"Hey. Check this out."

James joined Harry at the private study desk. He watched his thick fingers slide a few loose papers over each other, then pick up a photocopy of a cut out, crammed news column advertising a small, smudgy picture of a winged insect and a bold headline. "Midwich High School's biology class is putting on a bug exhibit," Harry said, looking it over. "There's a whole article about it."

The conduit waited for him to elaborate.

"This Thursday, the class of - some year - will be inviting family, friends, and the public to view their senior project, The Visualization of Insects," he read aloud. "Taking place in the school's biology classroom, the students will be setting up an exhibition dedicated to insects large and small, flying and grounded, to explain how the world's living organisms impact our environment. Though many may view insects as pests, or even fear them, the class seeks to explain their significance in our lives and dispel their oftentimes bad reputation, as well as educate and introduce myths and legends surrounding many of these small natural beasts.

"The exhibition will be open from 5:00p.m - 9:00p.m.. Refreshments will be served. All are welcome to join."

Harry looked to James. "That sounds fun."

The latter grunted. Gathering that that was the extent of his thoughts, Harry studied the page again. "Not too crazy about looking at a bunch of dead bugs all laid out, but eh, maybe we'll learn a thing or two."

"So it sounds fun, but it doesn't, and you want to go see it anyway."

"Might as well. Bugs are kind of a theme around here, if you haven't noticed. Gotta figure we're supposed to take the bait and head over."

"Mm."

Fingering the photocopy, Harry bit his lip, shook his head, and checked the back. It was blank. He began to fold it up to put into his jacket, then stopped when he felt the bulk. "Aw, shit. Y'know, this is stupid, I gotta empty this out. Gimme a sec."

James observed him cross to a long table outfitted with several generously spaced chairs, and flop down the paper wealth. It was cartoonish how much he'd stuffed in there. He let Harry sort it out by himself, taking a gander about the expansive library. Then he spotted, and meandered over to an abandoned cart stacked full of books meant to be returned to their shelves.

There were novels and reference books, histories and biographies. None bore titles that sparked his fancy, but he occupied the minutes by dismantling the uneven stacks while Harry was busy. He recalled his musings over Harry's books, idly rearranging the mess in dull pursuit of coming across one, improbable as it was. It was a dumb way to waste the time, but at least it kept his mind somewhat active.

Soon after he'd placed the children's book atop the mystery novel, Harry blew a hearty raspberry. "How'd I end up with so much crap?" he asked the room. "I'm like a goddamn squirrel." James stood obediently in place for Harry to file his papers away on his back. When he was given the usual 'okay' pats, he looked over at him.

"So we're going to the high school?"

"Yep. How'd you know?"

"I had a vision."

"Ooh, psychic now, are we? That's neat."

The conduit slipped his hand into his pocket and started off. "Yeah. It was foretold by gyromancy."

Excellent acoustics echoed the short-lived, rich laughter that burst from the middle-aged survivor's lungs. "Oh, not you, too! James, I'm gonna be really pissed if you've been a mole for the Order this whole time."

He shot a sideways glance at Harry. "You'd like that, wouldn't you."

"It'd add a level of complexity to the plot, wouldn't it?"

"Mm."

"Aaaahh, you weasel."

Before they left the building, Harry took another look back, floating his light into the dark. "Pretty nice library here, huh? It was bigger than I thought. I hope this isn't the last time we see it."

James looked back, too. "Probably won't be."

"Mm.. yeah."

Together they roamed a lazy route towards the high school. Few citizens were out and about that morning. They were avoided, and they made it to their destination without any trouble. Harry rapped his pipe on his calf when they'd come to pause facing the institution, scrunching his features.

James was ambivalent.

"The town getting larger is so weird to me," he remarked. "I still don't know what to make of it."

The resident squinted through the light fog and snow at the school while Harry continued to talk. "In a way, I like it; the broken-off streets are gone, and it started to get kinda boring the way it was." He glanced at James. "No jixing that, since it already happened."

"No, you called it boring," corrected his fellow traveler. "That jinxed it."

