The Silent Hill Town Center, in all its former glory, was rather nice. A wide, open lobby decked in cream marble welcomed patrons old and new, flanked by two curved staircases also carved from marble and oak. On the upper level was a quaint little museum dedicated to Silent Hill and various offices for town officials. Housed on the main floor were event rooms, registries, and libraries. Together the men perused the museum and rummaged through open rooms, glimpsing pieces of people's lives in documents and various commentary. Fortunately, they procured a map of Central Silent Hill from the pamphlet stand in the museum, but other than that, came up empty handed for anything else deemed useful.
The mood between them was light. After indulging the forces that be and getting a better feel for one another as a person, their past difficulties were thankfully smoothing out. That aside, the two were exhausted. Being in such close proximity for so long was depleting both of them of their respective energies. It wasn't good practice to split up, but when James suggested that he'd like to take another look at the museum, Harry gratefully agreed. Since the building was so open-air, they felt comfortable separating for a spell; it'd be easy to quickly reconvene if the need arose.
Harry decided to make good on his promises and took the backpack from James - he'd take over from here. There was no need for him to stick around for it. The civilian looked relieved and stretched out his back before he went to learn more about the town that trapped them. While his cohort took a well-deserved break, Harry sat down on the hard, cold steps and emptied out their collection.
"There's a lot of crap in here," he mumbled to himself as he sorted things into neat piles. Pulling out item after item from a cavern that seemed to hold just about everything and the kitchen sink, he shook his head and sighed. Good god, he felt bad about letting James trudge around with this thing. It'd been heavy when he was first wearing it and it'd only gotten worse. Well, this was the time to lighten the load as much as possible, and he'd strive to do just that.
Notepad, keys, the cult bible, history books from the hotel (that he didn't get to crack open yet), bandages, cassettes, handgun, more ammo, another half roll of bandages, more books, gauze, even more ammo ("What are we, dragons hoarding all this ammo? This is obscene. .. I guess it makes sense, though.") and at the bottom of it all, a folded photo.
Now that wasn't right. Harry opened it to a grainy picture of a door and an imprinted hand smack dab in its middle. On the back was a sentence in Latin written in chicken scratch. Flipping it over again, he studied the obscure photograph intently. He didn't recognize the door, nor did he recall ever seeing the picture in the first place.
He sighed. There was no way it could have gotten in there, at the very bottom of the bag, without them knowing. Harry rubbed his eyes and dragged his hand down his face. He'd have to ask James about it, though he highly doubted he'd have any idea, either.
Harry put it aside and continued to reorganize. When he was confident he'd made the right choices and weighed the pack in his hands, he set it down knowing that James would be appreciative.
James. Harry set his cheek in his palm. James Sunderland: an inscrutable, bleak young man chained to a plane of hell on earth. A young married man. No ring sat on his finger, but the way he'd divulged that bite of information led him to believe that his wife had been long gone before he got here. How or why was not his to know. Of course, that didn't stop him from speculation. Divorce? Death? He was leaning towards death, but James had seemed oddly stilted about it, as though he were reading from a script. That whole event didn't sit right with him. Sure, his default persona rated high on stoic with depression right on its heels. But he'd been detached - and while that too was a big player in James's personality, for a topic so heavy he'd shown a perturbing absence of actual emotion about it. Harry expected some kind of sadness from him and got none. It simply bothered him.
Harry tried to imagine a James that a woman fell in love with. He also tried to construct a woman that James could care for so much that he'd put a ring on it. When Harry got that first good look at him in that dark, dusty bistro, he pinned him as the kind of person for the white picket fence and humdrum, but content life. As they went along, now Harry wasn't so sure. Moreover, he wasn't sure about anything that related to James. As it was, he had no basic information: he didn't know how old he was, when he got here, why he was here, how long it'd been, or even his favorite color. Harry didn't know jack shit about James Sunderland except that once, he and his wife had visited Silent Hill on a vacation and stayed in Room 312 at The Lake View Hotel.
He absently rubbed his thumb under his fourth finger. A gold ring of his own once adorned that very digit. The band was removed ages ago and put safely away in a small cedar box in his sock drawer with its mate. He'd intended to give it to Cheryl for her college graduation or better yet, the eve of her own wedding. A few times he'd thought about giving her Jodi's instead. Selfishness and memories made it too difficult to think of parting with it.
