Author´s note: Warning! following chapter might contain images too disturbing for people that´s not eighteen years old.
But then again this is silent hill...
Anyway, you have been warned.
Chapter 3
Only your faint steps on concrete in the thick fog.
Silence of a tomb surrounded you from all sides. Old cracked widows stared down at you as hollow sockets of skulls. You looked around in unsettled confusion at the empty streets. Old rusty cars parked by the sides of the road. No air in their tires. No polish on their windshields. Old unburied corpses in steel and glass.
No people meet your eye. No children that walked hand in hand with their parents down the street. No murky and tired dog owners with their eager furry menaces to pets at the end of old leashes. No senior citizens who limped onward to by the newspaper and walk back home pointlessly. None of that meet your eye in this thick fog.
Not even a single step but your own reached your ears.
The streets were all abandoned…like you.
Small fear spread through your heart. Mixed with relief over the lack of witnesses. You only wanted to pass through. Not stay for long. You looked for the bus station yet couldn´t see beyond the mist. A white ominous blanket. Not even the wind disturbed you with its howl and cold strokes.
You stopped and turned around.
Only silence answered your gaze and fear. Eyes hidden deep within the mist. Eyes that watched your slow walk down the cold concrete. Something crept up on you. You knew it yet you couldn´t confirm it. It wasn´t difficult to imagine. Who knew what horrors hid in the white ocean of cold fumes. And there were nobody around. No witnesses.
You discarded these thoughts and moved out followed a path along the houses.
What were you going to do now? You couldn´t ask for the road. You couldn´t find a single road sign and you could not even find a single person. How ironic isn´t it? You wish to stay hidden from them and yet you seek them out. Knocked on the doors and frost bitten windows. No footsteps behind the doors, and the cold spread through your spine. Rattled the handle and found it locked. You looked around in fear and suspense.
Nobody in the cars, nobody in the shops and nobody on the streets.
You wondered what awaited in the mist. Would someone step out if you tried to force the door open? Would they hear you if you yelled? Would it hurt to try?
Your mouth closed. Shivered in fear.
You can´t yell. Yelling is attracting unwanted attention. If someone heard you they would call the police to "help" you. You were afraid. Afraid for what people might think. Afraid for the mist and for the unknown horrors that sent chills down your throat. Before your fear drove you to unconfirmed panic you picked up the map. Not to find the way but to rest your eyes on what you could see instead of the white cold curtain around you.
"Neely´s bar"
The encircled name drew your attention. Called to you with silent voices and the urgent red color. One look up to confirm what the old map spoke about your location. You stood by the crossroad on Sanders Street. Neely´s bar waited straight ahead and to your left a narrow alley road opened up and would take you to Katz Street. A red skid mark led into the alley and a half sheet of paper got your attention. Rested in the dried mark and left to rot. You slowly walked over to it. Wondered what caused this mark. Hesitation in your steps. Something was wrong, something with the color of the mark felt wrong and you felt fear for reasons unknown to you. You continued nevertheless and slowly picked the piece of paper up.
A letter, brown from the elements and with an old stamp in the right corner. An odd rabbit portrayed it and a red fingerprint over its lower half. Half of the message covered in filth yet you could read the upper half of it without any difficulty.
Here comes Mail-man.
Here comes Mail-man.
Here comes Mail-man.
He´s watching you without a sound.
Stay off the road when he goes the round.
Don´t send your letters without stamps, mama said
The Mail-man will come and get you in your bed.
Here comes Mail-man.
Here comes Mail-man.
Here comes Mail-man.
He´s watching…
The rest unreadable because of dried in filth and dirt.
You shivered and felt a set of eyes on your neck. Uneven and simple letters written by a child. Found in a dark red skid mark. You don´t want to think about it. Yet you couldn´t throw it away either. Something in the back of your head urged you to keep it. You couldn´t protest and against your better knowledge you put it in your inner pocket.
You acquired the "Mail-man Nursery rhyme".
Something felt wrong; you heard something far away in the mist. A turn at the main road with as you held in your breath. The fog moved slowly in the absence of wind. Shapes of distorted figures covered by a layer of white milk moved down the street. Fear filled you as you stood by this mark of a violent act with dried in spots on your boots.
What if it was a police officer? What would anyone who saw you now think? You would be brought in. Or alarm the authorities as the color of this stain spoke of murder in your mind. You were too afraid to check if anyone moved in the mist at all. The nursery rhyme filled you with panic. Fear took over your mind and you chose to run into the alley instead. Hurried as quiet your boots could walk. Prayed in silence that the one down the streets wouldn´t hear you as you moved by dumpsters and turned over trashcans.
More dark crimson spots on the ground as you ventured deeper and deeper into this filthy little alley. You turned your head over your shoulder in fear to be followed. Only the fog followed you but who knew what else used it as cover? You held your head forward, moved away from every shadow and every time the wind stroke over the dirty black surface of a plastic bag. You looked around in slight panic.
The walls of the houses on your sides intimidated you. Felt like the walls would arc over your head and shape a dark tunnel, seal you in a pipe filled with the ominous fog. No light, nobody to see you and nobody would hear you scream.
Your hollow steps stopped as your panic squeezed your chest. You breathed faster and your hands shivered. This was a bad idea. You knew it was as your lungs tired to fill up with air in this imaginary tunnel. You couldn´t take it. Your pursuer would catch up with you. It would grab you. And then…
…You would scream in pain on the ground.
