Chapter Thirteen

Neither of the women who lay on their makeshift beds had slept, as might have been expected. It had been determined that sleep in such a place was impossible after the events which had occurred just a short time before. Even though they were temporarily within the confines of a safe haven, relaxation failed to come about. The form of the officer lying sprawled out on the couch in a position that signaled she was hurting could be seen, as could the figure of a certain woman by the name of Rose Da Silva, whose manner of resting was only slightly less troubled. Quite plainly sleep was something they both needed plenty more of, but 'twas also quite plainly something the Hellish town of Silent Hill would allow them the privilege of drifting into. Rose turned on the mattress of the old spring bed to face the couch upon which Cybil lay, and her mind wandered.

This woman had played the heroine far too many times for Rose's tastes; while she wasn't actually happy about the fact that she now possessed an injury equal in magnitude to that which Rose herself had sustained in the impossible large scale crashing of the Jeep, she was pleased to have been able to offer some sort of service in return to the many Cybil Bennett had made it her duty to provide to Rose. But then, she was a cop, after all. Her kind had been trained just how to handle each and every situation that might arise; her kind had been forced through the most rigorous of educations ever offered; her kind had literally been seasoned to place the basic human instincts to self preserve and protect oneself at all costs aside, and to replace it with the instincts befalling another, less educated individual, such as Rose herself. Cybil Bennett's nature was to keep every other human being within her reach alive, and to almost entirely disregard she herself in the matter.

It was unfathomable to the young mother, as she propped her body up by an elbow and stared at the floor; it was impossible for her to understand just how her friend was able to continuously resist that most primitive and primeval instinct's desire to surface; even more so, 'twas impossible for her to comprehend just what would make a person do such a thing of their own free will. But then, perhaps it wasn't such an enigmatic occurrence after all; Rose recalled the times she had put herself in harm's way in order to ensure her daughter's safety, and her husband's as well. That was a different set of circumstances though. Sharon and Chris were family; Rose's life revolved around that family, and nothing more. Each and every thing she did or said left a trail that, should one follow it far enough, would eventually link her back to that family. Cybil Bennett, however, was only just short of being named a stranger to Rose. She knew nothing of the officer's past; she knew nothing of the family she might have herself, nor her likes and dislikes, nor her interests; the only knowledge she might be credited with possessing on the feisty cop would be her understanding of the woman's intelligence. Nothing more.

Movement captured Rose's attention; Cybil seemed to have realized she was being watched—or at least that she had been under the sea-blue gaze just a few moments before; her head turned to stare back at the mother with a questioning guise in the violate irises, but her countenance was generally calm, save for an occasional cringe. The injury to her shoulder throbbed painfully, though she did her best to keep the fact silent; sitting up, the cop made to get to her feet a minute or so past; once standing, she tottered a bit, but only slightly. Striding over to one of the web-cracked windows and tilted her head at an angle so as to view the smoke-hazy atmosphere which blanketed the town; Rose watched from her place on the old bed, and, having nothing better to do, swung her legs over the edge of the mattress and placed the heels and toes of her knee-high boots on the singed wooden floor paneling. She stared at them for a minute or so, seemingly lost in thought, but lifted her head when Cybil's voice cut the silence.

"We should get going sometime soon you know."

The mother said nothing, and instead, she merely resumed staring at her shoes anxiously; the cop pivoted quickly on one heel and took not but three steps before she had placed herself directly in front of Rose, and had bent her head to look down at the other woman with a stern expression on her voice.

"You better not be thinking of giving up," came the authoritative tones from her throat, and Rose glanced up. It was the first time in quite some time that she had heard such austere resonance coming from her friend; it was unnerving, to say the least—Rose knew very well just what sort of power the officer held over her physically—and though she would have been thoroughly shocked had Cybil chosen to use force in order to convince the young mother to push onward and find the answers she was looking for, in a way, it wasn't something that could be totally eliminated as a possible occurrence. The threatening nature of her voice that moment caused a barely detectable tremor to pass through Rose's small frame; too many times here she had been subjected to those wicked tones—albeit they had come from nonhumans—and she wasn't pleased to be subjected to anything similar in nature to said tones more than once.

