Jack's Inn did not have a map.

The shotgun was where James said it'd be, so they did have that going for them. The rest of it was agonizing. They had only South Vale and an educated guess on their side. This was a decent place to have another sit down and actually make a set of plans. Getting comfortable at the table in one of the open rooms that the motel offered, they opened their only map.

If Nathan Avenue wound all the way around the lake, which James was sure it did, it'd take them to the amusement park that Harry remembered. He also mentioned seeing signs for a hotel nearby, and it was reluctantly confirmed, and so that was a good enough indication that they'd be heading the right way. The problem then was the possibility of the road being out. If that were the case they'd be shit out of luck, and that's no way to be.

Even so, there was a sliver of hope shaved off their shoulders that the roads were intact, and so they held it safe in their hands.

"What if we jimmied a car?" Harry suggested, mostly joking.

"You know anything about fixing up cars?"

"Uhh, well," he started, "I do know how to change the oil and a tire."

"Just one tire?"

"Yeah, only one. If you need two tires changed, sorry buddy, you're gonna have to find someone else way more competent."

"That does set us back a bit with the car thing, doesn't it?"

"What's the matter, don't you know how to change a tire?"

James supported his cheek on his fist. "Do I look like I don't?"

"You look like someone avoiding the question." Harry sat back in his chair and absently drummed his fingers on the table. "How about fixing a car to work?"

He was awarded with one of those signature dull stares. He shrugged. "I sure don't. I slept through shop class in school. I scraped by with a C+, all because my lightbulb project was exceptional."

"Oh, so you're an electrician. If only that'd come in handy."

"I don't want to brag, but I'm probably the best one in Silent Hill."

"But you're not the best mechanic, and that's what we're really looking for right now."

Harry crossed his arms over his chest. James was warming up to him - or so it seemed. He imagined that by what he's learned so far about him, it'd be an entirely different story in a couple of minutes. He soaked up the banter while he could. As it turned out, James was kind of funny.

"I feel like I'm in a job interview. Did I bomb it?"

"We'll be in touch."

"I have a very good feeling about my chances."

Those sad green eyes left him in favor of the drab, stained wallpaper. Strangely, James now appeared drained by the conversation, all the charm and wit he held all gone. Harry was right to expect it to fall away. He was disappointed to see it go so soon, and he shifted his weight awkwardly in the cheap, creaky chair.

It took another uncomfortable moment for either one of them to speak. "I slept through shop, too," James admitted at last. "I barely know how to change a tire."

Harry smiled. "A fellow slacker. That kind of takes me by surprise. You look like the kind of guy that would've enjoyed shop."

James's eyes fell from the wall, and lay unfocused on the layers of dust blanketing the windowsill. Harry's mood began its gradual descent into tired disappointment. The exhaustion of trying to communicate with James, enjoy a conversation, then be stonewalled on the turn of a dime was going to wear him down into nothing, and they hadn't even known each other a full day.

The silence yawned, and then James interrupted it. "I did," he told Harry. "It was fun for me."

Harry tried not to get too hopeful, but sat up in his seat. "What'd you like most about it?"

Though his face was stoic and faraway, James exuded a struggling air. Opening any aspect of his history to Harry was harrowing. He didn't want to be known, and Harry shouldn't be interested.

James sucked on his tongue and gave a menial effort to work with him. "The smell."

"Oh, man. I love the smell of wood shops. Home Depot is one of my favorite places, just for the smell." Harry grinned. "I'd buy a candle scented like that, and I'd only have to go in to Home Depot once a year."

The ghost of a smile haunted James's lips. As he leaned back it dissipated, and their eyes met. "Yeah."

They stared at each other. One set of curious brown eyes asked the ones tinted green the question, 'Who are you?' and they replied, 'No one.' James cast his gaze away and got to his feet, fetching the shotgun from the bed. He double checked his supply of rounds and then turned to Harry. Harry rose slowly, the map tucked into his jacket and the pipe in his hand.

"Onward and upward," he declared, the fatigue hanging on to the edges of his words. James turned the doorknob and stepped outside into total darkness.

"Oh."

Harry emerged and stared dumbfounded into the street. James clicked on his flashlight, and declared the obvious: "It's night time."

"What in the hell?" his companion wondered aloud, following his example and turning on the light. Their combined beams were enough to see a few feet ahead of them, not nearly as far as they were expected to. The darkness swallowed their light.

"We were only inside for twenty minutes," Harry muttered, squinting into the black street. "This is insane."

"This happens," James said flatly. "Everything usually gets worse around this time."

"Usually?" Harry eyed him. "I'm not so sure I like the sound of 'usually'."

"Usually." He stuck his hand in his pocket and looked at him. "It's been really quiet lately. I haven't seen many monsters at night. Or at all, for that matter."

