Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: NIGHTMARE
Chapter 2: MY SWEET HOME
Chapter 3: LURKING PLACE
Chapter 4: CHURCH
She remember being wrapped in a warm embrace. A child's memory, faded and frayed like old parchment, yet still clinging to the edges of her heart. Strong arms had borne her aloft once, swayed and swung like leaves against the winds, with harsh and heavy breathing against her ear. To her, it felt like breaths full of hopeful vitality, yet also gasps of stifling sorrow.
"Running while holding you as a baby," her father once told her.
His eyes gazed into a far-off place. Nostalgic, yet lonely...
Heather still dreamed of it, from time to time. A warm comfort, when the dream was kind. But dreams do not stay sweet. Sometimes, a shadow closes in, dancing ever-dangerously from behind her running father.
Pat, pat, pat— Heather could hear the bare footsteps against the asphalt. An irregular, eerie rhythm that soured the pleasant heartbeat she felt against his warm chest. The warmth bled away then and the world turned hollow and from that hollow came the shadow. It loomed, tall and terrible, a smothering dark that consumed over the father and child and road and sky alike. From that darkness, eyes gleamed; yellow as a harvest moon behind the stormclouds. They float in the darkness, a smile curled beneath them, twisted and wide, glaring at young Heather with malice older than men.
A gaze cold and cruel. Icicles cut deep into Heather's body, not only through her flesh but also a soul-wrenching agony that drove her to madness. Heather felt herself unravel beneath it, every nerve afire, and every breath a scream clawing to be born. And scream she did, a raw, primal thing that tore from her throat and lips like a beast’s cry.
Normally, she would wake up from these nightmares. She would be gasping in the dark, soaked in sweat and her heart hammering like a war drum, but...
This time, the dream held fast.
"Where am I...?" Heather whispered, as she looked around.
The shadow, vast as a mountain and black as the grave, had nearly caught her. Yet in the realm of dreams, the world twisted and turned, and she was no longer in her father’s arms. No longer a baby. She stood now on her own two feet, her current seventeen-year-old self in a strange place.
A square, of sorts. Paved and open beneath a starless sky. It was a plaza.
"Is this... an amusement park?"
Though darkness had fallen, it wasn't pitch black, as faint light from scattered street lamps diluted the gloom. She turned and saw colorful neon lights blending into the night mist, and an illuminated archway indicating the amusement park entrance. The gate was barred by iron grilles, preventing entry or exit, but Heather was already inside... trapped with no means of escape.
Then, she felt it.
A cold sensation against the palm of her hand, solid and real as steel.
A knife. No kitchen blade or a boy’s toy but a switchblade, an unfamiliar object to her. Heather did not know it, had never owned it, and certainly not something she habitually carried for self-defense, yet it lay nestled in her grasp as if it always belonged there. This was a dream, she told herself, there was no need to ponder why. Yet the sensation felt vivid, the hard, icy blade was almost real.
There, she noticed.
On a bench at the edge of the square, a figure sat. Still and watching. Was it the same shadow that had chased her as a child? Heather crept forward, slow as snowfall, her blade clutched tight. Her boots betrayed her as their heels struck the iron grate hidden beneath brick and echoed. Part of the plaza's brick pavement was covered with a mesh grid, possibly a drainage cover.
As Heather neared the bench, a pale light rose to meet her; not from the flickering streetlamps above, but from her own chest; somehow, in admist the absurdity, nestled in the pocket of her down jacket, a pocket torch had found its place. Its beam cut through the mist, and in its glow, the figure was revealed.
A person with unusually large ears protruding from their head. Leaning weakly against the bench back, they had wide-open, round eyes... It was a rabbit doll, or rather, something meant to resemble one; a costume, tall-eared and sagging, the kind worn to delight children. Yet this one sat slumped like a broken thing, with blood—dark and caked—soaking the plush of its face, streaking its once-cheerful features. The eyes stared, round and lifeless. A doll’s eyes or maybe the eyes of someone still inside.
She turned away and ventured further. Beyond the bench lay the deeper park; abandoned, yet waiting. She wandered aimlessly through the surreal landscape. Passing by a popcorn stand and a mysterious, cage-like box the size of a phone booth, something writhed through the gaps in the wire mesh. It didn’t seem to be human... Heather did not linger. Curiosity had its place, but not here. Not now.
Her wandering brought her to a wall of brick.
Another gate. A second one.
It creaked open without resistance.
The sounds of the park changed. The whirring noises filled the air, replacing the lively sounds of visitors. The ground beneath her boots was entirely made of metal mesh. Every step she took rang out like a cry, high and grating. And something answered.
A dog. Or the shape of one, padded from the darkness.
A beast in mockery. Its head was split in two, as if cleaved by an axe, jaws parted and oozing. Drools clung to its fangs, thick as oil. It snarled, not for food, but for her.
She ran. Compared to her female friends, she was tomboyish, known for her strong-willed nature, never flinching even in fights against boys twice her size. But still, she was a seventeen-year-old girl. She hated cockroaches and rats, and its grotesque appearance made her hair stand on end. Her legs refused her, made even slower by the syrup-thick air of dreams.
The dog-like monster lunged and its teeth caught her skirt.
"Get off!"
She swung the knife, wild and panicked. The blade passed through the beast as if it were smoke, as if she were swinging at night mist. Yet, the tug pulling on her skirt was real. The stench from its bared teeth was nauseating. Somehow, Heather found herself running along a corridor with an open center, dragging her bleeding leg wounded from its bite. Souvenir shops and shuttered restaurants blurred past as she fled, until she was stopped once more by a wall, and a door, marked Mountain Coaster.
She threw herself inside.
Though she escaped the beast, the situation worsened.
The groaning machines of the park howled louder here. The air buzzed with dread. From the gloom ahead, something massive loomed ahead. The light struck its form: an abomination, hunched and vast, with arms like sacks of flesh dragging behind it. Its head was malformed, the skull bulging in ways that defied human birth. The giant lumbered forward, dragging its heavy arms that reached the ground.
Heather froze.
Otherwordly terror rooted her to the spot. Its appearance was more horrifying than the beast. Her body refused to heed her commands, and her heart thundered in place of her voice. She wanted to scream but could not.
She had to run!
She tore herself free, veering wide around the beast. It moved slowly, ponderously, but the air fought her every step. Syrupy and suffocating. The thing struck her with its one massive thick arm, sending her flying. She hit the ground hard. The impact left no pain, but the bruises felt true. They felt all too real.
She staggered onward.
Beyond a yellow ticket booth was a barred fence, and beyond that, she saw stairs. Stairs awaited; leading upward, toward the coaster’s platform. No refuge but it would have to do. She pushed through the gate and headed there. The ride loomed, skeletal and lifeless. The control room above was dark. The tracks lay open before her, winding away into shadows. Her nightmare pulled her forward, whispering that only ahead lay escape.
She walked along the tracks. The sleepers beneath her feet were missing in places. Had this been reality and in broad daylight, she would be paralyzed from vertigo. Unable to take another step, the trek proved itself to be perilous.
Then she heard it.
A high-pitched whistle sounded from behind, sharp as a knife’s edge. Vibrations traveled through the tracks and thrummed beneath her boots. Then comes a deafening roar penetrating her ears.
She turned.
The train, long dead and rusting, now surged toward her like a demon unbound. Its lights pierced the darkness, expanding like a dying star and burning into her widened, astonished eyes. Her vision went completely white.
White.
Then—
Flight.
Her body flailed like cloth in a gale, limbs splayed. Down she fell, through nothingness, into the yawning dark beneath the tracks. She saw herself break; her bones snapped like twigs, her organs torn, and her blood soaked her skin in great red blooms.
A dream, her mind cried. This is only a dream.
It must be. But, yet, this awful feeling? The despair weighed upon her like stone. It filled her chest, crushing her heart from within. It was as if it were real…
Then, a touch.
Something is touching her. Fingers laid upon her, cold and firm. It was not of comfort nor grace. Revival, yes, but not the kind she sought. She forced her eyes to open. A hand of salvation, but not one born of love. It was more a forceful pull from the grave.
Heather barely opened her eyes to see who it was.
A face peered down. Human, perhaps, but it was shriveled, leechlike, a thing dried by time and soaked in rot.
A guardian angel? she thought bitterly. Don’t make me laugh.
No, don’t touch me with those filthy hands.
I just want to sleep. To forget everything. To not remember.
Heather awoke groggily. The sunlight that filtered through the blinds was warm, crimson and golden. She lay slouched at a table in a hamburger shop, the one she’d stopped at on her way home. Afternoon had slipped into evening, and the world outside was bathed in crimson light; the tinge of evening that had painted her dream in blood.
“What a horrible dream...” She murmured wearily. The nightmare had left her feeling utterly drained.
She rose, her limbs heavy with a weariness that sleep had not cured. Outside, the sun was setting. The shadows of the world stretched long outside as she left the shop.
Families trailed unruly children like banners in the wind. Couples clung to one another, their laughter loud and hollow. Solitary souls passed by in silence, women cloaked in the latest fashions spun from vanity, men armoured in suits, their collars stiff and faces empty. Young people wore their defiance like war paint; inked skin, rings through flesh, eyes bored by the weight of nothing. The corpulent rich waddled between storefronts, and the silver-haired elderly, graceful in their twilight, walked with a nobility passed long ago.... All these corrupt and decadent individuals were swarming. The shops overflowed with baubles and bright things, empty delights that promised momentary joy. It was a feast of decadence, a second Sodom, the rot of Gomorrah reborn in polished glass and scented air.
Amidst the bustling crowd, walked a woman clad in black.
Defying the flow of shoppers in the mall, her nun-like attire made her stand out like ink spilled on snow, her gaze filled with pity as she regarded the world with disdain.
“Very soon,” she murmured, voice soft as a prayer. "A new era will dawn."
She smiled then. A faint, reverent curve of the lips.
The signs were already showing.
On the otherside of this seemingly unchanged city, it lays in wait, biding its time to emerge. From the otherside, separated by a thin veil, it waited for the right moment to surge through. The trigger had already been pulled. The bullet would soon pierce through the thin membrane, and before long, it would start to spill out. Her gaze shifted. Amidst the crowd of gluttons and fools, she saw her. Her look was intense, almost loving.
The girl standing in front of a public phone.
The girl who had become the catalyst...
The one who had pierced the veil...
Everything resided within her.
"Dad? It's me!" Heather spoke rapidly into the public phone. "Sorry for not calling you sooner... I fell asleep. I'm heading home now... Oh, the thing you asked for, they didn't have it... Yeah, yeah, I know. I love you too."
Two pairs of eyes were secretly watching her as she called home.
One belonged to a man. He watched her profile with a practiced gaze, his breath held as though fearing to disturb the image. The man observed her from a slight distance, comparing it with a photo in his hand, and nodded to himself.
“That’s her,” he whispered. "Heather Mason... It's definitely her."
Heather felt the weight of eyes upon her.
The man looked like a beggar in borrowed skin. His coat was threadbare, stained by years and regrets. A middle-aged man in a worn-out suit and coat, with his beard, more a tangle of brambles than hair, spilled from beneath a crooked felt hat.
As she hung up the receiver, Heather returned with a glare sharper than broken glass. There was no need for words. If an unknown man was staring at her intently, his motives were clear. A ruin of a man, just old enough to wear her father’s face, his twisted intentions were obvious.
Get lost, you creep!
Heather's glare conveyed her message, and the man flinched, wounded as if struck. He looked like a scolded child, hastily shaking his head.
"Wait! You’re Heather Mason, right? I need to talk to you."
He pursued her as she turned to leave.
"My name is Douglas Cartland. I’m not some shady guy. I’m a detective."
"A detective?"
Heather turned back, surprised to hear her name called.
"Yes."
He produced a badge, worn at the edges, its leather cracked like old scars. It was a state license.
"Huh..."
Heather leaned closer at the ID, curious in spite of herself, but no such feelings about the detective himself. She couldn't determine if it was a real license. There were plenty of forged IDs in the world. For all she knew, he could be a criminal pretending to be someone else to make her drop her guard. Even if he were to be a real detective, she had no intention of divulging private information about any acquaintances who might be the subject of his investigation.
“If you’re looking for someone’s lost pet, try a bulletin board. I’m not interested.”
"Just a moment, please, hear me out."
"My daddy told me not to go with strangers, even if they offer me candy."
"This is very important. It's about your birth."
"How far are you planning to follow me?"
Her boots snapped against the floor as she strode toward the women's restroom, glaring at the man with the "Women Only" door behind her.
"Oh, my apologies." Douglas stepped back, almost stumbling. "I got carried away... I'll wait here, but please, we really need to talk—"
Slam!
The door closed in the detective's face.
Inside, she didn’t check the stalls. Her goal was to shake off the man trailing her, not to use the facilities. She approached the window, her escape already plotted but something arrested her mid-step. There was graffiti on the mirror above the sinks. A strange symbol enclosed in a circle. It bled across the mirror like a wound, daubed in what looked like lipstick, but clotted like dried blood.
This mall has really gone downhill, Heather thought to herself. It used to be a decent place, but now there are perverts lurking around, and even the restrooms aren't safe from vandalism...
As she stared at the graffiti, something in her head twisted. Her temples throbbed, and memories seemed to seep out from deep within her mind. The symbol on the mirror looked familiar...She had seen it before.
Where had she seen it? When?
Pain lanced through her temples. The memories clawed at the walls of her mind. Heather averted her gaze, desperate to escape the pain. Now was not the time for this. She needed to get away from the pervert first. She had to report him to security and have him arrested.
She opened the window and pulled herself out into the alley between the mall and an adjacent building. Heading toward the main entrance, she found the alley blocked by a van, white and rust-bitten, blocked the narrow passageway. The van was parked with its rear end protruding, taking up the entire width of the alley. Further down, several boxes had collapsed across the alley’s width.
Heather was infuriated. She couldn't believe the gross negligence. This was supposed to be an emergency exit! What if there was a fire? It was no wonder the mall's clientele had deteriorated with such poor management.
She had no choice but to go back inside through the emergency exit, though every fiber in her bones screamed against it. Though there was a chance she might run into the self-proclaimed detective again, she figured it was unlikely since the restroom was far from where she re-entered. As she opened the emergency door, the air that greeted her was damp and heavy, the stink of mildew and rot clinging to her tongue. She wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Was the air conditioning broken?
Another odd thing.
It was eerily quiet. It was not the soft hush of an empty corridor that unnverved her so, but it was the complete silence, so loud she could hear it roared in her ears.
She couldn't hear the usual cacophony of shoppers. The clamor of commerce, the chatter of passersby, the tinny melodies from distant speakers. It was gone, all of it. It was still too early for the mall to be closing. The sound of her boots on the floor, usually a brisk, confident noise, now echoed forlornly in the corridor. When she reached the end of the emergency hallway and pushed open the door to the main shopping area, with her hands trembling on the handle.
Her fear became true.
Beyond lay only desolation.
There was no one. Not a single soul. No shoppers, no employees. The mall, once gaudy and loud in its celebration of indulgence, now stood abandoned.
The main lights were off, leaving only the dim glow of emergency lighting to cast long shadows. The floor, once polished to a mirror sheen, bore dark stains like old wounds. Perhaps it was blood, though she could not tell. It was as if a massacre had taken place. Both passages leading to the main entrance were sealed with fire shutters. She was trapped.
"What's going on?" Heather's voice was nearly a scream. But there was no one to answer her, no security guard to scold her, no clerk to calm her. The dread swirling in her chest no longer concerned itself with the fear of running into the middle-aged man. There were only the moans; low, mournful sounds, distant and subterranean, like a dirge rising from the bowels of the earth. And it filled her with terror.
Her legs trembled, but she forced herself to move, summoned the courage driven not by bravery but by the raw instinct to survive. She had to get out no matter what. Passing through a boutique, she caught a movement; something was hunching in the shadows behind the display glass. A person? Perhaps it was someone that got left behind, and they were still hiding from whatever had happened. She rushed inside, a flicker of hope blooming in her chest. She pushed open the door, ready to help if the person was injured and unable to move. They might know what had occurred.
It died at once.
Inside, a gun lay discarded on the floor, as out of place amid the frilled mannequins as a corpse in a cradle. An automatic type, not something one would expect in a boutique. Perhaps a security guard had dropped it. Heather picked it up, checking that it was loaded. The feeling of having a weapon eased her anxiety, like an old friend returning in time of need. She had subconsciously wished for something to protect herself, which might explain why she had spotted the gun so quickly.
Then came the sound; flesh torn from flesh, a wet and vicious noise.
In the back of the store, under the counter, something large and misshapen was huddled over something else. A massive body with bloated limbs that sagged like bags of meat, a head shaped by no sane god, and claws slick with blood. There, crouched beneath the counter like some beast at a sacrificial altar, was a creature straight out of her nightmare.
She could not say what the thing was devouring. The heap of meat it tore into was mangled beyond reason or recognition. If it had once been a man, there was nothing remained. Heather could only hope it wasn't. The creature hunched over its kill like some monstrous carrion beast, and when it turned, its head cocked at an unnatural angle, its eyes—wherever they were—seeming to fix on her with a fierce gaze.
It rose.
The beast unfolded itself in ponderous silence, sinews shifting beneath diseased, baggy flesh. Its bulk seemed to press against the high ceiling, and its grotesque limbs dangling like butchered carcasses. From its swollen arms jutted claws like scythes, curved and crusted red. She saw now what had done the killing. Heather stood frozen, her breath caught between throat and teeth, like a rat under the mercy of a snake. Sweat slicked her skin, running in rivulets down her spine. Her body burned one moment, and froze the next. Her legs barely supported her. Running seemed pointless; the beast would be upon her before she even took three steps. She clutched the pistol tighter, her only shield and her only option.
"Stay back!" Heather shouted, trying to sound tough. But it was a monster, not a man. It would not parley. It would not plead. It probably didn't even understand human language. Even if it did, It would answer to nothing other than blood.
It came at her, and Heather fired.
It wasn't her first time handling a weapon. Her hands knew the weight of a pistol, the stiff pull of a trigger, the sharp crack of recoil. Her father had seen to that for a few times he had taken her to shooting ranges. He had praised her skills. She had experience with pistols, rifles, and shotguns. To the outside world, his teaching and hobby might have seemed eccentric, but her father had done it out of concern for her safety. His eyes had always held a mix of conviction, love, and a touch of sadness.
"It might be unnecessary, teaching you this... But this world’s grown rotten at the edges, and I won’t have you go unarmed into it. Someday... it might be the only thing that saves you." her father had told her.
That someday had come.
His hope—that it would never be needed—had proven hollow. But the training had not. The hours spent beneath the flickering lights and the stench of gun oil had carved something into her.
"I said, stay back!" she screamed, her voice high-pitched. The pistol bucked in her hands. Smoke curled from the muzzle like breath in winter air. Her shots rang out, loud as thunderclaps in the silence. The creature jerked, staggered, yet came on still. She fired again. And again. The magazine emptied with a metallic click, and only then did the beast collapse, a titanic fall that shook the floor beneath her boots. Its limbs twitched one last time - like a dying spider - and stilled.
There was no victory in her. No cheer nor breath of triumph. Just the sound of her heartbeat, frantic and hot in her ears, and the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes like the seventeen-year-old girl she was.
"Why is this happening?" she muttered. The creature was from her dreams; of that she was certain. She had seen it before, in places that should not exist, beneath the red skies and broken carnival lights. The shock and confusion made her head spin. It had haunted her sleep, yet now it stood slain at her feet, its blood steaming in the air. It was too hard to accept. She kept staring, but the creature was undeniably the one from her dream.
Why?
She pressed a hand to her temple, digging her fingers into her scalp as if the answer might lie beneath the skin. But no wisdom came. Her thoughts ran in circles, dizzying and strange.
"Enough!" she hissed, shaking herself. There was no point in dwelling on it. There were no answers in fear, only paralysis. She wouldn't find one by pondering. It wasn't in her nature to brood.
Tears still stung her eyes, hot and bitter, but Heather drove her boot into the creature’s ruined corpse all the same. The thing didn’t stir. Whatever life had animated it; be it rage, hunger or some dark mockery of a soul. It was gone now, leaking out across the boutique floor in dark, reeking pools. She shifted her gaze to the mangled remains of its victim. If it had ever been a man, there was little now to prove it. A slurry of blood and shredded flesh, limbs torn open like old parchment. But amidst the corpse, a belt lay twisted and torn, one end still looped through a ragged hunk of torso.
A gunbelt. She swallowed hard. That meant a guard. Someone who had once walked these halls.
Heather pressed a hand to her mouth and forced the bile down. There was no time for grief. Only a muttered prayer, half-remembered and poorly spoken.