"Damn. You're right." Sighing, Harry returned his attention to their objective. "Well, everything for a reason. Let's get this over with."

Inside, the school offered two wide hallways to choose from. Their first order of business was to find a map, and the main office was kind enough to provide one. Little else was outright obvious for the taking, so they laid it out on the reception desk and gave it a good survey.

No doubt they'd have to scour the entire place, or rather, wherever they were allowed to go. Four buildings total claimed the campus, so their work was all but cut out for them. Knowing Silent Hill, they'd be disallowed from getting a feel for the entire place, though they'd been wrong before. Sometimes it was refreshing being wrong; however, with how the town's been acting lately, the jury was still out on that one.

Not unusually, the school was in dark disarray, but like Midwich Elementary, retained some order. Posters typical of high schools decorated the walls, reminding teenagers of football practice and scheduled games, spirit day, that God was good, health and environment information - and even an advertisement for The Visualization of Insects.

They regarded it thoughtfully. "I wonder how many students actually went to it," Harry mused. "Though if I remember anything from school events, a lot of people went just to socialize with friends. Nobody actually cared about what was being put on." He hummed. "Also to, y'know, take advantage of the refreshment table."

Scanning the poster one more time, nothing else of note jumped out to him, so he made to continue on; but stopped short at a medium-sized notice about sex education and specifically, STDs.

"I'm kind of surprised," Harry said, reading the bill detailing gonorrhea and its symptoms. "For a religious school, they sure are open about STDs.. though I'd guess they're using it as fear mongering and sex shaming.. or so it looks," he added, tapping his finger on the drawn picture of two teenagers intimately kissing. "That guy's even got his shirt off."

James wrinkled the corner of his nostril with disgust. "Seems a little more creepy."

"Yeeaaahh," agreed a wary tone. "I'm not so sure that's entirely appropriate. Rather uncouth, don'tcha think?" He leaned away from it, then returned to James's left side. "Religious schools are weird about stuff like that."

Giving it another scornful glance, James walked away with Harry. "Most schools don't even have a Sex Ed."

"Which is stupid, and if they even do, they like to go the, 'just don't have sex' route. No actual education, nothing about a growing body.. and then people love to wonder why teenage pregnancy rates are up."

"Hm."

"Did you have to do the flour sack baby when you were in high school?" Harry asked, looking at him. "On one hand, yeah, that's one way to dissuade people from gettin' it on, but on the other, nobody takes it seriously. It usually doesn't sink in."

His shrug came and went. "Don't remember. Probably not. I think I've heard about that, though."

"Schools are weird." He mimicked the gesture. "But Catholic schools are worse."

"I guess."

"Jesus, speaking of, Catholicism is just weird in general.."

James didn't sign up for the theology lesson, so he didn't pay attention. Sometime during their tour Harry fell quiet, doing their regular poking around without much to say. The school was relatively silent, no abominations about to bother them. That granted little in terms of reassurance, for it meant it would only be a matter of time until they'd be hit hard by the hall monitors.

They came around back towards the commons after the uneventful first walk about the main building. The map located another set of administrative offices nearby, and they let themselves in. In here they found the principal's office, the teacher's resource stations, and a row of filing cabinets. Since there was no one to stop them, Harry went to read the labels and try their drawers.

Most were locked, and the ones that weren't were half-filled with benign supplies. What really caught his interest was the stack of cabinets labeled by the alphabet, which he guessed were filled with confidential student files. Invading the long-gone pupils' privacy ordinarily would've been a moral issue, if these were normal circumstances; but they weren't. In order to open the cabinets and leaf through everybody's business, they'd need to find the keys first.

Desks were checked, papers shifted and read, and they couldn't check the principal's office, since it was locked. Disappointing as that briefly was, a note taped beneath the nameplate smoothed it over.

Leaving for the day. I gave the keys to Mrs. Lounds. See to it that she returns them to Margot.

"Ooh," Harry murmured, plucking it from the door. "Keys, huh? It's been awhile since we picked some up."