You ran. As fast as you possibly could. Ignored the red marks, ignored the containers. Focused your stare as far into the alley you could. The walls closed in. They wanted to trap you. Bury you in a prison of darkness and silent screams.
A tight grip around the umbrella that now rested in your hand. Held it out as it would rain at any moment. You wished it would rain. Preferred it now as the drops of heaven´s grief would scatter this ominous fog. To tear open this dark tunnel of bricks and dark plastic.
No rain would fall today or anytime soon.
You knew that.
The end of the alley appeared out in front of you. You couldn´t decide if you should feel relief from the close claustrophobic feeling this alley gave you. Or fear over the fog and its shadows that waited to put you in a cage and send you back.
You panicked.
The exit was blocked.
An old car stood and with its body of rust and rubber hindered you. To make things worse. It was a police car. The tanned brown color over the hood. The "blender" on the roof with a broken blue light and glass shards around it. Back windows covered in filth from countless of thugs that pressed their faces up against them. The white badge with "Silent Hill´s Police" on the side of the front door but only halfway visible.
Your eyes opened wide as you felt to gag in shock.
A body sat at the side of it and covered the other half. Slumped down with arms along the side and head bowed forward. A female officer. The brown uniform stained by dried spots similar to the one that first where you found the letter. An empty holster, no gun in sight. The once blonde hair, tied in a bun on the back of her head, now filthy brown form blood. You couldn´t see her face, since there wasn´t anything left to see.
A hand over your mouth, you wanted to puke. The sheer brutality of it forced your eyes away. You felt ill; a revolted feeling filled your stomach. A dead body blocked your path. Forgotten by the world in this alley of trash. And as far as you know, you could be next.
What would you do?
You could not run away from this. You had a moral obligation to report this. But you also couldn´t call the police either. They would ask questions. Difficult questions that would go unanswered. And what if they aren´t satisfied? They will put you in a cage and send you back. Your escape would come to an end and a fate worse than your darkest nightmare would await you back home.
You had a choice.
Nobody had seen you here. Only you and the dead officer to share the alley of filth. The car had been there for a long time. You could see that on the filth on the windows and the rust. Who knew how long this woman been here? Who knew who the true assailant was? Your hands are clean. All you need to do was to turn around and leave. Run farther away and forward. You´re not supposed to be here. Nobody waited at Neely´s Bar. It was not much but better then the alternatives. Just leave it here. Leave it in silence.
Like you did before.
The grip around your umbrella tightened. The stomach revolted. Yet you couldn´t leave the body either to go back into this dark tunnel one more time. You could just jump up on the hood and walk over to the open space on the other side. Freedom from this dark trap awaited on the other side.
All you needed to do was to go around the police officer.
The choice tormented you more than the claustrophobia and the sight of a dead body. Freedom waited in the end of each option yet you stood there and hesitated. You panicked and another thought broke through the surface, added fuel to the fire.
What if the assailant came for you?
You never liked alleys like these. All places turned dark. All skies turned into tunnels that left you alone and defenseless with the man of your nightmares. Ready to use you for their own pleasure.
Your body shivered in fright.
These assailant were shadows, but to you just as real as this body was. They never came but your fear for them refused to vanish.
You could not make any decision at all even when astray on the dark path.
You needed someone else to make them for you.
So be it.
White noise broke the silence and startled you. You nearly screamed in horror. It came from your pocket. Your red little clam screeched and shrieked with high pitch screams and you pulled it out to silence it. You could get caught. Someone might hear you. And if anyone saw you here, they would scream and call the police.
Yet you stopped once a second sound followed it in pursuit.
A thump.
Heavy and slothful.
Your eyes went to the police car as your cell called for otherworldly assistance.
A second thump, stronger this time.
Something moved behind the back windows filled with grime. Something tried to force the back door open. A third thump and the door shivered from the force this time. You shivered as your heart thumped faster for each heavy one. Something grunted from within the car.
A fourth thump and the door budged out a little before it returned to its place.
The grunts stopped and a little click followed once the door opened from the inside.
It swung slowly outwards like a bird´s wing.
And something dragged itself out from the back seat and into the alley.
You couldn´t describe it with your mind. You didn´t even knew if it was human or not. You saw a filthy, sweaty creature with the body of a man. Fleshy, muscular and hairy forelegs that ended in feet dark from filth and dried blood. Legs that pulled this creature forward for each step. In its crouch, you saw something that wasn´t an organ, or a tentacle, the only thing that it reminded of was the trumpet proboscis of a filthy housefly. Only much larger and hanged between the legs uselessly. Close to the insides of its legs where two black spots, golf ball-sized and no different from an insect´s eyes.
The upper body, covered in filth and sweat, twisted so a hairy sweaty back turned up toward the white fog-filled sky. Dirt and infected scratch marks covered its forearms as they dragged into the ground as a pair of hind legs. And in the end of this creature of disgust and filth, a vaguely human head dragged behind into the ground. No hair and only the back of it visible as it dragged down into the ground.
You froze in complete terror. Unable to move as your cell phone chanted its spells of forbidden knowledge.
A new choice appeared.
Run or die.
Author´s note: Please review and I hope you enjoy the story so far. (and don´t say I didn´t warn you)
next chapter in progress.