The torn belt had a spare magazine attached to it. The man had likely been caught off guard and attacked before he could even fire. Heather grimaced as she picked up the belt. She loaded one of the magazines into the handgun and stuffed the rest into the pockets of her down jacket. The moaning had not stopped. If anything, it had grown louder. And closer. There were more things in this place. Things that hungered.
She left the boutique behind and retraced her steps back to the emergency corridor. It was a place meant for employees; storerooms, maintenance closets, offices, places where no shopper would ever saw. She remembered the layout. She intended to head upstairs via the emergency stairs, then come back down to the first floor using the escalator and make her way to the main entrance. A long path, perhaps, but maybe the only one left to her.
The stairs groaned beneath her boots. She reached the second floor and pushed through another door, entering another restricted area. The moaning met her like a greeting. It was not of one voice, but many and the sound of footsteps approached from the right fork in the hallway. And the steps were slow and wet and wrong.
Something was coming.
From the gloom emerged a beast with no fur and too many teeth, its jaw split wide like rotten wood, its mouth leaking slime that hissed where it struck the tile. It was the beast. She knew it. Dreamed it and feared it. Beyond, there was another strange creature with long legs and pale as old bone that hadn't been in her dream. This time, she did not freeze. Having experienced combat once already, she felt less scared and more resolute. The pistol rose like it belonged in her hand. The first shot went wide, but the next four struck true. Blood sprayed, black and stinking, as the dog-thing spasmed and dropped, twitching.
The hairless creature's mouth lolled open in death. Its sharp teeth visible in its gaping maw, reminding her of a shark's deadly grin.
Then came the others.
From the shadows they spilled, their shapes torn from sleep and madness. Heather’s breath caught, and her fingers tightened on the gun's grip.
As more emerged, Heather's face went pale.
No way! I couldn't fight off this many with just a handgun!
Heather turned and ran, her boots thudding on the tiles as she fled down the left-hand hallway, towards the door leading to the hall. The second-floor hall had a circular atrium surrounded by balconies that extended up to the third floor. And there, lumbering in the dim, cold light, were two more of the towering beasts. Great loping things, with their arms hanging like meat-hooks, ending in blades that shimmered with old blood. She hid behind a marble column. Her fingers went to her coat, checking the pockets. Two magazines. Twenty-five bullets. It felt like a treasure hoard, but it would vanish like smoke if she wasn’t careful.
The last creature had taken nearly a full clip to bring down. Two brutes stood between her and escape. That left her with five shots for whatever else lurked beyond.
"No more wasting bullets," she told herself, and her father’s voice echoed from years ago. Count your shots. Make them count. It was a lesson her father had tried to instill in her, and it seemed she might finally take it to heart.
The creatures shuffled, slow as rot. Just as they had in her dream. They patrolled the balcony with a languid menace, more like sentries than hunters. She had done it before, and she could do it again now.
Heather watched and waited. One of the creatures turned, lumbering back toward the far side of the hall. She moved like shadow. From the column and across the floor, keeping low and silent, her heart a drumbeat in her ears. The plan was simple: dart past the first monster before it could react, squeeze through the narrow space between its blade-arm and the railing, and sprint for the escalator.
The monsters were liars. They pretended to be slow, until they weren’t. The beast wheeled with impossible speed, its grotesque arm slashing out across her path. And the steel flashed. Heather stopped dead. "Ah!" She gasped, her breath catching as the blade whistled inches from her chest.
Her path was gone.
The corridor behind her; sealed, with the fire shutters locked tight. The monster fully blocked the balcony, its steps making the ground tremble beneath her feet. Behind it, the second creature turned as well, drawn by the noise, lumbering toward her like a living tower.
Heather was cornered.
She pivoted, searching. Her only option was the nearby bookstore. A poor refuge, but better than standing in the open and waiting to be butchered. She dashed inside, knowing they would likely follow, but it was better than facing them both outside.
The bookstore was filled with rows of bookshelves, packed with hardcovers and paperbacks. Heather sprinted past a shelf of Shakespeare's collected works and headed towards the register at the back. She spotted a door that looked like a back exit. It might lead to the escalator. Heather didn’t hesitate. Behind her, the sounds of splintering glass and heaving flesh grew louder. The beasts were coming.
She hurled herself at the door, slammed it open, and vanished into the gloom beyond.
The woman stood alone in the corridor, as still and silent as a statue carved from obsidian. Cloaked in black from head to heel, her austere and expressionless demeanor might be mistaken to that of a nun in a secluded monastery. Her face betrayed nothing; no twitch of the brow, no quiver of lip. Yet, her eyes sparkled, and joy lived there.
The transformation had gone well. Better than she had hoped. She had waited long for this moment, dreamed and bled for it in her own ways.
Finally...
She did not speak the words, but they echoed through her skull, a litany spoken not with lips, but with heart.
Finally, it has begun. The dawn of a new era. The awakening from a long slumber.
But no sun had yet risen.
The night still held the world in its jaws. The horizon wore only the palest touch of grey, the first breath of light against a sky still ink-dark and cold. Dawn had not yet broken; it trembled just beyond reach. To make this dawn a reality, to usher in the new era, it would take more. Much more.
And she was ready.
The woman smiled, though not with her mouth. It was an inward thing, a quiet folding of thought. She waited there in the corridor, calm and still, her joy like a blade hidden beneath a velvet sleeve.
Heather pushed through the back door and into yet another emergency corridor, narrow and windowless, lined with metal doors that seemed to sigh coldly in the silence. She tried the door to the escalator, and found it locked. She tried another, and another then another. Each one resisted her, sealed fast as a crypt. There was no way forward.
No choice but to go back it seemed. Back to where the hulking thing were waiting in the gloom, with arms like slaughterhouse cleavers and a gait that mocked her.
"Listen, Heather," her father had said, a hundred times or more, "no matter how bad things get, you don’t stop. No matter what kind of hardships you face, you never give up. There’s always a way through. You’ve got that in you: a strong heart. Trust it, and trust yourself."
She closed her eyes, conjuring the memory of his face; the gentle furrow of his brow, the warmth in his tired smile.
"I know, Dad," Heather whispered. "I won't give up. This is nothing. I'll come home. It might take a while, but don't eat dinner alone without me, okay? Just wait a little longer."
The moment hung between the silence and her breath.
Then movement.
Startled, she raised her gun. Ahead, a figure stood shrouded in the corridor’s dimness. At first glance, it might’ve been human. But it was so black, so utterly devoid of light, it seemed more like a shadow that had pried itself loose from the wall. Step by step, she crept forward, and the darkness dissolved itself into a woman. She was all in black from heel to neck, motionless and still, like a nun. Her face was pale and empty, a mask without feeling and staring at Heather.
"Um..." Heather called out. "Who are you? Were you left behind too? What happened here? What are those… things? Please, you have to tell me! I don’t know what’s happening. There's no one else around... and you're the first person I've met."
The words poured from her like a dam breaking; fear, hope, confusion, all tumbling out at once. The woman finally seemed inclined to respond. However, the words that emerged were incomprehensible.
"The beginning is upon us." the woman said, her voice like candlelight in a darkened chapel. "To reclaim our lost paradise—"
"What are you talking about?" Heather frowned. Her voice came out sharper than she intended.
She studied the woman’s face, hunting for signs of madness. Gods knew, there was enough reason for it in a place like this. The dead walked. Beasts wore the stuff of nightmares. And this woman, still as stone and clad in black like a mourning dove, now spoke of paradises lost and beginnings foretold. Perhaps she had cracked under the weight of it all. Or maybe she’d been broken long before, one of those people who preach about the end of the world and urged repentance. However, none of them had eyes like hers. They were gleaming, and alive with feverish light.
"Don't you know? We need your power," she said, staring at Heather with eyes filled with rapture.
Heather shook her head, uncertain if she was more frightened or simply annoyed. “I don’t get it. Sorry, but I don’t think I can help you.”
No good would come out of staying. Whoever or whatever this woman was: prophet, lunatic, zealot. Heather had no time to untangle it. This was Carneades’ board, plain and simple: two souls drowning, and only one plank to cling to. She had to survive. Then, perhaps, she could come back with help. Real help.
"I am Claudia," the woman continued. Was she introducing herself now?
"Okay," Heather nodded. "I'll remember. Just stay put, alright? I’ll get someone."
As Heather tried to move past her, the woman stood in her way.
“Remember,” she said, her voice a hush and a blade all at once. "Remember me, and your true self as well, and what you must do..."
Throb!
A sudden spike of pain struck behind Heather’s eyes. Her temple pulsed like a wardrum.
"Thou, whose hands shall be stained with blood, shall invite the paradise."
Throb!
Heather staggered. The corridor tilted beneath her feet, the air thick and humming. Her vision swam. The woman’s words were needles in her brain. It pierced, and barbed, and was unrelenting. And her eyes, they glowed with something inhuman, something divine, or perhaps something damnably close to both.
Was it hypnosis?
"Did you do something to the mall?"
Claudia’s lips curved in a whisper of a smile. “All is the work of God,” she said, as though it was answer enough.
The pain flared again, sharp as a blade between her brows.
“Wait!” Heather cried, but the woman had already turned. Her silhouette slid into shadow, quiet as a ghost, leaving only silence and scent behind. Heather collapsed to her knees, her hands clenched around her pounding skull. The pain was blinding. Was it anemia? Her vision blurred white. By the time her breath steadied and she could grasp herself better, the woman was gone.
"What am I supposed to remember?" Heather murmured in a daze. "What is it that I..."
The answer was there. She could feel it like a fish just beneath the water’s surface, flashing silver. But every time she reached for it, her mind recoiled, and the pain returned, more worse than before.
Where had she gone?
The woman in black; Claudia, she had named herself; had vanished like a shadow cast by moonlight. Heather paced the corridor like a hound on a scent, testing each door in turn, her hand trembling on the knob, her breath sharp and shallow. One must open. One must yield. She had not imagined the woman. No fever dream, no figment. Claudia had gone somewhere, and Heather would follow. She must have taken a route through one of the rooms to get down to the first floor.
At last, at the corridor's end, she found it: a dull, gray service elevator sunk into the wall like a wound.
"This is it," she muttered.
The button bloomed red beneath her finger. The doors sighed open, and she stared into its dark, metallic maw. So easy, she thought bitterly. All the struggles she’d endured now seemed pointless, the path simply revealed itself. If only she had found it sooner...
She stepped inside, and the elevator groaned downward.
Then, a thud from above.
Steel rasped against steel. A hatch in the ceiling, forgotten until now, hung ajar. Something tumbled through, striking the floor at her feet.
A radio. Small and old. It hit the tiles and spat static.
Heather raised her pistol, eyes on the darkness above, her heart pounding endlessly. There was nothing else that moved. No beast dropped through the gap. Only the radio hissed, and spitting white noise. She picked it up and the dial turned beneath her thumb. Given the situation, she hoped to catch some news about the shopping mall, but the radio seemed broken, emitting nothing but that irritating static.
"You stupid useless thing!" She thought to dash it against the ground but held back. A memory caught her, as sudden and sharp as a knife. Her father's voice, gruff and warm, telling tales by the firelight. No sweet stories, but his own whimsical ones, and his were strange, and sad, and almost cruel in their honesty.
"Once upon a time, there was a broken radio. The radio only made a hissing sound. It couldn't even play the weather forecast. Moreover, it was very scared. It cried when the demons drawn near. Hiss, hiss, hiss. A man-eating demon is nearby..."
Leaving the noise on, Heather slipped the radio into her pocket and let it wail. It felt like her father, Harry, was giving her advice. He had rarely spoken about his past. Yet in his stories, those strange little fireside stories he’d told her, there had always been shadows and beasts and demons. Fairy tales, she had thought of them. Now they felt like memories. His memories. The resemblance was becoming more uncanny… between his tales and her situation. Could her combat training have been prepared for this day?
The elevator lurched to a halt, and the doors parted.
Darkness.
Something was wrong.
Heather frowned. The floor indicator still showed the second floor. She was sure she had descended. Cautiously, she stepped out of the elevator, and immediately found herself at a dead end, surrounded on three sides by wire mesh walls... another elevator.
The radio's cry sharpened.
Behind the mesh, a thing clung to the wall. Shrivelled, and twisted, and dry as a corpse in the sun. No name for it lived in her mind. She had seen it before, yes, in her dream, caged at the gates of an amusement park twisted by nightmare. Now it was here, and it was watching.
“No!” Heather recoiled. “This is a dream, right? It has to be.” She forced a strained laugh. “Even a kid wouldn’t believe this!”
Suddenly, the rusted door behind her slammed shut, trapping her in the wire mesh elevator. She could no longer return to the bright elevator she had entered.
“Wake up from this nightmare already!” Her voice rang shrill against the metal walls.
She wanted to believe it was just a nightmare. She clung to the thought desperately. Maybe she had simply dozed off at the hamburger shop, with her cheek pressed to the greasy formica, andd lulled into slumber by the hum of overhead lights and the scent of stale oil. That would be mercy.
But mercy was a stranger here.
…This wasn’t a dream.
It was undeniably real.
Across the mesh, the thing clung to the wall, unmoving save for the slow arch of its withered spine. A mummified and wrinkled creature stared at her with a face that was no face, blank and smooth as a drowned man’s skull. Heather wanted to look away, but it might break through the mesh and attack. She kept her eyes on it, unable and unwilling to blink. She stared into its eyeless gaze, and found the creature to be... less hostile. It was studying and measuring. And in that long, awful silence, she thought it smiled. Not with its lips nor with its eyes. But with the tilt of its head, and the stillness of its limbs, the strange familiarity that tugged at the back of her mind like a forgotten tune.
She had seen it, not just near the amusement park entrance... but it was elsewhere, too?
A sharp jolt shattered her thoughts.
The mummified figure vanished upward, like a puppet on a string, it lost to the black.
The elevator moved briefly before stopping and opening its doors. Another dark space awaited. It wasn’t pitch black; there were faint light reflected off surfaces, slightly alleviating the black. As her eyes began to adjust, she heard it.
Footsteps.
The radio in her pocket screamed, followed by a savage growl. Instinctively, she fired her gun. Something lunged from the dark. The muzzle flashed in the gloom, and one of the shots struck true. It hit its mark, and the thing let out a yelp, and collapsing. Squinting to see, she saw it was the half demon and dog and it collapsed in a heap, twitching and snarling as its life bled out.
As the creature died, the white noise subsided… just as her father had said it would. The radio had only cried when the monsters drew near.
Heather moved with her shoulder brushing the wall, hand trailing along its cold, uneven surface. Probably this way, she thought, though certainty had lost its meaning here. She wanted to get out quickly. The hallway swallowed light and breath alike, a suffocating tunnel that reeked of rust and rot. It was like passing through some secret gate into the underworld, where time curled in upon itself and every shadow carried a hidden hunger.
“Sharpen your senses, Heather.”
Her father's words came back to her. Calm and low, and moving in a steady flow like firelight on a cold night.
“Don’t rely on your ears alone. Beasts move quieter than breath. Feel them.”
It had been summers ago, in the woods. Her father had taken her camping, though it truth, it had felt more like a rite than a vacation. One night, he gave her no light, and no knife, only leaving her legs and her wits. He sent her into the lightless forest alone. The trail was short, he had said, but even these types can stretch long in the dark. Her father had made her walk alone as a test of courage.
“Watch out! There are bears and coyotes!”
The warning seemed cruel, scaring Heather out of her wits. She had believed him. Every rustle in the trees, every creak of bough or snapping twig had been a wolf in her mind. She walked in silence, fists clenched, eyes wide and stinging, desperately holding back tears. The trek felt like an endless march. But she hadn’t cried. Not then. She had trusted him, even through the terror that he would never leave her. And he hadn’t. He followed, unseen, and no more than a dozen steps behind. The stories about bears and coyotes were lies. When she emerged from that black forest, shivering and dry-eyed, Harry had wept more than she did, pulling and hugging and begging for forgiveness.
The sensation from those walks returned to Heather. Her eyes had grown sharper, and her feet steadier. The dark seemed less absolute now, less suffocating, and she could move without relying on the wall.
Had her father known? Was him training her for this descent? Did he foresee all of this? Who was he? Who was she? What did Claudia mean, with her whispers of blood and paradise?
Heather’s mind swirled with confusion and chaos. The thoughts coiled around her like smoke
Amidst the locked doors in the corridor, a door yielded beneath her hand. She slipped inside and found herself beneath a high ceiling, in a corridor wide enough to be a street. Perhaps it had been. The mall’s main thoroughfare, now stripped of light and life. If so, the main entrance was close!. But so was something else. The radio’s white noise intensified. The sound was shrill as a flayed nerve, and from the darkness ahead came a large, hulking silhouette broad-shouldered, arms too long, and flesh hanging in folds like melted wax. It was another one of those with thick arms.
One of them. Another followed, then came a third. And they moved with slow, dreadful weight.
Heather dashed towards the presumed main entrance. The nearest beast raised a clawed limb and brought it down like an axe. She couldn’t get through. She darted beneath the blow, ducking away from the door she had come through. Gone was her retreat.
Fine, if I can’t go back, I’ll find another way out! she thought.
She sprinted in the opposite direction. There was just enough space between them, just enough breath in her lungs to slip past. She ran into the deeper dark, feet slapping the tiles. Her heart hammered like fists on a coffin lid. For now, she needed to shake them off.
Ahead, another shutter was down. It was heavy, and rustic, and above all it was unmovable.
Fuck! she hissed I couldn’t see it in the dark!
She turned, teeth bared, and memory scratching at her skull. She remembered a side passage near the monsters. There was no other way, she had no choice but to try, and hoped it led to an escape route.
No choice.
The lumbering beasts had followed. One swung its misshapen arm, trailing blood and shadow. Heather fired until the slide locked back. The monster fell, and she stepped over its corpse and darted into the passage.
A right turn. Then a straight stretch. Finally, a door.
From beneath it, a crack of light spilled like gold. A beacon of hope, she thought. Someone might still be there. Driven by her longing for human contact, Heather opened the door and stepped into a storeroom. Dust covered the shelves like ash after a fire. There were no supplies and no tools. There was but a single object waited for her. A pocket flashlight, glowing steadily where it lay.
Heather grabbed it without hesitation.
Its light was strong for something this small. Reliable, but something about it unnerved her, not of its shape nor its light, but the memory it carried. Maybe it made sense if this was a continuation of those dreams, but it wasn't. For no dreams of hers ever felt so cold. Would there be an end to it? she thought Could I really go back home?
She stepped out once more into the corridor and followed the flashlight’s pale beam. The hallway wound through ruin and silence, until finally, it brought her back. This was where she had entered after leaving the emergency exit and passing through the route initially.
…But it seemed as if many years had passed.
The tiles were cracked. The walls streaked with filth. The storefronts loomed like broken teeth. Glass shattered and paint peeled. The air stank of mold and time.
It looked less like a mall, and more like a tomb.
Heather entered a store. The boutique where she had first encountered a monster. It was dead now. The floor was black with rot, and the walls yellowed like old teeth. The dresses had vanished. And so too had the body. Only wire hangers remained, swaying gently as if stirred by breathless laughter.
Leaving the store, Heather numbly pondered.
What to do… The shutter still barred the main hall, and the emergency route door was sealed... She had to turn back. Retracing her steps, she aimed for the main entrance.
Toward the monsters.
Toward the dark.
"What the hell is going on?"
The words escaped Heather like a breath she hadn’t meant to speak. She stood before the main entrance, hand pressed to the cold glass, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. After risking everything to reach the front entrance, the door now refused to budge. No push or pull would made it yield. It stood fast, and unmoved, and sealed by something other than locks. Through the glass, twilight had fallen, thick and unnatural, draping the world in a darkness that felt less like night and more like burial. The sky itself seemed to press against the glass, heavy and endless.
Behind her came the sound of pursuit, wet and dragging feet, and the snarl of something not made for breathing. Two monsters were chasing Heather. Their shapes loomed large in the gloom, all bulk and hunger. She looked up at the escalator, but a fire shutter, illuminated by the light, severed a way to the second floor.
No way up.
No way out.
Feeling desperate, Heather charged at the monsters.
Then she saw it. Just before the entrance, there was a hamburger shop. Unlike the main entrance with its reinforced glass, the shop’s doors were lighter. She could shoot her way in but she didn’t have time. They were closing in, their footsteps like hammers striking meat. They would follow, but there was surely a back door in the store, just like the bookstore at the mall.
She sprinted. One clawed hand swept through the air behind her, close enough to raise gooseflesh on her neck. She didn’t aim. There was no time. She crashed into the door shoulder-first.
It gave.
By some mercy, it had not been locked.
She tumbled inside, and rolled across the tiled floor, and scrambled to her feet. The monsters pressed at the doorway, and snarling. Their bulk were too large to easily pass through. But it would not be forever. Sooner or later, they would squeeze in.
