Harry shifted to the side to make room for James, and pointed at the fuzzy, black and white, quartered blocks of a surveillance system. Cameras in tall corners throughout the indoor campus maze showed them the cafeteria, spreads of lockers, the doors to the gym room, inside the library that looked like it had more floor space than books, and hallway after empty hallway. The winding school looked claustrophobic and cold with its corners so sharp. A professional, steadfast dream team of spies looming overhead made them privy to nearly everywhere and thing. It felt invasive to students who weren't there - and invasive to, at least, the elder of the two on the observational side of the screen; like someone had their eyes on them, too.

Harry asked, "Do you remember seeing any cameras around?"

"No. But I wasn't particularly looking for them, either."

"Yeah, same. Shit." Lapsing into silence, they jointly watched ten second long reruns of a show that was, so far, uninteresting. "Kinda creepy for the principal to have surveillance camera software installed on his computer."

"Mmm. Yeah, kinda."

"At least there's nothing in the bathrooms."

"Yeah."

"Yet."

"Don't be gross."

Harry sighed. "Well, if all that shit was to get our attention," his hands shrugged on the desk, "then it's been got. C'mon, Midwich, whaddya wanna show us?"

That was a logical question to ask, but the lazy scenic rotations on the computer screen were unhelpful to answer. They were stuck doing nothing but waiting, and waiting and waiting, until—

"Harry." James pointed at movement in the grid. Harry leaned in for a closer look.

From the angled perspective habitating the upper right, a dark figure slugged in from the north on buckled legs. Acting unironically befitting for the environment, its wobbly body language impersonated that of a moody teenager being "forced" to go where they didn't feel like going. Though the relay was far from perfect, they were able to make out the detail of its hung head, greasy hair, and twiggy limbs. It read feminine and familiar.

Diagonal of that site showed a cynosure lookout minding a corridor and some double doors installed along the left wall. There wasn't a reason to look at it until one of those doors tentatively hopped open, snagging their regard. Curiosity probed it again. Its brother popped a little further, walked itself closed, then enthusiasm tested the hinges as two humanoids burst in on all fours.

The doors naturally ricocheted off the walls with a sound bang unheard by the watchmen. Startled, the two paused in the middle of the floor, looking back to scrutinize the panels' tremble. One of the creatures, afterwards impervious to them (and if their eyes didn't deceive, proportions that dwarfed the other), took off for the southern border and disappeared. The other one, so distracted by the boring event, didn't notice its partner's exit, or its return until the twin dashed over and laid a slap on its shoulder. It sprung like a coil and twisted in place, and the feed captured only the first millisecond they started to run when it cut to an empty somewhere else.

At a vista likened to a gargoyle's perch, the device shared its sights of the spanning cafeteria on the monitor's top left box. The space, being as big as it was, definitely called for multiple angles, meaning there was a high chance its assigned room would be shared with other cameras. Obviously held in the highest esteem, this one kept dutiful vigil smack dab in the middle of it all. Puzzlingly, its lens presented a transmission near clear as day; so clear that the men could almost make out the details of an upright shape.

Now, finding some blackguard wandering about shouldn't be a surprise to anyone here, but there was a catch: the premium quality reported that this upright shape was indisputably human. Not only that, the maybe-not-an-actual-monster placidly, and fluidly controlled a mop handle in both hands as nonchalant as a janitor biding his time. (It wore coveralls like one, too.) Back and forth the floppy, gluey ropes swept, ploddingly chasing a black, impure runway halving the room. Whatever - whomever - it was, was doing a better job of daubing the goo into an abstract painting rather than cleaning it.

But every movement it made was uncanny, going so far as to dare categorizing itself alongside them as an actual, living, breathing, human.

The scene ended.

Refusing to be left out amongst the pestilential cast, a short, ropey thing made a debut staggering down the hallway median of the bottom right box (where the video rendering, sadly, hadn't improved). This thing marched the floor on unsteady legs attached to pigeon-toed feet. In fact, calling them "unsteady" was an understatement; its gait resembled a cut live wire, or perhaps a misbehaving circuit. From the shoulder sockets wagged the monster's loose, long arms, and inspired by the lightning running through its bones, its back-listing head shook perennial "no''s between fitful shoulders.

