Silent Hill

[Shokkou]

David's father was a sickening man when the mask fully dropped and he revealed who he truly was. When he revealed who David had always known him to be. It made him sick, but with that sickness came something else. Confidence. Satisfaction. Confirmation that Gregory was exactly who David perceived him to be. I didn't kill her. David told himself again and again as he dressed quickly. I didn't. Mom. Why did you stay with that monster? We could have been happy without him. I could have protected you like he never did. Like he failed to do.

He pulled his tie tight and checked everything over in the mirror once quickly before heading out the door. Gregory was stuck with David, afraid. He had to know how suspicious it'd look for him to lose his son at his wife's funeral, especially after all the calls David had made growing up to the police. Gregory had had to go downstairs in nothing but a bathrobe and squirm out of jail time many nights. Silent Hill wasn't their home, but it wouldn't take long for the local cops to connect the dots if something happened to David. They'd also be out in the public eye all day. That was a full day to run Gregory through the gauntlet of psychological warfare he deserved. Maybe he'd even slip up and let everyone see his true face.

Walking out into the lobby, he felt a flash of deja vu. These people. He'd seen them before... somewhere. The knot in his back returned with a vengeance and his arms started to tingle viciously for just a moment as the memories flitted on the edge of his consciousness like a dream. Just as quickly though it was gone and he shook his head. There by the windows stood Gregory. David walked over to him with a grin and waved. "Hey there killer. Ready to go?" His tone was jovial as if it was nothing more than a pet nickname, but their shared history made his meaning plain to the one person for whom it was meant.

 

[Fijoli]

A long time time ago, I was a child, and as a child, Father was impressed by me, I did as I was told, I learned many things from him, worshipped him and even now in the middle of nothingness , in the back of my mind, darkness took me back to a moment in time.

"Daddy, I don't ever want to have children, I want to stay little forever," Under summer shade, below the thick branches of oak, I placed my hand on my rook. "Why not, Sonoma?" Father wasn't always emotionless and in retrospect I stood staring after my father as he moved away from lindy and I for his car. The memory continuing.
"Because...," I Moved my rook straight taking one of fathers pawns. "Children are our legacy" Father said His Eyes hidden behind reflective lenses. He took his Bishop and diagonally slid to now take one of my pawns in turn. My little brow furrowed up at him angry he had taken my pawn and I glanced over at mother laying in the sun. "Because...Vanity and Motherhood shouldn't mix," And the hideous memory of the first frown my father gave me bore down on me as I moved my queen to sit before his king. "Checkmate" Said little Sonoma with a stern and stout pride
"I need to go find my mommy."

I Was brought back from the dead, the reality of my situation began to weigh heavily. Pieces of life Unmistakably fell into place as I looked down to Lindy and Quickly hushed her, Firmly holding her so she couldn't get away from me. I leaned away from her and held her higher. "Lindy, shhh, I'm not leaving you alone."

Unfortified, I looked around for Crowley. Listened for him and I heard...nothing. I commenced with lindy in arm up the stairs back to my room and placed her on the bed placing my sketch book beside her and handing her my pencil. This genealogical monster was discharged and I paced the room watching lindy, in a quiet madness. Doubt began to rip its way through each and every possibility leaving each clue untouched and confirmed. Reticulated I hung in a tangled web that had been sewn for me. Myriads of emotions pumped through me and I suddenly found myself in need of Crowley's antics. Arrangement of timely events soaked in as lugubrious crescendos that began to evidently leave me disjointed and shaking.

"Lindy...I'm going to help you find your mother and you can stay with me until we do, even if...if it takes forever," A genuine smile I gave lindy as I sat beside her on the bed, A smile that in this place looked foreign. "I won't let anything happen to you, Lindy, I won't ever leave you, Maybe your mommy is with mine"

I Picked her up as she held my sketch pad and pencil, and held her to me securely. Placed a gentle kiss on her forehead, and headed out the door, down the stairs, straight into the belly of the beast. At this time, I was externally sound, as though the glass had cracked away all that was unstable, like the phoenix reborn. Each step down with Lindy in hand the more I felt that she was mine and I was one step ahead of this interminable game, That is what I thought anyway.