Heather turned to the back door. It moved, just a little but then stopped. It was jammed. Something heavy was pressing against it from the outside. Crates, maybe. Perhaps, it was deliveries that had long been forgotten.
She was trapped.
Her lifeline, a handgun, had only one magazine and five bullets left.
“Don’t panic,” her father had told her. “No matter how bad it gets. Panic will kill you faster than any beast. Look around, observe your surroundings, and look for anything you can use."
Heather glanced around the shop.
It was vastly different from the place where she had dozed off earlier.
Nothing useful. No bullets nor blades. No blessed relic tucked behind the fryer. Why should there be? This was a place for meat and soda, not for survival. She was about to curse aloud when she spotted something above, a ladder, half-lowered and hanging from the ceiling like a beckoning hand.
A loft?
Even if it led nowhere, it was better than here.
Heather clambered onto a table. She jumped. Her fingers outstretched, but she missed.
Damn. Just a little too far.
Something to hook onto...
She dug into her jacket pocket and pulled out a wire, thin, and coiled, and slightly bent. She had taken it from the boutique earlier, thinking she might try the main entrance if it had been locked. She had no lock-picking skills but planned to jam the wire into the keyhole and jiggle it around if necessary. Her father's rule Try everything. Fortunately, she hadn't had time to try and pick the main entrance lock due to the monsters, but now it was proving useful in an unexpected way.
She straightened the wire, bent the tip into a crude hook, and reached upward. It was long enough without jumping. The hook caught and the ladder came down with a soft clang.
She didn’t look back.
She climbed.
The top revealed not a cramped storage loft, but a corridor, wide and shadowed, and unnatural in its presence. A second-floor passage, where no such thing should be. The ladder hadn’t ascended. It had descended, as if the space itself had twisted into a knot, folding floors upon each other. Given the abnormal situation with monsters prowling, Heather thought even time and reality might be distorted.
The path was familiar. But it had changed, just as everything had around here. Did her steps rewrote the world behind her? If she proceeded to the atrium, she would likely circle back to where the beasts roamed, but she had no choice. There was no safety behind her. Only teeth and claws. If the interior had undergone significant changes, perhaps, she could now access places that were previously unreachable.
The fire shutter on the escalator leading to the third floor was not down, but Heather didn't ascend. Her heart longed for descent. She didn't want to go up; she wanted to go down to the first floor! She wanted to find her way back down where the world might still resemble something human.
Her flashlight carved a narrow tunnel through the dark. She passed an electronics store, once full of light and color. Now silent, except—
Static.
It wasn't coming from her pocket radio. That remained still and quiet. The noise was different. A hiss like breath across bone.Then, a television screen, half-shattered and dust-laced, flickered to life behind the glass. White noise danced across its surface, pulsing like a heartbeat. And Heather could felt herself drawn forward.
Why was this the only television still working in this hollow corpse of a shopping mall? Its screen crackled, a blizzard of gray static, its alive, somehow, with more than just noise. Heather stepped closer, squinting into the blur. There were movement stirred within the chaos.
A human face?
A child's...a girl's, it seemed.
“Daddy,” the little one whispered.
Heather’s heart clenched. The voice carried a weight far heavier than sound. The girl’s face was twisted with pain, or sorrow, or maybe something in between. A moment later, she was gone, swallowed by the static as if she'd never been there at all.
Heather stared intently. She recognized the girl. She didn’t know from where, not yet. However, the familiarity was sharp as a knife, tucked behind the ribs. She couldn’t stop staring, though her stomach turned and her eyes ached. Where had she seen her before? She questioned herself. She tried to remember but the longer she watched, the worsen it became as nausea threatened to rise like bile.
She was spiraling, again, just like when she had seen Claudia.
Heather moved away from the television. A sudden, seething anger stirred beneath her skin. She didn’t know why, but it was rising. The rage was breaking through...and it was clawing at her throat.
Why?
"This is very important. It's about your birth."
Douglas had said that, the so-called detective.
...A secret...her past...
Tell me Heather thought, biting her lip. Tell me, Dad. You know, don’t you? You know everything. Who am I?
Lost in a labyrinth of memory and madness, her thoughts coiled like serpents in a cage, her heart ensnared in its twists and turns. Still, she walked. There was no other way. But after all her wandering, all the wounds and revelations, she found herself back at the start.
Heather’s shoulders sagged. She had combed the second floor to its very edges, yet found no stairs, no ladders leading down. She had burned her strength avoiding monsters, spent her fear, and worn her hope thin as thread. The only mercy the place seemed to any offered was ammunition, as she scavenged bullets from what had once been a gun shop. Without them, she would already be meat in one of their bellies and bones, crushed and forgotten.
With her last shred of hope, Heather dragged her weary feet up the stopped escalator. One foot after the other, she made her way to the third floor where it was dead, and unmoving, like everything else here.
The main corridor above, leading to the atrium, was blocked. She almost screamed, but upon closer look, she noticed what appeared to be a door embedded in the obstruction. It was a bizarre structure. Not steel nor glass. Was it exposed concrete? she asked herself. No, it looked more like a boulder had been cut out and placed there...
A sense of finality crept into her bones.
This is the end, and the beginning. She realised.
The sealed door would lead to whatever's behind her secret...
The door yielded beneath her touch. She found a ladder hidden on the far side of the third-floor corridor. With a sinking feeling, she descended into the void, and the darkness swallowed her whole.
What should have been the first-floor atrium was now a barren space with the floor laid bare and stripped to its bones, as if the foundation itself was exposed. All the surrounding stores had collapsed; not just the windows, but even the walls were gone, leaving nothing but empty voids. The fountain that had once been the heart and joy of the mall was now gone. In its place, there was nothing.
No, not nothing.
An arena.
A stage for slaughter.
A tremor shook the air, and a roar echoed, and with it came a massive beast barrelling forward, born from the pit’s deepest shadow. As it moved, the ground quaked beneath it.
Heather shuddered at the sight of the creature. It was massive. Far larger and beyond the scale than any of the ones she had encountered before. It writhed like a worm, bloated and slick, its thick hide gleaming with slime. With trembling fingers, Heather fired her gun but the bullets bounced harmlessly from its skin. It didn’t flinch. Instead, it screamed, ripping open its head to reveal a gaping maw, all rot and spit and jagged teeth, as if someone had carved a mouth into the belly of a corpse. Compared to this thing, the others had been pets.
Heather desperately fled from its massive, tree-like attacks. If she were caught, she wouldn't just be pinned down; she'd be crushed. If fate had mercy, she'd die quickly, but more likely, she'd be devoured, feeling every single crush and stab by its unnaturally large teeth. The end would not come quick.
The beast thundered past her, jaws snapping shut on empty air. Heather did not breathe. Her heart beat once, twice, then the thing was gone, swallowed by the darkness yawning at the far end of the hall. She remained frozen, the pistol slack in her hand. Relief whispered at the edges of her thoughts, but did not take root. Relief was a lie in this place. She had learned that much. And the lie revealed itself in the next breath. The void stirred as the creature reappeared through another. Its scream returned, a wet roar that boiled the blood in her veins. Its teeth gleamed with spittle, jaws wide, too wide, as if the mouth had learned from its failure and now sought to swallow not just her but the hall itself.
Heather stood still, the smell of blood thick in her nostrils. Something old and half-forgotten stirred within her, not quite memory, and not quite dream. Déjà vu, they call it, a ghost of the past slipping its fingers into the present. Her breath caught.
Her father's face came to her as he had been in the gentle days of her girlhood, the firelight dancing in his eyes as he sat at her bedside, book in hand. He had read to her that night, his voice low and sure. The tale was one she never asked for but he chose all the same: "The Traveler and the Lizard", a bedtime story clothed in the language of children, yet lined with steel. His reading had been so poignant that it left a deep impression that never seemed to fade away.
"...When the traveler with the bow and arrow heard this, 'Then I shall defeat the lizard.' said the traveler, and his voice was not proud but patient. The traveler did not rush to violence. No, first he mocked the beast. 'What a pathetic lizard, not scary at all.' Angered, the creature roared 'I'll swallow you whole!' and lunged at the traveler with its widen maw. That was the moment the traveler had waited for. Calmly, he drew his bow, loosed his shaft, and sent the arrow deep into the creature’s stomach, where no scales could shield it. And thus the lizard died, not in battle, but in its own fury.”
Heather laughed at the absurdity of it all.
A lizard and a worm could not be more different. One cold-blooded, armored and ancient; the other soft and eyeless, and were born of dirt. And yet... something about the way it moved. The gaping mouth. The hunger. As if it was acting a part, grotesquely mimicking the old tale. It seemed the story had been remembered not just by her, but by the beast itself.
Her laughter broke. And that laugher turned to breathlessness. A thought took root, unwelcome and cold.
Who was mimicking whom?
The worm?
Or...
Heather’s fingers tightened on the pistol’s grip. The worm’s mouth yawned open again, slick and dark as a tomb. A weak spot. The only one. This time, it was no guesswork. She knew, as the traveler had known. The story was no story. It was a map.
Her first shot sang through the air, struck true. The worm screeched, a noise like splitting iron, a scream so different its previous roars. Instead of closing its jaws, it opened even wider, as if pain and rage had unhinged it. She did not hesitate. She emptied the magazine, each bullet a nail in the coffin of the mimic beast. The monster's screams ceased. Its mouth closed like a wilting flower, its head slumped to the floor, and it moved no more. The thing died with no grandeur. Its fall was not the collapse of a giant, but the wilting of something wrong, something unnatural.
Then, silence. Not a holy silence, nor a victorious one. A dead silence, vast and unwelcoming, like the hush in a room where something unseen has just departed.
Heather stood alone. No one clapped. There were no spectators, no gods in judgment.
Then the world shifted.
"What the...?"
It was not abrupt, but slow and dreamlike, like dawn leaking in through a broken window. The bloodstained floor gave way to marble tiles, scrubbed and polished. The ceiling high above her shone with light not of torches or flame, but the steady pulse of electricity. A fountain gurgled where dust had lain. Shops lined the space like obedient soldiers, neat and pristine.
Heather widened her eyes and looked around.
The hall had returned to its former state. What had been a desolate, ruinous space was now a pristine floor with clean tiles, a fountain majestically sitting in the center, and the shops lining the urban mall.
"Am I back?"
Had she returned? Back to reality? Was everything up until now just a dream? Was she dreaming?
But her hands still remembered the tremble. Her side ached where she’d been struck. The pistol, warm smoking, and real, and it remained heavy in her grip. And blood, old and drying, stained her boots, her sleeves and her cheek. Her body bore the marks of life-and-death struggles, and no human figure could be seen anywhere in the hall or the main street she overlooked. Bloodstains were splattered everywhere on the floor, telling her it was anything but a dream.
There were no people, nor do the screams followed.
It was only blood, and silence.
Whatever dream she had awoken from, if it ever was one, had left its mark.
The silence in the mall had turned thick, heavy with absence. No more roars, no more tremors in the earth. The monsters, if they had truly been, had vanished like mist before the morning sun. But the quiet was not peace, it was the sort of silence that followed a massacre. Heather moved toward the entrance, her heart taut as a drawn bow. Then, footsteps, followed by a voice that cut through the stillness.
"Heather!"
The name fell from the lips of a man whose presence had once been of some small note to her, but now barely registered. He sat there, perched upon a bench like a beggar at the gates of the gods. Had he been sitting there and waiting for her all this time?
"What just happened?" he asked, his voice thick with confusion, his eyes scanning the pristine tiles and untouched shopfronts as if he half-epxcted them to melt.
Douglas Cartland. Gray in the beard, weariness in the eyes, and that familiar stench of failure clinging to him like smoke. He rose slowly, like a man dragged up by unseen hands rather than by his own will.
"This wasn't your doing? You weren't in on this, with her?"
Heather glared at him, causing the so-called detective to recoiled as though he had been slapped, his hands half-raised, and bewilderment painted plain upon his rugged face. if he wasn't acting.
"What did I do? ...'In on this'?"
“Claudia,” Heather hissed the name like a curse. “You're working with her.”
Heather thought that they had conspired to create this entire ordeal to trap her. The fact that only Douglas and Claudia remained unharmed in a mall where everyone else had vanished was irrefutable evidence.
“She was here?” he said, voice rising. “Shit… But why—?”
"So you are working with her."
"She's a client of mine. She hired me to find and bring you to her. What happened to her, anyway?"
"Why don't you find out yourself? If you're even a real detective, that is."
"But..."
Douglas hesitated. For a while, he seemed reluctant.
"What are those monsters... They're terrifying... Is the gate opening to hell itself...?"
The pale face beneath his beard looked genuinely frightened.
Her hand brushed against her temple as a dull pain bloomed there. “Maybe this all started because you found me” Heather muttered, but the words slipped past her thoughts.
"What do you mean?" Douglas asked, puzzled.
She didn’t know. Or rather, she knew too well and dared not to speak of it.
"I don't know... I just feel like all of this weird stuff is connected to me. So you shouldn't have found me."
Heather put a hand to her forehead. Another headache. It was not as bad as before, but still...
"Connected? How?"
“You tell me. You’re the one who knows something about my birth, aren’t you?”
“Only what I was told. That you were adopted.”
"That's no secret. I’ve always known my father wasn’t my blood. But he’s still my father. The only one who ever mattered. So? Who are my real parents? An Arab oil tycoon?" Heather scoffed, loud and sharp.
"She… Claudia… she wanted to tell you directly."
“Of course she did.” Heather turned, tired of the game, tired of the fear that shadowed every answer.
She walked to the doors. This time, they opened easily. Another quiet change, like the mall had grown bored of keeping secrets.
"Where are you going?" Douglas called after her.
"Isn't it obvious?"
Without looking back, Heather waved and replied "I'm going home. To the father I love more than anyone in the world, even if we weren't bound by blood."
She stepped into the light beyond the threshold, though it felt more like a shadow. The mall behind her sighed, ancient and alive. And inside her, something stirred, a knowing, deep and unwelcome.
I'm certain those weird events are related to something about me. But I don’t understand what that is—
No, I do understand.
She had known it all along. She just hadn’t dared face it. Not the blood nor the memories.
I understand, but I don’t want to remember. I’m running away from it...
Heather descended into the earth, each footfall a lonely echo on the cold stone steps of Hazel Street subway station. The sound of her boots rang off the tiled walls and vanished into the yawning silence below. Then, she realised. There were none of the laughters from the usual passersby. There were no chatters from any of the commuters, nor did she even hear their tired footsteps. The air was still as a tomb. She didn’t see any people. No one ahead of her, no one passing by her, and no one walking behind her… The turnstiles stood still, dumb sentinels of a world gone wrong. The booth was abandoned, and its glass smeared with something that might have been condensation… or blood.
It was still happening. It’s not over.
Not over. No, not even close. If anything, this was only the opening note of some dirge long-forgotten. A hymn of rot and madness.
Heather’s hand moved with practiced ease to the small of her back. The cold pistol brought a great comfort, though it meant little now. Her thumb flicked the safety off. Passing through the turnstile, a low growl rolled through the dark, thick and wet, not from beast nor man but something in between. She tensed up. The weak fluorescence above her buzzed and flickered like dying fireflies, casting long, twitching shadows on the tiled corridor. She moved forward, gun aligned with the beam from her chest light. Every step brought her deeper, not just into the subway, but into something more terrible. She could feel it pressing against her skull, like the whisper of a dream she had not wanted to wake from. They were lurking deeper inside. Like demons from hell, waiting for her in the depths...
And then she saw it.
Amidst the chaos of spray paint and crude scrawlings on the platform wall, there it was again. That sigil.
A circle within circles. Lines twisting inward like thorns wrapping a heart. The mark from the mall’s restroom, now found its home here in the underworld.
It glowed faintly red, like ember in ash.
She did not need to touch it to know it pulsed with something vile. It was a wound in the world, and something beneath the wound was stirring.
Death.
A fate that awaits everyone equally.
One day, it will come for me as well, Harry Mason thought.
Lately, the thought lingered at the edge of every moment, no longer as fear, but something else. Something like acceptance. Maybe it was surrender. Either way, it was not the knowledge of death that gnawed at him, but the knowledge that it would come soon. Too soon.
And it angered him.
They were back.
Not in black cloaks or masks. No symbols carved on their skin. No knives drawn in alleys or rituals in the woods. They wore the people's faces, be it young lovers in the park, old men who fed pigeons, girls with their laughter sounded too forced, and mothers who did not quite fit the mold. Ordinary, every one of them. But Harry saw them. He felt them. The long gaze behind the smile. The way they moved without much purpose. Amateurs, the lot of them. They did not know how to watch without being seen.
There was no evidence that any of this would hold up in court, and from an objective viewpoint, there was no way to be certain... but Harry had an unwavering conviction. From all the circumstantial evidence, he could smell the hidden threat, feel it on his skin. This was the intuition of Harry Mason, the writer. And before he had been a writer, he had been a man broken and mended in fire and fog, a father who had seen the veil lift and the thing behind it stare back. Years of running away, repeatedly relocating, only to have his whereabouts discovered each time, leading to deadly battles fought in self-defense... it had honed the instincts of someone who was always being pursued.
And then, at some point, they began to watched him with unassuming faces.
For the past few years, there had been no signs of them, and Harry had hoped they had been wiped out in the internal conflict that took place in Portland... but no, they had survived with a cockroach's tenacity and returned, now swarming around their prey with a vulture's persistence and a flies annoyance.
They weren’t after him.
Harry clenched his jaw until his teeth ached.
They wanted Heather.
That truth was written in every glance they threw, every shadow that lingered a beat too long near their door. It was never him, buther. It was always her.
His fingers curled into fists, nails biting into his palms. The armchair creaked beneath him. The television murmured and laughed, bright with canned joy, but Harry heard none of it. None of the jokes and laugh tracks of the comedy show. All he saw was the empty space beside him, where his daughter should have been. Was it a mistake to let his daughter go into town alone?
No. He could not keep her with him forever. Heather was no longer a child. She was willful and sharp, and stronger than even she herself knew. She would need to be.
He couldn’t always be there to protect her. She had to protect herself. Even if it meant sending her into a den of wolves, or places where more dreadful beasts lay in wait. There was nothing more he could do to protect her...
“It’s progressive liver cancer. I’m sorry, but...” the doctor had said, like one might say “rain tomorrow.” The words had meant very little. He hadn’t flinched even when he heard it. He had only thought of Heather.
Glancing at the medical chart as if reading off a menu. He felt sorry for her, being forced to stand on her own in everything, and having to lose her guardian at such a young age. He had declined the doctor’s forceful recommendation for hospitalization and secretly continued treatment during Heather’s school hours. He would not burden her with drawn faces and white walls. He would die as he had lived since then, fighting in silence.
He wasn’t afraid of dying.
That was Harry’s true feeling.
But even if his body withered, even if his soul endured... he could not endure losing her.
Not to them.
He never wanted her to go through that again. And yet, those persistent followers were so detestable. They would come for her. He knew it as surely as he knew the sun would rise. And he could only watch from his chair, powerless and decaying, a lion with broken teeth.
“Come home safely, Heather.” he whispered to the empty room.
And the comedians laughed louder, with their voices shrill and empty.
The light had fled. Not dimmed, not flickered—but fled, chased away from the earth by something darker than night itself. At the foot of the stairs, the subway was a pit of shadow, and Heather hesitated at its edge like a soul before the abyss. The stench hit her first. It was pungent and acidic, like piss left to stew in the corner of a unsanitary restroom. And the stains on the platform... dark and rust-colored, they were oozing into the cracked tile. The beam of her flashlight cut a thin path through the dark. Concrete walls, splintered and peeling. Rails eaten by rust, their once-gleaming surfaces now red with time and rot. It was the same kind of ruin she had seen before. The same dream.
"I've had enough of these hellish ruins." Heather muttered angrily, a prayer too bitter for church and too late for salvation.
But her prayers, rarely offered as they were, was selfish and likely in vain. She had come seeking the train home, but all these signs posted on the station's walls, they were all mocking her with directions that led to nowhere. Her platform and her world, laid across the tracks.
Heather clicked her tongue, a small defiant gesture that would’ve earned her a stern glance from her father.
"...Looks like the train won't come anytime soon."
She eyed the rails. It was closer than the long path around. It was a gamble. But in this twisted space, who could say which path led where? Time and logic bent like heat waves here. Crossing seemed quicker.
She stepped down.
And the void erupted in light.
A horn, shrieking like a dying beast, and a wall of steel screamed down the tunnel towards her. Heather's breath caught. She leapt, her boots skidding on stone, and flung herself to the far platform just as the train screamed by, a steel leviathan in a world of phantoms.
"Shit!"
