my hand, it slipped back into my pocket, muffling its speech but by no means silencing it. This was good, because I needed that hand to work with its partner in gripping the makeshift weapon I'd scavenged from the construction site. Because, intuition kicked in again at this point, telling me that something was about to happen, and I would do well to be prepared for it. For the ten longest seconds of my life, I waited for intuition to bear fruit.
It did not disappoint.
The all-encompassing mist was in a state of perpetual flux, driven in every direction by a series of seemingly omnidirectional wind trails. This was not the sedate blur that often results from a chance encounter of two opposing weather fronts, but the milky, ground-hugging afterbirth of a powerful seasonal storm, sans the storm itself, magnified to some incredible degree by forces unknown. Such confluence gives the observer an infinite confusion of shadows and illusions of the things which may cast them. It's the kind of environment which can take a respectable breed of caution and warp it into paranoia. This lends itself to become perfect camouflage, should something actually lurk within its formless depths. The range of total concealment is uncomfortably close, and it was for all these reasons that the shape had coalesced into definition before I was able to tell it apart from all the false ones surrounding me.
I knew immediately that I was not faced with something human. Even though the shape initially gave me that illusion, that was precisely what had happened when I was trapped at the end of Vachss Road, and I guess something subconscious was at play that wouldn't allow me to repeat the mistake. That, however, only formed the primary reason to dismiss any notions of humanity. The way it walked, it was sort of a chicken-like gait, its thin, bowed legs being the only true appendages it had. Even when darkness reduced it to little more than a living silhouette framed by the dim light of the blocked underpass, I could see that its head seemed to grow right out of its shoulders rather than a neck, and those shoulders conspicuously lacked anything like arms. I could tell in a heartbeat that the thing coming at me now was of the same species—no arms, no neck. But, out here in the middle of Lindsey Street, the light was ample, and now, here, any suggestion of humanity in this shambling figure resolved itself into absurdity. Very little else resolved into anything. The creature itself lacked features. Its head twitched in large, jerky impulse, as if attached to wires that were frayed but still carrying current, but when it spent a heartbeat being still, I saw no features that indicated a face. A thick, oily membrane covered the entire body, giving me the idea that there was, in fact, a grotesque shade of humanity in this thing, a slight body encased in a completely opaque, full-bodied straight jacket. I couldn't tell if it was flesh or plastic. Either could explain the greasy sheen, but what difference did it make to know? The creature, the straight-jacket, did not concern itself with figuring me out. Curiosity wasn't what brought it to a halt two paces in front of me. It reared back, an action one might mistake for a faint, if one did not know better. I did know better, but fascination kept me rooted in place, mind and body locked in a trance of drugged wonder because it was faced with a problem it simply could not explain. I think my jaw may have even hung slack.
Thankfully, there was another part of me, the animal cunning part, I guess, that understood something very important: if I did not move in the next two seconds, the hang-dog look on my face would be erased in a shower of corrosive venom. I heard the angry, pressure-wet hiss before any of my other senses kicked in, but then I saw it, too, a mustard-hued geyser exploded from some unseen cavity in the monster's chest. Those good old animal instincts had kicked in just in time for it to miss me by forearm's length and hit the asphalt with a wet slap. A blistering sizzle rose from where it fell, audible over even the shrewish howl of the radio, the sound of chicken dropped into a deep fat fryer. Smoke rose a few inches from that point, whereupon it was caught up in the fog and swallowed by it. It is right around this point where I think to myself that perhaps this would be a wonderful time to get the fuck out here.
It turned to follow me as I took off up the street, but it wasn't capable of anything more than a quick trot. A brisk jog was enough for me to pace it in a hurry, and that would have probably been the end of it. It's instinctual to take off in a direction pointing dead opposite of a threat. The only real subversion to instinct is if another threat lies visible in that direction, and, of course, that was a luxury I could not enjoy. I wasn't sprinting, and it was a good thing, because my pace was just enough that when two more of the straight-jacketed things suddenly materialized at eleven- and one-o'clock, I had just enough time to see them both rearing back like angry cobras. A double blast of dark mist spewed forth in unison. Had I given into my panic moments ago, had I taken off in a run, I would have taken it right in the face.
