The inferno raged. Harry shoved onto his elbows and swiped the beaded sheen from James's face. "James," he rasped, clearing back his soaked bangs now. "Hey bud, you with me?"

He mustered a bare, open mouthed smile when green eyes shifted to their corners to look at him. "Good, rise and shine," Harry strained through his lift to get on all fours, indescribable aches and rocking ground withal.

James's palm connected stiffly on Harry's chest before he could fall on him, and then with two hands, helped push him back on his knees. Harry teetered with the quaking, braced himself on his arm, and hefted himself to standing. He searched the area for the girl and spotted her not too far off in a heap of her own. Panting, he looked down at James again, who appeared to be in no way capable of getting up soon, but then noticed something even worse - the tar-bandaged cracks in the concrete floor underfoot were giving up.

He caught sight of the shotgun within James's reach. Harry grabbed it, stepped over the conduit, and took him by the jacket lapels. He hauled James's body over to the girl and placed the shotgun between them. Harry passed his hand over his wet, disheveled hair and tried to get a look at her, but she was in a fetal position that left her completely veiled. The ground continued to tremble, the fires billowing and roaring high and wide.

He didn't know what to do. Through his deafened ears he heard metal snapping and looking up, he witnessed, in horror, the Otherworld ceiling beginning to sever and drop in pieces. The room was collapsing in on itself. They were all in danger - far more danger than they'd just been in - and had an undetermined amount of time to save themselves.

But there was one thing on Harry's mind, one foolish, should-be inconsequential thing, that could ruin all their hard work:

His pipe.

Harry shot a glance at the path they'd crossed on the right. It was still solid, or so it seemed. So he hoped. The man was a pure-bred moron in so many ways, and a sentimental one to boot. Before he even realized it, Harry was sprinting like an Olympic gold medalist across the trail, clawing along the wall to the other side. He had no idea where the goddamn thing was but it was his, and to be risking everything for a stupid, rusty pipe should earn him the Darwin Award of the century.

Somehow, either by a psychic magnetic pull or just a keen eye, he found it where it'd stationed itself along the back wall. Harry bolted for it, fumbled twice to get it in his fist, then raced to the bridge again. For his audacity and vanity, he was served a dose of intense tremors that crumbled the ledge fringing his feet. He clung to the iron lattice, pausing to ride out what he hoped was the worst of it - but it wasn't.

He was right at the finish line when a patch of concrete shook itself away and left a gap that seemed to serve the express purpose of heckling him. Harry already knew he was a dumbass for his little stunt and this really drove the point home. Nevertheless there was still some faith left for himself, and that's what carried him as he leapt over the gap. The force of the earthquake sent him stumbling all the way to his two guardians, where he fell to his hands and knees before them.

Thank god neither of them seemed to have noticed the antics he'd just pulled. Harry delivered several firm pats to James's chest, drawing to him his unfocused, hazy stare. The cracks continued to split, the ceiling tearing itself asunder.

Harry snapped his eyes to the girl. She was dying, and for her, his heart cleaved. There was nothing he could do for her; she'd fulfilled her obligation and it was now her time to rest. However morose and guilty he was to have to leave her behind, Harry shoved the shotgun into James's palm, closing his pale, weak fingers around it.

"Hold onto it!" Harry demanded, using the pipe to get back up. "Don't you fucking lose that thing!" The adrenaline and need to survive aided him when he crouched, slung James's arm around his shoulders, wrapped his arm about his waist, and jerked him to his feet.

Harry supported the conduit against his side and looked down at the girl for the last time. She was on her back now, pointing at the door just paces away. He gave her a final apologetic look - but then shock parted his chapped lips; her head was melting, and there was a face .

A face.

The skin had slid off just enough to reveal the only left side of her goddamn face.What he saw of her features were pristine; she bore no blemishes, nothing but fair skin, one prettily arched, dark eyebrow, and her eye was blue - no, green - brown? he couldn't tell at all.

Her one eye gazed sadly up at Harry and, startlingly, with a fair amount of recognition. He felt he recognized her, too, but no name came to mind. Remorse stung his heart and reflected on his face, but she, and he, knew she would remain a mystery. Harry soaked her into his memories and swallowed hard.

"Thank you."

She seemed to smile, and Harry, with James secured at his side, left her.

The whole building was shaking. Descending the clocktower's spiral staircase was treacherous to say the least, and all but carrying a grown man wasn't making it any easier. Harry's legs were moving by miracle alone and somehow, the pair were not destined to go tumbling head over heels to broken necks today. When the staircase soon split itself in half, Harry felt that it was rather predictable, and almost insulting.

However, that didn't mean they were left stranded.

Contrary to the alleged fortune bestowed upon them so far, Harry and his human cargo nearly got swept away by the stone wall disintegrating at their left. His reflexes here were noteworthy. Stopping his heel on a dime to avoid the sudden rockslide, he leaned raggedly into the banister. Rock cascaded from the broken wall off the broken steps, and the resulting, conveniently man-sized window granted a way out. Before he took the exit, the plaque mounted on the cracked wall caught his eye.