Tragically, Cheryl was no more. Heather was his baby girl now. For a while, she wasn't; Harry once grappled with fathering her, this poor child born from turmoil and hate. She was no replacement for the sweet three-year-old he and his young bride had brought home. Cheryl biologically wasn't theirs, and obviously neither was Heather. But unlike Cheryl, who the Masons had met many times before the judge declared her their own, his second daughter's adoption was forcibly thrust upon him and he was ordered to rear and love her. She was only a baby. Just a defenseless baby, swaddled in cruel fate, in the arms of a despairing father that didn't know if he could call her his own.
Harry closed his eyes behind his hand. He'd never get over the shame of what he'd once planned to do. Nothing had been her fault; she was innocent through and through. Be that as it may, he was terrified of her, through infancy to fifth grade to a high school senior, and whatever her future adulthood would bring. And he'd tried not to fear her. Heather was his daughter, and he grew to love her more than life itself, vowed to do anything she needed, keep her safe, keep her ignorant, and far, far away from where she came from.
God, he was so willfully naive.
He sat his chin in his palm again and stared, unfocused, into the lobby. Harry knew that Jodi would have been proud of him for taking her in and giving her a proper, loving home. She wouldn't understand the thoughts he had, and likely, would have been so disgusted that she'd never look at him the same way again. Her love for Harry would be lost. Divorce would end their lives together. It was a notion that twisted his heart dry. Harry didn't provide for and love Heather for Jodi and her theoretical judgments. He loved Heather because she was his kid, just as Cheryl had been, and nothing would ever change that.
He was a good dad; he knew it. Going back to Silent Hill for her wasn't a duty - it was an act anyone should do for their child, one of devotion and love. And he'd do it a million times over to make sure his baby girl got home safe.
Even if this kind of company he was forced to keep had the potential to be more dangerous than he ever imagined.
Harry thought too much about the whole 'conduit' business. Silent Hill spoke to James. It used him like a battery pack. He'd seen it happen with his own two eyes back at the strip club. That was the only instance so far, and it kept Harry on edge for the next squeeze whenever he thought about it. James also claimed to have "felt" not only him arrive, but Heather - and someone with her. Even after spending this much time with him and witnessing that impossible watering effect, he could not wrap his mind around even a tiny grain of it.
Harry couldn't remember if that'd been explained. With everything going on, and the worrying lapses in his memory a bright new problem, he had a hard time keeping all the facts in order. It scared him, rightfully so. And also rightfully so, that look in James's eye when the water soaked him from head toe in the hotel crushed Harry like a mountain. He'd never seen him so terrified and, if he could be so bold as to say, vulnerable.
His eyes softened.
If these past weeks (could they call them weeks, or even days? has it been a month now?) taught Harry anything about James, it's that this lost boy had considered himself dead and gone a long, long time ago. It felt wrong. A person shouldn't go about their lives dead as a doornail inside. Harry worried about him, and James hated that he did, but there was no way to turn it off. Empathy was perhaps his greatest weakness. Once a caretaker, always a caretaker.
Harry frowned ruefully. He'd spent a fair chunk of his own time as a walking corpse. No one deserved to be so hollow for years, acting out their life like a rusted machine. That experience had changed him. Thankfully, he'd started to come out of it in time to be a responsible father; and damn hopeful that Heather had been too young to have any memories of a man that struggled to love her.
Harry loathed having to go through that, and James has lived and breathed it for god knows how long. All he knew was that it was too long.
Hm.
Funny, he thought. These ghouls were a product of one's subconscious, so James said. Harry's first Silent Hill adventure contained things that couldn't've been any byproduct of his psyche. He struggled to match anything he saw to something that would be of any significance to him. Meanwhile, the beings that wandered South Vale that were identified as James's personal demons were, for the lack of better phrasing, fucking concerning.
Harry didn't know what to make of the blatant sexual motif of James's monsters. But to return to his first comparison - Ted Bundy didn't look or act the type, either. He tried not to think about it too hard. (Not to mention he'd be perpetually sheepish about using such an insensitive example. He hoped it wouldn't stick.) Though James's business was laid out there out in the open, it held no meaning to anyone but him and him alone. Harry, nor any other person, had ever been meant to see it. Everything was off limits for discussion. Well, for James, that is.