"Rose?"

"You have problems with patience, don't you?"

"When it comes to you, yes."

"You've had nothing but patience with me, Cybil. With the number of times I've nearly gotten us killed, you can't have had anything else."

Cybil smiled faintly, but it faded the instant sirens rang through the air, sounding closer than ever before. The small hands immediately found home on the pistol and ripped it from the holster to hold it out before the blonde, like a knight brandishing a finely crafted sword. Rose froze for a moment, and then looked in the direction of the ceiling of the office; the sirens sounded to be atop the library, which would make sense, considering this was the newfound refuge for the townsfolk; her gaze dropped to the floor a moment later before she scurried over to the desk, pulling open drawers desperately, and dropping them to the wooden floor below after she had finished searching them. A slip of paper fluttered to the surface of the mahogany desk, and was partially concealed by several others doing the same; Cybil turned only her head to shout over to the mother and question her actions; Rose answered only by removing a rather large syringe from one of the drawers cautiously. The cop's face contorted in a strange and worried way; Rose's sights shifted to the papers on the desk and she reached for the one upon which was written in formal script some sort of number—or part of it, at least. One chunk of the paper had been singed, hiding the rest of the number from view.

By that time, Cybil had moved up to open the door of the office in order to see if Galia and the miners were anywhere within the vicinity; Rose had spent a minute or so contemplating the possible meanings the numbers on the paper withheld; she now dashed up to follow Cybil as she strode out into the open air of the monstrous library, placing the capped syringe in her pocket and the paper as well. She could hear footsteps in massive numbers echoing throughout the monstrous size of the library, ricocheting off the towering shelves of literature and escaping into the darkening air through the grate-marked fireplace and the chimney attached to it. The woman in the white dress was easily visible amongst the sea of greys and browns of the townsfolk's coverings.

Something, or someone, quite abruptly attached their arms around her back and upper arms, dragging her forward more quickly, though with the strength of her struggle, it would have been presumably faster to simply drop her and leave. Her shriek drew Cybil's attention, and upon sighting the face of the unnamed miner, she shouted something aloud and shoved him off of Rose, whose weight was instantaneously transferred onto the officer; her good arm withstood the light mass to the best of its ability and nothing more; Rose was pushed easily back to her feet before she had even realized she was by Cybil, and not the miner. The officer cast a rough glare at the miner, who had stopped temporarily, just as they had done in the momentary lapse of attention to more important things.

"She's perfectly capable of walking herself, you know."

"She was too close to the walls."

Rose looked between them, her small figure still perched close to that of Cybil's purely out of instinct; shaking her head she reached out and pushed her friend smoothly into motion once more; the cop looked behind her to see the wall as unscarred as it had been upon their first entry there. Rose suddenly tore her hand away from the place just below her friend's shoulder, taking several steps away from her in the process. Their eyes met briefly and with a shake of Rose's head; she would explain later, the look seemed to say; reaching the group of people whom had gathered together in a semicircle around the enormous fireplace, some could be seen on their knees and weeping, others standing solemnly nearby. There weren't nearly as many as had been in the sacred church under Christabella's watchful eyes; but then, Galia, whom was decidedly the leader of the procession judging by her presence at the front and center of the mass, had described herself an outsider; who was to say these people were anything other than outsiders themselves as well?

Cybil's pistol remained within the view of the surrounding townsfolk, and they watched her warily; she was comfortable with that fact, however. She would much rather they feared her and stayed away, than not fear her and attempt to burn her as they had done before. Galia stood at the front of the group with her arms extended down and her palms pressed together in a gesture that might be considered a praying posture; yet she did not bow her head, or give any other outward indications of such suspicions lying true; instead she merely gazed out upon the relatively small group and watched idly as several fought to close the heavy door which marked the entrance to the library. At last they had succeeded, and the sirens failed and silenced themselves; Rose came to stand beside Cybil, though she kept the distance between them wider than necessary.

