Though Harry had gotten a modest taste of South Vale, there was much more to see. James led him languidly down its streets, offering little commentary, if at all. Harry was still shaken from their chases and battles, thus didn't have much to say, either. He took in the desolate town with distracted interest. It would look cozy if it hadn't been bathed in fog and fear, and as he raised his eyes to the blanketed sky, he recalled that it had been snowing when he first visited Old Silent Hill. Oddly, it hadn't been cold enough for it, and the season wasn't appropriate (being late summer at the time). He supposed it didn't touch this section of the depraved town, and he was chagrined that he missed it.

The snowfall was calmer. The fog here was more sinister. Harry tried to visualize what South Vale would look like if it was gifted with snow, and decided that it would honestly improve the dour setting.

The neighborhood wasn't very big. The map of it showed a modest community and it took not much more than an hour, Harry gauged, to see what there was to see. James took him along every street: the ones that dead ended, the many that bore ruin and abandonment, and the few that were streaked in crimson. There were a few bloody human corpses tucked into corners and laid out on the road. They weren't a cause for concern. Their display was like a town council-approved ornament to bolster the atmosphere.

James spoke only to mention if a blockade had gone missing. It appeared that Silent Hill had struck its walls and ended construction for the most part, only leaving up the striped wooden fences as an afterthought. There were some walls left of canvas tarp that cut off the remainder of a few streets. They came upon one that bore blood-painted words (The door that wakes in darkness, opening into nightmares.) that Harry tried to translate into something he could understand. James was familiar with it to the point of boredom. Harry had enough sense to not to inquire after its meaning.

They passed the bar that was closed down, and saw every apartment complex there was to see.

The sigil still marked the road in front of the Wood Side Apartments. They gathered warily at its border, studying its runes and intentional arrangements, but they wouldn't be able to hang around for long. Its presence made their heads throb and ache with pins, crushing their skulls and pushing them away from it. Don't get so close , it seemed to warn. I'm not for you, but you need to see me.

When the cruise brought them around to their starting point at the leftovers of their massacre, Harry decided it was the right time to ask James how he was. The question directly referred to the scrape that marred his cheek, and James ignored its deeper intentions.

"It's fine," he told him.

"Was that from the fight?"

"Yeah, I guess."

And that was that.

The initial tour allowed Harry to get a vague idea of the layout. Over the next handful of days he became much more accustomed to it, and no longer needed the map to guide him. He was mostly accompanied by James on his walks about town, though despite the danger that loomed, he made some of his outings alone.

What James was doing while Harry tried to find solace in the muffled, lonely world he was trapped in, he didn't know. He was likely sitting and simply waiting for him to return, doing nothing at all. That seemed the most plausible to him.

In fact, that was exactly what he was doing.

James had given Harry the base knowledge of the town and that was all he cared to give at that point. The businesses that he'd formerly been able to access were hopefully locked to Harry's curiosity. He was fine - relieved, really - that Harry wanted to take time to himself. They needed more space from each other.

It was hard for James to be close to a person so full of life. Harry drained him in a way much like James drained Harry. He didn't know that his presence wore Harry down; he only assumed that he was the one experiencing the exhaustion. Their temporary separations gave them both time to recharge and breathe, and the men appreciated the agreement.

James was comfortable in the easy chair. Today they took refuge in an apartment belonging to the previously shuttered Nightingale building. The room was normal in its filth and surprisingly plush in contrast to the other spaces they visited. Being on the far south side of town near the industrial area would have held other expectations. This was nice for a one bedroom, and James would have liked to appreciate it more.

It had been seven days since their runaround on Nathan Avenue and the appearance of monsters he couldn't comprehend. In those seven days they had sporadic encounters with demons that James knew intimately, and the ones that were a new product of fear. He wondered about them. Being tied to Silent Hill for so long had given him enough familiarity of the fiends that roamed with him to unveil their significance. Each of them represented a part of him that brought guilt and shame as tormenting souvenirs of his past. They'd never stopped taunting him. He was forced to face the worst parts of himself for years, digging harder into his psyche and filling his coffin with nails.

What did you mean when you said, 'this one is mine'? Harry asked him.

James gave him a warning glance, but his challenge lasted a short few seconds. It was in the name of survival to clue Harry in to one of the secrets of Silent Hill. It was for his own good that he be prepared, so he spoke.

I meant that it's not one of yours. These monsters have meaning. They come from a part of you; memories, fears.. things you've done. They represent you. Whatever those new ones are, they come from you.

Harry knew better than to ask what the others meant to James.

James wrinkled his brow and frowned at the ground. Now that was a terrible thing to speculate on. How long would it take for the Red Pyramid Thing to make its stand?