James made a noncommittal noise. Folding the note and putting it in his personal storage, Harry tapped the pipe on his calf and tossed James a hyperbolic smile that affected his whole face. "Fun, huh? We finally got something to do."

Passing the man devoid of opinion, the patriarch pulled out the map in the hall and gave it a good snap to look it over. "Since we struck out on this side, we might as well head to the biology classroom next," he bid. "Aaand according to our handy dandy map, it's across the courtyard on the.. left. Where's some wood?"

The convenient, wood-framed bulletin board made his next sentence jinx-proof. "Hope we don't run into any school security."

James's face doubted the legitimacy of that.

Finding the doors to the rather large courtyard yielded a mighty shock. The snow fell in Old Silent Hill, and not once did it pile on inches - until now. Here, in the school's public square, the snow looked two inches tall. Their shoes sank into the white carpet, the height of which reached their hems. It wasn't cold; its temperature seemed like an unnatural, physical representation of the air.

Needless to say, the veteran and civilian were absolutely dumbstruck. "What the hell?"

James frowned at the snow, glancing at the fluffy spray from Harry's kick. "This isn't supposed to happen!" exclaimed his ward. "How the shit is it sticking?!"

Hypothesis-deficient once again, James scanned the quad; snow sheeted the stairs on which they stood and everywhere else; it piled on nearby bench tables, blanketed on bare trees, and continued to fall in the fog. Beside him he heard the telltale crunch, loud in the snow-muted atmosphere, and watched Harry advance down the steps into the yard.

"This is bullshit," Harry was muttering, leering at his feet. "I can't fucking believe this." James started after him, choosing to admire the scenery instead of contributing to the protest. Untouched snow was invariably a beautiful sight, akin to something out of a fantasy world, or a winter greeting card. It seemed a crying shame for this tranquility to exist in Silent Hill. He hadn't seen anything like this in eons.

James missed real snow.

Looking over when Harry paused, he followed his eyes to their flattened tracks and scatter. Trepidation clouded the survivor's face. Antithetically, the conduit couldn't rally the same feeling just yet, still too enchanted by the weather's unprecedented change.

"I hate this," Harry murmured. "It feels wrong. .. well, obviously, it is. But, like.. worse than it looks." His gaze shifted and lingered on James. "You with me, bud?"

Drawing up his eyes, James fixed them upon Harry's wary face. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Prudence kept Harry's frowning stare in the corners of his eyes as he rotated his head away, looking out at the yard again. "Let's get a move on."

They clomped along, hopefully, towards the correct building. As they passed a table and bench, James couldn't resist dragging his fingers through the mound of snow on the table. Like the white beneath their feet, it wasn't cold to the touch. His whimsy went unnoticed by the other man, as did the small placid smile that adorned his lips.

Out here the fog became denser than before, worsening the further in they walked. Their flashlights weren't enough to pierce the grey, leaving them worryingly high and dry to recognize any buildings. The map was brazenly procured, impetuously endangering themselves while they tried to figure out where they were supposed to go. Harry hoped to hell that he got his bearings, put the map away, and they started off when a harrowing noise penetrated the thick somewhere in front of them.

It sounded like a guttural, sickly heave - the same one idiosyncratic to their resilient, unsanitary, and pregnant friend.

Aw, shit.

The men stopped at the precise moment her gargling halted the crescendo. Boiling spray hissed upon contact with the snow, narrowly missing their shins. The staggered back, both cursing up a storm. Stabilizing themselves in a heartbeat, they reversed several paces again during the short interlude her hideous gagging provided.

"Oh, come— are you fucking serious?!" Harry angrily shouted. "Fuck me! You fucking bitch!"

Insulting her only won him another projectile retch, driving them farther back once more. She was someplace ahead of them, unseen in the concentrated fog. Clever and insidious she was to exploit her own invisibility for her profit; it was baffling how she could detect their position when they themselves couldn't see two feet in front of them. It gave her a deadly advantage.

And to add to that, she was directly blocking their path.