2B.

He threw his and James's weight into the school hall. Harry tried to orient himself, looking this way and that, and spotted the sign on the door reading LIBRARY. There'd been a blockade of debris and, oddly, haphazardly stacked student desks, so they were herded south. By now, James was making a valiant effort to stay upright, though his strides were heavy footed and had some trouble keeping up with Harry's pace.

The school was breaking down. White, flimsy tiles folded from the ceiling in pieces; some afire, some not. Harry did what he could to navigate these obstacles over shuddering floor and the man so leaden in his arm. His limbs had been threatening to drop James since he'd gotten him up, but then again, all four of those limbs for a while now had been teasing the idea of falling out of their joints at any given second.

There was fire boiling in Harry, too. Sweat impaired his vision. His jacket was a furnace and later, he might wonder how he didn't keel over dead from heat stroke. Blisters chafed and tore, saturating his legs in sticky juices, then repeated the cycle ad nauseum. The school was increasing its quaking by the second. It was as though the skies of hell rained its fire and brimstone upon them, heralding the Otherworld's splintering tomb.

Careless lumps of shadow and flesh that made up children's bodies lay scattered along the walls, thrown atop each other as mass graves. They fueled Harry's rage, and when he was again barred from the stairwell at the end of the hall, the anger hit a peak.

"Fuck Midwich," he hissed under his breath, "fuck Silent Hill," his words were hatefully spat, and as he slammed their bodies into the doors adjacent, a roar manifested from his throat, "and fuck this goddamn place and everything FUCKING in it!"

Then, in cutting through the short, connecting hallway, he came to a sharp halt at the music room.

Harry froze in place, his eyes wide and jaw slack. The entire room was a cathedral of flames. His heart leapt behind his tongue, sickness coiled in his gut, and he couldn't feel nor hear his tongue abjectly whispering no, no, no . Within the bowels of the flames, the piano was naught but a chunk of black, its elegance and purpose unforgivingly devoured in the blazing, desecrating maw. He was helpless bystander to her sacred room being destroyed before his eyes.

No matter how badly he wanted to linger, wanted to sacrifice himself to the fires to save the piano, save their song; save her ; the Otherworld wanted retribution, and Harry wasn't in the mood to play ball.

But just before he turned away, a midnight apparition stepped into view beside the piano; and by its size, it was an adult. Harry caught a glimpse of it and refused to see any more. The double doors ahead banged open and he swung them around the corner. He was emotionally, mentally, and physically frayed enough to be unable to tell the difference between sweat and tears blurring his eyes. A sob hitched and rattled in his chest, for through his damaged, tinning ears, he heard a woman's mournful wail hex the corridor he ran.

He didn't want to know for certain if he'd heard his name in her cries.

Harry and James, fighting harder on their legs now, charged on. Their dexterity was tested on turbulent floors and kindling scraps from above. The stairwell at the end encouraged their escape. They descended and nearly fell at the bottom, but didn't yield. Widower and conduit were in their final stretch, racing like rats in a maze to freedom.

They burst open into the reception; whipped right, entering the lobby; then propelled themselves out onto the Midwich entryway steps.

They were outside; they were finally out.

The air washed over and stung their hot, sweaty faces like winter's chill. Old Silent Hill's nighttime siren encompassed the town and welcomed them back. Yet the abrupt transfer from rolling waves to solid ground upset their equilibrium like two sailors departing their time at sea. They almost got tangled up in each other's legs in the confusion of noise and instability, but desperation to live was a mighty drug. Through snow that never melted and never piled on inches they ran into the middle of the street, where their feet couldn't carry them anymore, and they buckled onto the blanketed asphalt.

Harry, panting for breath in charred lungs, existing in a body that begged for death's rest, rolled onto his back. Their weapons scattered upon their fall, though didn't go far. James dropped like an anchor onto his side, coughing out the smoke and ash. The resounding crack of demolishment broke above the siren, the fires ahead illuminating the survivors and the street. Harry maneuvered up on bent arms and gaped like a fish for air; and in awe of the fateful prison of nightmares and abuse in the guise of a school swallowing itself in purgatorial fire. James too struggled to his elbow and slumped hard into it, turning his head to watch the school engulf itself in untamed fires.

Together in profound, reverent silence they beheld a bonfire that painted them in reds and cast their shadows in the deepest blacks. An important segment of a sacrificial girl's life was razed before their eyes, banishing itself from existence forever. Midwich Elementary School brought about its own fatality, as was fitting, and could only be done by its own self.

But the beacon of cruelty claimed another victim as it caved in: the mockery of Jodi Mason - the beloved, late wife of Harry Mason - who taught music at an elementary school, who loved to play the piano, and from whom her husband learned to recreate that haunting masterpiece by Erik Satie, because it was the song she loved the most.

The wayward father of a daughter past and present held a gouged, empty heart in his chest, and hoped the poor girl who'd saved their lives had found peace at last.