Taking the hint to move along, James turned heel and went for the door. He pushed it open and not a moment later abruptly gasped in pain, quickly picking up his feet and stumbling backwards into Harry. "Ow! Fuck, shit!"
Harry staggered a little with the sudden weight, grabbing him by the shoulders for support. "What—"
"Little asshole!" Briefly using Harry as a foundation, James swiftly kicked the chubby and toddler-sized, featureless monster wielding a knife in its hand to the floor with a whimper and thud. Harry tipped to the side to see what happened and groaned.
"There those suckers are. Took 'em long enough! You okay?"
"Fucker stabbed me!" Shoving off the other man, James stepped forward and punted the little beast down again and promptly sent his heel thrice through its unnaturally large head. Harry shimmied his shoulders and made to follow when he, too, was suddenly assaulted by meaty arms grabbing his leg and carelessly hacking his thigh. He yelped and beat the vermin off before it could do real damage, and much like James, threw it to the ground with a good swing and beat it lifeless.
"Great! Ow, fuck!" he hissed, swiping his hand across his slacks which were slashed through to the skin in several places and bleeding. "Aw, come ooonnn. My fucking pants! Ouch, UGH! Knife cuts are the worst; and what the fuck am I gonna do about fucked up pants?!"
"There's more of 'em," James warned, and sure enough, the flesh bags emerged from the shadows. With Harry in the classroom and James in the hall, the door closed without the conduit there to prop it open. On either side of the wall, their few aggressive playmates lost this round to toppling kicks, boot heels, and steel until Harry burst from the classroom in a mild panic. Looking this way and that, he found James putting the finishing touches on the final one, and instantly relaxed.
"Whew. Fuck. Let's not get caught behind closed doors, huh? I thought that was gonna lock us out."
James wiped his shoe off on the floor, checked the sole, then dragged it again. The mushy smear it painted made him sneer in disgust. "Yeah. Sure."
Stretching his neck, Harry stepped over a mangled body to try the last set of lockers it blocked. James shuffled out of the way, deciding this was a good enough time to check his rounds. The metal clang coincided with the snap of his gun, and as though practiced, their heads happened to turn to each other in unison.
"Let's keep going."
The library awaited them at the end of the hall. A large table and its five chairs were placed in the center, and bookshelves packed with tomes stacked on the walls. A few books lay on the table, one of them open before a tucked in chair.
One surely wouldn't call that 'subtle.' Harry crossed the room to take a look, and James perused the bookshelves for once. As usual many were either ruined, uninteresting, or their spines blank. He slowly went along to the sound of pages flipping back and forth, then to Harry's disappointed hum.
"Just looks like someone was doing some light reading. Doesn't seem to be anything in this." But just to make sure, he returned to the page he'd started at, and got a good scare when a squeak came from seemingly nowhere. James looked over his shoulder, pivoted, and bent to look under the table when his flashlight caught movement. Harry noticed and mimicked him, chuckling at what was hiding underneath.
"Well, hey there little buddy," he cooed to the shadowy blob of a child. "Whatcha doin' down there?" Together they watched the harmless little thing spin in confused circles, apparently disoriented by being discovered, then quickly scuttled to the door. Harry straightened out to watch it go, then pursed his lips. "I think we should follow it," he said, already giving chase. James obeyed.
It was a speedy shadow. Both knew that when Harry had first met one that it wanted nothing to do with him, and that hadn't changed. The thing squeaked along, stumbled a couple of times, and immediately got up to continue to flee; yet when it attempted the stairs, its little feet were no match for them in its state of panic, and down the shadow child tumbled to the landing. Being in such a hurry, it failed to learn from the first experience when it got up and went rolling once more to the ground floor.
Perhaps it could be a bit cruel that Harry got a laugh out of it, but James himself even had a chuckle. The veteran shot him a sidelong grin, getting to see the personal fight to restrain the smile on his pale face. "Comedic gold," was all he said to James, and looked away before that smile won.
The pursuit ended in the second classroom. They set foot just soon enough to see the ghost run headfirst into a wall of cubby lockers at the back of the classroom, topple over, and disappear. Harry meandered to the spot, studying the dusty floor, then the rows of short columns of potential. "Well, thanks for the lead, little buddy," he thanked the air. "That helps us out a lot."
James hung back to supervise Harry set to work finding the golden ticket. One opened at last, and to Harry's dismay, was located on the floor. There was a substantial amount of fatherly groaning as he got down on his knees to get a peek. Reaching in, he extracted the grand prize of a large, thin, floppy yellow book that turned him solemn, and a lanyard that sported a single brass key.
Sitting back on his heels, Harry pushed the corner of his mouth down in his cheek. He gave no explanation yet, opening the dingy cover to gaze at the first page within. James waited, somewhat impatiently; yes, he understood that Midwich, like a slew of the other locations they'd traipsed about already and those that had yet to come, held a lot of importance. That said, it was still annoying to have to stand by while Harry took these little trips down memory lane.
Harry knew he couldn't sit there long. At the behest of his knees, he planted the pipe into the floor to assist himself to his feet. A soft whoosh of air and a bit of tugging at his clothes later, Harry held the book and lanyard up at James. "Cheryl's sketchbook," he said bluntly. Then he flipped it, holding it to his chest to show the printed tag declaring it as a sketchbook indeed, and a drawing on the cover in red crayon of a person with bulging oval eyes, misaligned pupils, and a dumb smile. "Look. It's me. Uncanny, wouldn't you say?"