Following the ghoul like a bride's train was a strip of black ooze accompanied by blots evocative of sickly flower petals. From the looks of it, the general motif matched, and henceforth linked the crone to the mess the supposed janitor was (not) cleaning up. Harry scrunched his nose.

"Hey. I recognize that one."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We saw her in South Vale. She was, uhh.. she made noise, remember?"

"They all make noise."

"Yeah, I know. But this one made a different noise." He canted his head, peering at James. "Like radio static. Like she was the radio."

James hummed once. "Yeah. I remember her. I'm surprised you do from just looking at this shitty feed."

Harry curled his lip, annoyed. "You gonna get at me with this every time?"

He backed off. "I sorta remember her. I thought she was here, too; thought I've heard her once or twice."

"Nah, not her; we've seen the other ones. The crying ones. Those're everywhere. But I don't think we've seen her since we were in South Vale," he noted. "We've been seeing the, uh, the— that one," Harry said, tapping the screen when the long-haired girl appeared. The conduit passed him a confused frown.

"That's pretty much the same one, Harry. What's the difference?"

He sighed short. "You're killin' me here, James. These, that's one of the crying ones. They walk different," he stressed. "See, look— look." Harry pointed to the two fortuitously co-starring in separate quarters. "That one's all droopy, right? We see it all the time - but it's that one, this one's movin' around like she's got fire ants in her pants. You see it?"

".. hm."

"Again, the ones we've been seeing, these ones; they cry. And again, if I recall correctly, which I very likely do, that one here's got the radio static." Harry gave him a serious, sidelong look. "And not only that? They smell - yeah, they all smell, but she really smelled different; worse than the other ones."

Uncertainty twinged the corner of his mouth, but James couldn't argue what he didn't recall. "Guess we'll see."

Harry studied him. "Can't believe you didn't notice."

James shot back a dull glare. "Notice what?"

"The shaking."

He huffed and looked back at the monitor. "Whatever. It was pretty much the same."

"Heh. Are we gonna have to find you an optometrist around here?"

"Shut up, Harry."

The surveillance could be monotonous. Tedious cycles showed still-barren halls; the occasional runny catwalk tattling on someone's past presence there; and once, spotted a door easing home. Harry and James used the time wisely and tallied the variants. Scholarly review led them to assume there were at least three types (recording the frolicking pair as one and tentatively excluding the janitor). Then, with that in mind, they attempted to gauge their numbers. As ill luck would have it, telecasting inconsistent vantage points in the school's labyrinthian interior only blurred their perceptions. There'd be no real telling if there were more than one of each.

Many minutes passed watching the silent vaudeville show go on. The cohorts started to get bored with waiting, wondering how long this was going to last when a camera gave them something to fixate on.

Traveling down the middle of the road is inadvisable to the common person, but the quaking bogey didn't care, because she wasn't the common person. So when the terrible twosome came belting down the hall behind her, they, seeming to not have noticed the gloppy aisle she paved, appeared shocked to see her and separated straightaway. They migrated tight to the walls, giving her the widest berth physically achievable, and looking like poisoned cockroaches as they slunk charily by.

Most of all, they feared her; their body language vouched for it. Oddly too, for a reason unclear, they shared a poise that inferred guilt or embarrassment. Cautiously skirting around her to avoid any trouble, they kept their bearing low and groveling, but that wasn't enough to appease. Out of nowhere, she snapped into a craze as if possessed by some secondary demon, lurching suddenly and too quickly for one of the two trespassers.

It seemed as though she knew how terrified they were of her, but had no stock in starting a fight. Instead, she chose to merely throw her weight at them like she wanted to see them jump out of their skins - and it worked. The aberration (who'd been assumed to be smaller than its comrade, and thanks to the camera position, clocked true) leapt in place, crashing into the wall while she crossed to bully the other. Those poor brutes got tangled up in their own limbs trying to race away, and amid the havoc, Harry and James watched her scoot back to her catwalk.