There's a lag, I discovered, between the point of learning that you were just a stupid, lucky step away from destruction, and the point where that knowledge actually sinks in. While in this gap of wakeful, unconscious thought, it's as if you achieve a very temporary state of uncontrollable, superhuman reaction. I was flanked, but I knew that these creatures were not as nimble as they were fast. I knew that I could skirt either of them if I tried. But, I was caught in the gap. I had become a creature of the nerve endings. That's why I charged the one to my right, hefting the plank as if it were a baseball bat and unloading as if I were Frank Thomas faced with a juicy, hanging curveball. I guess it might have looked almost heroic to an onlooker. This sense of lower operation ceased immediately upon impact, when the nail-spiked end of the board first struck against the creature's skull and then through it as the thin ridge of bone caved in. Had I really swung something hardwood, like a baseball bat, I might have taken its head clean off. Instead, the creature crumpled, all its muscles apparently having shut off like a light switch, and it fell to the ground in a boneless lump. The ruins of its head struck the pavement, and a black starburst exploded from the point of impact. The smell was immediate and overwhelming, and even knowing the other creature was but a dozen feet away wasn't enough for me to keep my gorge down. Thank God I hadn't eaten earlier, because if I had to displace a full breakfast or lunch, it'd have gotten to me first.
I turned and ran, wiping strands from my chin as I did. I took an angle to the right and onto the sidewalk, both so I could cover at least one flank, and so I could better see where Lindsey Street intersected Katz Street. Not even being hip-deep in the monster mash made me consider high-tailing it back to Wiltse and out of town. Even now, beneath the new and immediate imperative to watch out for these impossible monsters, my thoughts had a single foundation, and that foundation was getting to Rosewater Park with all due haste. All would be made clear, both Mary and the state of this place, I convinced myself, if I could only get to the park. It wasn't a very good argument, but I wasn't in a state of mind which required good arguments.
I came to a stop upon reaching the intersection, not because I was gassed, but because I had just now noticed that things had gotten quiet again. The monsters were a few hundred feet in back of me, and at the pace I'd observed, it would take them awhile to catch up, and that was assuming they were capable of tracking me. Yet, it wasn't this knowledge which reassured me.
It was the radio. It had gone quiet again.
I held it again, but this time, I didn't mess with any of the knobs. When I held it close to my ear, I heard pops and crackles, but they were almost inaudible when held at arm's length, even with the volume knob turned to the max. Twice now, it had emitted those awful, tortured sounds—and, both times, I had made acquaintance with one of those shambling, straight-jacketed things immediately thereafter. Was it sensing them, the way a Geiger Counter sensed radiation? Could that even be possible?
The question was unspoken, but I was given two quick answers regardless. First, the radio came to life in my hand, and keeping with my hypothesis, I whirled around. I would not have known it was there, otherwise, and even having that knowledge left me incapable of changing anything. While upright, the thing in the fleshy crazy coat moved about at a sedate pace. This was the one I had laid low—the first thing I saw was the ruins of its skull—and its legs, spread-eagle and parallel to the ground, worked like pistons, pumping at speeds that simply could not be possible for a creature of its size and yet it came and there was nothing I could do about it.
My attempt to dodge this humanoid missile probably saved me from a broken ankle, but even though it only grazed me, there was such power behind the punch that my balance was immediately and irretrievably stolen. I went down hard, landing on both elbows. Twin shocks of pain lanced out in both directions up my arms, and I felt a moment's surety that I'd broken both of them, that in one amazing shot, this formless horror had ensured that I could never again do to his friends what I'd done to him. They weren't broken, though. Within moments, they'd be sporting some fine bruises, and would probably be smarting for days to come, but I still held firm grip on the plank, and when I tried using my arms to push myself upright, they complied. I'd dropped the radio, but it loudly announced its own survival. I picked it up only by groping for it, preoccupied as I was by trying to locate the skittering monster. It was off to my right, still moving about in that impossibly fast shuffle, but it was angled away from me, and after a brief pause, those legs churning like the legs of a cartoon character in full sprint. This burst carried it out of sight, and the radio settled back to near-silence, in confirmation of both the monster's retreat as well as my own ideas of its function. I'd heard no more crackled bursts of voice, but it was valuable nonetheless.