Stringy, pus-loaded vomit separated the pair the next second. James veered to the left and Harry ducked to the right. He stayed low, clenching the pipe in both hands, and heard the harsh click-clack of James's shotgun above her nauseating gurgling. They were going to take their customary offense by fanning out and flanking her, though this was going to be risky in an area that unknowingly wasn't flat and where they could easily get lost.

But they'd also have to find her.

"James," Harry called out. "Don't wander too far! We might be able to go around her!"

"Roger that," he replied. "I'd rather not engage, either."

"Well, don't get fried."

"I'll try."

"Oh hey, turn off your light!" he reminded James on a quick afterthought, switching his own off. "She's attracted it it, and we can't fucking in this shit as it is."

Harry thought he saw the soldier's fuzzy light vanish. She was getting ready to spew, so he yelled to his companion one last time.

"And whatever you do, don't fucking die!"

It was going to be easy getting lost out here; better yet, their impact in the snow made a lot of noise, which, despite their snuffed lights, helped give them away. Harry cursed under his breath and ran out of range when a wave of black bile swept his way. He heard her retch again, but the sound of it indicated it was aimed at James.

Predictably, Harry got lost almost immediately. He found, by tripping over it, another set of stairs he guessed led to the buildings they didn't want, but thanks to James's shotgun, he surged blindly forward towards its sound. If Lady Luck was present as their guardian angel, as she'd been a surprising few times before, he wouldn't make a mistake and bump right into the monstrous woman.

But navigating the incredibly thick fog and snow that was coming down faster than normal was a hell of a chore. This was bordering on obscene. Aggravated and impatient, he turned to an age-old game that would, could, help and hinder them; but he had to take that chance.

"Marco!"

Her gagging swung in his direction. Harry dashed to the side. James's lack of an immediate response contributed to the flash of unwarranted anger at the conduit.

"Polo!"

Thank fuck. James, however, sounded too far for his tastes; but at least he had an idea of where he was. A rancid jet caught him off guard in his eagerness to find him, grazing the side of his jacket. The author swore up a storm as he veered away. "Marco!"

The gun went off. "Polo!"

To their misfortune, as they'd speculated, the woman was intelligent. Determined to keep them far apart, she arched the vomit between them, and the conduit's sharp expletive suggested he'd been hit. How the hell she had a keen understanding where they were in the escalating storm, they wouldn't know.

They had to hurry. The patchy drift betrayed them to becoming a crowded, wooly downfall. Harry's thighs were getting sore from wading in the snow, which was by and by becoming more difficult. Squinting to see, his subconscious raised a question - was it getting higher? He looked down at his feet, and sure enough, the snow's height was teasing his shins.

Harry was livid. Divided by watching his steps and wherever the hell he was going complicated everything, and right now, while keeping his swaying balance in place. What a stupid, stupid move they'd made! He boldly advanced, gritting his teeth. James couldn't be far off, and when unprompted "POLO!" beckoned, he changed direction to an angle.

There was a roadblock. Harry saw her hazy silhouette half a gasp before he realized he was virtually on top of her; Lady Luck had tapped out on this one. Whispering "Oh, shit!" whipped her around and lurching for him. Survival impelled him out of her way, clambering through the formidable snow. The pipe came in handy, using it like a ski pole for security while he tried to make a safe escape.

During his haste the reptilian part of his brain stayed diligent on her threat. Dry heaving and popping reminded him her behavior in the town center - she was losing her juice, and quite literally. Taking advantage of her regenerative pause, Harry bellowed for James again.

"Marco!"

"Polo!"

They were closer. He pushed through as quickly as possible, the pipe helping his momentum as his trail swerved to follow his voice. "Marco!

"Polo!"

Closer! "MARCO!"

A blast went off a second before her gurgle peaked; she too much closer to them now. The sizzle and spray parted the men from each other again.

But James cried "POLO!"and Harry, though the conduit was tough to see, had found his companion at last.

"James! I see you! JesusfuckingChrist!" he swore as one word. "I'm on your left!"