The camera switched.

Instantly thereafter, the local camera manning the adjacent hallway spotted the pair fleeing around the corner. They merged like a zipper, skittering off to a set of doors along the left partition. One of them pushed a door to test its give, then with its partner, thrust the portal open and escaped.

Fifteen minutes must've skated by watching all this unfold; Harry held a cantankerous glower for the most of it. "These kids are going to get some serious detention time for fucking around after school hours," he muttered, trying to sprinkle some humor on his mood. James didn't crack a smile. Seconds later, when their custodial friend showed up, Harry's finger rapped its place on the computer monitor. "I don't like that one," he said. "I don't like any of 'em, but that one - that one feels damningly wrong, if you get me."

"I get you," James flatly agreed.

"Crawls my skin. Hm." Harry chewed his lip, then smacked them before he spoke. "Not really sure what to think about the picture quality gets better every time he comes around, either. Doesn't make much sense." He shrugged a shoulder. "Not that anything does. Just.. would like to know what makes him so special."

"Mm."

"I'm gonna go with my gut and say we're probably gonna find—"

"What we do know is that it's a janitor."

"Yeah.. yeah. Did we lock up that closet?"

"No."

"Shit on a stick," Harry grumped. "Okay, then. So we got a janitor, a janitor-thing that looks, and acts, like a human, but probably isn't, so with that in mind, Iiiiiii can't be super thrilled when we get something that's too close to an actual person. .. hrm.. fuck. Have we ever even seen something like that before?"

The resident parted his lips to give his input - but the square went black. Harry, who had been leaning over on his hands, swiftly improved his stance. Half a minute later, so much longer than the ten second intervals they'd gotten used to, a second block died; two to go. Angles teased them with uninhabited halls and lounges, once glimpsing the tail end of a girl - or two? were there two? - sulking by.

If they weren't imagining it, all of them seemed to be going the same way.

Soon yet an eternity after that, they were once more gifted by the janitor doing his lousy job, then his cubicle, too, lost connection.

The final fourth scope dwelled in the skies above the main doors, overlooking the commons like a king on his balcony. Its visibility was wide, wide enough to preview the left hand corridor, and graze the open threshold of the administrative offices sheltering the survivors at its high right. Despite its royal post, it seemed to be trained to focus more at the floor rather than far across the concourse, but it was no less menacing.

Then, it twitched. Drifting slower than an ocean liner turning about face, they watched the camera travel to the office, and stop. Next, as though someone were manipulating it with a joystick, it jaggedly ticked its eye up once, then twice, and even wiggled side to side. It stared at their refuge like a bounty hunter's turret, daring them to sniffle, or move one fatal muscle. They were unsafe, these poor suckers; their hideout now had glass walls.

The frame began to darken and cave. Itchy little bug legs swarmed to close the port hole, caging the picture in its corner. Its gradual demise felt like a cliffhanger, and still yet, they expected a fat, stuttering pig to pop out of the hole and say, That's all, folks! before being cinched in half.

Harry looked up towards the foyer, despite being unable to see through the office barriers. "Oh. I loved that."

"Let's go."

"Go where? Back out there?"

James was already passing the front of the desk. "You've got a better idea?"

"It's waiting for us, James."

He stopped, half-turned to Harry, and said, "What isn't?"

Harry grabbed the precious files and followed him out.

Their flashlights placed them in the sprawling atrium where they'd entered. Shining his beam upward, Harry sighted the rectangular spy mounted at perfect bird's eye view. As if whomever had been playing with them were found out and sent away, the camera's position had innocently returned to its proper mark. He sent it a sneer.

"Y'fuckhead." His lowering eyes tracked James to the doors. The sleek bar handles complied with the usual rules and regulations in Silent Hill, telling them what they already knew: they were locked in. Nevertheless, Mason and Sunderland weren't idiots; they knew full well the winds were about to change.