As it turned out, he didn't kill that massive butcher. It continued to hunt and ridicule him at its excruciatingly lethargic pace. How could it still be alive, and how many were there? He didn't know what it was or what it meant. It bothered him that the Red Pyramid Thing had been his great mystery, a code he couldn't crack. Silent Hill let him play a guessing game until one night, they were face to face, the great rusted knife at its still drag by the abomination's side, and James pointing an empty shotgun at its bloodstained chest.

James sneered at the ground and violently shook his head. He wasn't going to entertain that memory. He kicked it away. There were important riddles he was working on before all that rolled back into the picture. James forcibly re-centered himself and yanked the conundrum of the new monsters back to the forefront.

There were the crying, burning women, and the creature made of static and fumes. The former were forever smoldering, blighted by singed holes in their baked flesh, and dripped black, acidic ichor. Some were bald, their scalps incinerated, and others had long black hair that was both wet and decorated with kindling flames. When they staggered, their faces were obscured by the way their heads hung on broken necks, and when dead, Harry and James rolled them over to unearth the fact that their eyes were blinded by melted skin and their mouths silenced by a red square made of steel. How their screams were audible from behind the plates, they didn't know. Their bodies reeked of gasoline and scorched wood.

The women were revolting, and Harry was once made sick by their stink. They vaguely nauseated James, but not for the way they smelled. He couldn't place why they unsettled his stomach and thickened his throat. From then on Harry was determined to kill them off first and get a distance between them and any other monster before continuing the slaughter. Unintentionally, this turned out to be a good tactic. It allowed the men to beckon and flank creatures, particularly a group of three or more, and pick them off more effectively.

These rancid, charred women were attracted to them both, though they tended to favor Harry. The inky creature that exhumed fumes and duplicated the radio's staccato ignored James until he attacked it. Annoyance seemed to make it clash harder with him.

This told James that these two variants were not meant exclusively for him. Despite that, they had a mean card to play against him, and they used it carefully. He sank further into his seat, recounting how the monsters wept and wailed. Their voices were a cacophony of several feminine cries tangled together to make them an indiscernible mess. He wanted to believe it was his own damaged psyche, but he strongly presumed it to be one of Silent Hill's schemes that in those voices, he swore he heard Mary.

The first real introduction of the burning women on their journey down Nathan Avenue had struck him dead cold. Harry didn't hear it, or else he'd've started in with those goddamn questions when they stopped running. James heard it too clearly. He heard her. Through the gunk and the moaning he heard her call to him. It wasn't all of them - just one. His name came as a mix of a sigh and a sob, so soft, and so clear. That's why he had to grab Harry and run for his life.

He wasn't about to let Harry meet her.

James rubbed his face with both hands. She was even present in the static thing. He couldn't recall if he detected her on its first appearance, but every one after that he had. Again, Harry didn't seem to hear it. He came to the wary conclusion that he couldn't, and that her voice was meant for his ears alone.

It was a dirty trick for Silent Hill to play on him, and James wasn't in the least surprised.

He dropped his hands to his lap and sighed deeply, tipping his head back to meet the cushion supporting his back. God. He was so tired. The tiredness was the result of Harry's life force, as he'd already concluded. He was feeling a little better now that he was gone for an hour (so he wagered). James couldn't stand, nor understand why, Harry's energy took so much out of him. Because of him, he sank harder into his depression and disregard for his own safety. Harry made him want to find a flooded basement to lie in and be forgotten. He made James feel guilty for breathing, for moving, for speaking, for being found.

James revolted himself. He couldn't stand the feel of his own arms brushing his sides when he walked, the feel of his thighs meeting his calves when he kneeled, seeing his own hands when he reached. The rare times he caught a glimpse of himself in a reflection had him lowering his eyes in immeasurable shame. When he sat with Harry he made sure to distance his limbs in a way that they wouldn't touch the rest of him, and still make him look normal.

It was pitifully embarrassing how much James felt sorry for himself. That alone made his wallowing cycle spin itself 'round again, and there was no end to it. He'd learned to file it into the back of his mind so it wasn't so loud and distracting, allowing his head to be more empty. With Harry around, it was thunderous, and refused to be shut away in its box. James's robotic functioning took a hit because of this. He was slower to respond, more difficult to keep track of, more sluggish in battle. It concerned and bothered Harry since James had made himself more of a liability, and this was part of the reason why he proposed the idea to have time apart.

The seven long days did give them more time to adjust to one another. James made a terrible conversation partner, and Harry had noticed that the banter they'd had the first day had dwindled considerably. It put him in an awkward, disheartened mood and ever to his personality, he endeavored to alleviate the tension as much as he could.

James tried to participate. He'd never been much of a talker, but Mary hadn't minded that. She called him a good listener. That was what she needed in a person, but Harry was her opposite. He wanted a chatterbox. Harry seemed to hate stretches of silence and felt compelled to fill them with talking. He liked learning about people, he said, because everyone is different and they have different things to say.

Surprisingly, Harry also liked to listen. I'm more of a listener than a talker, if you can believe that, he'd laughed to James's disbelief. I mean, I prefer to listen. I just.. talk when I'm nervous or it's too quiet. I hope it doesn't bother you too much.