The veteran had noticed how eager James had been to read his notes. As excited as he was, he didn't zoom through them. James took his time with it, rereading the same page, going back a few; really digesting it all. For some reason, it perturbed him. Harry felt strikingly bare about it. Oftentimes he wanted to rip it out of his hands and look through it himself and censor anything that he wouldn't want James to know. Which is ridiculous. He had nothing to hide; so why, then, did he worry?
Oh, James. Harry'd been flip flopping over how much a soul was left in that dead-eyed husk. Standing with him in the hotel, braving the fire and affliction, he'd made an observation that placed high on one side of the pendulum: that James was still human. For all the times Harry tried his patience, tried to get to know him, coax whoever was locked up inside that tormented shell of a man, he swore that he saw a glimpse of the James he wasn't allowed to meet.
It did continue to amuse the older man how James's knee jerk reaction to escaping danger was to manhandle him. He understood that his PTSD-bred shut downs were a liability and an annoyance. It was something James clearly didn't understand. Truthfully, while Harry had expected to run into some psychological problems coming back to Silent Hill, the ones so far humiliated him. James had a right to be irritated.
Even though they regularly chapped each other's asses, at the end of the day, James was there to quite literally grab his hand and run. In fact, he'd taken to that since essentially day one.
It'd given him a laugh back then that he had to prompt James to let go of him. Interestingly, every now and then when it happened, he'd had to remind him again. Since arriving in Central Silent Hill, they'd had one or two instances where it was necessary to haul ass like that. Each of those times, Harry ended up having to ask for him to return his hand.
James's methods were appreciated; it made Harry again feel like he cared more than he let on (preferring that than taking the more realistic approach that he had a duty to uphold). Whatever it was, it seemed like dedication to him, and that alone helped this tired old father believe that there was hope for a light still flickering in that dusty old attic of that poor man's head.
He wondered if James had any idea that the dedication to protect went both ways. It'd be nice to be able to trust him - or better, that they could trust each other. But no matter how badly he wanted to meet the real James, anything that he'd get to know would have to be at James's discretion.
It would be nice to know why he couldn't stop thinking about how learning of an unaccounted for wife made him feel like he now knew a deep, dark secret.
He closed his eyes. That thought was put aside to ruminate on later.
Oh, sleep. As it stood now, Harry didn't see himself ceasing all his bitching and moaning about not getting to sleep anytime in the near future. In the normal world he probably would have been committed to an ICU for insomnia and possibly be on his deathbed. Hell; Silent Hill was practically a coffin on its own. It made him wonder if that's what it had done to James - but he couldn't pretend like he didn't know the truth.
Poor, wretched James Sunderland.
Harry opened his eyes and inclined his head when he heard those boots click down the steps. The building's acoustics were incredible. It must've been a musician's dream. He roved his eyes upward at the baffling young man standing beside him. "So? How was the history lesson?"
James shrugged. "Okay. Depressing."
"Yeah. Instances of murdering natives and stealing their land only to facetiously apologize centuries later kind of puts a damper on enjoying a nice vacation."
He gave an encore. "Expected, I guess."
"Mm. Yep. That's what America was built on." Harry lifted the backpack to him. "Try this out. I took out the books I've been hoarding and some of the handgun ammo," he said, nodding at the little pile. "On their own they're a light load - the bullets, I mean, but I figure every ounce counts. Gotta admit, I'm kinda bummed to leave the books behind, but I doubt I'd ever get around to reading them. Kind of like all the other ones back at home." He watched James pull it on and shake himself out. "I know we can agree that I'm slower with it on, but c'mon, not by all that much. I'd be happy to take it over for awhile. Been feeling kinda bad about it."
He received one of those signature dry looks in return. Harry lifted his hands in moderate defense. "Okay. Your call, boss."
Taking his eyes back to the room, he contemplated nothing for a moment then stood up, wincing. His knees were hating how much activity he was getting. Though the thought was nice, he had to come to terms that any weight loss due to the rigorous exercise in Silent Hill was wishful thinking. There goes that shattered dream. "Alright. You wanna get back to reading? I might go take my own walkabout."
