Harry got to his knees without too much of his ritualistic grunting, pulling away the small blue plastic chair from its tucked in spot. He shed his jacket, pushed up his sleeves, unclipped the flashlight, and shone it into Alessa's small compartment desk. Light filled the cave and cast hard shadows, and as he searched, his knuckles bumped its ceiling. The thought occurred to him that it might just lift up and make him look a proper idiot for not thinking of it in the first place. Folded hinges screwed to the metal walls confirmed he was a fool indeed. Giving the edge a wiggle and push, it was evident it was too stubborn and for the moment, saved him from James's judgments.

He pulled out failed assignments, a black and white speckled writing book commonplace among middle schools, pencils, and at the far back, a crumpled ball of paper. Opening it showed it was ripped in half - apparently for unfriendly note passing.

You're a witch and nobody likes you. Hope you catch fire and burn!

"Mature for their age," Harry commented. "Their parents must've been very proud."

"Mm."

The note was handed off to his companion, since he showed interest. Some things about James were getting easier to read than others.

It felt shameful to invade a child's privacy, even if that child was long gone. Harry went through Alessa's things with a heavy heart. The teachers had bullied her, encouraged it in her peers, even, and turned a blind eye to any of their harm. Life was against Alessa Gillespie and she was well within her right to exact as much revenge as she'd liked - and that she did.

Sifting through the pages revealed a girl with neat handwriting, and who was a good student, though the red marks said different. Her desk upkeep was something less to be than desired, which he understood, and from what he could glean from her assignments, she was otherwise meticulous. Alessa had handled her work with care. He had to wonder how much of that was her personality, and how much of it was Dahlia's influence.

Towards the middle of the writing book was a pink slip carelessly folded. It was a disciplinary notice to report to the principal's office for a short list of offenses. "Oh, that's bullshit," Harry muttered under a frown. He straightened the crease with his thumb. Projection was a very real thing, but telling by the sharp, quick cursive, he didn't think that calling the writing 'smug' wouldn't be off the mark. It was penned by obvious malice; there was no projection here.

"Bullying other students, disrupting the class, and being combative," Harry scoffed to James, tossing the note across Alessa's desk. "Yeah, I'm sure she was. What a load of shit.".

Being the man he was, Harry had wondered before what she could've become had there been better reverence for her gifts. It was more than a shame that an innocent such as she had been thrown into the Order's foul plots. But he'd ruminated on her and her twisted roots in Silent Hill enough to span beyond seventeen years. He had to set his simmering anger aside, force all his runaround thoughts away, and put his focus first.

James lightly cast the mean, one-way correspondence onto the clean desk and shoved his hand in his pocket. Harry retrieved it and the pink slip, tucking them into the back cover of the notebook. Having set Alessa's things neatly to the side, he pushed away the second chair and scooted over on his knees to assess the innards of the neighboring desk. He found it scrupulous and almost bare. It too had hinges that would - should - allow its surface to rise. Giving it a shot, he tried the edge, and up it went.

The lid wasn't meant to lock into place. Harry stood and propped the desk open again. There was a pencil in the divot, and a singular lined sheet of paper that bore the title 'HOMEWORK' as the face of a small, pristine stack of papers that lay on an identical writing book. In the narrow columns were numbers one through five.

All were unused except for number five. That damn 11:30 sat on an otherwise blank row. Below that in an empty line, a middle schooler's penmanship was developing into its own distinct reflection of the person becoming. The letters were orderly and light handed, surprisingly elegant for a child.

Two would-be sentences indented from the side column, difficult to discern under the frantic strokes of an eraser. The numbered title appeared to have some sort of meaning other than what the fortune teller had predicted. 11:30 no longer portrayed hands on a clock. These sentences that were missing letters and even full words, held a deeper meaning, so it seemed. These words were far out of a child's casual vocabulary, proper and insightful, almost like a..

"Is this a bible verse?"