"Oh, that's comforting," came the reply, dry and sarcastic over a film of apprehension. "What about the one we saw earlier?"

James drew his lips into a half frown as he shrugged. "One of the first I've seen in a while, and I'd never seen it before."

"What does that mean?"

His weight shifted between his feet. Harry might have felt like they were sitting ducks standing in the vulnerable nothingness that surrounded them, but James was nonchalant as ever. "I've seen everything that's here. They've always looked the same. The one we saw before was entirely new. I don't know what to make of it."

"Great. That's really comforting." Harry ran a heavy hand over his hair and exhaled a heftier sigh. "This kind of sets us back, doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Wonderful."

"We could try walking," James suggested. "Like I said, it's been quiet. We might not run into any trouble."

Harry grunted a laugh. "Now that you said that, we lost all chances of that happening. Yeah, uh, I think we should go back inside and—"

And nothing. The radio bubbled to life, jolting Harry and bringing James to glance at his pocket in bored curiosity. Danger was looming somewhere nearby, and before they had a moment to decide where to run, a bone chilling siren rose its voice across the town.

James's head snapped up in alarm. For the first time Harry would have seen disturbed horror take over his deadpan face, if he had had any ability to process. The siren was foreign in this part of Silent Hill. Its rolling wail was a parasite in Harry's head, one that ruined the call of emergency vehicles and kept him from enjoying a boardwalk. That sound was the herald summoning the world to peel away in scabs and eat itself with bloodied rust.

His heart thudded in his stomach. His throat had become tighter than a hangman's noose after the drop. His mind was chasing itself into circles that developed knots at a sickening pace, forcing him to think of every single terror he had seen seventeen years before multiplied tenfold, and muffling his comprehension under a thick, suffocating pillow.

There were many ways of dealing with PTSD, and he had been given those tools in his effort to help himself. He recognized his triggers. He practiced the count down and the grounding. Faced with living in his nightmares, all his learning packed its bags and took a midnight hike. Harry had frozen; he could barely breathe, and the siren sang a harrowing aria.

All the while, James was lost in his confusion, and blind to the man suffering beside him. "What the hell is that siren?"

"We need to go. Right now." Harry didn't wait for a protest or an agreement. He chose a direction and ran. James stared at his retreating back and took after him before he could lose him to the night.

"Harry! Where're you going?" he yelled over the gruesome duet. The stricken father didn't know where he was going. He needed to find a place to hide, though there was no safety in the pockmarked floors and the chainlink walls that were corroded and sharp with orange rust. Every step would take him closer to the clang of metal echoing from underfoot and creaky churn of industrial fans stationed in the impossible walls, for asphalt and solid ground didn't exist in the Otherworld. Harry didn't know the night in South Vale, but in Old Silent Hill, there was only one way to spend it - and it began with the siren.

They ran. Harry took them down the road they kept being drawn to, to Munson Street and its rows of townhomes, and bounded up the steps to try doors. James didn't feel his urgency, and stupidly watched him for the first two homes. "Harry!" he tried again, and fell on temporarily deaf ears. Harry needed desperately to get inside to safety, though there was no safe spot from the transformed hell he knew.

"James, would you please help me out," he grated as he passed him to the next stoop, "and try finding an unlocked door?!"

He stood there helpless and unhelpful, shadowing Harry to the neighboring house. The radio hadn't stopped chattering yet, despite their loneliness. The threat of the Otherworld hung over Harry's head like a waiting storm, and he didn't yet know that its rust didn't taint this neighborhood.

He wouldn't take chances. He angrily shook a doorknob that wouldn't turn, cold sweat beginning to dampen his shirt and make him shiver. "Come on!" he seethed, warring with a door that wasn't going to let him in. Over the din, he heard James's voice.

"This one's open!" Harry tore down the steps and up the next, shoving past James in the narrow hallway and slammed the door closed. The house was wrapped in darkness and accented by the light that bounced off their flashlights. James stood to the side, observing another one of Harry's panic attacks, and the fight to bring himself down to earth.

Outside, the siren droned to a fade. The radio sank into silence once more. Harry's shuddering breaths became forcibly calmer, though the last hitched in surprise when James's feet scraped the floor.

Harry looked over his shoulder. The emotionally unmoved man had turned his back to him and was taking a gander at the musky, abandoned home. How could he be so calm? he thought bitterly. In a world of hungry monsters that were too cowardly to show their face yet toyed with their fragile minds, he was both angry and jealous of James's detatchment.