James answered by taking off the pack and sitting down. Harry sighed softly and, absently swinging his weapon at his side, went to get some more precious alone time.
As he aimlessly wandered around, Harry's brain idled on the conundrum of his blond guardian while he tried the same doors they'd already tested, not that he expected them to be open. The halls were short and not much of an interesting circuit, and he wanted to drag his feet - so he thought more about James.
Lately, it seemed like James was thinking about peeking out of his shell; or maybe Harry was just imagining it through hopeful projection. He couldn't genuinely say that James had gotten more talkative than he was used to. Either way, though he was a poor conversationalist as a whole, one of his favorite things he'd learned about James thus far was that he had delightfully superb comedic timing. In the scheme of things, he'd turned out to be pretty goddamn funny. That man had a pocket knife in his mouth and he knew how to wield it; and if Harry had to be candid with himself, he actually welcomed the jabbing with (mostly) open arms.
Harry loved and appreciated his wit.
Honestly, it all came down to the fact that he preferred to hear his companion's voice because he got tired of his own. Being such a nervous talker meant that all he did was flap his gums near constantly - or at least, that's how he perceived it. Even when he was nearby it was easy to get lonely without James's input. Sometimes just hearing him grunt reminded Harry that he was there at all.
But then his conscience struck a newspaper against the back of his head. It forced him to send a meek, but useless telepathic apology to James. No, it really wasn't that he wanted to hear him because Harry was bored of his own voice, or because he was quick to get lonely. If he were put it mildly, it was awfully selfish of him to use that excuse. He just found it such a shame that he didn't want to talk. There had to be someone looking for a listening ear up in that dismal attic James called his head.
Again, he strongly presumed a lot of what he'd thought about James's nature was all projection; though having said that, he had to come clean about the real, rather straightforward reason he sought out his conversation:
Harry, at some point, had realized that he missed his voice. James had a profound sadness etched in his words, but held a soft, handsome tone withal. It was nice.
And Harry liked to hear it.
He pursed his lips as he meandered towards the other wing. Between the respective sides of the town hall lay a large event room. When they passed through earlier, they'd noted how the tables and chairs were scattered all over, some in piles, and others pushed up to the walls. It had been, as Harry joked with a smile, uneventful in there. Suddenly, a putrid smell wafted into his nose on the approach to the event room. Harry scrunched his face and pulled his sweater collar to cover his nose and mouth. He proceeded cautiously into the enormous room, sweeping his flashlight to and fro.
Then he saw it, and heard it, and stopped dead in his tracks.
Harry immediately noticed that this was something brand new. A non-person stood dimly bathed in the flashlight's beam near the other end of the conference hall. The monstrosity had its back to him, swaying listlessly on thin, stringy legs of ripped flesh and pockets of exposed bone. It breathed hard, popping breaths into the corner it faced. One lungful was evidently too much effort for it and the body shook with the force of the following cluster of coughs. Something splashed the ground, then the sticky gasping resumed.
The thing stood in a puddle of black, syrupy ichor collected from the veins of ooze that ran down its gangly, naked body. Anything that could possibly be called skin on its foul body looked to have been carelessly scorched; though now, it was too wet to be crisp. There were patches of grey between the char, thin and light enough to see a root system of green beneath. Every time it hacked, the passion of it spurred more of that liquid nastiness seemingly originating from its head to flow over its knobby, protruding spine and suctioned ribcage. Any of the rips in its soggy husk gave shelter to the dribbles that sought it. On limp arms stripped of its skin like the sleeves cut off from a t-shirt, blood glistened amongst the black slime coating the muscle beneath. The entirety of this crude mockery of a human was wet either by black sap, blood, or.. or, Harry didn't want to know.
Unsurprisingly, the thing was grotesque - an attribute that went without saying around these parts. Maddeningly, this abomination too kept with the theme of fire and water. But above all that, the first thing Harry had truly noticed was that it was tall. From his standpoint across the floor, he tried to gauge the height despite the creature being hunched over. During his calculations the ogre rocked on its bony legs, another round of coughing turning into dry heaving. The sound engaged Harry's weak gag reflex and he threw his arm over his mouth to both control and hopefully stifle the noise in time.