James snapped his head to side to look for him, glimpsed Harry's shape, and frantically reloaded as he trudged to meet him. Panting hard, lungs dryly burning, Harry disobeyed his fatigued legs to try to run to him. "The snow's getting higher!" he yelled. "This is horseshit!"

"I know! So get the fuck over here!"

"I'm fucking try— shit, oh shit!Back up, back up, she's right fucking there—"

The slathering, disgusting beast stepped into view. She, holding firm to her elementary strategy, contracted her enormous belly and belched a viscous, steaming river that parted Harry and James again like the Red Sea.

This was unbelievably infuriating. Harry was at the end of his rope, darting his eyes every which way for some clue as to what to do and where they were - and doing a double-take at his right. In the distance loomed a dark, shadowy wall. That could be a building. Of course it damn well was; was the one they wanted?

Did he fucking care?

"James!" he yelled for him. "There's a building dead ahead!"

"Well, what the fuck do we do?!"

He was getting so fucking sick of her shit that he was willing to make his infamous, idiotic choices. "BOOK IT!" he ordered. "Just fucking run!"

"You fucking serious?! Do you not see the—"

"I fucking see it, James! But it's only going up and down, you can run up to the goddamn building!"

Breathing hard, Harry heard the hurried swish and crunch on the other side, swallowing his parched throat, his tongue sticky on the roof of his mouth. He pivoted for the same direction, jabbing his bludgeon into the snow, and hoped Lady Luck was paying heed this time.

But he was suddenly grabbed. His eyes widened in terror as he was viciously yanked by his left arm, her bony squeeze painful even through the thick leather - and harshly drawn against her towering, repulsive body. The woman's arching spine made Harry's curve, burdening him under her weight. She had him trapped; there was naught he could do, except plead for his legs not to buckle.

Her neck stretched improbably low to level her face-to-face; her putrid breath rolled nauseating seas in his stomach, and her milky eyes oppressively bored straight into his. Harry's spine had to painfully concave further, his torso pressed on her pregnant belly. The fluid roiled within her belly's membrane against his chest.

What really got his heart racing was the feeling - he was imagining it, he was hallucinating it - of a hard, dense shape smoothly bouncing off his own stomach.

Harry heard the shotgun cock - close, yet far away. It and James screaming for him registered in the back of his subconscious, his head too stuffed with cotton to comprehend now. Transfixed upon each other's eyes, Harry nevertheless slanted his head back from her deadly, foul corpse breath, and the oily, thick saliva collected on her chin. Her poison, should she - or he - take the wrong breath, would put Harry right at the finish line. Praying never got him anywhere, but pray he did that she'd leave his sweater (and mortality) alone, when she emitted a strangely low, and oddly private, growl.

He must be losing it. There's no way he heard what he did. Harry's eyes darted from one eye to the other, uselessly searching for a clue as to why, why, it sounded like she was trying to talk. She rocked from the shell striking her body and didn't give a care - though Harry damn well did. Trying to safely duck and wrench away from her and the flying spittle, all he managed to do was lose footing and drop back into the snow. He'd barely hit the ground when no sooner than that, untamed strength yanked him up again to her face.

She wasn't done with him. Sucking in a short gurgle, her sigh curdled and boiled in her throat; Harry was wild-eyed. Whatever she was trying to do was still indiscernible - except it really sounded like she was trying to talk.

Suddenly, her head snapped up, and turned to stare into the fog. Her fingers loosened on his arm and Harry, desperate to get away, awkwardly struck her shoulder. She dazedly let him, and all interest otherwise, go. The woman departed, shuffling laboriously in the tall snow, and was enveloped by the fog. Harry instantly turned heel and staggered the rest of the way, snagged James by the arm, and towed him through the snow to the building ahead.

It blessedly came into view within just a few yards. Harry dropped James's sleeve, pulled hard on both doors, and flung them open. They dashed in; both spun around, and pushed the doors repelling against their slowed safety hinges. The locks soundly bolted, then the men shoved their backs on their panels.

They were safe.