"School's closed, boys!"

And change they did. Whipping around, the men swept their lights across an empty, shadowy terrain. "You'd best be on your way now," cautioned a congenial fellow's echoing, disembodied voice far away from their encampment, "or security's gonna getcha."

On cue from stage left, an overture consisting of disorderly crackle tickled the darkness beyond. Harry's breath and heart caught in his throat, whisking his white ray over into the corridor. "Oop!" chuckled their phantom master of ceremonies. "That was quick. It's just one coincidence after the other, huh?"

No better or worse than a department store perfume counter, her delightful, flammable, sulfurous aromas wafted into their noses and mouths before she was even seen. The unavoidable fumes burned their nasal cavities, dehydrated and prickled the backs of their throats, and coated their tongues with foul, industrial lacquer. Tasting the gas even felt hot on their tongues. Their lungs, fairly disagreeable with the miasmic concoction, pressured them to cough, their flashlights frisking her deceptively frail, convulsing body with beams like watery reflections off a lake.

Guest starring all the way from dreary South Vale for one night only (knock on wood), the radio mimic, whose presence had been teased and of whom Harry had picked out like a contestant on a trivia game show, had come to reunite with her best friends and hark back on old shenanigans. Harry had been too right, indeed.

And her presence had not been missed.

She led a small entourage of blubbering women that, by this point, Harry and James were well accustomed to. Divergency from their everyday were nonexistent, for their odors were the same (rotten, dewy, moldy clothes); their images carbon copies of one another (strung of raw, fraying peels of skin charred yet moist and wrinkled like wet paper maché); and their sniveling gargle a bottomless source of irritation. The greying outsider clicked his tongue.

"Oh, hey. Our fanbase is back. Just like I said."

James grunted, giving them a once-over. "I know. They're annoying."

Harry threw him a sideways grin. "Aw, don't say that. They're all we've got."

"We can do better."

"Ha! I like your positivity. What'd'you think our stakes are? You think we'll ever get around to it?"

Nominal exasperation dropped James's shoulders, staring at him. "To what?"

"Doing better. In the stalker department."

"I— I don't know, Ha—"

"UGH! God, that's hair-curling! They smell disgusting together—"

Skull-vibrating, bones-in-a-blender roaring jealously interrupted their banter. Taking the hint, soldier and veteran huddled together in front of their only way out and primed themselves. James replenished the shotgun chamber with shells and Harry awkwardly crawled his grip on the long, gore caked steel rod. He looked down at his left, where his fist clutched that treasured Old Reliable; then he flicked his eyes to the folders held in his right.

Harry realized that he was a mite bit fucked.

The main problem was right between his fingers. Flat and varying in thickness, the files' material had no traction against each other nor in his hand, and their uneven weights were starting to react poorly to Harry's straining, cramping palm. Flipping the stack up underhand to his inner forearm worked on the comfort scale, but to add insult to injury, rubbing up on his baggy, rumpled sleeve endangered them to fall.

Worse, he needed both hands for power and control over his weapon - and these irreplaceable sheafs robbed him of that. There was no winning here. This fight was going to be no cakewalk (duh) yet they both depended on him not to lose or destroy their priceless evidence. The pressure he felt was immense, and his proactive suppression of thinning patience resulted in a restless, distracted, and embittered aura.

James felt it - and surreptitiously eyeballed Harry.

The diva and her innately antsy friends waited about ten feet away, evidently in no rush to meet and greet; strange, that. Having them lag about, while uncommon, would've been fine any other day; they were normally easy pickings, and the tourists had confidence in their teamwork. That said, the stall gave off an air that didn't make them very confident about the scenario.

They caught each other's glance; something was amiss. Either group could've, should've, already engaged, yet there they were, doing a good bunch of nothing. Judging by the mood, they were all waiting for a time that hadn't arrived. The men mutely interrogated the women for an answer.

What's the holdup?