The fiend turned its head. Harry caught a look at its profile, then the rest of its foul existence when it twisted its body in his direction. On its revolting head, its features appeared to be melting right off the skull beneath clumps of greasy black hair. Mushy skin drooped from its splotchy brow, weighing down the eye sockets and slouching off the cheekbones. From its open jaw dripped yellowed, diluted pus that bubbled on its rotten teeth whenever it exhaled, making gargled snarls sound like muttering. The horror of it peaked when Harry realized that this thing was supposed to be a woman. Her deflated breasts sagged on her visible rib cage above an enormous belly bulging and sloshing from her midsection, reminding Harry of a water balloon and fit to burst at any moment.
Her attention seemed to be drawn by the flashlight. As she fully faced him, her gurgling became harsher and her dripping brow lowered. Harry immediately clapped his hand over the white glow. He held his breath. The sudden darkness seemed to briefly confuse her, and by the sound of her coarse breathing, she'd lost interest and turned away again.
Harry, as silently as possible, began to back up, slowly turned heel, and quickly fled. He released the beam to guide his way back, and when his feet hit marble, he stopped short to tread more carefully across the floor.
James was as he left him, seated on the steps and absorbed in the old notes. He startled when Harry set a heavy hand on his shoulder and frowned up at him and the universal signal to keep quiet. Harry leaned in close to his ear. "There's something in the event room down here," he muttered. "It's new. We should move somewhere else. If we can avoid it and get out of here in the morning without pissing it off, I think that'd be a really, really good idea."
When he drew back, James's face had exchanged its vexed expression for grave. He quietly packed up and, upon Harry's gesturing, led the careful way up the stairs. They edged their way to carpet, where they relaxed and looked for a place to camp out.
Harry shut the door after James once they found a newly unlocked office. He exhaled gratefully despite the eerie feeling he got from it having once been closed off to them, but now was open. The door shut behind him and he faced the room. Plush. Gaudy. It must've been some town big wig's personal throne room. James leaned back on the desk, regarding him seriously. "What was it?"
"Fucked up," he replied, joining James by his side. "What else?" Harry ran his hand over his hair. "It.. was a woman? Pretty tall, I think taller than me, and I'm 5'10"." He glanced at James and gave him a lopsided grin. "Taller than you."
James awarded him a dull glare. Harry shrugged. "Hey, you're not far off. Probably just an inch below me. It's nothing to be ashamed of."
"What did she look like, Harry?" James's impatience asked again. Another sigh left the older man.
"Like I said, tall, over six feet. Maybe in the realm of 6'3". Huge. Black, wet, burned up.. man, I don't get it," he frowned. "Nearly everything - no, no, everything we've fought is either wet or charred. I can not figure it out. It's driving me nuts."
James scoffed next to him. Harry took a gander at the guarded, unfortunate civilian at his side. A bitter feeling told him that James had an inkling what it was all about. But he'd promised, and so he had to honor it, and what an uphill battle in a blizzard that was.
"There was some kind of thick black ooze all over her and she was standing in a puddle of it. It was like car grease. Or oil. Whatever." Harry slumped his shoulders, clasping the pipe in both hands to rest over his thighs, and looked out into the room. "She was hunched over, breathing hard and coughing. Gagging. She kept lurching like she was gonna yack," he continued, repeatedly rocking forward to demonstrate. "She was mostly facing away from me, so I couldn't get a full look at her right away, BUT - she did turn around a little when she noticed the flashlight. She's got this huge stomach," Harry described with the help of pantomime. "Really gross. Looked heavy. Anyway, after that, I covered up the flashlight and got the hell outta dodge."
He chewed contemplatively at his lip, scrunching up his face. "She stank, too. I could smell her from a couple yards away. Smelled her before I saw her. She smelled like.. oh, and her entire arms," he interrupted himself, gesturing from shoulder to hand, "were totally skinned. Raw muscle, looked shiny and fresh, with blood and black glistening all over it."
James glanced at him. Harry, as always, was quite the active storyteller. "What did she smell like?"
