They got a little turned around getting back to Balkan. The expanded map didn't define a lot of the landmarks like the old. As a matter of fact, pretty much everything but the school, parks, mall and a couple other select big boxes were nameless. It was tiresome, but they eventually found the hallowed ground and entered.

The congregation hall was as unwelcoming as remembered, and the passageway still candlelit and dungeon-like. It was rather a hackneyed flavor for a (badly hidden, in Harry's mind) secret cult squatting in a church; should any ol' oblivious soul wander back here, the cult would be made in an instant. Speaking of Harry, even the simplest simpleton knew by now that this chatterbox had quite the personality. He liked to share his thoughts, despite James's ongoing wish that he didn't, but to him, the decor deserved his opinion.

"I kinda feel like I'm in The Phantom of the Opera or some Vincent Price movie coming back here," Harry joked, stopping to admire a candelabra. "The props are in an almost ridiculous excess around here. It looks fake. Cheesy. Like the Haunted Mansion." He swiped his finger through a wooly, dusty web bridging the stone wall to the waxy rim of a mounted candle holder. Instantly disgusted, he hastily brushed the clumpy silk off on his slacks. "Ugh, ugh, augh! Yuck."

"What did you expect it was gonna feel like when you touched it, Harry?"

"Oh, I dunno. I was hoping that maybe it'd be different than I'd thought. Y'know, give it the benefit of the doubt. Surprise me."

James watched the torn grey cotton dejectedly dangle and swish on the rim of the candleholder. Spotting Harry out of the corner of his eye swiveling to go, he left the sad web in the past, and caught up in two steps.

The corridor held memories - one specific memory, to be exact. James knew he was going to regret bringing it up - it'd definitely constitute as a form of masochism; a bad idea. But, eh, sure: what the heck. He was in the mood. "Are you gonna need a hero?"

Halting, Harry's stature read surprised. Partially turning to look at James, he inclined his head, charmed and tickled. "Are you offering?" James's deadpan put a grin on the patriarch's face. "Cuz I'm gonna need one 'til the end of the night."

"No."

"Aw, c'mon, James. I wouldn't want anyone but you. You're strong, you're fast - and hell, and I know for a fact you're even larger than life; I've learned that much."

"Thanks." Pulse. "But no."

"Hey, you're the one who brought it up!" Harry proclaimed, defensively lifting his arms from his sides. "What, you were just doing that to tease me? Leave me hanging?"

James grunted. He regretted bringing it up. "Yes."

Harry had a mature raspberry locked and loaded waiting for him. "Pthth. You're always playing with my emotions, James. Heartbreaker! Charlatan!" barked accusations one after the other, stalking away. "A swindler - running the long con with me!"

He scoffed as he trailed behind. "Are you—"

"A player of fools!"

"Not hard when you're an easy target."

Harry stood in the door jam and looked, smirking, back at him. "At least you know where your strengths lie." The look persisted as James came to stand close.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. In cheap shots."

Unabashed for his hypocrisy, Harry proudly tipped up his chin, and breached the room. Politely shuffling aside for James, he smoothly flipped the jacket and parked his bent wrist on his hip, energized by the juvenile banter. He scanned the room, breathing one of his signature deep - and now, necessary - dramatic sighs.

"Welp, here we are again. Hello, ma'am," he greeted the enormous painting of God. "Good to see you again. You look well! How're the kids?"

Critical, brown-eyed looks roamed around the room. ".. hmmm. Y'know, and don't take this the wrong way, but this place is a mess. You ever think of hiring someone to come in and clean the place?" Harry looked up at the illustrated woman swathed in red. "I think I could recommend a guy, if You wanna take me up on it." He tracked his colleague's leave for the bookcases. "Right, James?"

"I think he was looking for another job," he heard him mutter. Harry pish-poshed at that.

"So? It'd be an honor to work for Her, don'tcha think?"

Harry waited in an interlude that seemed it could go either way; he could get silence, or banter. He pivoted to the desk. Heaped upon it were papers and books, nary a spot of its actual surface seen; kind of reminded him of home. Leaning the pipe on the side of the desk, he judged the work he had cut out for him, and reached to make his first choice. Nearly before he ruled out getting a reply, not that he entirely minded by now, James said, "He might not be religious."

"A job's a job," Harry advised, curiously parting some papers. "Besides, he was working at a Catholic high school. What's the difference?"

"This is a cult."

"Like I said, what's the difference?" He chuckled low. "The whole Catholic thing's a front for the Order, anyway. Whoever thought to use it as a front knew their stuff. Stick to what you know, I guess. At least the Catholics have a weird sense of humor. Not too sure about these guys, though. Or not yet." Picking up a chart overcrowded by symbols and circles, he studied it with care, then held it to the candlelight. James spoke again.