I hugged the north end of Katz Street, and I made it to Neely without any unfortunate encounters. I was half a block up Neely Street when I came upon the distressing but not entirely surprising truth: Whatever had plowed a canyon across Lindsey Street had not bothered stopping simply because that particular avenue had been severed clean. Just how far did it go? And, why did it seem as though the world was out to get me today? This anonymous little town was, by any measure, in a very bad way, but I couldn't wrap my mind around this being coincidental to my being here. From a calm distance, I could easily dismiss such notions as ridiculous, but I was right in the pitching middle of it, and from right up close, I couldn't see these two elements as being disconnected, even if I also could not identify any of the connections as being relative. That was the thing about truly crazy situations I'd never really considered before. Vital clues and nonsense intertwined so closely that it was a nearly impossible task telling one from the other. It was equally difficult to say for sure what made certain clues relevant, and what made others inconsequential. As if this wasn't enough of a clusterfuck, underpinning all of this was the fact that I could only assume that any of this was consequential, and how valuable were the assumptions of a man who came to this place because a woman three years in her grave insisted on meeting him here?
So, now I had Munson Street. Once, an anomaly. Twice, a coincidence. Thrice, a trend? I suppose I would find out before too long. It couldn't go on forever like this, though. There was that. Come hell or high water, I would find a way. Turning back wasn't an option. It never really was. I would just have to find a way. So thinking, I came back to Katz Street and continued west.
Past a little restaurant called The Jade Moon, a chain-link fence bordered the crumbling sidewalk with no break. It was half again as high as I was tall and topped with strips of barbed wire. I could only just make out the sense of a building, lurking almost hidden by distance. Every so often, a battered NO TRESPASSING sign adorned a stretch of fence. This was a place that did not want visitors, in the midst of a town that no longer seemed to want visitors in spite of that being its primary reason for existence.
And, yet, it was where I was to go.
Katz Street came to a premature end as well, though this time, the obstacle went up instead of down. It was a giant construction barrier. I'd seen its like before on the side of the Wal-Mart in Ashfield when it had undergone a remodel. Like that one, this was a skeleton of wooden beams and sheet metal covered and connected by skins of waterproofed canvas. I couldn't judge its height, but once this kind of obstacle rose out of sight, it wasn't really worth knowing. It spanned the entire street, leaving a gap between itself and the chain-link fence no wider than my hand.
Surely, nobody was building anything right in the middle of a street. Was there another huge crevasse on the other side of it? Could the town's cataclysm have happened weeks ago, and this was evidence that someone had tried to do something about it? I honestly hoped this wasn't the case, because even when I had the luxury of connecting the monsters to the desolation to the outright destruction, there wasn't much in the way of sensibility. My grasp of the situation would be much simpler if I could tie all of these effects to a single cause. In any case, I was blocked off again. Whether or not there was a pit on the other side, the end result was no different.
Someone had left a message in red spraypaint, across one quadrant of canvas:
The door which opens in darkness leads to nightmares.
And, there was a door, just to the right of this cheery admonition. I tried the knob, and it turned, but far too freely, as if the knob itself was unattached to the latching mechanism. I gave it a hard shove, leading with my shoulder. All I got was a little shock of pain. It didn't budge an inch, nor should it have; the hinges were visible. It wouldn't open away from me unless I drove a car into it.
Only one option now remained: Saul Street, a block south. I had no real reason to believe it would pan out. Katz Street had given me the trend, had it not? Past that, only a crazy man expects the trend to break right after it is established. I was not a crazy man. Desperate, perhaps, but not crazy. I would go south to Saul Street—assuming I could make it even that far—and I would not expect an open route. A crazy man would expect. All I would do was hope. If Saul Street didn't let me pass, well, I would hash that problem out once it presented itself. If it presented itself, I added silently.
I had gone only far enough for the barrier to disappear from view when I heard the radio again, like a waterfall from a mile away but growing louder. It was a cry of danger, I understood, and I tensed, scanning the short horizon for signs of danger. The deep clap of one of their heavy feet came into range, bringing with it the dusky, now-familiar form of one of those inhuman things. The stick had a nail still impaling its end, an end now lightly peppered with black droplets, and I held that end aloft, ready to rush forward and introduce it to the approaching threat, but I got only one step toward this end. To my right, another straight-jacket parted the mist and approached, its odd, birdlike gait angled right at me. I backed up and sidled away from the sinister fence, wanting to get to open space. Attacking one of these things was dangerous. Attacking a pair could very well be suicide. By no means did I attribute my last victory to anything resembling heroism on my part.