"Oh! Uh.. she smelled like.. tar? or.. chemicals? Like an embalmed corpse left out in the sun, then thrown in a lake. I dunno, James," he shrugged, leaning back on the desk on one hand. "You'd have to smell it for yourself. It was a whole bunch of things wrapped together like a rancid burrito."
He was shot a disgusted frown. Harry shrugged sarcastically back. "What?"
The shake of his blond head spoke for itself. Since that conversation came to a clear end, Harry twisted to get a look at the desk. "I wonder whose office this was. It's tacky as hell. Someone wanted to be a hotshot around these parts and I'm really curious how much of a social hierarchy actually mattered here." He pushed off to invade someone's privacy in the drawers. James didn't make a peep, or even move. Harry was getting used to his mannerisms, sure, but he hadn't gotten to the point where James's disconnect was no longer a forefront annoyance. The author was such a social man who hated awkward silences, and this guy was made of them.
He had begun to pull out files from the bottom drawer when a loud, hacking cough came from directly outside the door. Harry slowly straightened his back; James already had his gun at his shoulder. "Ugh," the conduit whispered. "You were right. She fucking reeks."
"Yep," agreed a low voice.
Their visitor wheezed sticky breaths on the other side. She drew a bubbling inhale and mumbled incoherently on the likewise exhale. James shook his head and readjusted his stance. "Can't believe I can smell her through the door."
"We can recommend a spa to her later."
She seemed to be hovering around like she knew they were in there. Harry gingerly placed the files down and moved to James. Their stalker growled, then suddenly crashed against the door. The panel shook with each blow: she was trying to get in. Harry rapped the pipe on his calf then held it up ready for attack, scoffing. "How did it even know we were in here?"
James cocked the shotgun. The banging got more insistent, more angry, and the wood soon began to splinter. Spurred by success she drove herself harder, and once the door suffered enough damage for another few beatings to reduce it to pieces, James fired the first shell.
A thunderous caterwaul resounded through the hall. Being shot naturally pissed her off, and as James was preparing another, she retaliated by projectile vomiting stinking bile at the two of them through the large jagged gap in the panel. Each man dodged to avoid it, but neither were quick enough not to be, at the very least, splattered. James drew a sharp breath over the searing heat sizzling on his sleeve and stupidly tried to brush it off with his bare hand. All he managed to do was burn himself, and while Harry made the better choice of rubbing his shoulder on the corner of the desk, James looked for another way to wipe off.
The creature demolished the door and staggered into the room. James scrambled to his feet, Harry already on his own. He weighed his weapon like a batter ready for the pitch, and as she set focus on James, he dove in to deliver a sickening blow to her shoulder. She spluttered, whipping around and spraying at Harry. Harry ducked and flung his arms up, retreating around the desk to James, hissing and swearing in pain. The yellow acid bled through the thick leather and past the sweater and scalded him. Though they were beginning to think they may be out of their league the time, they nevertheless had to get out.
Harry urgently shook James's sleeve. "Shoot her again, I'm gonna go in and throw her back. Keep doing it until you can get to the door."
James nodded, but this would be a difficult dance. Harry was a big, solid man, and James briefly struggled to find the best opening. The father put himself right in the mouth of danger to beat the demon back, and one lucky swing sent her against the wall. Two calculated rounds went off, and upon James's demand to leave, Harry followed hot on his heels.
Escape took them down to the main floor to yank at lobby doors that wouldn't yield. Harry struck his fist on the panel and leaned his back against it. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck," he hissed, thrusting his hand over his hair. "God dammit, should've fucking known— shit! James," he hurriedly addressed the conduit reloading his gun with a grim frown. The beast's muddy howls echoed through the building. He took his eyes to the landing above. "Where's the key? What did we do with it?"
James stared up at him. "I don't fucking know! You had it! What'd you do with it?"
Harry frantically checked all his pockets. "Shit, shit! I don't have the fucking keyring!" She roared again; he looked up to find her at the top of the stairs.
The movement beside him caught his attention and he looked to the young survivor crouching and hastily digging through the backpack. "What're you doing?"
"Need more rounds," James grumbled. Harry sighed hard, and glanced up to see the monstrous brute already halfway down the stairs.
"Find them fast, James, because she's comin' our way. Look for the keyring too; god dammit why don't I fucking have it?!"