"Then he's working for the church, either way."

Harry huffed a laugh, the smile still alive as he placed it down. "Well, you make a good point. I say we do all a' us - you, me, and Silent Hill - a huge favor and burn this place to the ground."

"Yeah, cuz that'd go over well."

"The Order likes burning things. They're into the whole fire and brimstone, hell's a-comin', destruction is the path to Paradise mumbo jumbo. We'll just be giving them something more to think about.

"Might be blasphemy talking about this here."

"Ah, She doesn't mind. She's in on it. Right, ol' gal?" inquired good, blasphemous humor to the painting.

"Sure, if you wanna push your luck."

"Wow, God. That's not the kinda voice I'd thought you have. It's nice! Pleasant. Hmm.. though, I gotta say.. it kiiiiinda reminds me of someone, but I just can't quite put my finger on it.."

The soft snort on the other side of the aisle held the same weight as an eye roll. Harry smiled to himself and got down to business.

Conversational silence fell upon them, traded for the intermittent voices of books pulled from shelves and mingling with papers slipping against one another. The study's overall age, dust, and weathered tomes engendered the distinct, maudlin fragrance like an old bookstore, and the sunset gloam of candlelight drowsy, and pretty. Combined, they simulated the mellow warmth and erudite feel of a monk's study. It was warm and lovely - and too good for an Order academic.

Alas, there's always a catch, and it happened to be the deplorable, manufactured beam clipped to Harry's jacket front. It mightily intruded on the aesthetic. Just for giggles he turned it off and, predictably, reading by the two candelabras were only going to strain his eyes. Harry turned it back on, scowling faintly. Party pooper.

Another drawback here, one that took precedence over all, was the frightful mayhem all over the desk . Harry honorably took it upon himself to organize (valiant in intent, though in practice, quite in vain) while he browsed through every single piece. Since there was so much that it daunted even him, he took his time separating books from papers. He even ended up utilizing the chair as a means of setting things aside until wanted (or needed), so as not to miss a thing.

Shortly after realizing what an undertaking it was, he asked James for his notepad. Harry started to keep an index of whatever he deemed essential - which, at this rate, was going to be a lot. Little by little, he built a casebook as best as he could. As he worked, he found trouble within how many of the papers were written by different, and sometimes illegible, hands. They confused his perceptions, making him unsure of whether or not they were useful, and untangling what'd be appropriate culling.

But since Harry was an incorrigibly determined man, he recorded the cryptic jargon and shorthand ciphers he came across. They were esoteric to non-members of the flock, of course; yet he was all too happy for the opportunity to take an amateur crack at cryptography.

James, meanwhile, found himself neck-deep in historical records, occult reference (no duh), and an assortment of other subjects by the hundreds. Mobs of books surrounded him, some stacked neat, and others amassed by someone too lazy to file them properly. It was, indefensibly, a fire marshal's nightmare.

As a result, the remaining books lousily filled the shelves' voids, some standing in the safety of corners, while others steeply reclined on those that'd fallen. James knew this mini library was chock full of importance, but the place was such a wreck that he had no idea where to start, much less find anything of value. It'd take days to go through it all.

Research intimidated James more than the multitude of tomes. It made him feel stupid and incapable, extremely unlikely of tasting a drop of success. He hated it. And with the huge amount of work he needed to do, what if he unknowingly fucked them over by missing something incredibly crucial? It could ruin a future anything! Giving an unconfident sigh, James tried to not let it get to him, and called upon his gut intuition to be his guide.

This sucked.

While James toiled on the other side of the bookcase, Harry made great headway with the desk's overflow. As a direct inverse to James, research was pretty much second-nature to him now. He'd developed a standard routine and techniques that made him a master assayer of his own, and that was thanks to his decades of writing. Relying on those skills to find treasures amongst coals, Harry, using some Sherlockian sleuthing, started to connect a few dots. (He hoped Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be at least moderately impressed.)

Amidst documenting the truckload of encryptions for later dissection, Harry uncovered some correspondences. For some backwards reason, the patriarch inwardly complained, absolutely none of the back and forths were signed - not even hailed by a defining initial - which made Vincent's note an odd outlier. These findings prompted Harry to request his letter from James, figuring that if Vincent had been involved once, then he had to have been again.

Using it as his frame of reference, Harry proceeded to conduct a mix-and-match brain teaser using the letter to help pick Vincent out of the lineup of the other parties. His assumption was right: the guy's handwriting reappeared more than a few times. However maddening beyond compare that he couldn't name anyone else, he at least deduced if it'd been a woman or man penning their halves of the conversations - and that had to be worth something.