Ordinarily, the mother mused, she would have stuck close to the seemingly indestructible cop's side; when the library filled with darkness, however, she refused to do so, having learned from her past experiences in the premature night that anything she touched became infested with the vine-like appendages that had saved her from whatever fate the woman Galia and her followers had planned to bestow upon her. She might appreciate the…her own, rather…gesture when she was in danger; she didn't want to mistakenly set the demonic, plant-like organisms after Cybil, and so, she made sure to keep her hands at her sides and to place herself at least two meters from her friend at all times. Her attention wavered momentarily when an elderly man brushed past her with surprising speed and drew the faded and smoke-stained curtains of an extremely large window shut, and then proceeded to stride about the main gallery, repeating his actions on three other windows. The group of people seemed to swell with apprehension before her eyes.

"C'mon," Cybil urged from alongside her, nodding in the direction of the gathering. "We'd better see what they're up to."

Rose nodded docilely, trekking after the officer as she moved, and stopping when she did, undoubtedly at the commotion which had arisen from the far end of the hall. The doors of the library had burst open quite suddenly, and a group of miners struggled with something that was clearly alive, dragging it up the stone steps and across the mahogany paneling of the floor; shrieks and eerily human-like wails spouted forth from the throat of the victim; Rose's blue eyes were wide open and shocked when the awful parade at last broke through the crowd and traveled to stand before Galia. Both the mother and the cop let out gasps equal in the amount of surprise or horror; upon the floor lay a bloodied character which Rose recognized, but Cybil did not; a human figure was bound by the same rope that Rose herself had been bound with once before, writhing and struggling against said bonds; a feminine physique was distinguishable through the shimmering crimson that frosted the suggestive clothing and the body within. The face was turned away from Rose and Cybil, and the officer, reverting to her unnatural instincts, cried out above the noise of the crowd and the shrieking of the victim in front of them; no doubt she intended to put an end to whatever sick delusions had the townspeople thinking they had another witch on their hands.

"Cybil, don't--!"

The officer strode forward and into the mass, ignoring Rose's voice, attempting desperately to reach the figure on the ground; she held her gun high above her head, aiming it at the ceiling and threatening to pull the trigger should anyone try to stop her; she at last reached the person, still battling with the evident strength of the thick-braided rope; she made to reach out with her sore arm and snatch the victim away. The motion of her arm ceased and reverberated back in towards her chest when the face of the victim rounded on her; 'twas not a person at all—human, in part, but not in whole; the officer stumbled backward and away in a daze as a partially visible eye composed of rotten tissue met her own; the remainder of the face was swollen and cancerous, and tiny pores could be seen to rhythmically open and seal once more—poor excuses for nostrils. The hat which had previously covered the top of the head fell to the floor, revealing a gaping hole in the disfigured skull through which prolapsed something of a tumor-caked brain. The eye, unblinking, was locked onto those of Cybil, and as she continued to back away, the incubus resumed its agonized thrashing against the ropes.

Someone tugged the officer gently away from the scene; the congregation returned to their business and the miners dragged the entity to lie at Galia's feet; Rose stood transfixed by the goings-on, a part of her curious as to what the woman in the white dress would do, and another part of her wishing she could see no more of it. Cybil had been pushed back to her previous position by the same man whom had gone about drawing the curtains closed; the rubber platforms of her boots seemed bolted in place as she stared out at nothing in particular, likely doing her best to remove the horrid image of the demon nurse from her mind. Voices rang out in a sort of dark harmony in response to whatever Galia was feeding through her own; the creature's struggles weakened within moments and then died altogether; its tiny nares opened and closed as it was slowly starved of the life-giving element by way of some unseen force. Life remained present within it as 'twas dragged by Layton toward the monstrous grated fireplace, whose grate was lowered into the floor.