A frustrated grunt brought his attention back to James. "I'm fucking trying , Harry! Let me get these shells first! Why the hell did you store them at the bottom?!"
"Seriously? They were right there!"
"God dammit, Harry," James muttered, finally shoving a handful of shells into his pocket. Harry sneered, but their stalker had gotten to the bottom.
With James desperately working with the backpack to find the keys, Harry couldn't stall any longer. He aggressively crossed the floor and greeted the monster, hollering, "Batter UP!" and followed through with his powerful swing. The collision bent her back and forced a mucky spray out of her disgusting throat. Harry teetered backwards to protect himself and then ducked to the side when James bellowed, "MOVE!", clapping his hands over his ears against the deafening blast of his shotgun.
Her screech hurt his ears more than the firearm. Harry braved the incredible acoustics to do his part. Like clockwork they fell into their flanking method, though with this monstrosity, her ejaculation put holes in their tried and true strategy. Gunk splashed dangerous puddles on the nice cream marble and distanced her attackers from both her and each other more and more.
She stood in one spot at the foot of the stairs the whole time. It made her a prime sitting duck. James did all he could to fill her with buckshot, but at no one point did she appear to be taking any crippling damage. Confused and distracted by it while reloading, she very nearly killed him. A shout from his ward called his attention to her sweeping blasts and James swiftly leapt back into the corner to avoid too close a call.
That's when he realized Harry had been separated far from him on the other side of the room. She had effectively, In what now appeared to be a clearly intentional move, not only hindered Harry from getting up close and personal with either her or James, but had forced the latter into an isolated corner nearest to her.
With Harry unable to make any approach from his end and James stuck in a barely manageable space surrounded by her spew, she became the ultimate warden of their death. Harry screamed at James to take her down - but the civilian was digging for more shells, and every second wasted on that was one tick closer to failure. They were running out of time, and more catastrophically, it seemed like James had underestimated his needs: he was running out.
There was a dry, hacking pause in her assault during the race to reload, but just before he could shove the last shell into the gun she coughed some meager spittle at James's hands. He sucked a sharp breath and in jerking his hands away, dropped the shell and watched it bounce into the acid. She gasped, hoarse and labored, not yet making her final effort to turn James into nothing but melted flesh and bone. Oddly, she seemed to be waiting for something.
Harry panicked. He darted his eyes over the floor, looking for any possible way he could get across to her. In a bid to get a better view he stepped up onto the staircase. Then he looked down; then up at the second floor. Actually, there was a way to get to her. Without a second thought or glance, he bolted up the flight two steps at a time and ran for the opposite side.
In all the mayhem she forgot to monitor Harry. Her arrogance would be her undoing. He nearly slipped down the stairs in his rush to get as close as possible and his yelp whipped her around. Harry both scrambled for his balance and tried to assess his few options. She loomed before him, and though threatening him with her spittle and gargle, still hadn't bothered to use her best weapon. The fourth round went off behind her and the impact jostled her frame, yet failed to faze her. Her milky eyes tracked Harry when he ascended a step and a half and raised his pipe like a spear.
Harry was not a religious man by any means but he prayed to whatever god was listening that his aim was true, and that James had reloaded. He launched the steel rod at her engorged, wobbly stomach and cursed under his breath when it hadn't penetrated like he'd meant it to. Harry slammed his hand down on the railing, preparing to run, but then he realized he may have done some damage after all.
The shrill howl filled the building like the feedback from a microphone through concert speakers. Harry crumpled to the steps this time, hanging on to the rail with one hand and trying to protect his ears in his shoulder and free hand; this noise too much to bear. Two rounds were almost loud enough to be heard over her, and though her torrential scream hiccuped, the next two blasts transformed that noise into pathetic, dying rasps.
Harry lifted his head and looked on to see the deadliest thing they'd encountered so far quake on her stringy legs. She clutched her bulbous midsection and through her spidery fingers flowed the fetid, watery, and yellowed pus. The enormous swell contracted once - then twice, harder, bowing the stomach impossibly inward. It seemed like it was trying to push something up . A vile mixture of black ichor and mucous overflowed from her mouth from the intensity of the compressions, making her gag - and by proxy, Harry too - and then her jaw broke open like a fish. One violent punch from her insides folded her over to vomit a waterfall of sickness and a large solid, dark mass onto the floor.