Then, out of nowhere, a loud, sickening CRACKruptured their silence, followed by Harry's agonized shout. Stricken with dread, James dropped the book he'd been reading and dashed around the bend. Heart jumping like a live wire and breath ensnared by his lungs, the conduit was wide-eyed to watch Harry, hands cupping the middle of his face, writhe in blind pain while swearing up such a storm that it'd make a hardened biker gang blush.

"What the fuck happened?!"

Unresponsive other than to curse, Harry tripped over his feet, his body crashing into the desk. Its thunderous slam into the wall begat a fierce quake throughout the table, rattling its drawers and agitating the pipe's balance where it leant on its wooden side. The hollow steel toppled and, quite fittingly, clanged like a church bell when it hit the hardwood ground.

But that split second, real calamity was whet. Books jockeyed off the table, stacks of paper cleaved, scattering across, and off, the desk like wind taken to a pile of leaves. It was disaster: profound, unforgivable, and unadulterated disaster. All of Harry's hard work; all his disciplined polling; his entire orderly masterpiece, was felled in one hapless, fatal swoop: all was ruined.

Ironically, Harry looked much like a parishioner in worship when he folded on himself, head bowed between his knees. The prayers he spouted were, in a manner of speaking, not the kind of praise recited from holy books, nor the type taught by any respectable clergy. The patriarch's enraged growl swiftly crescendoed into a roar.

"TEN STEAMING MOUNDS OF DOG SHIT, MYFUCKINGNOSE! JESUS CHRIST ALMIGHTY SON OF A BITCH TIT-FUCKER OH GOD DAMN IT—"

Bewilderment from the other man stammered, "Wh-wha— what happened to your nos—"

"IT FUCKING CRACKED!OH JESUS CHRIST FUCK ME ON A GODDAMN BASTARD'S SHIT ONNA FUCKING FOOT LONG SHITSTICK—"

James rubbernecked at his ward. Harry threw back his body, jabbing the desk on the wall and upsetting the collection again. Whatever James could see of Harry's hand-obstructed face was colored a magnificent shade of red. "It— cracked again? Is that what the fuck that was?"

"YES, JAMES! Oh fuck me TENDER onna hot COAL BED!"

Taking small steps forward, James tilted his upper half to the side, trying to view Harry despite his pained squirms.

"Oh my GOD that FUCKING—"

"Let me see."

Obeying rather pitifully and panting hard, Harry gingerly lowered his hands to show him a ruddy, pained, and pinched face. Watery, squinting, despairing eyes pink from welled tears blinked at James. The conduit leaned in, adjusting his light, and roved his eyes over the issue - or, rather, the fixed issue. His jaw slacked agape.

"What?" Harry frailly puffed. "What is it?"

Suspense blistered the air. Fascination affected James's manner and voice when he said, ".. your nose is back to normal."

".. what? Huh? Are you serious?" The civilian's tentative nod affirmed; Harry balked. "It un- broke itself?"

"Yeah.. I.. guess. Does it hurt? or can you, like.. breathe through it?"

It didn't even occur to him to try. James attentively looked on as Harry drew a big, deep, and unhindered breath through his large, beaky nose. He exhaled through it, interrupting halfway to breathe out, "Holy shit!"

"Yeah."

Harry squeezed and wiggled the mystically cured feature, just as dumbfounded as his sidekick. "It's totally fixed. It doesn't hurt at all. The town healed my nose. .. that's incredible."

"Yeah. Good to know, I guess."

"Yeah, it's great, until one of us breaks a bone! — and if this the way Silent Hill goes about fixing things, by just snapping them back into place like that, it's gonna hurt like a bitch when it does. That felt worse than it did when it broke! Heh! Well.. alright. I'll accept that, shitty as it is. Or was. Thanks, Silent Hill."

"You've got a little blood on your.."

Perplexed, Harry dabbed his finger on his lip, frowning slightly at the crimson wet on his fingertip. James lingered, watching Harry wipe his mouth with the back of hand, sniffling, and rubbing it off on his leg. Now that everything was solved and taken care of, James got bored and left the father to his whims in favor of getting back to his duties. Harry rotated too to resume investigating only to behold the catastrophe provoked by his short-term riot. Muttering and grumbling something or other about the whole fiasco, he picked up the muddle, put it all on the desk, and got back to it.

After casing the room for all it was imaginably worth, James was put up to the true contest of storing the hefty amount of papers, and even a couple books, away. The backpack was getting full. Harry apologized for the bulk - and added weight - but assured they were matchless prerequisites for their research. It'd all be worth it, he'd said, when they got to the library.