Emerging out into the air, BReathing Silent hill Deep into my lungs, it's aura rung in my ears. Nothing would shake me worse than this I said to myself...I can live with this, I reassured myself...I had now Idea that This place would become. What I would become. With my chin high, I Placed Lindy in the back seat of my fathers car as she scooted herself over I sat beside her in the back and clasped her hand gently below my fathers sight, my eyes locking with his from the rearview mirror. "There is no one here," The look in my eyes pierced through the reflection and with a steadfast deep breath. "Lindy will stay with us until we find her parents"

"us?"

There he was, with his voice of questioning, I could still see that painful laughter on his face. I was still asleep and I wanted to wake up soon, Where I was now Was my nightmare, I needed to find those people, even that Niosome lake was better than the feeling I had in my core. This was only the beginning of my Unriddling, I looked back to Lindy and with a warm smile gently squeezed her hand something my mother, never did.

Crowley's Laughing permeated all of my thoughts into oblivion as we Father gently pressed on the gas, my smile, only grew.
​

 

[York]

Maureen got up gingerly out of the bed hurried after her mother she worried about her mothers current condition without any further thought... She was a lot worse off than she had remembered, somehow she still feels it's her fault, perhaps it's just her, or perhaps she really did something that made her mother the way she was today... She needed to remember those 5 years, there must be a way... There must be... As she was opening the door lost in thought a sharp pain from emanating from her right wrist reminded her that it needed to be taken care of... Taking a closer look at it it almost seemed unreal, either the stairs here had sharp edges or this cut was from a knife or something like that, after all the cut was pretty deep... What's more is she was never prone to sleep-walking, though according to her mother this was her first time she's seen it... Something glinted on the night-stand, it was a needle and a spindle of black thread, not the best for stitching up her cut but it'll have to do for now... "Good thing I'm a nurse.." Maureen thinks to herself as she stitches together the cut... Finishing after a few moments "Now where did my mom go?" She wondered to herself as she stepped out into the lobby... She spotted a few others, they seemed familiar... "Wait... They're the same people from my dream!" She thought to herself, it was confusing... Very confusing... She didn't remember meeting them other than in the dream...

 

[Asmodeus]

The woman and child stared back at Benedict. No... he did not know them... it was not them.

Yet they were something. The older wore a smile all her own, a smile of volumes, knowing and familial. And the child, who clung so tightly, so intimately, to the flesh of the other was fast asleep.

"It doesn't count." The voice was no match to her body - too high, too childlike. Shredded. That word came quickly to Benedict. Like machinery. Like wheezing. "It doesn't count unless you catch us."

A moan, erotic and infantile. A sound of half slumber. The child stirred and clung again to the mother's hip.

No. It was not clinging. As the child shifted Benedict saw the stitching, the track of cat-gut ties that bound her, thorax and limb, to the older girl.

They giggled as one. And ran.


"Hey there killer. Ready to go?"


Benedict spun in the haze of sunlight, his silhouette a blur by the lobby's window. David recoiled. It was the feeling from before - that misunderstanding, that mistaken identity. And this time it was David whose face mapped out the error. "Oh... sorry... I thought you were..."

Benedict peered at him, then back towards the couch, where the woman and child had stood. Where now there was nothing.

It were as if they had each collided in a dream. Frown answered frown; half-word met half-word. "Did you see...?" Benedict cut himself off and looked again at David. Moments passed in mutual fog, until they found a topic that could lead them to clarity. "You were at the lake?"

"Yes."

"The drowning boy - he..."

A sound interrupted them. Maureen's feet creaked on the staircase. David and Benedict looked up with the stare of two men trying to assure themselves that this next vision was a true one. Benedict said to Maureen, "You too... You jumped in to save the boy. Was that real?" The question would have sounded ludicrous if not for the lassitude in all of them, the misted, half-sleeping daze of the grieving.

Maureen went to answer as she reached the lobby floor.

But then the office door opened.

No sooner had Bartley's foot pressed the gas pedal when it came off again. The acceleration had been negligible, a slight lurch before stillness. Like a turning page dropped back again. Sonoma's father applied the handbrake.

"One moment, girls."

He had seen something. The man's broad shoulders spoke of urgency and intention. Through the windscreen beyond him Sonoma spotted another. A suited man, slender and bearded, sipping from a hipflask. He lingered at the balustrade, where the lawn of the Lakeview Hotel met tangled woodland. There was something familiar about him.