Her heart pounded. Sweat clung to her brow. That was no coincidence. The timing was too cruel for mere chance. The darkness hated her. It watched her.
She stared across the tracks, and glared into the black. The silence that followed was worse than the shriek. Something was waiting. Heather’s eyes lingered on the opposite platform, lit dimly by her wavering flashlight. She clenched her jaw, resentment curdling in her throat. The growls that echoed from the tunnels were distant, but ever present, like the memory of a threat that refused to die.
She sighed. The stairs again. Her oldest enemy wasn’t the beasts, it was the labyrinth. The place itself. This station, twisted and reborn with every descent. The spaces folded like parchment, reshaping what was once familiar to her into something cold, different, and cruel.
"Come out and fight! I'll take you down!" she shouted. However, it was more to bolster her own courage, than out of any hope it would bring forth a foe. But the darkness was a great maw, and it swallowed her words without echo, leaving her feeling even more isolated.
Once again, the stairs led to the wrong platform. None of it made sense. There should only be two platforms, one for each direction. She noticed another set of stairs across the same platform. This was not how Hazel Street had been. She knew it. Yet here was another, appearing where her memories swore none had ever stood. The closer she got, the louder the hiss and crackled from her pocket radio became. From the shadows, it came, flesh mottled and raw, its jaws split down the center, its eyes gleaming with hunger. It was another one of those rabid dogs, warped by some profane hand.
"So it was you," Heather smiled. She welcomed the clarity that came with the familiar. It was like recognizing the rules of a game you hadn’t played in years. Two shots. One to stagger it, and the other to end it. The body twitched once and then it was still.
The darkness, now silent without the feral growling—
The only sound now was her own footsteps, and somehow that was worse. The quiet wrapped around her like a winding sheet. A chill ran down her spine, prompting Heather to turn around. And above the tracks, in the ring of her flashlight’s pale glow, she saw it.
A figure clung to the ceiling, shriveled and grotesque, limbs curled like dead leaves. Its skin was tight and dry, and cracking, but its eyes—those tiny black eyes—shone like wet coal. They studied her, not with hatred, and not even hunger, but something stranger: curiosity.
An elderly mummified monster. It was the same one she had encountered in the elevator at the shopping mall. Back then, a mesh barrier had kept it from attacking her... Heather raised her gun… and then, her hand lowered. It made no move. No noise. It merely watched, suspended in stillness. And for all its horror, it felt almost childlike in that moment. There was something of awe in its gaze. She lowered her gun. While it was hard to believe in harmless monsters, she didn't want to waste bullets on one that wasn't attacking her. Still, She turned from it, wary but untouched, and climbed the stairs while keeping her attention on the creature.
“Protect me, Dad,” she whispered. “Please… just let me get home safely.”
Heather had been born in the city, raised on its noise and soot, its ceaseless rhythm of horns and heels. She knew its tempers; its street-corner prophets, its knife-flashing shadows, its reek of old piss and fried food. None of it had ever unnerved her. She was forged in it. But this? This was not the city. She clutched the pendant at her throat, and felt its cold against her skin. It was no weapon. No shield. But it had been her father’s gift, and in that lay its strength and comfort. His face came to her, smiling faintly as he always had, even when the world was falling apart. That was her only solace now.
She wandered alone through the maze-like subway station. Again, she found herself descending. Again, she crossed the rails. Again, she felt the trembling in her bones.
Suddenly, a warning horn blared. It happened just as Heather had reached her intended platform, narrowly escaping an ambush by another dog-thing, as it lunged from the black while she was on the tracks. She ran. Climbed. Boots slipped, fingers scraped, and then she was up, just as the train thundered in, slamming the monster with the wet crunch of flesh meeting steel. It dragged the creature beneath its wheels, screeching as it passed, coming to a halt long after it should have.
A train.
Finally, a train.
Finally, I can go home!
Heather felt a surge of joy.
Most of the train doors were tightly shut, with only the one at the very end open. She stepped inside, and the door slammed shut behind her. Not with the steady pace as it should have, but more like jaws snapping shut.
No matter. Go with the flow, do what you can.
Heather forced herself to think positively and moved toward the front of the train. The train swayed and swung beneath her feet. Every car she passed was empty and quiet, and devoid of warmth. Still, she believed. There had to be someone. A conductor. A person. Or just a face. A voice would even be enough. Just one thread of reality to anchor her.
She reached the front car.
There was no cabin.
No engine.
No driver.
Only more seats. Empty and waiting.
Heather stood and stunned, in the last car of the train.
The world moved around her, but no one was at the helm.
I've always strived to protect her.
From the moment he first cradled her in his arms, Harry Mason had sworn to protect her; this second chance the world had granted him, this echo of a daughter he had once failed. Heather. His Heather. His true child, if not by blood, then by fate.
He raised her with firm hands and a wary heart. Not soft, never soft. Life was cruel, and softness was a kindness the world rarely returned. He taught her resilience, taught her how to stand when the world wanted her on her knees. If her grades suffered for it, if her fists flew faster than her words, if teachers called and sighed about her tomboy behavior and schoolyard fights, then so be it. Surviving without breaking was more important than excelling in studies.
Harry chuckled softly, though the sound came out brittle.
The irritation from a moment ago now felt like a lie. Reflecting on memories with Heather softened his heart. Though she's a feisty seventeen-year-old now, in Harry's mind, she always appeared to be the adorable seven-year-old child... the one with a face so much like the daughter he couldn't protect.
The tears came unbidden. I've become emotional, he thought. He wiped them away, ashamed, straightening in his armchair. He needed to be strong. For Heather. For Jodie. When he met her in heaven, he would not greet her bowed by guilt. He had already carried enough concerning their daughter.
Tonight, he was going to tell her everything. The illness he had been suffering from, the truth of her birth, the existence of the secret watchers which he had kept quiet about to avoid scaring her... They needed to discuss the future and he had to explain the legal procedures for inheriting the assets he had saved up. They could talk this over a leisurely meal. He had even prepared one worthy of celebration—or what could be passed for one, given that most of it came from that little corner Italian place and the duck in the oven may yet betray him. Harry’s culinary skills were such that he could manage to burn French toast to a crisp.
The apartment was filled with the delicious aroma of the freshly roasted duck. He couldn't wait to see the look on his daughter's face as she dug in. A smile spread across Harry's face in anticipation, only to dissolve into a grimace. The smell that reached his nose now was not rosemary or garlic. It was rot, raw and rancid, like the festering pits of that accursed town he had thought left far behind. He heard footsteps on the floor behind him, the sound of someone creeping into the room.
Harry froze. His body responded before his mind did, adrenaline burning away his grief. Of all the nights... Of course they would come now.
“So,” he said, voice low, bitter, “you’ve come for Heather.”
He had believed, foolishly, that staying far from Silent Hill would protect them. That evil was tied to its geography. That monsters could be outrun. He hadn’t considered that the past is a ghost, and ghosts always find their way home.
"Can't you wait just a little longer?" Harry spoke, not turning, not wanting to give his unwanted guest the satisfaction of his attention. "There are still so many things I need to tell my daughter. At least give me tonight. After that… do what you will.”
"No, that won't do."
A woman’s voice. Young, but hard. Cold. Not of Dahlia’s, but a shadow of her, cut from the same cloth. "You took something precious from us. You stole away a new era, a wonderful new world. That crime is unforgivable. No reprieve will be granted."
"So, you're one of them after all."
Harry smiled bitterly, and drew the pistol from beneath his coat, smooth and sure, born from his long practice. He had kept it close for such an occasion. He turned and fired, but not at the creature flanking him. No, he aimed it at the woman. Kill the head, and the limbs would die. If he killed the woman controlling the monsters, they too would disappear, after all, they were mere grotesque projections of her own will. The thing moved, with metal shrieking against metal. It deflected the bullets like one would swat flies away.
"Damn it!"
Harry stood, properly aiming the gun and targeting the monster. It was futile. His bullets had no effect. Still, he couldn't give up. There had to be a weak spot. If he could just find it... Keeping his eyes on the monster, he reloaded with years of hunted vigilance guiding his hands. But the moment his eyes flicked to the gun, a blade flashed through the air, slicing his left arm, and the weapon fell. He gasped. The wound was not fatal. Not yet.
"Give up. You’re only delaying the inevitable." The woman stepped closer, a smirk curling her lips. "Heather is in our hands now."
"You’re holding her hostage?" He laughed, raw and defiant. “But she’s still alive, isn’t she? You need her. You can’t hurt the Mother.”
"Not necessarily."
"What...?"
"Yes, we need her, as long as she fulfills her duties as the Mother. But if she refuses..."
"Stop!" Harry's expression changed from a defiant warrior to a pleading father. "Stop tormenting her. Don't hurt her anymore. Please, I beg you."
She looked down at him with contempt "Then die here, now. You were never meant for the new world.”"
“Nor were you.”
He surged upward, a knife flashing from his leg sheath
"You don't care what happens to Heather?" The woman’s warning made Harry’s hand faltered as he prepared to throw the knife.
It was enough.
A great blade struck him, punched through bone and sinew. He staggered back into the chair as if it had claimed him, blood blooming like red petals across his shirt.
Heather, his mind screamed but his lips could not. The pain dulled and the world grayed.
Jodie... he thought. I’ll be with you soon. Watch over her with me, wherever this road leads.
The night swallowed everything but the sharp steel silhouette rising before her, an unfinished monolith of concrete and iron, outlined by the narrow reach of her flashlight. The beams caught the light like bones unearthed, skeletal fingers clawing at the stars. It was a construction site for an unfinished building. Heather stepped forward, boots scraping on loose gravel and half-buried nails. It had taken her through a darkness beyond maps, only to ditched her into a station more dream than reality. A station with a name she didn’t recognize, but considering the duration of the ride, it had to be a station in her town. Fearing further encounters with trains that could whisk her far away to unknown destinations, she had hurriedly gotten off. And when no exit greeted her above, she had plunged into the sewers like a fugitive fleeing not from the law, but from some darker, older justice.
Now, at last, she stood before something real. Familiar.
"This has to be my town!" Heather breathed, her voice came out like a ghost’s sigh. She knew this building. She had regularly cursed its clamor in the mornings. She rolled her eyes at the whine of drills and the shouting of laborers. It was a blight upon the skyline. A headache made manifest. Now, it was a beacon. She was just a short distance away from the apartment where her father was waiting.
Just beyond it was home.
With a spring in her step, Heather pressed forward, scanning the fenced perimeter for an opening, a gate, anything that might offer passage. But the chain-link walls mocked her with their bareness.
"Not again..." She glared at the building like a girl betrayed by a friend. It loomed over her. No way around. There was only through. Another twist in the distorted space-time she found herself in. She found a door, its metal frame half-hung and crooked, and stepped inside. The air was thick with dampness, the scent of fresh concrete soured by time and neglect. Shadows clung to the corners like mold. The floor was scattered with debris, broken pallets, rusting tools, and bags of cement split like spilled guts. Though it was the process of being completed, the entire building felt desolate, like the workers had fled and never returned. She knew it was new, and yet it breathed ruin.
She moved carefully, footsteps echoing with too much clarity. The halls led nowhere, corridors that collapsed into walls, and doorways that opened to nothing. No exit. No logic. Like the mall before, the building was a maze dressed in architecture. She would have to go upstairs and take a longer route. Being under construction, the elevators were naturally out of service. The shaft stood gaping and black, a pit to swallow the foolish.
The stairs waited.
She had no choice.
"...This building is about five stories tall, great..." Heather sighed, dreading the climb ahead.
"My technical analysis indicates that soon there will be a massive buy-in, causing a surge, and she will be drawn to this place, lured by her greed," Vincent murmured, adjusting his slipping glasses with his fingertips. He carefully laid out cards on the table, one by one. The cards were tarot, yes, but their images were meaningless to him. It was the ritual that mattered, the laying out of fates, not the reading of them. He had done it since boyhood, when the rhythm of shuffle and draw brought calm in the chaos of a too-bright mind. Even now, the action soothed him, allowing his thoughts to align as neatly as an order book.
"Her long-held position, left to fester, has accumulated quite a swap. But it’s a negative swap… the ballooning negative has spilled over, becoming a 'tainted demon'…"
This was how Vincent saw the world. Not as a priest or a prophet, but as a trader. Not souls, but assets. Not sins, but losses. The divine was a market, and God the invisible hand. He had once walked Wall Street with the quiet swagger of a man who understood the game better than those who made the rules. Blessed with a brilliant mind that saw him graduate at the top of his class at twenty, he achieved success in the financial industry and amassed wealth at a young age.
Though he had achieved the American Dream and retired early, he had not amassed a fortune comparable to the likes of Bill Gates. Nevertheless, he had sold it all. Liquidated his empire. Given away every cent. In doing so, he had renounced material desires and chosen a path of faith. It was this conviction that kept him waiting now.
"…Her negative position should be liquidated," Vincent continued, quietly turning over cards. Another card flipped. The Fool, reversed. He flicked it aside with a practiced hand, not even glancing at its face.
A voice, distant and brittle as wind through bone, whispered in her skull.
"It is being invaded… by the Otherworld… a world that has taken the form of someone’s nightmarish delusions…"
Heather stirred on the cold concrete, her limbs trembling, her breath shallow, and her head spinning. The pain had struck like a hammer, sharp and sudden, driving her to her knees. For a moment, as her consciousness began to fade, she thought she heard a voice.
Her father's voice.
But the words made no sense. They belonged to none of the past conversations they shared, no bedtime stories he told her, and no whispered warnings he made to her. Still, she knew. It was him. Speaking from wherever the dead lingered, and desperate enough to reach her through the veil. She stood, slowly, swaying like a drunk. The world had changed. The air had thickened, tasted of rust and rot. The very weight of the place had shifted. The ground beneath her boots no longer felt like concrete but something ancient and crumbling.
She walked and the building had aged.
It felt as though time had warped, leaping hundreds of years ahead into the future, and revealing its future as a ruin. The smooth plaster and clean lines of new construction were gone. In their place: cracked tile, sloughing walls, stains seeping like wounds too deep to clean. The bones of the building had turned to dust. The walls and ceiling were brown and dingy, encrusted with signs and dust. Tiles that should have been installed during construction were on the floor instead, swollen from moisture, peeling, and detached.
Otherworld...?
That was the only name she had for it now. It seemed like the only explanation. Like the mall, and the station. Could it be that Dad was trying to tell me about this...? she questioned herself.
Invasion. Someone's delusion.
But whose?
Heather bit her lip, swallowing the answer that was on the tip of her tongue.
The hallway ahead was narrow and broken. The flickering beam from her flashlight revealed the thing that blocked it. A grotesque colossus sprawled across the passage, its body pale and distended, its skin ulcerated and weeping. Its head was little more than a lump atop the bloated trunk, its features sunken, and flesh folding over itself like wax melting under a candle. It breathed. That was the worst part. The rise and fall of that vast, diseased belly. The giant looked like a malignant tumor ghost.
"Move," Heather said. Her voice sounded small in the echoing corridor.
The bloated monster showed no sign of attacking, it was just lazily lying there. However, its massive body blocked the hallway, preventing her passage.
“If you don’t move,” she warned, leveling her pistol, “I’ll shoot.”
She didn’t want to. Bullets were precious. Fear was worse. She wanted to save them for when she encountered a truly ferocious enemy. But, she fired one shot, carefully aiming at the head to kill it with a single bullet. The shot echoed like a whipcrack and the giant stirred. The monster bellowed. Not a scream, but a groaning roar of anger, or some unfathomable hunger. Then it surged forward.
Heather’s blood ran cold.
It came at her in lurches, each step jiggling with its bulbous flesh, every motion sluggish but immense, befitting of its huge frame. The stench it carried was unbearable, like carrion left to rot in the sun, and corpses piled in plague-ridden streets. It did not just smell, it clung, like hands clawing at her skin. As it rushed towards her, its ulcerated flesh jiggled and a massive weight bore down on her. Overwhelmed by the sight, she turned and fled, and her lungs burned bright.
I don't want to be crushed by that thing! she thought, her heart slamming in her chest. There were many ways she would prefered to die, but suffocating beneath folds of diseased meat? Not like this.
The stench of decay filled the air, and just thinking about touching its oozing, festering body made her skin cowered in terror. And the thought of contracting an incurable skin disease by a meager touch would not fade away.
Desperately fleeing, Heather felt an odd sensation beneath her feet. The floor buckled unnaturally, causing her to stumble and thrown forward. Her ribs cried out. Her breath fled her. The impact left her unable to move. The monster was closing in as the sound of the thing’s mass bearing down, like a building falling and the sea breaking a levee.
I'm going to get crushed!
"No!"
GWAAAAAAARGH!
Her scream and the monster’s roar as one, human pain twined with inhuman anguish. Then, collapse. A deafening groan as the floor gave way, swallowing the beast whole. Heather rolled, and dragged herself up, and peered over the jagged lip of the broken floor. The monster lay below and writhing. It spasmed like a twisted sack of rotting and ruptured meat. It wasn't dead, but it wouldn't follow her anywhere soon.
The building continued to bend around her, and the shape was always wrong. Doorways where none should be. Stairs that led back to the same floor. A place eating itself from the inside out, determined not to let her find an exit. She checked any accessible room, eventually stumbling into one. A waiting room, familiar in the way dreams are. There were old chairs strewn about, and a reception counter with dust laid on top, thick as snow. The room could have been a typical psychologist’s office.
What's this?
On a bench, there was a piece of paper, yellowed and curling at the edges.
"Found the holy one. Kill her?"
The words were scrawled in ballpoint, messy and deliberate. Flipping it over, she saw a photograph. Heather herself was in it. A candid, taken from a distance.
"What the hell is this!"
Heather was infuriated. The image burned in her hand. The name that rose in her mind like bile: Douglas, the unremarkable middle-aged man who claimed to be a detective.
Is it that guy’s doing? Kill me? Calling me a 'holy one'... it sounds like something a creep would say... Of course, he is...
A noise!
A sound cut through her thoughts, from beyond the door.
Someone's here... Did Douglas follow me... to finish on what he was starting... and drop this photo...
She crept forward, heart hammering. Her fingers brushed the pistol at her hip, still warm from her body, and familiar in its weight. The door creaked beneath her touch. She nudged it open.
Inside the consulting room, a man sat at a wide desk. He was young, not much older than herself, wearing spectacles and the smugness of someone far too sure of himself. Tarot cards were laid out like bones in a ritual.
"Who are you?"
The man looked up, smiled, and waved.
"Bit forward, don’t you think? No introductions?"
"You're some counselor or a doctor?"
"My major in college was science, specifically mathematics, so unfortunately, I’m not a doctor. But, well, you could say I heal people now."
"Don't dodge the question!" She thrust the photo at him. “This yours?”
"Yes, it’s mine. A meddlesome friend gave it to me, but I didn’t need it, so I threw it away. I don’t intend to kill you, Heather."
"You know me?"
"Yes. But don't worry. The name's Vincent Smith. I’m on your side."
"I don’t trust you. The one who gave you this photo, was it Douglas?"
"Douglas... No, he has nothing to do with me."
"Then it must be that woman, Claudia?"
He stood, the mask of civility cracking.
"Don’t lump me together with a woman like that—"
The smile vanished. And his voice turned steel.
"Don’t compare me to that zealot. A puppet with her strings pulled by an crazy old hag and her delusional obsessions... Sorry, I forgot, she was your mother, wasn't she?"
"My mother? What do you mean?"
Heather frowned. Her father always said that her late mother, Jodie, was an intelligent and wonderful woman. So, could it be... the real truth is...?
"You don’t remember."
Vincent slowly approached Heather.
"Harry didn’t tell you, did he? He kept the truth to keep you on his side. Harry, the doting father… turned out to be quite the cunning trickster.”
"Talk about my dad like that," Heather hissed, "and I will fucking shoot you."
The safety clicked off.
Vincent shrugged.
"My apologies. Please, calm down."
“So, you know everything, then? About him?"
"Yes. Everything."
"Then tell me. What’s happening now? What are those monsters?"
He smiled again, but now it was the smile of a man watching a fire from a safe distance.
"Did you enjoy it? The thrill? Have fun. It’s going to get more and more interesting."
"So you are just like that woman... you’re sick in the head!"
She backed toward the door, her gun never wavering.
"Wait! I'm not finished talking!"
She didn’t wait. She left, rage and revulsion twisting in her gut like serpents. She couldn’t breathe in that room. Couldn’t think. All she knew was the fire in her veins, and the man with glasses behind her, watching.
The car coughed like an old man choking on his own spit. Douglas steered it through the dying light of evening, the wheel creaking beneath his calloused hands. Once, the car had gleamed like a knight’s armor. That was years ago, when his son was small and the world still held wonder. They used to drive with the windows down, chasing the horizon like it meant something.