James bent to look. "Dunno. I've never read the bible."

"Yeah. Wouldn't expect you to."

He glanced at his profile. "I didn't sub—"

"Yeah, yeah. You weren't any religious type."

At least he remembered that. "How do you know it's a bible verse?"

"It reads like one. From what I can even tell." Harry held the paper close to his face and light, squinting at the short, faint passage. "'The fruit of.. the.. uhh.. right.. eous, I think.. is a tree..? of life;..' .. and, everything else is gone. Yeah. 'The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life.' This sounds like a bible verse. Hm. Cool. We don't have a normal bible. We've only got the cult one. And it's wet."

James studied the text, tilting his head, and shrugged. "It means something. We're just gonna have to find it."

"But what does that have to do with failing the math test at eleven-thirty? If eleven-thirty is a bible passage, that doesn't make any sense. Ugh," he grunted, digging for the fortune teller and opening it again. "Fuckin' Silent Hill runnin' us around in circles. And here I was starting to think it was handing us puzzles again like it was a ' Silent Hill For Dummies.' When we finally meet God or whatever, She's getting an earful."

The civilian stepped to the side to get a look at Alessa's desk. It was like a condemned house in the worst part of town next to a new mansion in a well-to-do neighborhood. There were so many harsh words permanently ground into a place a poor girl had to see every day. Children were unashamedly mean at that age, and it was generally downhill from there.

He had to pity her. All he knew of Alessa was through Harry's story. There was a lot to read and of course there were holes and vague fragments all around, but Harry seemed to have done his best to keep an accurate account. This sacrificial daughter perturbed and intrigued him, and since she had been nothing but a character in a story thus far, seeing physical evidence of her existence felt strangely fake. It was as though she and he were so disconnected from one another that James had a hard time believing she'd ever been alive.

James figured this was due to his isolation in South Vale. The Order meant nothing to him, so Alessa Gillespie held no importance. Her role was understood to an extent, but he was so removed from the history here. He wandered Old Silent Hill with scarcely a snowflake of connection to it. Here he was the tourist and his charge the guide. James was out of his element and would be for the rest of their mission.

He didn't like this loss of control.

"Damn. Well, beats me. I wonder whose desk this even is," Harry mused aloud. "My guess is that this is the 'one is a neighbor and friend of two.' .. one is a neighbor and friend of two," he murmured, scrunching his face at the fortune teller's passage. His lips pursed inward then outward, and his brows ticked upwards. "Hey. Can you get the sketchbook out?"

James obliged. Harry accepted it. "Okay," he breathed, plopping it down on the pristine desk to flip through. Finding the happy scene, he locked his arms and rounded his shoulders, and got down to business studying the drawing.

"So. The two girls. One is Alessa, the other is her friend. Obviously. Since it's written right here. They're standing in front of a church," he described, helping himself and possibly James get their thinkers going. "And we're at their desks with that bible quote. The woman has to be Dahlia, since it says that mommy doesn't like her. No clue who the girl in the grass is. But the note reads," Harry continued, referencing the paper game beside his fist. "'One is the neighbor and friend of two; four is company, but also a crowd; three stands alone, waiting on the side. Together they're a family, though one always goes missing; we do our homework, but never learn a thing.' "

The author exhaled hard. "Neighbor and friend of two is Alessa and mystery girl. There's four people here. Three is the girl in the grass waiting on the side. They're all a family, and one always goes missing; we do our homework," he said, tapping the page titled 'HOMEWORK,' "but never learn a thing.." His voice petered off, frowning now. "One always goes missing." Harry scrunched his face. "Always goes missing. If this is Alessa, and that Dahlia.. fuck. I don't know."

James stared at the upside down art. This was Harry's riddle to solve. It only drove home how useless he felt. The hum of industrial fans provided white noise and for James, soothed his troubled self. He felt calm. The Otherworld was as comfortable as home; he liked it here.