And before one could say "knife", galloping, meaty claps on vinyl tile heralded the proper, and fashionably late, introduction of the quadrupedal couple. Upon emerging into the artificial headlights, however, they recoiled. At once, and reminiscent of their earlier behavior on the security monitor, Harry and James watched them volley apart. Furthermore, their emotions seemed to be unchanged from the scene with the girl in the corridor.

Demonstrating that behavior in person sowed the seeds of interest, for as intimate as they seemed to be, they also showed signs of having a mysterious, innate fear of being seen together. The predators chose their quarry and took sides on an archer's bow. During their slow, deliberate advance, they verified the surmised size discrepancy as correct - and the larger made James its target.

Its hunched skeleton made it hard to decipher its entire build, but anyone could see that it boasted the hallmarks of an athlete: lean, sturdy, balanced, and if it stood on its legs, would probably surpass the six foot mark. In contrast, its partner, who had business with Harry, posed an all around average height and body type. As far as fitness went, this was one that strongly hinted it preferred the bleachers, as there was barely any muscular definition on it at all.

Other than that, the pair's bodily design was nothing special. Moist and raw burns covered their unpalatable topography from head to toe, mapping out ice cream swirl streets hued in apricot and ripe peach, and pronouncing the sewage brown lagoons dotting them like Dalmatians. Their figures were ugly to be sure, but they weren't the focus - their faces were.

At one side of the mouth, a necrotic, flat, fabric string vertically secured the starting base of a pattern. It was a simple motif, too: laced shoes. Criss-crossing over the lips and tunneling north and south through septic punctures ringed by crystalized pus eyelets, the strings wove impenetrable diamonds all the way to the other side, triple-knotted in gunky yellow paste, and the uneven ends left dangling. Once upon a time, these mouths must've had something to say, or needed to say; but none were permitted to listen. They, like all other fiends, were victims of silence.

Harry and James didn't much care for the trendy, stringent enforcement of 'silence is the best policy.' A while ago, Harry, at least, began to suspect that there was significance behind each individual, unique means; granted, the allegation seemed like no-brainer. All aside, the two here helped build his case.

He'd chew on it later.

Two slanted holes pretended to be a nose, and above them sat two anomalous eyes. One visualized the world through an eternal squint, the eye semi-obscured by a grafted skin bandage. The second, in juxtaposition, told further tale of torture. Stapled to brow and cheek were the upper and lower lids, stretched beyond capacity to plate the living, twitching centerpiece netted in spider silk threads. Firetruck red painted the inverted inner lids, and by merciful grace of the monster's exotic biology, the socket and orbit glittered from moisture that preserved its functionality.

The afflicted were closing in. Harry and James heedfully steeled themselves when two blinks after, they came to a stop. Like the women waiting oh so patiently, the companions stood ground nearly ten feet away. At this distance, the compact spotlights illuminated the last important details left on their profiles: the asymmetry of their eyes, and the color of their irises.

Honing in on his delegated vulture - the smaller of the two - Harry stared into its blackish ocular embedded on the left side of the face and roving over him. Next to him, James hadn't broken eye contact with the strapping villain's sole icy blue ring dissecting him on the right side. Neither were aware of what the other saw, being that if they looked away, they could be attacked and thus, made toast. But author and widower dually realized, in their own independent study, that for the very first time since they started this journey together, they had actually encountered males.

Over all else, the manner of their arrival was timely - eerily, timely - and felt like the wait had specifically been for them. And now, with them here, everyone could proceed.

It's just one coincidence after the other, huh?

The boys ahead glanced at each other, then at the congregation tarrying in the neighboring hall. Suspicions briefly arose that the parties were impulsively planning the skirmish, but that was discredited in a flash. She menacingly stomped her foot at them, and crested her fingernails-on-a-chalkboard screams, causing them to summarily quail. Although she put them back in their place, the pair and the trio put full attention, and baneful appetite, on the underdogs. The handwriting was on the wall - it was go time. Harry sighed hard.

"Ohh, man.. this is reallygoing to fucking suck."