Bartley popped the door and headed out onto the gravel lot. Soon he was lost in mist, no more than silhouette with the other man. Words were exchanged, gestures thrown. It was a dance of anger.

Sonoma looked away, to check Lindy's seatbelt, and soon heard the footsteps returning. A crunching euphony, scraping and crackling. A much slower sound. Perhaps her father had worn himself out in the argument.

No. The crackling was not from outside. It was from within. The car radio sputtered, its digital display flickering.

A shadow fell across the side window.

​

And then the window was gone. Scratching glass and chilling breeze became Sonoma's world and the vision eclipsed itself with its own hand, reaching, grabbing. It was impossibly gaunt, as an old woman's, bones straining through the skin. And its other arm... its other arm stayed perpendicular, an umoving perch for the birds that clung there. The crows had eyes where the creature did not, the weight of intellect all their own. They watched the quarry as the scarecrow reached, its posture awkward and agonizing.

Sonoma was already crawling back across the seat, shielding Lindy. But her thigh was seized.

This thing had no meaning. Yet what it meant was clear. It meant to tear her apart.

It came quickly, yet beautifully. Its posture was perfect. For a moment, a long moment, anyone might have mistaken it for a dance-instructor, an elegant dame come to visit, leaving the reception office to find her room. The lack of a face didn't register... not for a moment.

Then Benedict cried out.

With one arm perfectly raised to support the crows, the creature closed the distance between itself and Maureen. And in its other hand flashed a letter opener, rusted and blood-stained, swinging in a surgical arc to slice Maureen's cheek open.

 

[Fijoli]

A cold sensation racked my body pronounced a cry from my trembling lungs. Not again. I shielded Lindy from the glass, suddenly to be tugged backwards and half way out of the car window and let out more cries as Lindy and desperately held on to the others hand. Looking around I had no time to think, I kicked my leg hard to free myself and climb back in the car. I unfastened Lindy from her car belt and brushed away all of the sharp beads of glass. Crowley was laughing again, a Haunting Laughter of both amusement and Victory, as if to laugh in my stead.

Taking up a larger piece of Glass and closing my fingers around it tightly and as the creature recoiled back towards me through the window, I lashed out violently Screaming. Cutting into its form, the glass cut into my palm and slice open my fingers. Lashing out every which way to keep this devil's scarecrow at bay, rippin and tearin every attempt to grab me. As it laid its hand for a moment on the seat to hold up it head it screeched into my face, I forced into its hand and with glass stuck it to the car seat.

Turning took lindy up into my arms again and crawled quickly from the car, practically falling to my knees with her latched to me.fumbling my skirt up into a ball beneath lindy I ran with her straight for some nowhere unseen, seemingly into the very maniacal laughter of Crowley.​

 

[Space Furret]

Well damn, isn't this just a lovely place.

That had been Draco's first thought as he had entered Silent Hill. He had parked his car by an older looking hotel, which gave him the shivers just looking at. But Draco wasn't a man fooled into showing emotion through facial expressions. And his sober and cold facial language hung onto the edges of his mouth. This place deserved nothing, no tears, no laughter, just the silence.

Now he was standing just outside his car, wondering if it would be smart to even go into the hotel. What's the point? I saw this town... in the flashes. But that doesn't mean that I needed to come here. I should have just stayed at home. Home seems like a much better place than here.

But Draco had already come here, he had already driven on the long highway to come to Silent Hill, and now that he was here he was going to make sure that he got what he had come for. That he understood why he had been seeing the town in his mind. Why that was the only thing that he could remember, and why the hell he had nothing else in his memory bank.

Surely someone here must know the answer.

So shutting the door of his silver Impala, he began to make his way into the the hotel. He almost wanted to believe that everything was going to be normal, that there wasn't going to be anything going on in this place, but he was smart enough to know that this town was beyond normal. Anyone could tell, just by a brush of wind that this place harbored secrets.

And he was determined to find out what those secrets were. And how he managed to get himself tied into them.

 

[Wanderfool]

"Lindy, shhh, I'm not leaving you alone." Sonoma had refused Lindy release, but instead of continuously fighting the woman something shifted inside of Lindy. She had to obey, but not only was she pressed to obey she wanted to. No longer squirming she fisted Sonoma's shirt as the two traveled up the hotel stairs to the woman's room. Lindy decided to be quiet and listen to Sonoma's heart beat that fluttered oddly every once in a while. After she had been sat on the bed with the sketch book and pencil Sonoma began to pace the room, eyes moving everywhere mostly trained on her but always moving at the same time. Searching Lindy's face, searching the room, unseeing, but this did not bother Lindy. Looking down she picked up the pencil and began to draw on the first empty page. She made a crooked child's cirlce and then another. Biting her lip she colored in the circles and gave them jagged wings. The picture looked something similar to a scarecrow.