He was wise to forever keep that to himself.

"Maybe I missed something in the desk," the father distractedly muttered, getting to the floor again to rifle through Alessa's bare storage. He looked for anything, anything at all, maybe stuck somewhere, maybe a coin, or a note, or even a matchstick. A whole lot of nothing later, he went through the papers with a more critical eye, leaving James to turn the sketchbook and fortunes to face him.

He flipped the page to the next for the far more grim scene. Then back. Then forward; then back again. And back further to view the imagination of a seven-year-old girl.

Cheryl apparently liked drawing landscapes. There were a lot of trees, hills, grass and flowers, and of course a big sun. One of the suns had sunglasses and a smile. Also depicted was she and Harry at a park, he presumed, with big smiles and crazy hair for her dad. The corner of James's mouth indented his cheek. Cute.

Her drawings were innocent and run-of-the-mill for a young kid. The contrast between hers and, allegedly, Alessa's were drastic and sad. James had just begun to feel bad for them when Harry shuffled the papers, slapped them on the vandalized desk, and got up. Watching him pull on his jacket and clip his light, James closed the book and put it away in the backpack.

"I didn't find anything else we could use," Harry told him, staring down at the stack. "Nothing really jumped out at me."

"Guess we should move on."

"Yeah. Wish I knew whose desk this was," he said, tapping the nicer lid. "But I have a feeling we'll find out eventually."

"Always do."

"Yeah. Welp. Let me make a note of this on the map real quick, then we can go see—"

They both looked up when the loudspeakers crackled in their corners across the school. It interrupted Harry's reach into his jacket, cringing at the noise and feedback, and James bore a frown as a woman's lackluster voice filled the building.

"Would Harry Mason please come to the principal's office?"

The veteran's eyes darted over the walls and settled on the box speaker in the upper corner. He grimaced against the popping and sizzling electricity taking up a courtesy pause before the unknown voice requested again, "Would Harry Mason please come to the principal's office?" then snapped off.

Standing there in the abruptly noiseless classroom made them rather uncomfortable after that cryptic announcement. The two stared at the old speaker in bewilderment. Both were captured in the distinct feeling that all students had when hearing something like that - a particular fearful, sinking feeling that they were in trouble. Neither had experienced that emotion in a long while. It was infantilizing.

After a dumb beat, James asked, "What did you do?"

Harry exaggerated a harder frown and shrug. "Dunno. Maybe someone found the stick figures fighting in the boy's bathroom. But it wasn't me," he defended himself, pointing the pipe at James. "I'm being framed."

"Uh huh."

"I swear."

"Mmhmm."

"It absolutely, definitely wasn't me."

"Yeah, sure."

"Don't make this worse for me, James," he warned, then jerked his head towards the door to signal his follow. "I'm counting on you to have my back."

"You want me to lie for you?" the conduit asked. "How do I know you really didn't do it?"

Harry scoffed, looking at his skeptical face as they walked along - then their banter and trek stopped short at the sound of a telephone ringing somewhere close by. He looked at the stairwell; it was coming from downstairs. And it sounded insistent. "Huh. Reception isn't gonna answer that?"

"It's one o'clock. Might be at lunch."

"Well, I don't want to get into more trouble for answering the school phone."

James grunted. Hoping not to lose their streak, Harry lifted his shoulders to his ears and picked up from where they left off. "Anyway, you're not lying for me," he reasoned, starting down the stairs. "Because I didn't do anything. You just.. gotta back me up. Y'know, say that you were with me the whole day."

"Then how do you know about the stick figures?"

"Oh, come on," scoffed the other man. "Like you don't, either."

"I don't."

"Psh. Liar."

James shrugged. "Call me a liar and I won't help you out."

"Oh, come on, don't be like that."

They landed, one after the other, on the main floor. "Nobody likes being called a liar, right?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Ugh, just— I'll give you half my lunch money if you help me out."

"All of it."