While Harry wondered if James was even human, the latter ventured into the open living room and kitchen. The sofa was overstuffed, brown, and darkly stained. The carpet hadn't been vacuumed in years, and the walls were a health inspector's nightmare. Aside from that, it was one of the more cleaner spaces that existed here. It almost felt like a real home. So much, that he got the feeling that the owners were supposed to be back soon, and as guests, they were to wait for them.

He lifted his head in acknowledgment when Harry closed their distance behind him. "It really doesn't seem like we're allowed to go anywhere," Harry said sullenly. "I feel like all we've done is be chased and forced indoors this whole time."

"Mm.. yeah. It does."

"And no fucking monsters. Just that one!" he continued furiously. "I don't get it. I don't understand what's going on. We're being toyed with. I just want to get Heather, and get out!"

James's eyes followed Harry as he went to the kitchen and leaned on the counter. He was right. Silent Hill was playing a game he wasn't used to. It didn't bother him as much as it ought've; rather, he was intrigued. The town's energy had turned to malicious glee. It was laughing at them - at Harry, specifically. James just happened to be along for the ride, and that didn't add up. His part was being improvised. For the first time in what felt like centuries, he felt insulted for being played with like a cheap toy.

They spent the night in the house. The rooms were canvassed and gave them only the solemnness of a place that missed its family. During the wait they spent some time apart; Harry lay down for a while on a dusty but made bed, hoping that he could sleep the hours away. James moved listlessly downstairs, paving a trail through the dirty floors, until he came to sit on the couch.

Eventually, the sound of Harry's feet descended the stairs, and James tilted his head back to look at him. The aging, worldweary father set his weapons with James's on the coffee table and dropped into the easy chair adjacent. He ran his hand down his face and threaded his fingers over his soft belly. "I've got a question for you."

"Yeah?"

"Well. Two questions. One: don't you see the Otherworld when you hear the siren?"

James stretched his arms and leaned back into the cushions. "I don't know what that is. The siren was totally new to me."

Harry seemed doubtful. "You're serious. You've never heard that before."

"That's right."

"And the Otherworld?"

"I don't know what that is," he repeated. "You're gonna have to help me out."

"It's.." Harry motioned unhelpfully in the air. "It's this.. it's when the whole world starts peeling itself away like ash and burning paper and underneath there's chains. Like chainlink. And metal bars, and industrial walkways, and the walls are all barred and there are these big industrial fans, and there's rust and blood and gore everywhere.."

James slowly shook his head. Harry, too, shook his head, but for a different reason - his was in disbelief. Describing the Otherworld never made sense. He sounded bonkers. He felt a little embarrassed by it, though he was in the right company to believe him.

"No, sorry. That never happens here."

"What does?"

James slowly looked around the room, as though it had the answer. "Well.. nothing. I don't know. I think I've been here so long I don't notice much happening, or turning into anything, I suppose. I'm used to it."

Harry drew a frown as he thought. "One thing I have noticed about this Silent Hill is how wet it is." Their eyes met, warily gauging the other's intentions. "It's really, really wet. There's water damage everywhere, the carpets are soaked, and even you seem like you're dripping sometimes." He eyed him up and down. "You seem dry right now, though."

A defensive air rolled off James. Harry felt it, and James knew it. "I don't know why there's so much water damage here," he said, annoyed. "I think you're looking too far into things. It doesn't need to be complicated. You know the town's all screwed up. It does what it does and it doesn't tell us why."

They studied each other carefully for a long, tense pause. Harry sighed through his nose and took his eyes to collection of weapons on the coffee table. "I don't buy it," he mumbled. "There's a reason it does these things. I want to know why."

"You can't know everything." Harry looked up to find James fixing him with a stare that chilled his heart. Those dead eyes were warning him - threatening him - and knocked him right off the sanctimonious pegs he had unknowingly climbed up on. The look scared him. It was meant to.

"For your own good, Harry, keep your nose out of this town's business. This isn't your part of Silent Hill. It's mine. We're going to get you out of here and back to your part of town. We'll find your daughter, and then you'll leave. Until then, do me a favor: don't ask too many questions."

Like an animatronic switching off, the sudden hostility vanished and James defaulted to his quiet suffering, his eyes low and his shoulders slouched.

Harry sat in shock. He closed his slacked jaw. He was aware, now, that he shouldn't be thinking so much about himself, selfishly tied up in his head and consumed in his problems while he was here. He had to worry. He needed to survive.

James was right about this not being his part of town, but the way that he said it made his stomach crawl.

Their night would soon come to a close. When the darkness lifts, they'll gather their things and tentatively step out into the streets once more. Nathan Avenue stretches far into the fog and they'll have all day to walk it. They'll walk in silence, uncomfortable tension keeping them a person apart, towards destinations that itched to poison and turn them.

Though somehow, that threat that lay on the horizon didn't worry Harry so much as the one that walked silently beside him.