The bed shifted as the pretty lady sat next to the young girl, "Lindy...I'm going to help you find your mother and you can stay with me until we do, even if...if it takes forever, I won't let anything happen to you, Lindy, I won't ever leave you, Maybe your mommy is with mine" Then she went onto smile, something beatific and bright. It looked odd against the gloom of the hotel room and the buzzing of the bathroom lights. Lindy felt tears in her eyes as she leaned forward and nuzzled the woman. "Pinky promise?" She whispered too softly to hear, before the young girl knew it, Sonoma had scooped her up once more. The bathroom lights flickering as Sonoma walked out the room door. A soft warm kiss on her forehead, they were off once more. The drawing of the scarecrow and shattered glass forgotten in the sketch book. Halfway down the steps, Sonoma's hold on Lindy tightened to a strangling hold but only translated as a possessive grip around her torso. Lindy held just as tight.

"There is no one here," The two sat in the back of an unfamiliar car, Lindy's small protected by the elegance of Sonoma's hand. Lindy kept her eyes trained out the window as crows cawed outside on a phone line. Lindy touched the window with a single finger her breath foggy on the window. "Birdies Noma... there are birdies out there." But Sonoma was much too focused on the matter at hand, "Lindy will stay with us until we find her parents" Lindy looked up at Sonoma's stricken face and wondered what was wrong. The car had pulled out of the parking lot and began its trek to an unknown destination to Lindy, when she was jolted forward and caught by her seat belt. "One moment, girls." The man got out of the car, a strange look on his face as he left the two alone, disappearing into the perma-fog.

Lindy sat quietly looking out the window, when a chorus of crows began to sound off in the back of her head. Letting go of Sonoma's hand she kneeled in the seat and looked out the window. "Do you hear them?" She asked Sonoma just as the radio began to sputter, fear wracked at Lindy's small body as she sunk down in her seat. They were coming, the radio flickered and sputtered. Memories of horrors crawling toward her to the endless melody of static haunted her as she sat in the back of the car. Lindy could only remember hating static, feeling the same fear she did in that moment.

The glass shattered in harmony with Lindy's screaming as she held even tighter to Sonoma. She felt herself lurching to the side as Sonoma was drug half out the window by the creature she had seen so clearly in her own head. Lindy held fast and scrabbled back against the other door, trying to save the doll like woman. Trying to pull her back so that she could protect dear Lindy. Sonoma kicked at the thing and kicked into action, sweeping away the glass before releasing Lindy who kicked and grabbed for Sonoma like a toddler. Lindy all but jumped into Sonoma's arms as they both scrambled out the car. But the fight was not yet over, The creature clamored over to them and Sonoma slammed a piece of the window into the thing's featureless face. It howled in the background as Sonoma fled with Lindy attached to her chest. "It hurts. That bitch made it hurt." Lindy could hear the thing's thoughts as if they were her own as they fled. Tears began to stream down her cheeks as it yelled in pain and cursed Sonoma saying horrible things. Horrible things.
The nightmare had just begun.

 

[York]

Maureen saw the hand coming and time seemed to slow down as the rusty letter opener traveled towards her cheek, without thinking she raised her arm to try and knock the letter opener out of the creature's hand... It worked, sort-of, but she received a slash across her arm as a result before the creature dropped its weapon. The cut wasn't too deep but it hurt like hell, she Ignored the pain shooting up her left arm as she reached for her pistol she had in her jacket, remembering it was loaded... She hoped she'd be able to fire it with one arm, it's been a while since she did it... She raised the piston at the creature stumbling towards her, noticing the crows that were perched on the outstretched arm of the creature... "Why are they there? Pets? Company? Or perhaps the creature depends on the crows for something..." She pondered for a brief moment as she was backing up... The creature had already picked up it's weapon again, and it was quickly advancing towards her.. "Stay back! I'm warning you!" She yelled at it, though she knew it was pointless... She briefly glanced at David and Benedict, wondering what they were going to do...