Without further ado, the pair made their rounds through the rest of the church. It quickly became apparent that they weren't going to get very far in apropos of seeing anything new; even the altar inset into the wall hadn't been touched. Civilian and tourist both agreed that was a good thing, and kept on. Twisting available knobs told them the offices were locked; the bathrooms were locked; even the janitorial closet was locked. How unfathomable. Well then, Harry groused; be a prude.

They moved along.

Transiting into the kitchen and event room confronted them with the visual history of introduction, attack, and pursuit from days lang syne. Leading in from the partnered doors ahead told of the unwelcome entry by the most hideous monsters yet encountered: a daubed but dried, evil strip of black blood and ooze shed by the detestable charred man (and his morbid tow). It drove some yards frontwards, then slanted in their direction, dileanating physical evidence of its headlong rush for assail.

Granted, being as the road led to them, they were obliged to look down. The survivors noticed that they, indeed, stood in the vulgar grot. Harry side-stepped out of it, wordlessly moving into the kitchen, and proceeded to re-enact the snooping around he'd ere done.

Nothing was different. Lifting the cellar door presented the same story of a high altitude of obsidian water impenetrable by flashlight. Wandering into the bare, echoing room adjacent, the single door leading outside at one end wouldn't open. Trying the twin set from where the abomination arrived was, par to the recurring keynote, also unwilling to yield to busybodies.

There was nothing else to look at. Harry and James walked back to the front of the church for departure. Uncomfortably aware now and repelled by the sinister lane smearing the floor, the patriarch tried to walk the trim instead of taking its equal share beside his cohort. James, on the other hand, had no qualms about cheapening its metaphorical weight. (Harry felt his conduct was disrespectful, yet wittingly eschewed from making commentary in support of not rocking the boat.)

Being as they were on their way out, they reserved a few minutes to inspecting the worship hall. They found the podium empty, the altar plain, and the pews' wooden cribs housing a scarce amount of spiritual doctrine. Harry cracked one open, blessedly (so one could say) finding it precisely the anthology of scriptures he was looking for.

"Ah, fucking finally!" Harry exclaimed, dropping onto a hard bench. "Jeeeeeezy Creezy. We got ourselves some Catholicism, folks."

James sidled into the narrow aisle. "Found your bible?"

"Yep, though I tell ya, I'm not even about to find religion."

The resident watched Harry flip through the text. His brows knit. "Hey. Have you been reading the cult bible?"

He tarried to answer. "Nope," he said, opting not to lift his head. "Not yet."

The conduit stared. "You're supposed to be reading it."

"I'm getting to it," he mumbled. James was unimpressed.

"What've you been doing then, this whole time?"

"Composing soliloquies that'd put Shakespeare to shame," Harry airily replied, harassing the book's super thin pages into separating. "Wrestling with my inner demons.. solving the trolley problem.. chicken before the egg.. you know how it is. Silent Hill gets the ol' cogs cranking. Do you think Walt Disney really did get cryogenically frozen and put under Disneyland?" He looked up. "Is Elvis really still alive?"

James fired back an evil eye that could kill armies. "You need to do your job," he frostily retorted. "The cult's your thing."

Acing the paragon essence of a father's disapproval to a child's surly attitude problem (probably because he was a seasoned father, himself), Harry snapped, "I'm aware. I'll get to it."

"Seriously, what have you been doing this entire time?" James asked again, insistently outspreading his arms. "You've had all this time to do it, and you haven't even started?"

An interval passed. "I've been processing."

That answer entirely refused to satisfy in the least. "Processing. This whole time, you were just processing."

"Yeah, James, processing. Doin' the ol' Thinker. I know it doesn't look like much to you," Harry snipped, deflecting any wisecracks. "But it's something I need to do. And mind you, I have been writing," he contended, stiffly pointing at him. "I've been recording our shit. Believe it or not, I AM doing some work; it's just not the work you think is important. I haven't gotten around to reading the cult, but I WILL get around to it."

James shot him a short-tempered glint. Once a minor scowl cleared the author's lips, he looked down again. "Anyway. Let's put this in the backpack. Now we can strike one thing off our list."

His guide made his disgruntlement abundantly clear by the way he shirked and plunked down the backpack. Harry handed off the tome and supervised it being placed safe and sound. He got to his feet and shuffled out of the row, reconvening with James at Balkan Church's tall, carved wooden panels.

"Alright. We good?" The ashen face said 'no,' but he boycotted verbal objection. Harry, impartial to his mood, nodded and reached for the cold iron handle. "Awesome. Come along, Watson," he declared, shoving the door wide open with the help of his shoulder. "To the library."

The proclaimed and incontestable decree was one to which James banally replied, "Goody."