They halted at the reception desk when Harry held up his hand. " All of it?!" he goggled, having to raise his voice over the ringing. "Come on!"

Again he shrugged, turning his deadpan to a far more talented actor's annoyed gawk. "Yeah. All of it."

Harry sneered, dropping the gesture. "Man, you're expensive. You better be worth it. I was looking forward to pizza day."

James tipped his head to his lifted shoulder. "Sucks for you."

"Jackass," his companion muttered under his breath, looking for the elusive office around the immediate area. James scuffed his feet as he trailed him.

"I heard that. Don't call me a jackass or else I'll raise the price."

Harry shot him a disapproving look over his shoulder. "How did you hear that? Fine. Whatever. Jerk." Eyeballing the jut of his chin and smug gaze that knew he had him by the hypothetical balls, the author huffed, and finally found the door labeled PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE directly across from the reception. He didn't recall it ever being there in their traipsing about the school; it seemed like an impossible room. He tried not to let the dread it brought sully their rare, welcome game they had going on - especially since James had initiated it. The noise was coming from inside the room, and louder than ever.

Their playtime was compelled to come to an end. "We'll figure it out later, okay?"

Turning the knob, he pushed into the Otherworld room of four walls and floor made of disgusting iron mesh, furnished with a beat up desk, chair, and the impatient old, blue telephone. He apprehensively approached it, rapping the steel on his leg when he stood at the desk, and took a breath. That next ring became its last, for just as he went to pick up the receiver, it disrupted itself and fell silent.

He wrinkled his brow and withdrew his reach. ".. okay. I guess we took too long."

James joined his side. "Hm."

"Yeah. Hm."

"Too bad you can't call back."

Harry perked up immediately. "Actually, I bet you can. I totally forgot about that." James questioningly glanced over as Harry picked up the receiver again.

"Huh?"

"Star sixty-nine," he said, punching in the numbers and looking at him while he listened to the dial and fuzz. "Like in the nineties. If you missed a call, you could generally dial star sixty-nine and call back whoever called you."

For whatever reason, that did sound accurate to James. He heard the click of the line picking up, and watched Harry's face.

"Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed," said a female voice loud enough for James to hear beside him. "For school hours and location, press one. To page a student, press two. To hear about our policies against cheating, press three. To hear about our policies against lying, press four. For all other inquiries, press zero. Would you like the time?"

Harry's eyes darted wildly and distractedly at the wall, then down at the number pad. "Would you like the time?" she asked again.

One might be moved to call her voice 'unsettling.' She sounded like the same woman from the announcement, now tonally professional, and had inflections that told them both that she was 'human.' In that, though, lay underlinings that implied she never was, and never could be. It was a near perfect imitation of a real person that felt wrong .

The civilian wrinkled his nose at the nostril. Her voice patiently repeated her question, over and over with nary a pause.

Harry hesitated. All the options were things he wanted to hear, ominous and intriguing as they were, but it was clear there was only one correct choice for him to make. He bit his lip, taking a short breath as she asked again, "Would you like the time?"

"Yes."

"And the souls of the evil will be removed . It is now 11:30." The line clicked off and deserted him to the dial tone.

He removed the receiver from his ear and stared down at it while the beeping carried on. "11:30 is a bible passage and the time?" his quiet bafflement asked. Delicately placing it down in its cradle, he had but a moment to frown heavily at the telephone before a thud landed somewhere across the hall.

Visitor and resident glanced at one other. They went to investigate and upon the pitiful stack of papers in the inbox, was the gold medallion.

It made a pretty paperweight.

Harry picked it up. It glinted and shone its tarnished color at them. The medallion, like A Silver Moon, was too large for the palm of his hand. Staring down at it made Harry recall the dead man's claw clutching the piece, truly making good of the promise how one would 'have to pry this out of his cold, dead hands.' Back then the irony wasn't lost on him, and right now, felt as though his hand could be the last to eternally grip it, too.

