James grimaced in pain. He'd hit the ground hard and the backpack, combined with Harry's solid body toppling over him, gave his spine a good bruising. The sigil's headache's abrupt end left him somewhat dizzy. But he was being crushed in the sandwich of Harry's dense weight and the bag "supporting" him; the man above was still too dazed to realize what broke his fall, and wheezed next to his head.

"Harry," James strained. "Get off me." He filled his lungs when Harry quickly came to his senses and pushed himself up, then flopped to the side. Their recovering breaths infused the dank tower.

The flashlights brightened up a black space that was no cozier than an old well. To no one's surprise, the clocktower was cramped. A large spiral staircase led to the stone heavens; and the civilian had fallen a mere scant foot away from its base edge. James had someone looking out for him for him not to have cracked his skull open on the first step.

Harry tiredly ran his hands over his hair a few times, smoothing it into his preferred slicked back look, then dropped them to the ground. The floor was gritty; he dusted his hand off on his thigh. Twisting about, he reached to grab the staircase ledge and pulled himself up. After waiting out the short spin in his head, he stepped to James and offered his help. James accepted and got to his feet.

"That was somethin', huh?" he half-heartedly joked. "You okay?"

James frowned at the floor, painfully rolling out his shoulder and stretching his back. "Yeah."

"Sorry about that. Didn't mean to crush you, there."

James grunted. "Potato, potato."

Harry returned a chuckle. "Heh. Yeah." Swiping off his pants had him making a face, and he displayed his palm to the light. ".. oh. Weird. James, look."

Ash turned his palm white. They both looked down at themselves and wherever the demons had touched, they'd smeared grey and white powder like children's finger painting. Harry was covered in it. Groaning pathetically, he tried to brush himself off from head to toe, but only got so far. The stuff stuck worse than glitter. "Man! Seriously? Ugh, what a pain in the.."

James did a dispassionate clean up of his own. "You're vain."

"So I've been told," he grouchily muttered. "I like to look nice, sue me."

"I don't see the point of it if you're gonna be in Silent Hill," he said, watching Harry take off his jacket to shake and sweep its back.

"Yeah, maybe it looks stupid," Harry replied. He'd done what he could with the leather and pulled it on with a disappointed scowl. "I dunno. Maybe I'll meet a nice girl here. I don't want to give off the wrong impression and make her think I don't care about my appearances."

James snorted and rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Right. How dumb of me."

"Don't worry, James," he comforted, fetching his weapon from the floor. "We can still make a prize out of you."

"Yeah, okay."

"You're welcome." Harry wagged the pipe at his side and weaseled past his companion to look at the plaque by the stairwell. "1L. Hmm. Remember that," he said, clinking metal hook on metal square, "so we know where we parked the car."

James had exhausted his conversational repertoire. Leaning to peer up the tall, twisting staircase, Harry thoughtfully tap tap tapped the pipe on his calf, took the handrail, and started the ascent.

Climbing the corkscrew took them to another mounted plate. Interestingly, it read '2B' as though there was supposed to be a landing or a door to exit through, yet there was nothing but rounded stone. 3B had to be close.

The trek upwards seemed higher than the tower itself. Their shoes clicked and clanked on the stairs and soon, Harry was winded. James's dry annoyance with the man's pitiful stamina returned, and it persisted until the end when Harry, panting, pointed out the final tablet by the door.

"3B," he gulped. "We made it. Finally. Jesus, that was longer and steeper than I expected." He forced the door outward on its sticky hinges, and officially arrived at the top. Harry gave a great sigh and caught his breath, shimmying his shoulders while the door complained its way closed. James shuffled to his side. "Stairs, man," exhaled the writer, casting a sidelong glance to his colleague. "Those were rough."

But he'd find no solidarity in it. James was physically unbothered and looked bored at best. Brow wrinkling, Harry lightly shook his head and looked out across the roof.

Or, it was supposed to be the roof. None of it looked anything like a roof at all. The chamber hosted some untraceable, diluted light of a factory past its prime, and swathed the entire scope of the place in shadowy, orange gloom. Where the endless black sky should have lurked high overhead, the Otherworld extended its signature pockmarked iron in its stead, barely seen through the light that dulled the further it tried to reach.

An industrial fan whirred somewhere at their far left, churning warm air that ghosted cooler over their hair and skin by the time it reached them. Its buzz blended with a large boiler's thrum in the corner nearby, its dim crimson lights glowing fuzzy and baleful.

Concrete, not grate, spanned far beneath their feet. Cracks bandaged by tar veined the floor, all of them seemingly gunning for the middle, where they dove into a black mass. The space was huge; there was no telling how far it went.

This place resembled a basement more than the roof it should have been.

Harry directed his trusty light to the right corner and wandered to check it out. There was naught but a quartet of unmarked, dirty barrel drums. That warranted a full inspection; knocking and gently rocking one told him they were full. Of what, he'd leave a mystery.