Now the upholstery was torn, the paint faded, and the engine grumbling with each mile. Like its owner, it too had seen better days.
The boy was no longer around. Buried, like the past. Douglas didn’t speak of him. What was there to say? Grief didn’t need words; it needed whiskey.
Heather drifted through his thoughts like smoke.
He’d been hired to bring her in. A simple job for a girl with eyes like stormlight and a habit of being in the wrong place at even a worser time. But now, somehow, she’d already met with the client. The job had gone sideways without even allowing him the dignity of a confrontation. He called the client to clarify the situation and got new instructions, but couldn’t reach them. Unsure of what to do, he initially thought of going home, have a drink, and go to bed, but something gnawed at him. He gripped the wheel, stared through the cracked windshield.
Douglas reminded himself:
“To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle.”
A saying from an old Chinese sage and it clung to him like a curse.
You're a man, right, Douglas? Weird things are happening around that girl. Don't be a coward; help her out. Otherwise, you might end up screwed out of a job.
There was something wrong around that girl. The kind that made the air taste different, like copper and thunder. He'd seen things. Heard things. Monsters in the dark. A woman talking about gods and sacrifices. None of it made sense, but his gut twisted all the same.
He could walk away. There was no shame in that. Wasn’t his daughter. Wasn’t his fight. But then again, no Heather, no payday. And if she ended up dead, there’d be no one left to pay him his success fee. Practicality, if not nobility.
The wheel turned. And the car groaned. He made the U-turn, heading back into the city’s heart.
The self-proclaimed hard-boiled detective was heading to the apartment where Harry and Heather lived.
To whatever fate waited for a tired old man in a trench coat who still believed, somewhere deep down, that a little courage might make a difference.
The door groaned on its hinges as Heather pushed her way out of that godless building. Night air struck her like baptism, cold and clean. She drew it in greedily, purging the foul stench of blood and rot from the grotesque space inside the building.
Her boots echoed on the pavement as she stepped into the city streets. Streetlights glowed softly in the mist, and through curtained windows she caught glimpses of domestic warmth, dinner tables, laughters, and silhouettes dancing in yellow light.
It was her home. And it remained unchanged.
Thank goodness. My hometown is the same as always.
Heather quickened her pace. The nightmare was long behind her. It had to be. She clung to that hope the way a drowning woman would clinged to driftwood. She wanted to have a shower, a nice warm meal, to sleep soundly in her soft bed, and listened to her father’s gruff voice when he called her a delinquent, and to forget everything that had happened today.… It would all be fine, once she got home.
The Daisy Villa Apartments stood just as she’d left the building. Her footsteps slowed as she approached the door at the far end of the hall, the room they shared. Just the two of them, but it was always enough.
As soon as she stepped inside, the exhaustion of the day hit her all at once. Heather stretched and relaxed her body.
"Dad, I’m home."
Harry who usually greeted her cheerfully with "Welcome back, delinquent girl!", was now silent. He was definitely there, she could see his back as he sat in his armchair, watching TV. The glow painted shadows across his broad shoulders. Maybe he was too absorbed in the show to hear her?
"Listen, Dad. Something unbelievable just happened."
She started recounting the countless terrifying events she had to share, as she moved closer to Harry. But he kept facing the TV.
"Dad...?"
Heather moved in front of the armchair to block the TV and gasped.
The world broke.
The breath she had held back escaped as a scream.
Harry wasn't there.
He was no longer in this world.
What sat there was no longer her father. Not in any way that mattered. The corpse was slumped and slack, soaked red with blood. A jagged wound split his chest wide, and his mouth hung open in the slack-jawed finality of death.
Her screams pierced the walls. She screamed until her lungs were empty, then stood in a daze, unable to move. Eventually, she collapsed to her knees, clinging to Harry's lifeless body and weeping. Her hands, slick with his blood, cradled what remained of him. This was the final nightmare that sealed the series of unfortunate events. The worst misfortune that could happen in a young girl’s life.
Despite being just the two of them, Heather and her father had never felt lonely, only happy. Their life together now had been shattered to thousands of broken fragments.
Who...?
Who did this to Dad...?
Why did this have to happen!
Harry's chest was stained with blood from a deep wound, and the blood had dripped down to the floor, leaving a trail deeper into the room. Her eyes caught the trail. It pooled, dripped, then led away, leaving a bloody path across the room, to the open window. It didn’t look like her father had come from there. It was more like someone who had moved while carrying a bloody weapon. The trail led to the open window, and towards the fire escape...
Whoever had done this… they’d gone that way.
Heather's grief hardened. From that grief, it turned bitter fury. Strength returned to her body. She forgot her fatigue, grabbed his gun lying beside the chair, and replaced her own nearly empty one, and sprang out of the window, rushing up the fire escape. On the apartment rooftop, she saw a woman. At a glance, Heather knew this woman was the culprit. It was Claudia, with madness wore her face like a crown.
“You were close,” Claudia said, her voice laced with mockery, her smile like a blade.
Heather glared back at her.
"It was you, wasn’t it? Why did you kill my dad!"
"Revenge for seventeen years ago. If that man hadn’t interfered, things would have gone according to our plan… But he ruined everything, took you away from us, and ran away. This is his just reward."
"I will get you for this!"
Heather raised the gun, the weight of vengeance in her grip.
"That’s the spirit," Claudia’s smile widened, awful and ecstatic. "There’s another reason I killed him: to stir up your heart with hatred."
“Why? What did I ever do to you?”
"It’s necessary. In time, you’ll understand why."
"No! I'll never want to understand!"
"You must try to remember me quickly, and realize your true self. You will birth 'God' and build an eternal paradise."
"Just shut up!"
Heather squeezed the trigger.
She couldn’t stand not avenging herself against this woman. She was a murderer. It was only right for such people to be executed. Here and now, Heather would play the executioner herself.
But the bullet missed.
She couldn’t hit her.
Her father's words rang out in her mind, like a curse or a command.
"Don’t shoot people out of anger. Even in self-defense, if you act emotionally, you’re just a murderer. Even if the law permits it, The heavens will judge you. God forgives only when you judge calmly, to protect your loved ones and yourself. Only then, strike evil without hesitation."
Taking advantage of Heather's hesitation, Claudia vanished into the dark.
"Everything returns to the beginning" her voice echoed. "I’ll be waiting for you in Silent Hill."
Heather aimed her gun again towards the direction of her voice.
There stood a monster blocking her way. From the murk and mist of the rooftop’s edge, it came silent, save for the rasp of its breath and the wet scrape of steel upon stone. It had the shape of a man, if men were forged for war and shod in slaughter. Two legs bore its weight, but the limbs that hung from its shoulders were no arms, only gory scythes, dulled not by time but caked with crust of old blood. Its head was swathed in coarse, dirt-colored cloth, the makeshift helm bound tight as if to blind it or perhaps it was to restrain something far worse within.
"It was you, wasn’t it, who did it..."
Thinking about it, Heather realized her father wouldn’t be easily killed by one woman. His shooting skills were far better than hers. He had taught her to shoot, to track, and to think. He was no easy prey. He wouldn’t have succumbed easily, he would not have fallen to a mere thief or a madwoman… even if he hadn’t been well lately. If the enemy was a monster, her father's admonition didn’t apply.
Heather didn’t hesitate. She fired a bullet into the monster’s chest. Her father’s death echoed behind her eyes, a memory steeped in pain and rage. She aimed not for the head, nor the limbs, but the heart, the same spot where her father had been hit. The shot rang out, cracking the silence like ice beneath a foot.
With swift movements, the monster wielded its massive blades. The bullet ricocheted off the monstrous figure, confirming it was not of human origin. Heather had no means to fight back. Was she to give up on revenge and flee? Yet, the monster blocked her escape, swinging its blade at her.
"Ah!"
The blade whistled past her nose, so close to her face she could felt the kiss of wind upon her cheek. Heather dropped, a clumsy sprawl of limbs and panic, hitting the rooftop hard enough to jolt the breath from her lungs. She scrambled backward on hands and heels, boots scrabbling for purchase, but the thing had vanished once more into the darkness. Her light had died in the fall, a mercy or a curse, she could not say. The night pressed in thick around her, blind and silent. She hesitated to turn it back on. The switch was beneath her thumb, one flick away from illumination, but light was a danger now. In the dark, she was a ghost; in the light, she would be a target. In this darkness, not knowing the enemy's position, it was too dangerous. If she remained a ghost, she might find a chance to strike back.
Slowly, her eyes drank in what little the city offered, a wan spill of white from the distant streetlamps, a gleam of starlight caught on wet steel. And there it was. The monster. Its silhouette hulking, motionless and uncertain. The rags about its head wrapped tight, robbing it of sight. In the silence, it fumbled, like a blind rat in an unfamiliar maze.
Gotcha! she mouthed, her lips shaping the word with silent triumph.
She had always been at home in the dark. Summers spent under the forest canopy, threading her way through branches and briars without a lantern. Moreover, the gun she held was her father's, equipped with a silencer. Harry had always kept it that way at home, just in case. A modification he had made long ago. She had found it odd before but now she understood. With a monster as the opponent, involving the police would complicate things. There would be no police, no calls, and no sirens. Disposing the creature quietly in the mountains was for the best.
She rose like a shadow behind the creature, barely a breath in the cold wind.
Moving silently like a cat burglar, she shifted positions while shooting. The monster shrieked, high and jagged, a sound that grated against her teeth. It spun wildly, but found only darkness. It was vulnerable to her silenced shots. Her father's pistol spoke in soft coughs. The creature wailed again, a sound like steel being torn, but each time it cried, it bled. And with each shot, it grew slower, its steps more uncertain, its anguish louder than any alarm.
Then silence.
It fell, not with a crash but a sigh, as if the night itself had claimed it. Heather stood over it, breathless and trembling. The darkness was her ally. And in that darkness, she had won. The silence was thick now, not peace but the stunned stillness after a fight. She had won, but victory brought no warmth. Heather’s heart did not lighten despite avenging her father.
When she returned home, her feet dragged as though each step pressed against the weight of her grief. Douglas was waiting, his face as grim as a funeral shroud, standing vigil over Harry's body.
"I don’t know what to say..." Douglas began, his voice brittle. "There are no words of comfort."
"Then don't say anything... get out" Heather pointed to the door, yelling.
"But—"
"Get the fuck out!"
He hesitated. His face twitched with shame, then resolve. "Alright. If that’s what you want. But at least let me help lay your father to rest. I couldn't help you before, and I need to make amends."
"No need. I don’t want help from someone associated with that bitch." Heather spat, her fury rising anew.
"You mean Claudia?"
"Yes! She did this to my father!"
"I’m not her ally. I was a hired man, nothing more. That seems to be over now. Please, let me help you. I want to be on your side."
Why is he so desperate? Heather wondered, looking at Douglas. She was wary but something about him reminded her of Harry. Not in his looks, but in his mannerism. There was earnest and sincerity there. Perhaps it's worn and beaten like old leather, but real nonetheless.
Reluctantly, she agreed.
"Just help me move him."
Together, they moved Harry's body to the bedroom bed and prayed for his peace. His face, despite the brutal end, looked serene in death.
"What will you do now?" Douglas asked, with concerns in his voice, careful not to stir further grief.
"I can live on my own," Heather replied, still turned away. "I’m his daughter. I’ll give him a proper funeral. But first, I need to do something. I have to go to Silent Hill..."
She murmured the last part, but it was enough for Douglas to frown.
"Silent Hill? What’s in there? Will you be alright?"
"I have to go. She told me to come. The woman who made the monster....Claudia. I know it’s dangerous, but she has to pay. And when i find her, I'll kill her myself."
"How will you get there?"
"I’ll figure it out."
"I can give you a ride."
"I don’t need your help."
"It’s a long drive and it's too far to walk. I’ll wait outside. Come by when you’re ready."
Heather finally looked Douglas in the eye.
"You might die if you come."
"That's fine. Nobody's gonna cry over my grave anyway. The only ones who’d miss me are the debt collectors and I doubt they’d weep."
Douglas gave a small, wry smile and walked out.
I won’t say goodbye, Dad. I’ll be back soon. We’ll meet again in Heaven someday. She whispered.
Heather prayed once more for Harry's peace, her shoulders shaking. The dam of her emotions broke, and came flood of tears streaming down her cheeks.
"I will avenge you," she swore through her sobs.
The car waiting outside was no noble steed. It was rusted in places, looking like it hadn’t seen a wash or wax in years, with mud caked onto the sedan’s body. The interior wasn’t any cleaner, with crumpled fast food bags and empty soda bottles littering the back seat, resembling far more like a garbage truck than a passenger car. To top it off, it smelled faintly of cigarettes.
“While I was waiting for you, a guy named Vincent showed up,” Douglas said as he started the car. “Do you know him?”
“How should I?”
Heather responded curtly, hiding her tear-swollen eyes. Explaining their encounter at the clinic seemed too troublesome.
“He seemed to know a lot about you. Like he knew everything. Said to look for a man named Leonard once we get to Silent Hill. He even gave me a map. And this… this was by the body.”
Douglas handed over a notebook. One glance at the pages, at the familiar loops and slashes of her father’s handwriting, and the silence settled over her like a shroud.
Heather read the notebook silently, and Douglas, respecting her need for privacy, kept his gaze ahead. The road unwound before them. After a long while, raindrops began to fall, cutting through the mud-stained windshield and breaking the silence between them. The drops washed over the windshield in a steady stream with rhythmic thump of wipers fighting a losing war against the thickening rain.
“It’s starting to rain,” Douglas remarked, the first sound either of them made in miles. He glanced at Heather, who had closed the notebook and was sitting with her eyes shut.
"You asleep? You feeling cold?”
“I’m awake. Just thinking.”
“Silent Hill,” he said, as if he had tasted something bitter. “Used to be a lakeside resort. Peaceful, people said. A place for families. But now…"
“Have you been there?”
“Only once, for a job. A missing person case. Never found them. There's something wrong with that town. You hear a lot of bad rumors in this line of work.”
“I was born and raised there.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to speak ill of your hometown.”
“It’s alright. I don’t have any fond memories of it either.”
“Wait… Weren’t you living in Portland when you were little? That’s what my investigation turned up.”
Heather flinched, her breath catching as though she’d taken a knife to the gut. Her skin paled to ash, her fingers tightening around the notebook.
“Hey, you feeling carsick? Should I stop?”
“No..." Her voice shook. "It's just that.... reading this made me remember… my past…”
Heather's voice trembled as she continued, like casting off a heavy burden from her chest. The emotions she had suppressed deep within her now came flooding out.
“Seventeen years ago, there was an incident there. A woman named Dahlia tried to summon a ‘God’ that the town’s legends spoke of, using her own daughter as a sacrifice.”
“Sounds like a crazy story.”
“It’s true. The ‘God’ was born from the sacrificial daughter.”
“What?”
“She had powers and was called a witch and hated by everyone at school. She could kill people just by wishing for it. But the ‘God’ she birthed was ultimately defeated by a man… my father, Harry Mason. Maybe it wasn’t a real god if a human could defeat it…”
Heather gazed out the window, her face clouded with melancholy.
“Now, it’s happening again. And this time, I’m the sacrifice…”
“Christ…” Douglas muttered. “Do you have those same… powers?”
“The daughter who had given birth to ‘God’...She lived just long enough to bear a child. And she entrusted the baby to my father before she died.”
“You’re saying that baby was…”
"My dad loved me as his own child. He didn’t even know what I was… He didn’t expect anything in return… And he died too soon. I haven’t even repaid him. I haven’t shown my gratitude. I haven’t told him how happy he had made me…”
Heather’s face was cold and stiff, devoid of tears, but the rain outside mirrored her sorrow. She opened the notebook again, and ran her fingers over the familiar script like a priest reading the last rites. The words were fading, but her father’s love had not. It clung to those pages, and to her.
I hope you will never have to read this. Perhaps it would be better for you to never know. But sometimes, we have to tell the truth. That's why I'm writing this, before I'm lost in death and oblivion.
What happened in the past and the story about who you are. It all began twenty-four years ago. My wife and I found an abandoned baby on the side of the highway. We had no children of our own and thanked God for this blessing, and we decided to take this child in... this girl. Three years later, my wife passed away. And another four years after that, I came to Silent Hill, answering the girl's pleas. Why she wanted to go there, I would never knew.
In that town, the girl vanished. Not that she actually went anywhere, nor did she die. 'She returned to her true self'. That’s what Dahlia Gillespie said.
Her true self... that was Alessa Gillespie, a girl burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the God by her own mother. In that fire, she released half of her soul, and that half resided in the baby... in that girl of mine. Of ours. After seven years, that half returned to Silent Hill and rejoined with Alessa, thus regaining her power. What she wished for was to kill the ‘God’ within her, summoned with the usual rites, and nestled within her womb. This was Alessa's wish, no matter the outcome, even if her own existence was at stake.
But her wish was not granted. My interference, wanting to save my own child, got in the way. Yet, I couldn’t save her. All I did was inadvertently assist Dahlia in her ritual to birth the ‘God’ from Alessa. Fortunately, the newly borned ‘God’ also died after letting out a single wail, probably because of the child’s and Alessa’s resistance.
After the ‘God’ vanished in a glow of light, Alessa appeared again and entrusted me with a baby, one who looked like that girl so long ago. And then she was gone, dead and I couldn’t save her. All I could do was simply clutched the baby to my chest and ran off. The whole thing felt like a dream.
But the reality was clear: the girl was gone, and a baby was in my arms. Seventeen years have passed since then, yet it feels like only yesterday, but again it feels like a million years had passed. At first, I was hesitant to raising that baby. I doubted whether I could love a being whose nature was unknown. I thought, 'She could be that young woman who snatched away my beloved daughter.' That led to sadness, then to anger... there were times when I put my hands around her tiny little throat. I thought about abandoning her more than once. That's what a terrible person I am.
But in the end, I couldn’t let her go. The baby... you, Heather, would look at me with your innocent eyes and smile. Even now, I can't forget about that girl. But I love you. I have no doubts about that love now. That's all I ask you to believe.
To my precious daughter...
Harry Mason
“I'll head over to this Leonard’s house. Heather, I need you to check out the hospital… Are you sure you’ll be alright on your own?”
“I’m not a kid anymore. Or do you want me to hold your hand the whole way?
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. I’ve been alive for over fifty years, and I’ve never experienced anything like this before. It still feels like a dream.”
“More like a complete nightmare.”
“Oh, absolutely. I just hope to wake up soon. Anyway, come back after you've checked out the hospital.”
“I know.”
Douglas left first, the motel door sighing closed behind him. They had agreed on the room as a place to return to, should either one of them survive their errands. Heather lingered, not yet ready to face what waited in the mists. Men could step into danger with weapons drawn and little thought for their appearance. Women took more time to prepare. They readied themselves not just in body, but in mind and spirit, and she would need every shard of hers sharpened before she faced the fog-wrapped monsters.
Two nights had passed on the road. Without a license, she’d have never made it alone. She was grateful to Douglas now. His endless, terrible jokes had been a balm. His humor was dry, but somehow, it softened the grief lodged in her chest. Her father was gone. Her past had torn open like an old wound. Now the town loomed before her, its face hidden in thick white veils. And yet, the sight did not frighten her as she had expected. Perhaps grief had dulled her fear.
However, her hatred for Claudia burned bright. There would be no forgiveness.
As if dressing up for a date, Heather armed herself with weapons she had brought from her apartment. She holstered a pistol and survival knife in the belt around her waist and carried Harry’s prized shotgun. She loaded as many spare bullets as her pockets could carry. The flashlight and pocket radio, her saviors in this waking nightmare, found their places too.
"All set," she murmured, ready to explore the town of Silent Hill.
As she stepped out of the motel room, the damp, white air immediately clung to her. The fog washed her skin like a damp cloth, heavy with miasma. She coughed once, instinctively holding her breath against the noxious substance that seemed to thicken the air.
She was in the South Vale district, south of Toluca Lake, where the motel faced Nathan Avenue. West along that road, then south along Carroll Street, lay Brookhaven Hospital. The map had shown her the way, but they could not show what awaited in the mist.
The fog had been thinner when they arrived under the cover of night, but now, in daylight, it pressed in like a living thing. Despite daytime, the sun was completely obscured, making it impossible to tell where it was. Heather could see no further than a few yards, as if the world ended just beyond her reach. A night time in a regular town would have better visibility. Heather walked along the sidewalk, carefully watching her steps to avoid getting lost. There were no cars, so she could walk in the middle of the road without worry, but that would make it harder to see the buildings along the way, and possibly miss a side street. No sounds. No people. Only the soft squelch of her boots against damp concrete, and the fog curling around her shoulders like the fingers of some long-dead god.