He hopped it in his palm and turned to James. "Welp. Solved that."

"Hm."

"Yeah. I think it's kinda weird, too." Wrinkling his nose, Harry brushed the textured face under his thumb, regarding it distrustfully. "Wasn't I just saying that it was kinda nice not being handed things? I know we're not the brightest tools in the shed, but a little confidence in us would be nice.."

James grunted. "Yeah."

"I don't like the feeling that we're being babysat," he added. "It feels like Silent Hill's impatient with us. Like, 'hurry it along!' while also trying to get us lost. It doesn't make any sense." The father peered at his guardian. "Has it been saying anything to you?"

He sighed hard through his nose. "Here and there. It's been acting strange. It told me about that girl-thing that helped us out," James revealed. "Other than that.. nothing really too important. It sounds.. distracted, and.. distorted?" He performed one of his signature shrugs. "Mostly distracted. I don't think it knows what it's doing."

"I'd've thought that when it sucked you it'd up the ante, too; give us a harder time."

"Yeah. You'd think." James shook his head to Harry's sigh. "I don't know, Harry. I think it's confused. It feels weird to me too. I'm getting mixed signals."

"Great. Just what we need: a possessed town that's got itself fucked up in knots." Harry looked the medallion over again, then put it and his hand in his pocket. "What about Heather?"

"What about her?"

Harry gestured vaguely through his jacket. "Any clues, or updates?"

He shook his head. "No. Haven't heard about her since that first time when she came in."

"Damn. I dunno what to do here, James," he told him, rapping the pipe on his leg. "I think it spooks me more to think that Silent Hill is more unbalanced than usual. It's been so.. weird since we left South Vale." Harry passed a skeptical look at his companion. "Hm. You think maybe busting you out of South Vale has anything to do with this?"

"What do you mean?"

"I dunno, like.. maybe it shifted the energies around in a way Silent Hill wasn't expecting," he speculated. "Now it's all screwy. Even if it let you out."

James couldn't find anything to add to that. "I don't know, Harry. I can feel it's off. The town's talking weird. You might be right."

Sighing a sigh that wished he wasn't right, the veteran looked at the floor, then out to the hall. "We better get this medallion into the clocktower."

"Mm."

"It'll probably unlock," Harry tiredly remarked, walking the short trip to the courtyard doors around the corner of the reception. "And we'll take the stairs up to the roof. And 3B, I bet." Closing his hand on the horizontal push handle, he shot James a faint smile. "Whee."

The clocktower awaited them across the yard. Otherworld night had removed the snow and fog from the atmosphere. They set foot on the wide stone path and as soon as the school doors clicked into place, the clock announced the time. 11:30 had come, indeed; odd that it had delayed itself after the woman's say.

It was as though it were waiting for them.

Harry and James flicked their bemused eyes up to its bold face. These wanderers weren't meant to ponder it for long, for a burst of inky plumes from the ground stole their attention. Its manifestation acted as a symphony orchestra's world-renowned conductor heralding an overlapping choir of children's shrill, echoing moans and cries to overstimulate their ears.

In the middle of the courtyard, a red glow shone so bright it penetrated the black smog. Without the fog it would have illuminated the entire area; instead, it backlit the true nature of what the clouds contained. Amassed within was an army of ashy hands stretching out from the ground, writhing over each other like a pile of worms. They were familiar (as though they could be forgotten), seen before a good while ago, and were just as unfriendly here than they had been in the Lake View Hotel stairwell.

It was an ambush.

Shock detained James and Harry from immediate reaction. The mass acted like a wildfire's vapors, billowing at random and its feathering fading out before it reached their shoulders. But their stupor was short lived; survival instincts threw them into action.

James took off quick as a startled rabbit for the tower. Harry began a sprint after him and barely got three steps in before the horde seized his weapon and jacket, yanking him into their abyssal sea.