That was too much to suppress a snorted laugh from James. He smirked at the drawing and compared it to its subject. "Yeah. It's like looking at a photograph."
His humor rejuvenated a smile on Harry. "She was a protegé, huh? I was gonna send her to an art school and watch her surpass Michaelangelo by ten miles."
"Well, it seems she had a natural talent."
"Oh yeah." Harry turned it to look again. "Too bad it didn't pass on to Heather. What a waste."
James couldn't tell how much of that was in jest. It felt strange. "Yeah? Did Heather not make up for it?"
The sound he made was somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle. "Eh, well.. she'll kick your ass in soccer but other than that, no; not artistically, if that's what you mean. No, Heather can't draw a stick figure, much less a stick, but I've had good reason to believe she's joined a teenage Fight Club, and she's on a winning streak."
Harry gave James a big, proud smile. "That's my girl!" The resident nodded a little, taking the offered sketchbook for his own inspection. With that out of his hold, Harry began to whip the lanyard back and forth around his wrist. James nodded upwards at Harry's plaything. "What's that to?"
"Dunno!" he chirped, still swinging it. "Doesn't have a tag, so beat me with a stick."
James grunted and turned a page. "Nah. I'd beat you with something that wouldn't break so easily."
He glanced to his right when the dirty pipe gently bumped his hand.
"Here ya go."
"Yeah, I was planning more along those lines. I'll do it later."
"I'll put it on the 'honey-do' list. Just don't forget."
"Mm." His brows creased. James flicked the previous page to the front, then back, then went to the third; then backtracked twice again. "There's some weird pictures in here."
"How weird?" Harry asked, moving to his side to have a gander. "I didn't think Cheryl drew too much in here. Or, not that I remember. From last time."
"Don't make that a habit," he muttered.
"Doing my best."
Drawn as sloppily as one would expect from a child was the depiction of two girls holding hands. One had yellow hair and the other brown; their blue outfits matched and they were smiling in front of a church. There was another stick figure by the church wearing a black dress and an angry frown, her black hair sticking out every which way. One more smaller child was positioned by her, teeny tiny and obscured by tall grass. The sun was quartered at the corner, big and yellow, and the sky scribbled blue.
Along the bottom of the piece read, 'Me and My best Friend — and Mommy doesn't Like her. We like to —- and —- games by the —.' A red arrow pointed to the edge of the page and overturning it revealed a more disturbing scene.
The entire surface was covered in frantic scribbles of orange, red, and black. It looked as though it was to hide something underneath it all, barely discernible through the mess, but it had been a vertical and rectangular mass of black. Turning to the next page fix showed the same two children, now wearing frowns; the woman was larger, hair wilder, and far more angry than before; the littlest nowhere to be seen. Rather, a question mark as small as she had been in the first picture was off at the edge of this drawing.
They appeared to be in a room. Brown had been used as a background and grey made a table between the girls and the woman. Yellow and orange depicted a fire on the table. And again, the piece bore a title beneath it all, reading: 'We dont like Study time anymore.'
Harry pensively tapped his bludgeon on his calf. He scanned the drawing, pursed his lips, and furrowed his brow.
"Hm. Yeah, that's.. that sure is.. weird."
"Yep."
Harry took it back and shuffled behind James to store it away. "Well, I guess it's nice to have that sketchbook back," he remarked, trying not to sound as disillusioned as he felt, "though I kinda wish no one else had gotten to it."
James looked at him after he signaled 'all good' with a few pats on the bag. There had to be something he could say to Harry about it; his tongue felt like it had words, yet held no coherency. So without them, he instead took interest in the flat cord dangling in Harry's fist. He nodded at it, indicating it further by tipping his shotgun up. "Guess that's from a teacher."
Harry lifted his hand, looping the long floppy band around his finger for better display on his open palm. "Yeah, it's pretty standard for.."
His voice trailed off a cliff. Truly seeing it for the first time, the healthy color in Harry's face drained to a sickly pallor. The lanyard was greyed by filth, of course, but the musical notes printed in black against white were still discernible. He shot his eyes to the loop about his finger, which partially hid a name written in marker that bled into a material that wasn't meant to keep it legible.
Carefully taking it into both hands and stretching the strip taut displayed a name that made his hands begin to gently quake:
Jodi Mason
Harry's lips parted, and his lungs pulled a short, feeble inhale. He blinked a rapidly a couple times, fighting back the sting in his eyes, and cheeks hot despite them having run pale. James was stone still next to him, electricity buzzing in his chest; that name unquestionably belonged to the wife that Harry had never talked about. Now she had a name on a teacher's key string, and the implications were extraordinary. The air surrounding them became as dense and dry as cotton.
It took decades for Harry to react.
He reverently fingered the lanyard much like a devoted lover strokes their sweetheart's face. The next breath was fast, hitched, and was chased by an audible swallow. "This is Jodi's," he mumbled, stating the glaring obvious to a man who wouldn't dare make any joke of it. "She was a music teacher. At an elementary school."
Harry tilted his head as a broken heart lined a sorrowful frown on his worn down features. "God," he hatefully whispered. "Silent Hill really is pulling out all the stops lately. Jesus, fuck.. this is just.." Cutting himself off, he drew his lips inward to scowl, then shook his head. "Unreal."
He wrapped the lanyard even tighter around his hand. "Alright, then. We found the locker, and the key to the music room. Let's go see what she's got for us in there."
They went upstairs.