"They're some barrels over there," he reported upon his return. "Dunno what's in them, and I wasn't about to find out."

James's shoulders went up and down. Harry imitated, looked at the floor, and nodded to the tar rivers snaking for the center of the room. Words weren't needed to agree on their next destination, so they tentatively followed until they came upon the wide, gaping maw of a hole possibly as large as the room itself. James was braver than Harry in looking down into it. Harry didn't dare get too close to the edge, choosing to do his peeking from the safest distance he could. Their white beams touched the rough concrete edges within their proximity and nowhere else; the depths in the town never had a bottom.

"Hm! Well! I don't like that."

James searched the nothingness without many expectations. "There's not much to like in Silent Hill."

"Solid point." Harry stood back, shuddering. "I hope we'll never have to go down there, or anywhere dark and cavernous, for that matter. I highly doubt Silent Hill has spelunking equipment, and if it did, I'd doubt even more that it'd be up to code."

"You've said that before." James glanced over, watching him skirt the hole from a healthy few feet from its edge.

"Yeah? Well, then I stand by it. Or away from it."

James looked down into the hole again. A faint frown lowered his brows. He adjusted his light, slowly guiding it to and fro. Tucking his lips inward, he straightened his posture and caught up to Harry. They took the trip around the circumference, closely passing the imposing fan that took up most of the wall. Its blades blew hard enough on them to slightly upset their balance and sent their hair every which way. When they got out of its vicinity Harry did some bellyaching under his breath and reset his hair for the second time. James decided to again follow his lead, though certainly wasn't as fastidious as his counterpart.

The other side of the room had a station of wheel valves attached to the wall. There were a set of three in a row and one on its lonesome nearby. All four wore red, chipped paint. Upon closer review, they were found to be also situated conveniently at chest height. Harry pursed his lips at them, absently rapping the steel rod on his open palm like a policeman with his nightstick.

"Neat." A quiet. "Wonder what these do."

"Probably open the gate."

Harry caught the pipe for good and shot him a look, asking, "What gate?"

"The gate in the hole."

Harry couldn't be more stupefied. "What gate in the hole?"

"There's a gate in the hole," James repeated, lacking an ounce of cooperation. He frowned a little at the prickly look he received.

"James." A parent's condescending flatness went unappreciated. "What gate in the hole."

"There's a gate in the hole," was said for a third time, turning Harry's annoyance into exasperation. But on this round, James graciously followed it up with, "It's really hard to see, but it's down there."

Harry averted his eyes and newly deadpan face to the valves. Swear to god, he thought, he was gonna fucking murder this guy someday. "How do you know it's a gate."

"I don't. I'm guessing."

Raising his stare to the aberrant heavens, Harry wondered why the hell he got saddled with the most pigheaded man in the world. He'd have an easier time as a dentist pulling teeth from a tiger's mouth than getting the simplest information out of him. "James.. okay. Let's try this again." The veteran turned to the soldier. James looked none too happy with the way he was being treated like an idiot, but Harry saw the shoe fit.

"In the hole."

A beat waited until James took the hint and answered, "Yeah."

"There's a gate."

"Might be. I don't know if it's a gate."

"What makes you think it's a gate."

"I don't know if it's a gate," he clipped. "There's a grate floor down in the hole. It's hard to see. You weren't close enough to look, but I was." Harry took a breath; James cut him off. "It looks like a metal floor. I'm just guessing that it goes across the whole thing, and I'm just guessing it's a gate because there are valves here, and they have to open something."

The men had a peevish stare-off. One hadn't gotten the answers he actually wanted, and the other was resentful of being talked down to. Harry brusquely ended the squabble, turning back to the valves before they started plucking ruffled feathers.

He put the pipe on the floor and took hold of the left wheel. It wouldn't turn. Trying the middle, he got it to turn a quarter - then stuck. The third budged so easily that he was taken by surprise, pitching forward and knocking his chin on the hard rim. James expertly withheld his smirk while Harry grimaced and clamped his jaw, then took out the frustration on completing the round.

After one full cycle, the valve stuck again. Harry gambled the roulette all over, growing increasingly embittered to find that the pattern he needed wasn't being found. At one point they thought he'd made some progress by the sound of metal grating on something somewhere, yet he couldn't replicate it. This puzzle was not helping Harry's soured attitude.

Not to mention, his arms were getting pretty tired. Harry gripped the middle wheel, cocking his hip and slumping into the valve. He stared ahead, unfocused, past the laced, grody wall into the maze of others just like it. Their affair at Midwich was really starting to shake the curdling bottle of every goddamn piece of himself that'd been obsessively carved off along the way. Funnily enough, to put a humorous spin on his situation, he'd now begun to relate too hard with Lucille Ball fucking up at the chocolate factory conveyer belt.