Then she collapsed in a heap, and died for good.
In the silence of the building and over the ringing their ears, they could only hear themselves breathe. They stared at the body in the sea of its own bile and the unidentifiable thing she left.
Slowly, Harry stood. He looked at James propping himself back against the wall. James turned his head and stared back up at him.
"So!" Harry chirped, bright and mocking. "That was fun, huh? I think we did pretty well. I'd high five you but uh.." He gestured at the blackened floor. "Yeah."
James's hot glare shifted away after Harry substituted with an air high five. The veteran shook his head and let out another great whoosh. "Okay. So. Next problem: what the fuck do we do about all this."
"I don't know." James tentatively edged his boot on the quickly coagulating mess. The touch hissed and steamed and he hastily wiped his foot off on his little island. "Shit."
"Fuck. Uhh.. well," Harry hummed, taking a look back at the second floor. "I'm gonna go see if I can find something to mop that up with, somehow. I'll be back." Then he groaned softly, twisting his arms and looking down at them. "Fucking ow. This was a kind of nice jacket." As he trudged upstairs, he called back over his shoulder, "That pipe better be okay, because if it's not, I'm gonna be pissed!"
The hunt lasted longer than desired. He scoured every room and open closet and came up with as many protective sheets, broken down cardboard boxes, and loose posters as he could, and even found a janitor's mop. By the time he returned the goop had begun to set, though he knew it would still be wet underneath. A lot of cursing went along with the trial and error of making a quick bridge for them to get to the doors, where thankfully, the largest patch of marble was untouched by viscous poison.
Harry was determined to get his pipe back, however. "That thing is a family heirloom," he grunted, trying to catch it by the now soaked, sizzling mop. "It's not getting left behind, and no - I'm not gonna look for another one."
"How do you expect to clean it if you get it back?"
"One thing at a time, James." This was a feat in itself. The beloved weapon was partially guarded underneath the dead's limp arm, and being mostly encased in the sticky muck made getting it more difficult as it dried. While he worked at it, he glanced at the sizable clump she had barfed out. "Hey, can you tell what that is?"
Harry frowned and halted his efforts to watch James maneuver some of the cardboard closer and make a new path to their kill. The goop had set enough by then to make the burn less of a problem. He held the mop to the side, bearing an unamused glare as James passed him to edge in for a better look. Not only could he now get in right above the mystery clump, but he was directly beside the defeated ogre and, of course, his weapon. It felt like a cliche gag from a movie. "How long were you gonna wait to do that?"
He scoffed at the simple shrug from James. The space was tight and they had to be extra careful not to bump into each other or lose balance. While Harry tried to wedge in to better drag his bludgeon to the door, he addressed the quiet fellow tasked with investigating the mass. "So, what is it?"
The steel slid across the marble, free at last. Harry sighed in relief and plunked the mop in the goo, absently wagging it. He scowled down at the abomination - a smart one, unusually and dangerously smart - and surveyed its gross features until he realized he never got an answer. He looked at the back of the blond head, beginning to get worried. "James?"
"You need to see this," he quietly replied. James shifted his body to the side, barely allowing enough safe space on this narrow path for him and for Harry to stand facing each other. Harry shuffled forward, using the mop for extra stability, and looked down at a malformed horror that, even for Silent Hill, crossed a huge line.
The silence was tense, morose, and angry - an emotion that came particularly from the father. They mutually stared down at it for a long time, chest to chest, until Harry shook his head and sidled away to the door. James heard him muttering under his breath and messing with the pipe behind him. He was about to pivot when he was suddenly stopped and prompted to turn back around.
Harry dug through the front pockets of the pack. Loud jingling meant he found the keyring and the pockets were zipped up with a little more force than necessary. "C'mon," grunted, and James finally broke away when one of the heavy doors was unlocked and opened, cool air flooding in. Harry kicked the pipe down the steps and held the door for James to pass through. He then forcefully yanked the entry to the Silent Hill Town Center shut, making the building a mausoleum to a wicked, spindly mother and the unorthodox miscarriage of her once-developing, blighted infant by her side.