Heather remembered what Douglas had told her about the remaining townsfolk and thought,
It’s them. Claudia’s followers. The ones that helped with Alessa's sacrifice. The ones that are as delusional as Dahlia Gillespie. They’re trying to repeat that ritual, now using me...
She might’ve walked into their snare like a lamb for slaughter, but she had no regrets. To run would change nothing. These people would chase her across the world. There would be no peace, no sleep, until the matter was ended for good.
The fog thickened as she turned onto Carroll Street, where the shadows crawled and nothing good lived. The radio hissed to life on her belt, its static no longer just sound, but omen. Then it came, low and swift, a hound-shaped abomination, its howl more human than beast. It leapt from the mist, with hunger in its eyes. Heather aimed her shotgun and fired without hesitation and the body flew apart in a red mist. She no longer feared these creatures; they were just a nuisance. She calmly stepped over its shredded body.
But pride, like fog, can cloud the senses.
She underestimated a small figure that appeared.
The new creature, unlike anything she had seen before. It was small and wrong, its body sheathed in glinting metal, with two heads that twitched in opposite directions and limbs like sabers. It moved with an unnatural gait, twisting its torso in circles as if mocking her. She raised the weapon again but the blast rang out and did nothing. Before she could shoot another, it flew into the air, despite having no wings. It soared as if the air itself bore it aloft. Its speed defied nature. One moment it spun across the pavement, the next it was above her, claws descending in a blur. Heather couldn’t keep up with her shotgun. She rolled away, barely escaping a strike that would’ve gutted her.
“Shit, this is bad!”
The fog was no longer a veil, but a prison. It swallowed sound and sight alike. Heather could felt the terror of the town's thick mist entombed in her bones. The creature’s flying form blended into the white, making it impossible to predict where it would strike from. Every breath she drew tasted of death. She could not win here. There was no other choices. Driven by the fear of death, Heather ran as fast as she could.
Fortune, fickle though she was, had not yet abandoned her. Brookhaven Hospital loomed just ahead.
Its windows were blind, its walls stained with yellowed age and filled with thickening silence. The weakened sunlight, blocked by the thick fog, could not adequately light the interior of the hospital. What light there was, pale and sickly, did little to pierce its hollow halls. Inside, the air grew heavy. It reeked of disinfectant and something older, metal and mold and the faint, sickly sweetness of rot. Her flashlight cut thin shafts through the gloom, throwing shadows like blades along the walls. The hospital was deserted. No doctors, no patients, no staff bustling with purpose. Only the sound of her own footsteps, echoing... and something else. Heather’s ears picked up a strange dragging sound. A scrape as if shoes too heavy for flesh were being drawn across the floor, step by labored step.
Something, or someone, was coming to meet her.
Slowly, a female nurse appeared. A nurse, perhaps once. Now only a mockery. The woman limped into view, her legs twisted beneath her like broken twigs. She approached with a slow, halting gait, her hunched posture resembling someone utterly exhausted from a night shift. She wore the garb of a caregiver, a white uniform stained with rust-red smears that told of wounds not healed, but inflicted. In her hands, she carried an iron pipe, slick with old blood. Not a tool for healing, but for killing. Perhaps, she had already sent someone to their death.
Human? Heather thought, breath catching.
At first, Heather hesitated, thinking she was dealing with a lunatic.
"Hey, you," she called out.
In response, the nurse swung the iron pipe at her. Heather instinctively blocked it with the barrel of her shotgun. Steel clanged against steel. Up close, the nurse’s face was bloodless, her eyes glazed and bulging like those of a rotting corpse. There was no soul behind them. Even if she had once been human, whatever spark had once animated this body was gone. Heather’s doubt died in that moment. She kicked the nurse hard in the gut, driving her backward.
"I don't have time to play with you."
As the nurse tumbled, Heather fired a shotgun blast into her.
“Aah...”
The blast echoed through the hospital’s hushed corridors. The dying scream sounded oddly human, like tearing silk, and the nurse’s body convulsed pitiably and did not move again. For a moment, Heather stood there, chest heaving. Guilt pricked at her not for the monster, but for what it had once been.
She moved deeper into the building, past through windows and halls. In a room behind the office, Heather found some medical records. The atmosphere was far from that of a workplace, resembling more of a living room, likely a break room for the doctors. On the coffee table sat a medical file bearing the name Leonard. According to what Douglas had heard from Vincent, Leonard might be hospitalized here. Heather looked over the file.
"Leonard Wolf, Room S12. Displays symptoms of mild schizophrenia, including light hallucinations, auditory and visual, emotional instability, and obsessive thoughts. Continued observation is required. Generally, he has a mild and cooperative personality with a strong sense of justice. However, there have been episodes of extreme violence when highly agitated."
"Leonard!... This has to be him."
It seemed Vincent's information was correct. So far, he had not lied. Would finding Leonard provide clues to Claudia’s whereabouts? She thought to herself.
She knew which room her target was supposed to be in, but getting there wasn’t straightforward. The hospital was no longer built of stone and steel alone. Locked doors blocked her path at various points, turning the hospital into another labyrinth. It was just like the mall. Malevolence shaped its walls, twisted the hallways. Doors that should have opened were locked without reason. She had to search the hospital meticulously, exploring every possible route to her destination. She moved through examination rooms, patient rooms, the nurse center, operating rooms, the X-ray room, the cafeteria, and the lounge.
Not a single soul met her. No doctors in white, no patients in wheelchairs. Only the nurses remained, twisted echoes of care turned into violence, their bloodied uniforms and vacant stares reminders of what once had been human.
Could Leonard really be in a place like this? she wondered.
Doubts crept in, but she had no choice but to keep moving forward. There was no direct lead to Claudia, and there were no more breadcrumbs to follow.
In one patient room, where the air was stale and the sheets yellowed with time, she found something that gave her pause. A magazine lay abandoned on a nightstand, its pages curling at the corners, the ink faded but legible. It bore a name that struck her like a bell.
Hope House?
Drawn by something compelling, she picked it up. Within, the magazine was little more than filler, celebrity gossip, cheap horoscopes, stories to waste away the long hours of sickness and waiting. But this… this article drew her in. For a time, the locked doors, the monstrous nurses, even the man she hunted were all but tucked away in the back of her mind.
Teaching Despair: Hope House
Silent Hill's suburban children's home, 'Hope House'. Despite its name, what occurs behind its false image is a place where children are kidnapped and brainwashed.
The institution is run by a charity organization known as Silent Hill Smile Support Society, sometimes referred as '4S'. While it is undoubtedly commendable to take in and care for orphaned children, one must question the legitimacy of this charitable act when its true nature reveals itself to be a cult that indoctrinates children with its own warped dogma rather than providing them with good religious values.
Mr. Smith (temp), who lives near the facility, had this to say:
'At night, I sometimes hear their strange prayers and the children's cries coming from the facility. I once went there to complain about it but they ran me right out... Has anything changed? No, it's still the same.'
In fact, this reporter also attempted to conduct an interview at Hope House to uncover the truth but was refused admission. No response was given, and not a single photograph was permitted.
During my visit to Hope House, I noticed a suspicious-looking round structure nearby. This building is reportedly part of the facility, but no one I spoke with could tell me what the tower was used for. It certainly doesn’t seem necessary for a children’s home or that it has anything to do with the business of raising orphans. It might be a prison or a church for them. The true organization behind Hope House is a cult with no specific name, known locally only as 'The Order'. It's a long-standing religion that is deeply interwoven with Silent Hill's history, but with a dangerous element of elitist radical beliefs.
I intend to continue investigating 'Hope House' and 'The Order'. I've always believed that our most important duty is to tell the whole truth and show the children the true path.
Joseph Schreiber
Heather's eyes snapped back into focus after finishing the article. The words of the Hope House article still lingered in her mind like smoke in a ruined hall. Then pain struck true, sharp and sudden, lancing through her skull like a dagger of ice. A face appeared, unbidden and terrible in its familiarity. It was a memory spurred by the article, but she was certain the child wasn't from Hope House. A whisper from Alessa's memory, faint but clear, told her so. Kindred to that sorrow, born of the same era, swaddled in the same heavy cloth of suffering.
Who is she...?
The image danced in her mind, cruel and elusive. The girl’s smile was wrong, too full of love, of pain, of doomed hope.
Hey, Alessa the girl said, her voice like wind in dry leaves. I love my daddy. I really do. Truly, truly love him.
Tears welled in her smiling eyes.
Heather gasped, shaken. She shook her head, as if to scatter the memory like dust. For a moment, the girl's face became vividly clear, and it bore an uncanny resemblance to someone familiar.
"No" she whispered. "It can't be...!"
Her boots echoed through the empty corridor as she reached the third floor, the west hallway yawning out before her like a wound. Room S12 was empty. She had searched the hospital from top to bottom, each hallway, each locked door, each twisted chamber. Yet it was empty.
Where is Leonard? Is he even in the hospital? Or has she been chasing a ghost all this time? The thoughts came to her in fury.
"Come out, wherever you are!" she shouted in frustration, her voice cutting through the corridor like a thrown blade, but only the groans of nurses answered her, those wretched half-women who patrolled the dark, as blind and mad as the place that birthed them. Heather turned away, fury rising with her breath. If nothing else, she would have to pin her hopes on Douglas, and pray he returned with more than just weary footsteps.
Then, from inside room S12, a phone's shrill cry from. Heather tilted her head, her expression tightening with hope. Could it be a call from Douglas? Room S12, it turned out, was a VIP suite complete with a telephone on the night table. Heather seized the receiver.
"Claudia?" a man's voice asked.
Heather, disheartened moments before, was instantly invigorated. The caller seemed to know Claudia and was calling Leonard's room, no less.
"No, I'm—"
"Don't lie to me, Claudia!" the man roared, heedless of her interruption. "You're always running away like this. Have you come here to apologize? Or maybe you still not realize your folly? 'Salvation for all mankind'? Give up that ridiculous ambition! If you believe you can achieve that, know your place! Arrogance is an unforgivable sin!"
"Wait, just listen to me for a sec—"
"I heard enough. Why have you become such a person? Where did I go wrong?"
"Listen to me, already! I'm not Claudia!"
There was a pause. Breathing.
"...You're not Claudia...?"
"My name is Heather."
"Heather, I see..." the voice softened, uncertain now. "I apologize. I am Leonard Wolf. I was in that room until recently and thought my daughter had come to visit."
"You're Leonard... Claudia's father?"
"Yes. Are you an acquaintance of Claudia's? ...Are you one of her followers?"
"No! But I'm looking for her! Where is she?"
He sighed, long and grave. "I hear anger in your voice, your voice is laced with hatred. You want to kill her, don't you? I don't know what she did, but she's still my daughter, despite her foolishness. I would have forgiven her if she admitted her mistakes and changed her ways. But it seems it's too late...Heather, will you help me?"
"Help you?"
"I'm trapped and Claudia must be stopped."
"Where are you?"
"I'm not sure. Somewhere in this hospital... I think the entrance is at the end of the hallway on the second floor's west side. If you free me, I can help you. I have a seal. Please..."
The call abruptly ended.
Heather lowered the receiver, her thoughts storming. She had many questions, but meeting Leonard Wolf in person would suffice. This was a significant breakthrough. Still... the word he left behind clung to her thoughts like ash. 'Seal' lingered in her mind. The word burned and her skull throbbed with it and her thoughts danced like falling ashes.
The west wing of the second floor had once been impassable, barricaded by a ruin of toppled gurneys, shattered wheelchairs, and rust-flecked instruments strewn like the aftermath of a butcher’s rebellion. Or at least, it had been that way when Heather first came through.
Now, after the phone call, Heather found the debris gone and the hallway stood open, cleared clean as a banquet table. At the far end, a metal door waited. Heather stared. Had the nurse monsters tidied up the mess for her? That's ridiculous. She had faced too many bizarre experiences to be surprised or questioned the impossible anymore. The world here bent to strange whims, and she had stopped looking for sense in it. She reached for the metal door. Its hinges groaned in protest as it opened, revealing a passage painted in rust and ruin. The corridor beyond was a wound, walls, floor, and ceiling all soaked in a deep, iron-red hue. Fluorescent lights protruded from one side of the wall, their yellowish glow intensify the hue and turned every shadow into a blade. The ceiling was so low it seemed almost within reach.
Another dead end?
The corridor stretched forward, only to end in another barrier, this one a metal shutter, like those used in slaughterhouses to keep the beasts penned. As she stepped forward, it retracted with a grinding scream, rising like a curtain on a stage she had not agreed to walk. The path twisted, winding into a warren of steel and sickness. The shutters responded to her every steps, rising, falling, guiding her not by her own will, but as though something unseen had already mapped her journey.
A familiar symbol appeared, burned into the wall like a brand.
Heather had seen this kind of mysterious marking before. A circle, marked by the strange runes and shapes she had glimpsed before. Yet… this one did not bring pain. The usual spear of agony that stabbed her skull when near such markings was absent. The design must have been altered somehow.
I know this symbol...
Her fingers traced its outline, the metal warm beneath her touch. And then it came, a fragment of memory vividly resurfacing in her mind like sunlight through a storm..
--- "Still has an unusually high fever... she still won't wake up... just barely breathing with the IV..."
--- "Why... what is keeping that child alive?"
The vision came to her like an old video in a dark room. A nurse appeared, frail, trembling, caught in some unseen turmoil and contemplating the situation. She was Alessa's nurse.
Her name... Lisa... Lisa Garland...
The name rose unbidden, drifting from the depths of memory not wholly her own. She took care of her so diligently, the only gentle hand in that place of agony and fire... but she eventually wasted away, driven mad by what she saw, and lost her sanity...
Heather's cheeks were wet with tears, briefly recalling the warmth and pain of those times. She wiped them away with the back of her sleeve, harshly, as though ashamed. Strangely, the symbol had vanished from the wall. Despite the oddity, Heather pressed on, knowing she had no time to dwell on it. The corridor ahead was darker still. The lights above had failed entirely, casting her in near-blackness. Her flashlight cut a path, narrow and uncertain, until she reached a door. Beyond it lay a two-story atrium, narrow and suffocating, the walls streaked with blood in long, drying ribbons.
A metal ladder presented itself. Heather started climbing, the rungs cold beneath her hands. Halfway up, she froze. Clinging to the underside of the grated floor was a thing that once might have been a man, now mummified in filth, its limbs twitching with vile intent. It might attack, but she had no choice but to proceed. She tightened her grip on her shotgun, her hand white-knuckled on the ladder, and the other ready to shoot as she carefully continued her climb.
The creature's eyes glinted as she neared its level, but it only watched her with an unsettling gaze, making no move to attack. Just its gaze, fixed on her like a weight. At the top, she spared the creature a withering glance before turning away. She exited the atrium, finding herself seemingly back on the hospital's third floor. But this place was drastically different from what she had explored earlier.
Red, red, red...
Everything was crimson, walls, ceilings, and floors, all soaked in a wet sheen of blood and all shone with a deep crimson hue. But not just painted. The surfaces writhed, pulsing subtly, as if something alive gnawed just beneath. Termites in the walls of the world.
In this accursed place, creatures lurked here, grotesqueries born from a mind undone. They crawled low to the ground, grotesquely large arms fused like meat left too long to rot and swollen from burns, faces jutting with mandibles like those of great ants. They moved with the randomness of insects, but the malice of demons. Even the sight of their blood and flesh splattering from gunfire was revolting, so Heather grimaced and tried to pass them by. But as she leapt to clear one, it lashed out faster than she believed possible. A claw seized her ankle and she fell.
"Don't touch me!"
The shotgun roared and its echo obliterated the creature's head, and its foul-smelling blood and flesh spattered onto Heather's face and hair. The stench was unbearable. But worse was the indignity. Something inside her snapped. Her finger clung to the trigger with wild abandon. Shells flew. Flesh tore. Her face was a mask of rage, a fury unbound by logic or care. The world narrowed to blood and vengeance and the echoing thunder of her weapon. Her breath came in gasps. Her face was streaked in foulness, her hair matted. She pressed forward in a half-trance, searching for Leonard, no longer certain if she was hunting or fleeing. She eventually finds herself on the ghastly first floor of the hospital.
"Come quickly. Get me out of here."
The voice was little more than a murmur, a prayer muttered into the filth-choked dark. Leonard’s words echoed faintly through the damp of the basement, as though even the shadows had grown tired of his pleas.
Years had passed. Years in which time meant nothing, and silence became a second skin. He had waited imprisoned, abandoned, and damned. And all of it by her hand. His own blood. His own daughter. The damp had seeped into his bones. He longed for the sun, for the feel of wind on his skin, for the warmth of righteousness, yearning to bask in the glory of God. He had believed himself chosen, a vessel of holy purpose, yet here he was, imprisoned by his ungrateful brood. The faithful servant, now nothing more than a chained beast.
His teeth gnashed together, sharp and yellowed, his grotesquely transformed face twisted further in anger. He lashed out, splashing water with his iron arms. He could feel her. Claudia. Her presence like a poison in the air, a sacrilege in his temple. She was now a sinner in his eyes for what she had done to him. He resolved to punish her first and then the rest of the wicked. Leonard whispered his oath again, the words as familiar as breath, for what it felt like the millionth time, pledging to serve as a warrior of honor and guardian of the seal, offering the blood of sinners.
Room C-4 offered no man, no Leonard crying out for salvation but it held something else. An altar-like setup. Not named as such, yet unmistakable in its purpose. Two stretchers were placed side by side, one with a burning candle and a knife laid beside it, while a mysterious symbol adorned the central parchment. On the other stretcher lay an open book, which Heather picked up.
The book was titled "Lost Memories."
"One of the notable rituals, long forgotten in modern times and recorded only in rare texts, is the sacrificial ritual... Pray, then drive a copper stake into the man's chest, piercing the heart and wetting the altar with the spurting blood to appease and show loyalty to God. Another, higher-ranked ritual involves burning the sacrifice alive. This is reserved for clergy and bears similarities to fire sacrifice seen in nearby religions, suggesting a solar deity..."
The memory burst in Heather's mind like an explosion of flames.
"No!"
The word broke from her like a sob. The book slipped from her fingers, striking the stretcher with a dull thud. Her hands felt scalded, as if the ink itself burned. Her skin prickled, drenched in sweat though the chill was sharp as knives. These were memories she should not recall.
Stumbling, she fled the room, collapsing in the hallway, breathing heavily. Her heartbeat pounded fiercely. For a moment, she had relived Alessa's agony, raw and searing, the feeling of fire licking flesh. She longed to flee, to put a dozen walls between herself and the cursed room but could not will her body to. Leonard. She knew. Buried memories whispered the truth. He was beyond this room, the way forward lay through that altar, hidden by a secret passage.
Resolute, she stood and retraced her steps, not to flee but to explore deeper into C-4. Finding an empty IV bag, she recalled the eerie corpse hanging in the treatment room on the third floor. Heather filled the bag with blood collected in a bucket beneath the corpse and carried it back to C-4. She poured the blood onto the altar, the viscous liquid soaking the parchment and pooling around the candle’s base just as the ritual was described in the book. Somehow, this caused a spatial distortion. When she turned around, half the room's floor had vanished into a hole, a gaping pit descending into the bowels of the earth.
"Is it Heather?" A man's voice echoed in the dark underground, like a priest's whisper in a crypt.
Heather descended into a vast cavernous space, pushing back the dense darkness with the beam of her flashlight. The space below yawned wide, its walls blackened concrete, sullen with mold and age, its high arched ceiling disappearing into shadow. Iron bars marked old cells, their bars rusting and warped by time. Water lapped at her waist, cold as a grave, and reeking of rot. From the depths of the cavern came the sound of rushing water, like a waterfall. The place was no hospital now. It seemed to use the sewer system and designed like a prison. A tomb. If someone was trapped here, it could only be...
"Leonard?" Heather called into the darkness. "Yeah, it's me. As promised, I've come to rescue you. Where are you?"
"Thank you. Now finally I can get out of here," the voice replied, thick with anticipation and rage long-boiled and still hidden in the darkness. "Claudia's delusions will end. 'Salvation for all mankind'— absurd idealism, a fool's creed. Ha! There's no need to share blessings with those who oppose 'God!'"
The voice trembled with joy at being freed and anger from years of confinement.
"Come, Heather. Together, we will punish Claudia. She deserves to die!"
"Wait a minute," Heather said. That word again. Die. It came too quickly, too easily from his tongue. Revenge had scorched her soul, yes, but the talk of murder, of sanctified killing, she hadn't consciously considered going that far. She only wanted to ruin Claudia's ambitions, and then... leave her to face legal judgment. Something also felt off about Claudia's claim to "save all humanity." Heather couldn't completely hate her; a part of her felt pity, unable to despise Claudia fully.