James heard his shout and spun around. He'd gotten ahead, but instantly started to backtrack when he saw Harry had vanished, only to find he wouldn't get any closer to where he used to be. His feet and legs were suddenly no better than a fly caught on a sticky paper trap. Hands grabbed at his jeans, the hang of his jacket, the stock of his gun. The longer he was forced to stand there, the more it felt like the ground was slowly bowing under his weight - as though it intended to pull him under, and eat him up.

"HARRY!" he yelled over the mangled harmonies. James wrenched his gun from the predatory hands, frantically searching the mire for his body. The shotgun soundly cocked and fired into the pool directly below. Wails replied and grips weakened, and the three shells he unloaded around his feet quivered the ties that bound him. His last shell went into the thick near where he thought Harry went down, another burst dispersing the ensemble, allowing him to just see the ground under thinning wisps.

He loaded his weapon during his long strides. Blasting what he hoped was a safe perimeter where Harry supposedly was did him well; the black fog gave way to his body on the stone. Harry was clawing at the ground, fighting in vain to get up under the hands that marooned him like Gulliver in Lilliput and finally shot up on his arms when James's aim freed him.

"Get the fuck up!" James demanded, reloading as quickly as he could. The hands could only stay wounded for so long; they were again grasping his legs as their strength recovered. One more shot near him unbound Harry from his prison and he scrambled to his feet with the aid of James taking a handful of his jacket to pull him up. Once on his feet, Harry held the pipe high over his head before it could be snatched.

"Get a move on!" he shouted back at James, taking advantage of their short window to press through the onslaught like wet cement trying to drown them to the deep. James's blasts nearly overrode the unholy screams and wails that pierced and deafened their ears. Wading through took a toll on their strength and the claws attempting to catch James's wrist weakened his reload time when he went in his pocket to retrieve shells.

Worse, they had no other choice but to skirt the middle of the yard where the glow broke through the fog.

It was no question what it was. Fierce, blistering pain raided their skulls as easily as a sponge soaks water. Pins stabbed into the crevices of their brains like the precise hand of a voodoo priest and sounded like laughter; evil, scorching laughter from nowhere else but the sigil emblazoned on the ground. For James, it was too much, and his reloading ceased altogether. Harry, though delirious, wildly beat back the swarming flock.

"Fuck OFF!" Harry bellowed with his pitiless swing. "Fucking shit! You goddamn shitty fucking town! Augh!" He ducked his head, eyes squeezed shut in agony. Though blinded, he knew James was directly in front of him, and they had to make it; they were so fucking close. The stab thrust on his spine from Harry's steel hook ripped James from his roots, and sent him staggering to their target.

After all, one must always use force when necessary.

James tripped over his feet and crashed hard onto the clocktower steps. Striking his shins didn't compare to the powerful ache in his head, but he desperately powered through. He used the wall to pull himself up, then twisted his body, and squinted back at Harry.

"Harry!" The veteran jerked up his head in acknowledgment; his eyes stung too much to look. "The medallion! Give it to me!"

Harry forcibly screwed his eyes up at last to James's outstretched hand, trying to decipher what he'd said through the madness. "The medallion!" James screamed again. "Give me the fucking medallion!"

His hand plunged into his pocket. They had one chance to get this right. He had to take that risk, and with all the prayers in the world, tossed it high underhand.

Flared, bony fingers caught the tarnished weight and James spun back to the wall. He braced himself to its stone, the hands below clamoring for his sleeve, and slammed the medallion into its socket.

Atrophied screeches and howls flooded the courtyard like shattering china. The clusters that'd reached and stymied exploded into ash as the tower's solid gates flung open. Their sudden break from tension sent Harry's body floundering like a rag doll, stumbling up the steps after James's scramble inside. They crashed into one another, dropping hard into the ground behind the lethargically closing doors as the prized clocktower welcomed their well-earned victory to its cage.

The test at 11:30 had not been failed after all.