Attacking a group of three would spell certain doom, and to make that point clear, another one appeared. And another. And another. They had spread out, had flanked me. I hoped that was just shitty luck on my part, because if it was a demonstration of intelligence, of coordination, my end was to be immediately finite. I had to get around and away, and not just off this street I was thinking now but truly away. Coming here was a mistake. I had to get back to my car and the highway and to anyplace in the entire world but—
—right into the construction barrier. The two farthest on the right closed the gap in two seconds. There was no way I could get around them and avoid getting hosed with their awful, hungry mists. I could shimmy through the last one, or between the last two, only if they had the courtesy to hold still and let me do it. A million tiny dams opened in my capillaries and panic poured forth. Adrenaline pumped from my guts in huge, heaving bursts. I made for the fence, hoping that the leftmost of this gruesome quintet was more generous in its coverage than the rightmost, but nothing doing. There was, in fact, a gap of nearly two feet between the fence and the bird-stepping creature, but there was also a pile of loose debris scattered on the ground in that gap. If I tried to leap it, in all likelihood I would catch my foot on the way up. Even if I was lucky enough not to break any bones coming down, I would never get up fast enough to avoid being tagged. They came closer, the nearest only six feet away now and I was in the corner. Two more steps, three, each of them moving in a sinuous manner that seemed to imitate each of the others with clocklike precision. Faced with my imminent demise, my own clock ticked in milliseconds, laying out each frame of movement in its own particular moment of exposition. Each lift of the leg, each thrust onto the other, even the drunken, wind-blown sway of their formless, mottled torsos, seemed to me in this temporal compression a kind of choreographed dance, and even though the individuals had all, individually, lapsed from total synchronicity, the effect was more like watching the same video feed on five separate monitors, each one on a slight time-delay. I have to admit, it was as fascinating as it was morbid, and why should I not admire this? What I was seeing was not just beyond the realm of my own personal experience but beyond that of any human being, ever. This was a display only I could appreciate, and I should appreciate it, because escape was impossible and death was inevitable, and though I was certain that I could choose more pleasant ways to shuffle off the mortal coil, I could at least hope that it was quick, or at least, that the insult to my nerves would be so dramatic that they would overload like fried circuits, leaving me to go away adrift on my own numbness.
That's when I stumbled. It had been something, a rock perhaps, or maybe a discarded soda can. I never got to see it, but I had stepped on it in my resign and retreat. The unexpected interloper broke my balance and I tumbled against the fence. I had expected the fence to catch me and then gently release me, but the section of fence I hit was not a part of the fence at all. It was a gate, unlocked and unlatched, and it yielded to my weight without the slightest refusal. Reflexively, I latched onto the gate's links and forced myself to balance once more. The nearest straight-jacket turned towards me by pivoting its entire body. No surprise was evident in this motion. It was the simple readjustment one would expect from a machine knocked slightly out of alignment. Behind it, its closest companion advanced in its new direction. Could they see, I wondered, or could they communicate? They were actually rather noisy when they were close enough, wet gurgles and thick, phlegmatic chokes with just a trace of nearly-human voice underneath. To me, they sounded just like random freakiness, but it could perhaps be some method of communication, primitive but apparently effective.
Maybe you could ponder this after you close the gate?
Good idea.
I rammed the gate shut and threw the U-shaped latch across a second before the nearest one got there. It bashed against the gate in bubbling frustration, and the latch jumped in its cradle, but it did hold. A filth-caked dumpster stood adjacent to the gate on my side, and I went over and pushed it in front of the gate. Two more straight-jackets were at the gate now, and both of them joined the first in slamming into it. With the added weight of the dumpster, the fence merely shrugged under the onslaught. I merely stood there, watching this crazy spectacle until the next one arrived. In a display that betokened at least animal cunning, this one did not throw itself against the unyielding gate. Instead, it bent backwards and fired a shot of its killer juice in my direction. It fell a full three feet short of where I stood, but I decided that the time had come to check this place out. I was safe—in relation to thirty seconds ago—but I'd rather not take even a small risk that they might find some way to breach the defenses.
A battered double-door led into the large structure which the gate protected. A faded placard hung askew next to it, reading Woodside Apartments. When I turned the knob, it gave, and opened into a cave. The agonized squeal of the badly-used hinges bounced around and back to me as I stepped into the lobby and let the door fall shut behind me. The sound of its latch was like that of some divine gavel in an immense courtroom which needed no call to silence.