Chapter 2

The door swung shut behind me, banging as it did. I shivered, swearing I could see my breath. I crossed my arms in front of me, trying to rub some warmth back into them. They always kept these rooms so damn cold. The morgue was dark save for one light hanging above a steel table. And lying on that table was the dead body of James.

I slowly went to him. Even from here I could see the gash crossing his neck, dark against his lifeless skin. He was covered with a white sheet from the waist down. It didn't hide his ribs. I guess I hadn't realized how thin he had gotten. I stared at him, expecting to see his eyes open or his chest move from breathing. The sad truth was I'd never seen him so happy. The bastard looked pretty peaceful.

Just then the door opened, making me jump. A nurse strode in, looking down at a chart. She must not have seen me because when she finally looked up, she yelped and nearly dropped it. I looked at her incredulously.

"Nurse Rachel?"

She had to be in her late thirties by now, and she was still very pretty. Light eyes, dark hair pulled back in a bun. Still wearing pink scrubs, she loved pink. They always had cartoon characters on them and we made a game of it. Whenever her shift happened to be on my floor, she would sit on the end of my bed and I would have to name all of them. She wouldn't leave until I got them all right and would give me clues to the ones I didn't know. What a time to have a warm and fuzzy memory when I was so damn cold. She squinted at me before she smiled and shook her head.

"Well I'll be. Laura? Laura Sunderland now, right? It's been, what, almost eight years?"

I nodded, a smile creeping onto my face. "Yeah, something like that. What are you doing at this hospital? Do you work here now?"

She smiled as she came to the table, James rudely in the middle of our conversation. "Derek was offered a job here in Silent Hill, so we moved, oh, about five years ago now." She looked down at the table, no longer smiling. "I'm so sorry Laura. First Mary and now..."

The smile fled my face too, I should've known it wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. I shrugged. "I guess it was only a matter of time. After what he went through... Honestly, I'm surprised it took this long."

She just looked at me for a minute, then sighed. "I see you haven't changed. You still say the first thing that pops into your head, no matter what it is." She stepped around the table to stand next to me. "He loved you, Laura. He wouldn't have adopted you or taken care of you if he didn't."

I shook my head. "If he loved me so much, then why did he do it? He always wanted to be with Mary." I looked down at James. "And now he is. He's left me alone."

Rachel started to say something but there was a crackle as the intercom came on. It sounded like garbled static to me but it must have made sense to her. She frowned and said, "That's me, I have to go. I understand that his father lives in Ashfield and that they're trying to reach him. Maybe you should think about staying with him, even if it's just for a little while."

I nodded, knowing that's what she wanted to see. I'd never met Frank and all I knew was that he lived in Ashfield. A stranger, as far as I was concerned, but Rachel didn't need to hear any of that.

She smiled and said, "Good. I'm glad I got a chance to see you, Laura. You're all grown up. If you need anything, and I mean anything, please call me." She turned to go but before she could push through the doors, I called to her over my shoulder, "Hey, I never said sorry about going through your locker. I found the letter Mary left for me."

She stopped and I heard her say, "I knew it was you. Mary wanted you to have it, it was yours anyway. Just let Detective Holland know when you're ready to leave, he'll give you my number."

Surprised, I turned to face her but she had already left, the doors still swinging. Holland, huh? That's not even remotely close to Johnson. I'll have to remember that. I turned once again to the coldly lit table, gazing down on the dead form of my family, of any happiness I would've had. This was it. All that was left for me was to leave.

"Goodbye, James. Hope you're happy wherever you are."

I turned away and walked toward the doors. I reached out my hand to push them open when I heard a sound from behind me. My hand froze. I told myself no, that I did not just hear the sound of flesh sliding against metal.

Steeling myself, I whipped around. When I saw that James was right where I left him and not standing behind me gripping his knife like a low-budget horror movie, I started breathing again. My eyes darted around the morgue but nothing had moved, everything was the same as when I'd walked in. Wait...James's hand. Had it been hanging off the table like that?

Of course it had been. I just hadn't noticed it, that's all. I went back to the table, to James. Raking my eyes over his body, I didn't notice anything different. Well, obviously he had a gaping hole in his neck but other than that... That's when I noticed some cuts on his wrist.

I muttered out loud, "What the hell? Nobody mentioned this."

They weren't very deep and had been cleaned. I leaned down, realizing they weren't just cuts, they were letters. It was a name. Maria. I straightened up, frowning. Who the hell was Maria? Really James? You kill yourself for what you did to Mary and the woman's name carved into your flesh isn't hers or even mine, but a name I don't even recognize? I felt a stab of jealousy, as ridiculous as that sounds. I just wanted to get as far away from James and his Maria as possible.

I turned and left, finally pushing through those doors. Detective Johnson, no not Johnson, Detective Holland, was leaning against the wall with a cup of coffee in his hand. He looked up and straightened as he heard the doors close, he didn't need to be a detective to see that I was upset.

"I'm ready. Let's get the hell out of here."

He just nodded, probably glad that he was closer to getting rid of me. I followed him back out the way we came, through the big sliding doors, back to the car. It was night now. Detective Holland played his crappy music while I brooded, wondering who Maria was. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew Holland was shaking my shoulder, waking me up. At least he was nice enough to walk me back up to the apartment. He handed me Rachel's card and said good night. Yeah, what's so good about it?