Heather steadied herself and asked, "I don't understand. You're her father, right? What are you saying?"
"What am I saying?" the voice replied, seemingly exasperated. "Justice is blind to blood, it transcends family ties. Evil must be rooted out, those who commit it must be punished, even if they are kin."
Yet, to Heather, Leonard's voice itself sounded evil. There was no righteousness in that voice. Only bitterness and decay. Hearing it in person, she felt it was a voice she had heard long ago. A haughty, despicable face faintly resurfaced in her mind.
"Indeed, 'God' is merciful, but that doesn't mean leniency is permitted. Neither good nor evil should be saved. Only those who act righteously are chosen by 'God.' Only the chosen ones will pass through the gate on the coming day. The right to live in Paradise should be granted only to those who hearken to 'God's' voice, like us. Don't you think so, Heather?"
"Whatever you say," Heather replied dismissively, her dizziness turning into a headache. The face of the detestable man came clearly to her mind. "I'm not like you. I don't belong on your side. I don't want any part of that kinda paradise."
"What?" The voice from the darkness was now tinged with anger. "Are you a heretic? Have you been deceiving me? You approached me to steal the seal and destroy 'God,' didn't you?! Infidel!"
"What are you talking about, what is this seal thing, anyway?"
"Don't play innocent. I won't be fooled again. I will protect the seal, as commanded by 'God.' My duty as a guardian is to defend it to the death. The only thing you'll get from me is a gruesome death!"
"Leonard, could it be that you..." In the resurfaced memories of Alessa, a younger Leonard was holding a young girl's hand. A smiling girl, hiding her wounds under her clothes.
"Death to all those who turn their backs on 'God!'" Leonard's voice bellowed.
Yes, he was always shouting, even at his daughter. Not to guide, not to teach, but to silence. The voice of authority wielded like a cudgel. It echoed now through the wet blackness, a thunderous voice rising from filth, heralding a man whose appearance was far removed from the face in Heather's memory.
From the belly of the dark he rose, a shape wrong in every sense. No human walked toward her.
What rose was a bizarre creature whose form was seemingly that of part monkey and part fish.
Heather was almost speechless at the sight. His body bulged with lumpy scales, armored like a deep-sea monstrosity, the thick ridges of flesh glistening in the faint beam of Heather’s flashlight. Where his forearms had once ended in hands, there were now blade-like pincers, long and cruel.
He's no longer human. He has taken on a form befitting of his ugly heart.
Heather aimed her shotgun. Whether he was still man or had become a beast mattered little. He had already ceased being anything worth saving. The fear and hatred of young Claudia burn Heather's heart. Heather’s aim was true, guided by that fire, filled with righteous indignation on behalf of the abused girl.
The blast tore from the weapon, and Leonard was hurled back into the sewer’s filth, vanishing beneath the sludge. But someone like him wouldn't die so easily. This was a man who had terrorized children with threatening lectures and relentlessly drilled his own daughter with physical discipline. Such a fiend wouldn't die from a single blast.
He came again, surging through the water like a creature born to it. With the last shell fired and no more spare ammunition, Heather met him with the butt of her shotgun, smashing it into his grotesque head with all the collective fear of the children and the anguish of her once dear friend.
Though the underwater blow didn't do significant damage, it seemed to inflict some pain. Leonard stood, raising a roar that echoed like a scream through the cathedral-like sewer.
Heather now wielded a handgun, aiming it with unwavering determination. The gun's muzzle flared, and the booming shots were an extension of Heather's own cries of anguish.
She loved you so much!
She loved you so much!
The wide cavern filled with the death throes of the monster. The final bullet drove through the last of his rotted flesh. The creature staggered, shrieked, and fell. The water accepted him with a great splash. Red spread outward, mingling with the black, as his body stilled. Leonard floated, blood seeping from the gaping holes in his chest, his face turned to the void above. Heather stared. The image of the man he once was began to dissolve in her mind, but the pain remained.
"You orchestrated this, didn’t you? You made them meet!" Claudia’s voice cracked through the silence, sharp and trembling with fury.
Vincent did not flinch. He met her rage with a smirk, his tone calm, almost amused, like a man toying with a wasp he had already plucked the sting from.
"Was that wrong?" he asked, his eyes gleaming.
"Because of you, my father is dead!"
"Well, isn’t that a relief? He’s been summoned by 'God.' Leonard was quite fond of 'God,' wasn’t he?"
"Those who mock 'God' will never recieve salvation. You will go to hell. The beautiful paradise and God's eternal happiness will be forever out of your reach."
"Isn’t it a bit childish to think 'God' will save you?"
"What do you know anyway?"
"I know a lot about what happiness in this world looks like. I seek happiness too, you know. From my perspective, you’re the one who’s mistaken. Keeping your father alive in that state and calling it happiness is pure self-deception."
"No!"
"Deep down, it's all about revenge, isn’t it? You talk about confirming 'God’s' glory, but in reality, you subjected Leonard to the magic experiments hidden in Silent Hill. It was all human experimentation under the guise of vengeance."
"Lies! You twist everything!"
"You hated your father, didn’t you? I can see it. I can picture you as a little girl, beaten and bruised, and crying in the dark, begging for love where there was none."
"I didn’t hate him! I loved him! I love my father! But the memories of the past are so painful... that’s why! That’s why we need 'God'!"
"You’re like a child. What you call faith is nothing more than a child crying out for love. That’s why you’re all alone."
Vincent shrugged.
Claudia shook her head vehemently, her eyes filled with determination.
"You don’t understand! None of you do!"
Her gaze was resolute, a look of desperation in her eyes.
...Heather found herself lying on the cold floor of Room S12, where she had first received the phone call. the world steady beneath her once more. No water. No blood. No monster. The sewer, with its echoing chambers and crimson rage, had vanished as though it had never been, like a fever dream slipped away with the dawn.
She blinked against the light. The air was still musty with hospital rot, and the shadows clung to the corners of the room, but daylight filtered through the windows now. She stood up and looked out the window. The fog beyond remained thick as ever, yet it bore that muted grey cast of a sun struggling behind clouds.
Another distortion in time and space?
She rose to her feet slowly, limbs aching with the weight of unseen burdens. A glance around the room showed no signs of battle, no blood upon the tiles, no body in the water that no longer flooded the halls. The hospital had reverted to its normal, though still desolate, state from the nightmarish otherworld.
"I guess it's time to head back... I hope Douglas made it through."
As she turned, her boot struck something small and hard. The sound was soft, metallic. She knelt, fingers brushing the floor until they closed around a cold, flat object. A medal, worn, palm-sized, and engraved with a sigil that had already imprinted itself upon her memory. The same symbol identical to the one she had seen on the hidden door in the second-floor hallway.
Heather stared at the medal, a sense of familiarity and foreboding washing over her. This symbol, whatever it meant, was clearly significant. She pocketed the medal and stepped out of the room, ready to face whatever awaited her next.
Heather returned to the inn, Jack's Inn, as the rusted sign still insisted, wary and weary, her boots sodden from the foggy streets. The motel room they had chosen as a meeting place stood with its door slightly ajar. As she entered, she was greeted by an unexpected presence. A young man, dressed in a tailored vest, crisp shirt, slacks that had never seen blood or grime, starkly different from the scruffy Douglas. Heather frowned.
"Vincent..."
"Glad you remembered," the bespectacled young man smirked.
"What are you doing here?" Her scowl deepened.
"I had some business to take care of," Vincent dodged the question.
The words sat in the air like a lie. Heather raised her gun, steady and sure. Despite his intelligent and handsome appearance, he did nothing to endear himself to her. He was, after all, one of Claudia’s associates and the same man who had insulted her father’s memory with casual disdain.
"You’re always so... forceful," Vincent said with a troubled smile. "I came to tell Douglas about Leonard. No point looking for him anymore."
"So you know..." Heather's voice trailed off.
"I know everything. You met Leonard... I’ve been watching."
"You’ve been spying on me?"
"This town is my home. I see everything."
"And you’re here to tell Douglas? That’s very kind of you. What’s your real reason?"
"I’m not lying."
"Fine, I’ll let that slide. So, where is Douglas?"
"Right, he left a message for you. Said he couldn’t wait any longer and went out, left me here to watch the place. Really, Douglas is so impatient. You’d think he’d know better than to rush, but no, he just couldn’t sit still and--"
Heather shook her gun to cut off Vincent’s unnecessary chatter.
Vincent shrugged. "He said the church is across the Toluca lake."
"Is that all?"
"That’s all."
"What does he mean by that?"
"Don't you understand? That's where Claudia is. Across the lake, on the north side."
Heather reacted sharply to his words. "So, you told Douglas about the Church. And now you’re claiming it’s his message?"
Vincent just smiled.
"What are you planning?"
"Nothing... If you want to get to the church, you'd better go through the amusement park. It’s probably the only way there now. This town is tricky, you know. You can’t get there by the usual routes. The old roads don’t always go where they should."
"Sending me to the church... that’s your real plan, isn’t it?"
"Well, trust me. I’m not lying."
Trust you? Like I could ever trust you! she thought, her grip tightening.
Heather kept her silence, heading towards the exit.
"Take care," Vincent called after her. "It’s a long road you’re walking, but still, closer than heaven!"
Heather stood beside Douglas’s battered old car, its frame rust-pitted and windshield streaked with time and dirt. She retrieved what she could, spare bullets and reloaded her handgun, leaving the motel behind. Her shotgun, so recently her salvation, now hung useless and battered, more club than firearm. Only the handgun remained, its magazine cold and full. The survival knife on her belt felt laughably small, like a kitchen blade in a war.
The amusement park...
When Vincent mentioned it, something inside her had stirred, a shiver down the spine and a tightening of the gut. She hoped it was just an irrational fear. However, as she advanced northwest along Nathan Avenue, she found herself facing a re-enactment of her worst nightmare. The sun was dying. The town was already in the evening's shadow, casting long reaches between buildings. Although the garish lights had dimmed, the arch-shaped silhouette of the entrance gate loomed in the fog, identical to the one she had seen in her dream at the hamburger shop.
If only it were just a dream... she had thought. But what if it had not been? What if it was a warning?
Suppressing the urge to turn back, Heather stepped through the gate. As soon as she passed the open iron grid door, a pressure settled on her chest, as if she had crossed some invisible threshold. It felt as though she had broken through a barrier, stepping into a place even more malevolent than before. The air changed. Heavier. Angrier. The world behind her faded, and the world ahead became...other. She staggered, doubling over with a cry.
Agony bloomed in her belly, sharp and sudden. It came like claws from within, raking against her ribs. Her breath came in ragged gasps, and sweat poured from her face. She groaned in pain, struggling to resist. Something was moving inside her, trying to assert control.
No! I won't let you have your way!
She clenched her fists, gritting her teeth. And just as suddenly as it had come, the pain ebbed. Heather wiped the sweat off her brow, her muscles trembled, but she stood. Despite the lingering dizziness, she pushed forward, her pace quickening. She wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
In the square ahead, the twilight revealed horrors clothed in parody.
"A rabbit..."
Ahead, sitting on a bench in the twilight shrouded square, was a mascot rabbit costume, identical to the one in her dream. Slumped on a bench, its plush body sagging, its comically oversized head soaked in dark, rust-colored blood. The eyes stared without seeing, black pits behind glass. She had no desire to find out what or who might be inside the costume. Near it, a cage. Roughly the size of a phone booth. Within it twitched a creature mummified in rot and rage, bound in wire and cloth, its body twitching like a broken puppet.
She walked briskly over the brick-paved path, some sections of which had turned into a metal grate, clanging beneath her feet. Eventually, she reached another brick gate. It stood closed, looming like the first, and she knew what waited beyond. If her dream had not lied, monsters would await her beyond the second gate. Heather checked her pistol, fingers cold against the metal. She took a long breath, trying to silence the clamor of her thoughts. She summoned the map from her memory, etched there from dream and dread alike.
"Alright, time to move. Wait for me, Claudia."
As she laid her hand upon the gate and began to push, her heart surged not only with hatred or duty, but with something far more human. As she pursued Claudia, she felt a mixture of emotions swirling within her: sorrow, pity, fury, now far more complex than before.
Twilight bled over the amusement park like a wound, painting rusted iron and ruined joyrides in bruised shades of grey. Near the teacup ride, long silent and still, Douglas stood, his revolver raised and steady, aimed at the thin figure cloaked in shadow and righteousness.
"I hired you to find that girl and you've performed serviceably. Our contract is over. I've already arranged for your payment to be deposited in your account... Do you have any other business with me?"
Claudia stood opposite him, her pale robes fluttering like a prophet’s vestments, though there was no wind. Her eyes, clear and cold as winter glass, did not flinch from the barrel of his gun.
"It's not about the money. It's about Heather."
"What do you mean?"
Claudia frowned at the gun pointed at her.
"Because of your lies, I brought harm to her."
"Lie? What lie?"
"You told me Heather was kidnapped."
"It's the truth. She was originally one of us. That man, Harry Mason took her away from us and kept her hidden."
"Yeah, but she was happy with Harry. Besides, claiming she belongs to your 'cult' is a violation of her human rights."
"She is the Holy Mother. The one who bears 'God.' Such mundane matters are beneath her."
"Bearing 'God'...?"
"When Alessa truly awakens within her, she will give birth to 'God.' That is her ultimate joy... something she can't realize because that man had deceived her with false happiness. The liar here is Harry Mason."
"Yeah? What happens when she gives birth to this 'God'?"
"'God' will usher an Eternal Paradise. Everyone will be saved. No hunger, no sickness, no old age, no need to compete driven by greed. All shall live by God's grace alone."
"No this, no that, no nothing. Sounds like a dull paradise for castrated sheep, maybe."
"I pity you... You still don't understand. You're just a sheep, tamed by this corrupt world. Your clouded eyes can't see the truth."
"Corrupted and proud of it. I've long accepted mine. But to prevent you from corrupting Heather with your revenge... I'll kill you."
"Do you think you can kill me? Is it really so easy for you?"
"I can. I've already killed before."
"I truly do pity you. But that's not what I meant."
A sound scraped across the air, sharp and metallic, steel against steel, harsh as the cry of butcher’s knives. Still pointing his gun at Claudia, Douglas glanced towards the noise.
A figure stepped into view.
A figure reminiscent of a medieval soldier stood there. But rather than a noble knight, Its body was wrapped in burlap, stitched and hanging in layers like the shroud of a beggar, akin to that of thuggish mercenary. Its face was hidden beneath thick wrappings, its hands gripped a strange pair of weapons, tonfa-like blades, long and thin, scraping constantly against one another like a cook preparing his cleavers, the source of the noise that distracted Douglas.
"Do you know of the power that dwelled within Silent Hill?" Claudia said. "Here, fear is fertile ground and where man’s thoughts take root and bloom into monsters. "
"Did you create this thing?"
"Both of us did."
"What?"
"Your fear. My will. Its shape is the child of our thoughts."
"My... fear?"
Douglas looked again at the creature, its eyes glared beneath the burlap. And the eyes gleamed with hatred. Rebellious and young.
"You..."
Douglas recoiled. Memories stirred, shouts, fists, a door slammed too late. A boy's voice. A name he hadn’t spoken in years..
"Kill him!" Claudia commanded the monster in a triumphant voice.
Heather ran through the corpse of joy, through twisted steel and broken lights, beneath the skeletal ribs of dead rides and rusted signage. The amusement park, once a place of laughter, now snarled with beasts and shadow. And yet, she was not surprised.
As Heather sprinted through the park, she encountered the expected threats: the hulking giants emerged from the mist, their heavy limbs pounding the ground with dull force, rabid dog-like things with jaws lathered with spittle, slavered and lunged, and even the insect-like monsters that buzzed around her head. Each one came from where she had expected, just like in her dream. She knew the layout and her destination and did not linger. There was no battle here, only passage. She weaved between them, her breath ragged, her footsteps steady. She ran towards the roller coaster station. But the real challenge lay ahead.
Everything had unfolded just as it had in her dream, which meant that the next part would too...
The roller coaster loomed ahead, dark and high, its frame slicing through the fog like the bones of some long-dead leviathan. Fear gripped her, but there was no turning back. She had to press on for her target was within reach. She stepped onto the rusted rails, trying to banish thoughts of the ground far below, bottomless and waiting. The old rails creaking beneath her boots. Wind rushed at her in sudden, angry gusts, tugging at her skirt, at her limbs, as if the very air wanted her gone. She kept walking, forcing one foot before the other. The ground dropped away on either side.
It's close, she thought, a burning anxiety creeping up her spine. She could feel it. No matter how fast she walked, she couldn't seem to reach the end of the track. Her dream had told her everything, and it had not lied. Any moment now, the train would arrive, its sole purpose to run her down.
The vibrations came first, whispers beneath soles of her shoes, Then the shrill and high-pitched whistle piercing the air.Light bloomed behind her, bright as judgment, swallowing the beam of her own flashlight in its brilliance, lighting the tracks ahead as if it were daytime.
Heather didn't look back.
That was the difference. The only difference.
“Hmph.” It was the sound of defiance, barely breath, but full of fire.
She leapt.
Into the dark. Into the unknown. It was no calculated act but the will to survive, the need to defy fate written in dream and blood.
It was a desperate, all-or-nothing gamble.
The world turned, the wind screamed past, and then—a crash, a groan of bending tin, and stillness. Pain flared in her limbs, sharp and hot, but when she forced herself to move, she found nothing broken. Bruised, yes. Shaken, certainly. But not dead. It was a tin roof that had dented inwards, acting as a cushion and absorbing the shock, crumpled inward beneath her like a wounded shield. As she rolled off its side and lowered herself down, she recognized the structure: a ticket booth. The very gatehouse to terror. And yet, it had saved her from her dream's fate.
She rose, stiff and sore, drawing out her pocket light. Its thin beam cut through the gloom, revealing chain-link fences and cracked pavement. The place was still, no snarl, no skittering limbs or fleshless jaws. The fenced-in area appeared to be free of monsters. The only exit seemed to be the door of a building labeled "Borley Haunted Mansion," an attraction themed around the gruesome murder of a family of four. She went through the eerie attraction and emerged into a wide open area.
This area, too, was familiar, for it was inhabited by the same monsters she had encountered before. The creatures stirred as she passed, but she did not give them time. Her feet pounded the pavement, her breath fogging the air as she moved. Her eyes scanned for the path to the church, though she knew not what form it might take. With the darkness making the area feel like a maze, she moved along the chain-link fence, passing by the outdoor stage, then the "Whirling Rocket," and finally reaching the teacup ride, Beneath the dim flicker of a lone streetlamp, she saw a figure. Slouched. Motionless.
He sat by the stairs leading to the teacup ride, his coat stained and wrinkled, his beard wild, the look of a bandit or a beggar, not a man with a badge in his past. And yet, he lifted a hand in greeting, casual and tired.
"Douglas! Are you hurt?" Heather asked as she approached, looking at his outstretched leg. His trouser leg was torn, dark with blood, and the stench of iron lingered in the air.
"It’s nothing major. Just a few cuts. A bone snapped somewhere, I think. That’s all." Douglas said, forcing a smile.
"We need to call you an ambulance!"
"Don't bother. They won’t come to this town. Don't worry, I’ll be fine."
"You....you old fool!" Heather’s voice trembled with anger and worry both. "Running off on your own, and getting yourself hurt like that. So stupid."
"I know. I’m sorry."
"What happened to you?"
Douglas only smiled in response and instead asked her a question.
"Hey, what do you think will happen if that God of theirs really appear?"
"A god from a town like this... can't be all that powerful. I don’t think the world will change as much as they hope."
"But what if changes even a little?"
"Who knows?" Heather hesitated before answering. "Maybe things would be a little better. Perhaps Claudia is right... maybe people would be happier..."
"No," Douglas shook his head. "For a 'merciful God' as Claudia describes, the things that are in this town are cruel. We have to stop it, even if it kills us."
"You think you're Superman or something? Playing the hero won’t help. What can you do with your leg? Just...just leave it to me."
"...You remind me of my son."
"Your son?"
"My stupid son. Son of a stupid father."
"You had a family? You said nobody would cry for you if you died. That only the debt collectors would miss you."
"My son... was killed in a bank robbery. Stupid kid got himself shot robbing one."
Heather didn’t speak. The silence between them was thick with sorrow and shame.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. You're not like him."
"Maybe...maybe I’d have preferred being compared to your daughter."
Douglas’s lips curved into something like a smile. Shaky, brief. Then he lifted his gun and turned it, not to her, but with the barrel held up, as if weighing a question against the metal.
"If I took your life here, could I stop the cult’s plans?"
"Don’t be stupid!"
"Yeah, I’m stupid... trying to do fix something I can’t, and failing in the end."
Douglas lowered the gun and he leaned back against the cold railing, breath rattling in his chest.