 

[Hecatoncheires]

Walking down the steps to get the hell out of this place, trying to ignore the pounding in the back of my head, the dry sweat that's running down my back, the tremor that's seized my hands. I've hangovers worse than this one before, I'm sure of it.

It's just I can't for the life of me remember when.

So I try not to think about it, just as I try my hardest to ignore the state my body's in right now. Just as I desperately attempt to push the first encounter I've had with my father in two years out of my head, the one sort of memory I'd be glad to see joining all those others I've inexplicably forgotten. Self pity? Oh you better fucking believe it: right now it seems like the only thing I can get right.

I'm about halfway down the stairs, instinct feeling the urge for a drink but my stomach reeling at the thought, when several sharp cracks from downstairs snaps me out of my moping and back to the situation I'm in.

Gunshots. I'm no fucking cop, but those were gunshots.

Self-preservation tells you to run the opposite direction, yet I find myself rushing down the steps towards the sound. No explanation for the sudden suicidal streak, but there's a familiar pitch to those shots: I could swear I've heard the gun that's just fired them before. In my sorry state I nearly trip and fall several times on the way down, narrowly avoiding a particularly undignified death at the bottom of the steps.

As I reach said bottom, however, I suddenly start wishing I'd listened to what self-preservation was screaming at me.

There's something that's just come bursting from the reception office. Not someone: something. One hand is free, having until recently been clutching a rusted knife of some kind. The other juts out as though nailed and cemented in place, a branch-like limb atop which sits three crows. But that's not what's making me want to run and hide, oh no.

No face. Blank. Tabula Rasa. An empty void where features should be, the one place you expect to look and behold familiarity instead staring back at you, barren and empty. This goes beyond the Uncanny Valley; we've strayed from that retrospectively kindly place, fallen into some dark and terrible pit we didn't know existed that's filled with things that should not be.

Shit, they talk about nightmare fuel?

They'd use this thing to power rockets.

Yet still my legs are moving, pounding towards it in a run, and the knife is out of my jacket and in my hands. The faceless thing is looming towards the maddeningly familiar trio despite the shouts of the woman waving the handgun about, completely unfazed by the threat of firepower. Maybe it'll be more reciprocative of something a little older, more traditional.

With a roar I lunge at the creature, burying the blade into where it's shoulder-blades should be.

My mistake, naturally, is presuming that this thing follows the biological patterns that ordinary people do. Which, in hindsight, is about as schoolboy an error as it is possible to make.

There's clearly nothing human about this thing.

It writhes about to try and face me even as I clutch the knife, ripping it free with a savage tear.
"Oh fucking hell!" I manage to exclaim, desperately trying to slam my weapon back into my attacker as it lunges for me. There's no sound to it's attack, no screeches and threats and shouts. Just rigid, fluid silence and movements so swift I barely have time to react.

The arm that does not support the crows slashes out at my face, clawed fingers slashing across my cheek and drawing blood. With a snarl I plunge the blade back in, aiming for where chest meets arm and striking true. It doesn't scream. It doesn't even react to the seven and a half inches of steel that's been jammed into it's arm-pit, just swings it's free arm at me again and knocks me backwards.

Cursing and panting furiously, I scramble to my feet and yell across the room to the woman with the pistol,
"Not to sound like a cliché, but have you tried shooting it in the fucking head?!"

 

[York]

A little puzzled at the somewhat familiar man yelling at her she replied quickly, almost instinctively... "I already did, i-it didn't do much!" She managed to yell gritting her teeth as she motioned with her injured arm practically instinctively... Quickly she inspected the crows perched on the creatures arm, the creature was able to navigate fine without it's eyes, but it seemed blind to anything outside of the field of view of those crows on its arm... The thing had forgotten about her and had started attacking the man, seizing this opportunity she aimed her pistol at the creatures arm that was holding the crows and pulled the trigger.... *click* "Oh no..." Maureen thought to herself realizing she was out of ammo, knowing she wouldn't have time to reload, especially with her injured arm she quickly drew the swiss army knife that she kept in her jacket most of a time... It seemed to come in handy in alot of situations, though she hadn't expected to use it in this particular manner... She slowly moved just our of the creatures "field of view" and lunged towards it trying to ignore the sharp pain in her injured arm as the wound re-opened again when she involuntarily moved it.