Sometimes it did. James found it grating. Every now and then Harry's one-sided gabbing made James's chest twist in irritation and his clenched jaw barricade his need to scream SHUT UP, SHUT THE HELL UPsafely away. When these urges were at their strongest, James suggested as cooly as he could manage that he'd like to take a walk. He often left without waiting for Harry to reply, and so he wouldn't see the light strain of hurt on his aged face.

No, it's fine, James had lied. I'm a listener too.

In his solitude, James's expression softened. Their days together felt like a really long time. During them he learned that Harry was a writer. He wrote fiction. Prior to Silent Hill, he focused on light adventure plots, dabbled in sci-fi, and had an idea for a series about a man and the butterfly effects that led him on a wild ride through his life. After he came home, he somberly told James, he had a harder time focusing on those things. It took him a couple years to get writing again and when he did, he was coping by writing thrillers and true crime.

When Heather was turning ten and learning to enjoy reading, Harry tried his hand at a young adult book. Harry laughed when he tried to explain how daunting and ridiculously hard it was for him to switch gears. A few times he had to stop himself because he realized that he was not writing the same story anymore. Nevertheless, he cranked out a novel about a girl with a garden of plants that she could climb and talk to. The plants didn't have voices per say, Harry noted, serving more like emotional guidance. These plants relied on the girl to keep them healthy and in return they granted her access to a new and beautiful world. If she neglected them, they showed her a place that was slowly dying.

"Okay, so maybe it got a little dark for a young adult book," Harry admitted sheepishly. "But the moral of the story was to keep yourself and things around you healthy oh and also, save the environment. So.. I kinda got it right."

"Did Heather like it?"

"Yeah, she did. But she acted like she thought it was 'just okay'," he emphasized with quotation fingers, "because her dad wrote it for her."

"So you put a dedication in the front of the book, huh."

"Of course! I wasn't going to not embarrass her."

Harry sounded like a great father. James tried not to be sullen about it. This was a man who adored his daughter with every living thread of his being. She was his world and his meaning, and he'd give her everything he could and more. James imagined that he didn't spoil Heather (too much) and taught her her manners and her humility. She would grow up to be down to earth and compassionate, kind to others, and perhaps volunteering for an organization or two on the odd weekend. Harry seemed like the kind of father that would assert that thinking on his child, undoubtedly by the way of demonstration.

James gathered this in the things Harry told him about Heather. He described Heather's first day in middle school. One year, she was a Power Ranger for Halloween. James heard about how cute she was when she wanted to try gymnastics, and how excited she always got when Harry took her to Wendy's for a chocolate frosty after practice. He learned that her favorite color is orange and that she hates it when Harry makes up words to her favorite songs while driving with the radio on. Harry was proud of her winning second place in the middle school spelling bee, and was already getting empty nest syndrome because Heather was about to graduate high school.

"Of course not. You'd never waste that opportunity."

"Every chance I get is a chance worth taking."

Yeah. Harry was the kind of father that James would have liked to be.

Once upon a time, James had a little affair with the idea of being a father. It was shortly before they took their trip to Silent Hill. He and Mary were still in the debating stages of the whole thing, but it was definitely headed in the direction of parenthood.

They were lucky that she didn't get pregnant on their vacation, for the years of testing their vows of 'in sickness or in health' were on the horizon.

He and Harry spent their nights together. Monsters trudged the halls, infuriated that the two of them refused to engage. Abominations bumped into the walls, the siren screamed, and the radio made a racket. Something imperceptible often rattled the doorknob so they took to propping chairs or cabinets against the door, and Harry had gotten used to the little girl that cried for him on the other side. The upswing of activity didn't mean they were hounded all night. They had relatively long periods of silence between the monsters rummaging around outside. There was plenty of quiet to go around.

Cabin fever was still a little problem. Harry wasn't stupid enough to go wandering knowing what was waiting for him, and though James didn't have any personal reservations on it, he chose to stay for Harry's comfort. I can't let you go out there alone, he'd said so sincerely, while the siren called for their attention. You know it gets worse at night, and it's bad enough holed up in here. Please, James.

That was more of a reason to find a safe room with a lot of space. They spent some time sitting together, Harry trying to spark a conversation and James mostly giving zero effort to contribute. If there were books, Harry picked the least damaged and reclined on the couch and read. James watched him read, or would get up to patrol the apartment, likely ending up in the other room to sit by himself.

What James never caught was Harry's head lifting to watch him pace out of the corners of his eyes, or how they followed his back when he left him alone.

On the sixth day, the morning had arrived as normal. James didn't sleep, because he never did. Harry tried to sleep, and it never came. As their system had established, they eventually drifted apart halfway through the night, offering an unspoken farewell until morning.

James got the bed. He rose from the musty covers and went to greet Harry.