I entered the empty apartment and just stood there in the entryway. It was so quiet and so dark. I hadn't eaten since that morning so I wandered into the kitchen and heated up some leftovers. Table for one, please. I finished my meager dinner and afterwards went back to packing the apartment. When it got late I turned out the lights and went to bed.

That night I dreamt of James. A loud noise had startled my dream-self awake and I left my room, looking around in confusion. Everything was pitch black when I saw light in the hallway coming from James's room. It was yellowish with splotches of red, framing his door in a weird burning halo. I tried screaming at myself to stop, to not go into that room, never into that room, but as is the way of dreams, I didn't listen. I reached for the knob and turned it.

James's room looked exactly as it did in reality only it was bathed in a sickly yellow light, illuminating blood. Everything was splashed with it, from the floor to the ceiling. It made squishing sounds beneath my bare feet. Looking around horrified, I realized I wasn't alone. I looked down on James's bed and there he was lying in his green jacket and jeans, smiling up at me. His neck was bleeding profusely, the knife clutched in his hand. I screamed, trying to turn and run, but my legs were too heavy, they wouldn't move.

James pulled himself into a sitting position on his bed, laughing. With each breath blood pumped out of his neck and down his chest, staining his shirt and jacket. The louder I screamed the louder James laughed until the noise became a roar throbbing in my head. I fell to the floor and James leaned over, continuing his maniacal laughter, spraying me with his blood.

I woke up sweating and shaking, with James's demented laughter echoing in my head. I had barely heard James laugh in real life, much less like an escaped mental patient. I didn't get any more sleep that night.

I think I figured out why James hated the darkness. Your nightmares came alive, twisting and writhing all over each other. Even sleep couldn't offer an escape.

The next few days passed by uneventfully, well, except for the nightmares. They weren't as vivid as the first but they haunted me during the day. I was excused from school, your father killing himself was as good an excuse as any. Sorry Coach Dietz, can't run those laps today, my daddy killed himself. Didn't get to that English paper Mrs. Webster, daddy's dead. Oh you didn't hear Mr. Padilla? Dead daddy. Dead dead dead.

I had no desire to leave the apartment anyway, so I just spent my time packing and cleaning. I even managed to finish packing James's room. Between seeing his corpse and my nightmares, his room no longer held fear for me. Just memories. And that's all James was now. A memory.

I was watching TV when I got a phone call from the priest of the nearby church. He told me that all of James's funeral arrangements had been made, that it would be on Friday. Great, because I didn't know the first thing about planning a funeral. He asked me if there was anyone else besides Frank who would want to attend and pay their respects.

I paused and then answered, "Hmm, I know his wife would've wanted to, but she's dead. Last time I checked, dead people can't attend funerals. Well, I guess unless they're the one who died, then they'd be at their own funeral, right? I-"

The priest cut me off, wishing me a blessed day and whatever, then hung up. Some people just can't take a joke. The joke was on me, everyone I had ever loved was dead. I wasn't laughing.

James's funeral was held at the little church and it was sunny and bright. The weather was all wrong. It should've been dark and rainy. That would've fit James, not this warm and pleasant crap. The only living souls in attendance were the minister, myself, and two gravediggers. Apparently no one had gotten a hold of Frank, either that or he just didn't care enough to be here.

After some prayers and a few short words, the minister closed his bible and made the sign of the cross over the casket. The gravediggers went to work lowering the casket into the ground and covering it with dirt. I had nothing to say, so I turned to leave, leaving behind my old life and walking into an uncertain and lonely one. Detective Holland strode up to me, just at that moment. This guy had a real knack for popping up unexpectedly.

"Laura, I just wanted to stop by and give you my condolences. And this, a nurse found this in James's jacket pocket."

He handed me a small black business card, patted me awkwardly on the arm, and left. I looked down at the card and flipped it over. It said "Heaven's Night" in pink and purple lettering with an address on it. I didn't recognize the name and I was about to throw it away when some handwriting flashed up at me. It was written in silver ink and it was definitely in James's hand. I peered at it for a second, then smiled.

Maria, Fri-Sat at 9pm

I glanced at the address again and I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. The name of the street was the same as where Brookhaven Hospital was. I had been so close to finding my answers and now I knew where to go. My heart was pounding as I made my way back to my apartment and called a taxi. Fifteen minutes later I was in the backseat of a cab, flipping that card over and over in my hands.

Obviously this was some morbid curiosity, but I needed to know. Who, besides Mary, could have made such an impression on him that he would cut her name into his wrist? What could this woman have done to him? I suppose it wasn't surprising that James would keep this name to himself, I mean hell, he never even mentioned his dead wife's name.

I shouldn't be surprised, James was always a private guy, he never exactly wore his heart on his sleeve. I snorted as I laughed. The cabbie smiled at me in his rearview mirror, thinking I was laughing at his story he was in the middle of.

No, James would never wear his heart on his sleeve, but he sure as hell would wear a name on his wrist. Funny, wasn't it? Hilarious, in my mind at least.

By the end of the day I would be meeting this Maria, this woman who ripped my family away from me. And she would tell me everything, no matter the price. Little did I know the price I would pay would be my sanity. And my soul.