The wayward father was wearing down, slowing down, and destitute as he took a swan dive into a pit of his own with no secret net.

He dropped his forehead to his knuckles. Ever since they arrived at the elementary school he felt that everything was emotionally bleeding himself dry more and more. It started with a pin prick - nothing more than what one gets on the fingertip at the doctor's for a quick blood test. Then it'd steadily crawled up his hand and teased an artery and before he knew it, he was gonna need to swallow a month's worth of iron pills in one go just to feel a hair better.

His bed, drawn blackout curtains, and darkened lightbulbs were calling for him from home. All he wanted to do was to crawl under the blankets and say 'adios' to the conscious world for a day.

Or more.

Fans hummed, boilers rumbled, metal and blood stank the air. Harry was nowhere close to home (and no clicking his heels three times would get him there). A big breath didn't unclog the heaviness from his hollow head - not that he thought it would, though it was always nice to try. He got his weight off his hip before it started giving him trouble and stared down at his thick, aged hands dirtied by ash and curled around the wheel.

Heather was in danger. Harry sluggishly stepped to the left in an imminent, foggy haze. Heather is in danger, echoed the fatigued, yet stalwart reminder that strived to halt his disconnecting psyche as he took the wheel in his hands. Heather is in danger and you're going to find her and take her home just like you did before.

He tried to spin the valve left. It loosened and brought with it the hair-raising grind of metal against metal.

Harry looked over his shoulder. James was leaning over the edge, shining his flashlight in. He eyeballed his guardian. That man made him so goddamn nervous. "See anything?" he called.

The delay was a short one. "It seems to have moved a little."

"How can you tell?"

The shotgun served as a pointer. "Sides are crumbling."

"Great. Keep an eye on it." Harry faced the wheels. He had no idea how James could see anything that far down. To his credit, of course, Harry didn't have much of a look himself, at the time. James was fearless in general, and certainly had no qualms about essentially hanging over the side of a cliff like that.

More progress was made in the second round. Perhaps Harry needed the break, as mentally taxing and not-very-calming as recuperating ought to be. Ear-splitting friction and crunching became a frequent noise as Harry (sort of) discovered the pattern until all three wheels came to a halt.

Huffing, cranky, and sore, Harry gave them a reproachful frown and looked at the man in green. "Well? How're we doing?"

"Pretty close," he replied over his shoulder. "It's almost there."

Stretching and shaking out his arms, the survivor joined the other at the ledge and warily looked in with him. So it was a gate, after all - hard to see as it was. A long, wide band of metal bordered the latticed rust that accurately suggested that it had parted with a twin on the other side. James's guesswork actually had merit.

"Well, I got bad news for you, bud: the valves won't turn anymore. That might be all we get."

The resident hummed. "Doesn't seem right."

"Even so."

James curtly reprised it. His lips parted as though to say something, but closed. Harry stood straight and directed the beam to the outcast wheel. He left James behind to go test it out.

It had some give. He was able to wiggle it, but nothing more. Sighing, Harry crossed back to the trio to attempt one more shot.

Perhaps he'd forgotten to try rotating the other wheels to their opposite. The middle, after putting his back into it, allowed him a quarter turn. A tremendous thunder shook the room as the gate fully retracted into the concrete. Harry swiveled in place, immediately bracing himself against the sharp onset of a violent earthquake. James backed up, arms pinwheeling for balance, and quickly dashed, swerving and stumbling on shuddering ground, to Harry.

Harry snagged James by the sleeve to stabilize him back on the wheels. Briefly using him as an anchor, he snatched his weapon from the floor and dug his spine into the valves. He clung to James's jacket, both men awestruck as a gigantic, moldering beast sprung from the crater. It spread its massive wings and hovered in the twilight.

Harry had met it before. The moth he thought he'd slain was resurrected - and it had not aged well. It was splotched in gangrene, its antennae snapped, one dangling by a wish. Maggots (or grubs, by the massive size of them) wormed in decayed, splitting gashes, sliding around in oily black goo that dribbled down the abdomen.

Those grubs were crammed tight in there, bulging the segments and squirming on each other like an agitated crowd at an arena. Tattered wings kept it impossibly afloat (for it should not be able to do so with such defects), dislodging many of its congested parasites that then rained like hail into the chasm below.

Its legs hung worthless, serving only as an avenue for drooling ichor to be slung about as a result of encumbered bobbing. The insect let out an undead, stuttering, terrorizing shriek. More inhabitants were jostled out in clumps, but instantly sprouted again and again from a deep, infinite supply that apparently acted as stuffing to a skin that would otherwise wilt.

The tremors subsided. The survivors' board was set; their duty, assigned. This would be the pair's first big rodeo together where they were undoubtedly outmatched, and Harry had all of just one thing to say about it:

"Aw, shit."