"Stop Claudia, Heather."
"I will."
"Promise me."
"I will."
Heather started to leave, but turned back, glancing over her shoulder at the slumped, broken man behind her. With a conflicted expression, she muttered softly.
"Maybe it’s better... if you just..."
"You’re just as strong-willed," Douglas thought as he watched Heather's figure vanish into the dark. His son, Daniel,had once walked like that when he was young, head high, jaw set, filled with fire and belief in a world that might yet bend to his will. Douglas had seen greatness in him and that greatness would have grow with him. But he was consumed by his job, had neglected his family duties, failing as a father and ruining his son.
The memory struck him like a hammer to the ribs, a torment that still etched itself to his heart. He remembered the day it came. The shocking news had come from his superior at the police station. Chris Balmer, the stoic head of the detective division, known for his lack of visible emotions since childhood, had delivered the news with an odd expression, as though he was trying to mimic sorrow but failing, looking like he was smiling in surprise after eating something awful.
"I'm not here to blame you, Douglas, but there's been a terrible incident. Your boy... Daniel... was shot. He was shot and killed by one of ours. Bank robbery gone wrong." Balmer had said.
Douglas didn't remember much of what happened until he resigned. The world had dulled after that, sounds lost under the roar of disbelief. Douglas couldn’t remember much, only the eyes of his fellow officers, watching him not with sympathy, but judgment.. With a career as a former officer being nearly useless for finding new employment, and lacking the willpower, Douglas had shut himself away at home, drowning his sorrows in alcohol. The days turned to weeks, weeks to months. After spending what little savings left in his bank account on whiskey and gin, he borrowed money to keep drinking. His wife, Katherine had left, not for the drink but for the fights, the blame, the endless mourning disguised as rage. When the court sent divorce papers, he’d laughed bitterly, and yelled and slurred “Do whatever you want,” in a drunken haze an didn't even attend the court hearings. He let the world burn behind him.
Every day, from morning until night, Douglas thought about his dead son. There was no peace, only endless questions. Why had Daniel done it? Why had he resorted to robbery? Was it out of rebellion against him? Because he hadn’t been a proper father? Had Daniel truly fallen, or had he simply been lost, waiting for his deadbeat dad to guide and to hold him?
"I was just doing my duty as a police officer, as a guardian of justice, to protect this town, its people and my family... Why couldn’t you understand?"
But even he couldn’t believe it anymore.
Luckily, Douglas ran out of people to borrow money before he became fully dependent on alcohol. Hungry and sober, clarity returned to him like a knife, he had to face reality. He finally began to recover. With help from a former colleague, he found work as a temporary security guard and, once he had saved enough, opened a detective agency in his apartment. He remembered the reason he had become a police officer in the first place, his sense of justice.
It was penance more than profession.
He wanted to help society, to aid people seeking peace. So he dedicated himself to his small, unprofitable private investigator's office. Over time, the ache in his chest dulled and the ghosts stayed buried, and thoughts of his son faded into memory. But now, Claudia’s creature had dragged it all back. The accusing stares. The bitterness. The shame. The creature, shambling, wrapped in burlap and hatred, had stared at him with eyes he knew too well, when he returned home after being away. Not just monstrous, but familiar.
"Daniel..." Douglas had asked, stunned, his gun aimed but unable to pull the trigger. "Is that you?" The monster only glared at him in silence. It had not answered but it didn't need to.
"I know" Douglas said, voice hoarse. "Daniel, It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t really want to rob that bank, did you? You had those friends, those bastards whispering in your ear. It was just a prank that went too far."
Hatred in its eyes pierced Douglas, and he wept.
"I know, I know. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine," he admitted, his bearded face twisted with grief. "I should have scolded you, nipped your delinquency in the bud. You looked at me with those eyes, seeking a father's discipline, but I was too much of a coward, too afraid to reprimand you. I didn’t want to be the villain in your story.... Please forgive me."
And so Douglas had fired at the attacking monster, finally giving his son the punishment he should have delivered years ago. One final lesson given far too late. But that was all in the past now. Now he sat slumped against the teacup ride stairs, leg throbbing, heart heavier than the wound, gazing into the misty night as if it might return his son to him. The darkness reflected in his eyes, he smiled bitterly. The pain from his broken leg felt like a message from his son.
Heather moved through the remnants of fantasy and rust, past the fortune-teller's booth, its curtains torn like shrouds, past the fairy tale house once bright with the cheer of children’s stories, now sunken in decay. Snow White, her eyes hollowed, grinned with cracked porcelain teeth. Cinderella's dress, once shining, now dragged with filth. Then, into the square she came, and there it stood: the merry-go-round, frozen in time, horses paused mid-prance like beasts caught in amber. But it was not the carousel that caught her eye. There, in the midst of darkness, a brightly lit spot drew her attention. It was a small ice cream stand, cheerful in design and a memory of summers past. The item displayed there caught her eye, as if placed to ensure she noticed them.
"This is..."
And there, pinned neatly to a bulletin board beside the menu of sundaes and cones, hung something that stole the breath from her chest. It was a notepad identical to the one at her apartment. Harry often used it when he was away. Notes leaving messages like "I'll be late tonight, but save me some pizza in the fridge," or "Got called to the school by the teacher. Did you get into another fight with the boys?"
That familiar handwriting was on the first page of the notepad in the small stand.
No way! H-How could it be here? She thought.
Disbelieving, Heather read the note.
"Dahlia said that girl is a demon. She took my daughter as a sacrifice. It’s hard to believe. I mean, appearances can be deceiving. Looking at the photos in the hospital basement, I thought that girl looked like Cheryl. Is that why I feel this way? I do sense some negative force, but I just can't think of her as a demon. Moreover, she seems sad to me. Why do I feel like she's asking someone for help? But what matters to me is Cheryl. Everything else can wait after I've gotten her back."
The ink was real and the hand unmistakable. Judging by the names mentioned, it was undoubtedly written by Harry. Dahlia referred to Dahlia Gillespie, the ruthless woman who burned her own daughter, Alessa, alive. Cheryl was probably the girl Harry had adopted 24 years ago, who went missing in Silent Hill at the age of seven, Alessa's other half.
It was a mystery. Seventeen years had passed since Harry’s first journey to Silent Hill. Even if he wrote this note then, could it have survived until today? That was impossible, she thought. Someone would have torn it out to write a new one. It had been left behind, yet it remained here untouched and unfaded despite being left to the elements's mercy.
A trick, she thought. The cult had staged it, surely. But why?
No.
Heather shook her head. Not this one.
This had to be a message from her father, transcending time, space, and even death, sent to his daughter. It made no sense. And yet it made perfect sense. In Silent Hill, time curled like smoke, and memory was a blade that never dulled. Her father had been involved with the town, and so was she. It might be a message attempting to convey something, similar to the journal entries. What was it? Perhaps a warning? About Cheryl? Or Alessa?
Heather delved into the labyrinth of thoughts, trying to grasp Harry's true intent. The word "demon" lingered like a splinter in her mind. Alessa, the girl who had borne power too great for her years. A child cursed not by her choices but by what she was. She had been hated and despised for gifts she had never asked for, powers that had wounded those near her. Despite being good at heart, her power cared not to those around her, a dangerous trait now dormant in Heather's heart. Heather was her. Not wholly. But enough. The same blood. The same fire. Now, she had to carried that burden.
The headache struck her like a mace. Pain bloomed behind her eyes. She recalled the fear she glimpsed while reading the book on the altar in the hospital, the memories of Alessa burning alive, how the flames licked at her skin, how the stench of burning flesh permeated through the air, how her skin charred and darkened in the fire, how her screams of agony echoing like a dirge, her face contorted like a witch being executed, filled with despair, sadness, and hatred.
Heather stumbled forward. She didn’t even realize where she was until she stood before the merry-go-round. Lights adorned the ride, glowing eerily in the night, like a trap for summer insects. They lured her in, like a corpse calling to crows. And still, she climbed the steps. There was nowhere else to search. Was the path to the church here? The moment she set foot upon the ride, the silence shattered. Music burst forth, shrill and saccharine, and the platform groaned into motion. The stage began to rotate slowly, and the wooden horses, once frozen mid-prance, began to move up and down.
"Come, enjoy a fun time! Little boys and girls, ride the horse!" the speakers chirped, cheerful as a hangman’s whistle.
...But it wasn’t appealing. The platform was stained brown as if covered in blood, and the horses were fouled and filthy, supported by poles, resembling like those of impaled corpses. Any child would rather cry than to feel joy here in this grotesque façade.
Where's the exit?
Heather searched with wide eyes, examining the stained floor despite the revulsion. The music swelled. Her headache worsened, and the ride spun faster, and the world spun with it.. The cheerful music only aggravated her nerves.
"Enough already!"
Heather yelled in frustration, unable to find the exit. She angrily shot at the moving horses, venting the hatred born from Alessa's fiery torment.
"Neighhhh!"
One horse jerked, and from its wooden throat came a sound no sculpture should make, a scream. High, equine, and human. The merry-go-round shook violently, and the ride groaned like a living thing awakened, as if the explosion in Heather's heart had reverberated into the world around her.
Heather snapped back to reality, her hysteria subsiding and replaced by confusion. Footsteps echoed on the wooden stage, growing closer. Emerging from the foggy darkness was... a blood-soaked version of herself. Her face was Heather’s. Her body was Heather’s. Her clothes, her boots, her raven-black hair, all soaked in red.
But the thing behind those eyes was not hers.
The blood-soaked Heather wore an expression of anger. It stared with hatred carved into every line. It moved with grace and fury. It was as if the frustration and revived memories of resentment within Heather had taken form, becoming a physical manifestation, like Alessa using Heather's appearance. Alessa, wearing Heather’s flesh like a borrowed coat.
Heather felt a deep-seated fear. Seeing her darker self brought despair and disgust. In an attempt to deny this hideous reality, she fired at Alessa.
The mirror-image moved, almost lazily. The knife in her hand swiped once, twice. Each bullet was turned aside, knocked from the air as though time itself bent around her and each shot was struck down with monstrous strength.
Heather could only stare, breath caught in her throat, her gun trembling in her hands. The smoke of gunfire curled about her like a shroud, but it was not the stench of powder that filled her senses. It was understanding.
This was her father's message.
"Beware of Alessa's negative consciousness!"
Her father’s warning, scrawled across blood and dream, finally revealed its truth. The blood-soaked girl in front of her wasn't herself. It was a monster born from her own heart. Alessa, who had died seventeen years ago, remained not only in Heather's mind but also in Silent Hill as an obsession. This was Alessa’s pain made flesh. Her grief, her fury, her longing for release, all of it had coiled together within Heather’s soul, like a serpent that slept too long in silence.
It resonated with her. In her conversation with Douglas, she also wished for death. Of that moment, brief and terrible, when Heather had spoken to Douglas and confessed her weariness, her longing for an end. She had thought, just for a moment, that if she were to die, it might be easier than resisting. Than to thwart the cult's plans. Than to keep fighting. Than to keep living.
In that weakness, that fleeting wish, something had heard.
Something had answered.
And its answer now stands before her.
"I'm sorry, Alessa," Heather said to the blood-soaked girl. Fear was gone, replaced by pity. "I won't die. I don't want to die. I have to live on. For him."
Heather reloaded the pistol, each click of metal echoing like a tolling bell.
"I won't let the cult have their way. Rest now, Alessa. Find your peace within me."
Heather shot Alessa with a prayer in her heart. The blood-soaked girl's chest bloomed like roses over old wounds. Her defensive movements weakened. The anger in her eyes faded, the resonance power diminishing. With the final bullet, Alessa arched back and collapsed. She fell, not a beast, but a girl too tired to go on. Blood poured from her, crimson and thick, but it did not soil the ground. It washed away the tainted stage of the merry-go-round. The carousel shuddered beneath her. Before Heather's eyes, Alessa's figure dissipated like crimson smoke.
In the blood, a note remained. A message from Alessa.
"It would be better for "myself" to die. There is nothing to fear. Compared to the eternal suffering that the child... the demon will bring when it is birthed, a peaceful and gentle death is what I wanted for 'myself.' Why do "I" reject it and wish to continue? I never thought of "myself" as such a fool.."
Heather shook her head slightly after reading.
"No," she told the other self within her. "Dad told me that struggling to live may look foolish, but giving up on life is the greatest foolishness of all."
The once-lively music had stopped, and the merry-go-round ceased to spin. Walls rose, solid and gray, and in the center a doorless entrance opened up. It was as if breaking free from past obsessions, leading her towards a new future.
Heather proceeded down the underground passage that had appeared from the merry-go-round. The stone walls pressing in close around her like the inside of a tomb. The air was dry but thick, laden with dust and the scent of old prayers. Words had been carved into the living rock, scratched deep, not with reverence, but desperation.
"Stained by the evils of this world, we hold our sorrows within. Only you can heal us. Each morning, noon, evening, night, we shall call out your name. Longing for the day when miracles pile up, we offer our entire being to you. Even in the darkest of times, we will reach you. This is the testimony of deep faith in miracles."
Their lines wrapped around the walls like chains, illuminated by flickering lamps fashioned in the style of old gaslights, each flame casting shadows that danced like wraiths.
"Our souls serve faithfully like sheep. Oh Lord, lead us to paradise. No temptation shall shake our faith in you. Save us with your mercy. Oh Lord, grant us grace. Oh Lord, bestow upon us your blessing."
Heather furrowed her brow.
At a glance, it could pass for scripture, words of longing, supplication, or even grace. But knowing their author stripped them of any comfort. To her, the words read not as vows but the moaning and whining of spoiled children, rather than the steadfast faith of believers. Instead of enduring faith, it was no more than obsession akin to stalkers.
Finally, the underground passage came to an end. Beyond the unpleasant inscriptions, a staircase leading upward appeared. However, at the top of the stairs, Heather encountered another unsettling sight.
The final inscription loomed upon a plaque fastened to a heavy door of black iron and gold filigree.
"This door is the first gate to paradise. Embrace the Holy Mother's lap, admit your deepest sins, and seek forgiveness. Eternal tranquility can be yours."
Beyond the door, the chapel yawned before her, a vault of light and colored glass. Stained windows cast jewel-toned patterns across the stone floor, radiant and beautiful, and to Heather's eyes, eyes long adjusted to shadow, it might have looked like paradise but it was anything but. The path laid before her felt more like a guide to the entrance of hell.
There, at the altar, knelt a woman, pale, robed, praying as though every sin of the world might be erased by her whispers. The person Heather had been searching for.
"How did you get here?"
Claudia turned to face Heather, noticing her approach, her expression puzzled. Then a smile replaced it.
"It was Vincent, I see. He guided you again. That man, always interfering... but it's fine. I had meant to welcome you eventually."
"Checkmate!"
Heather aimed her gun at Claudia, who remained unfazed.
"Not yet. The time for the new beginning has not come... the time when people's sins will be forgiven."
Claudia continued, gazing up in rapture.
"The silent paradise we long for will be built. The promised eternity of bliss after Judgment and Atonement. Oh, Alessa, the world you desired is nearly here..."
"I don't want that world!" Heather shouted.
Claudia looked at her with a mixture of shock and disappointment.
"Not you. Alessa. Your true self who still sleeps."
"I am Alessa. My little Claudia, my dear sweet sister..."
Heather's eyes saw not her enemy but the image of a young girl she once played with long ago, a girl who smiled sadly.
Claudia's eyes widened in astonishment, her expression transforming into one of joyous surprise.
"Alessa? Is it really you? You've finally awakened!"
"I don't need another world. This one is fine the way it is."
The light faded from Claudia's eyes, her voice filled with sorrow like a sulking child.
"You said it yourself, didn't you? That you wished this world would disappear."
"That was a long time ago. I don't wish for that now."
"Alessa, don't you want happiness? Have you forgotten of all the hopeless suffering in this world? We need 'God's' salvation!"
"The suffering is caused by humans... we humans are foolish. And foolish as we are, we must pay the price. We must reap what we sow."
Heather glared at Claudia once more as her enemy.
"You may dream of paradise, but it's a nuisance to all those around you! Besides, I will never forgive you for killing my father."
"I wish only to save the unfortunate. For that to happen, the world must first be reborn. I did what I had to do."
"You self-rigtheous witch!"
"You despise me."
"You're damned right I do!"
Claudia smiled sadly and then laughed.
"That's good... 'God' is growing well within you."
Heather felt pain, the same pain she felt when she entered the amusement park, the fire in her abdomen roared anew. Something stirred inside her, writhing against flesh, clawing for escape.
No!
Heather doubled over, desperately enduring. She bit back a scream. Persipiration poured down her face. Her knees buckled.
You can never come out! You can never come into this world!
Sweat beaded on her forehead. She could hardly stand, let alone pursue Claudia, who turned and walked away, her steps slow and reverent. All she could do was kneel, her hands rest on the stone floor, her teeth clenched, and wait for the pain to subside.
It was pitch dark. No torches burned here, no stained glass offered color, no window let in the silver grace of moonlight. The hallway behind the door next to the altar where Claudia had disappeared was enclosed. Walls of plain plaster closed in on both sides, tight and sterile, stripped of ornament. Only Heather's footsteps echoed in the square and narrow space, each footfall clicking softly on the stone, the tomb filled with a church-like silence... but this quiet was soon betrayed. For the first time since the underground passage, the noise returned: a whisper of static, faint but unmistakable, buzzed at her hip, warning of an approaching monster. There, a sound low and ragged, a groan, barely more than breath forced through wet lungs. It came from beyond the corner where the hallway bent, just beyond sight.
Heather rounded the corner with slow, measured steps, with her hand holding the gun's grip. Yet, the hallway was empty save for the fork that waited at its end, one blocked by an iron grate, the other leading to a door further down. There were no monsters in sight but groaning returned. It came not from the empty path, but from the room beyond the gate. Pressing her ear against the door, she detected movement inside. The shuffle of flesh against the floor.
The thought crossed her mind unbidden, cold and certain. You're lying in wait for me, aren't you? Too bad, that's not going to work!
Sticking her tongue out in defiance, she headed down the other hallway, only to turn back quickly. The door at the end wouldn't open. It seemed she had no choice but to go through the room with the monster to get past the iron grate.
Resolving herself, Heather opened the door.
A large, burly-armed monster stood in her way. Heather scowled and the gun bucked in her hand once, twice, again. The shots rang out like church bells. The creature didn't even have a chance to swing its deadly arm before it fell, writhing, to the floor.
"Ugh, I'm so sick of you!"
Heather gave the fallen creature a final glance of contempt, then drove the pointed toe of her boot into its skull. The head gave under the blow with a sickening crunch, and the thing was still at last. She stepped over the twitching limbs without sparing a glance, she moved towards the back of the room. It looked like it was once a meeting room or conference hall, but now it stood broken and bereft, a carcass of its former self. It was a stark contrast to the well-kept chapel. The floor tiles were cracked or missing entirely, the chairs scattered like bones in a crypt, some fused grotesquely with rusted iron piping and strewn about haphazardly, and a whiteboard leaned in the corner. Heather paused, momentarily startled. She couldn't explain why the sight chilled her so, the answer lay not in her memories.
But Alessa's.
It was the shape of a classroom, a place filled with many unpleasant memories for her. She didn’t need to reach into those memories to know what had happened here. Her head ached just brushing the edges of them. She saw no visions, but the weight pressed down on her like a thick fog. She left quickly, as if to shield Alessa from what remained, or perhaps to shield herself. Heather moved down the corridor beyond the iron grate, but what met her eyes was no longer stone or plaster. The scene on the other side was different from what she'd seen through the bars.
It was a familiar state of decay.
Filth lined the walls like old blood. The floor beneath her boots was sticky, slick, pulsing in places as if it breathed. Crimson blooms stained every surface, on the walls, on the floors, and on the ceiling. It was the red not of paint, but of flesh and fires spreading, as if Alessa's fear had infected the place.
Maybe it's because I mistook that room for a classroom...
Heather began to think that her fears and hatred, given form, were mixing with reality, perhaps due to Alessa's special "power." That would explain it. The monsters from her nightmares appearing in the shopping mall, Claudia's delight in her hatred...
Stepping on the metal mesh floor, it creaked and groaned as Heather proceeded down the hallway. Another room appeared. Even if there was a chance a monster was lying in wait, she had to check it out. Until she found Claudia, she would search every room, however dark, however empty, however damned.
The next room Heather entered was a small, empty one. A strange peace lived here, for there were no signs of the otherworldly corruption present. A single desk sat under the warm cone of a lamp’s glow, and atop it, a cassette tape and a stack of papers. Heather pocketed the tape. Its voice, whatever it held, could wait. She started to read through the documents. They were titled "About the Cult's Symbol."
"The symbol called 'The Halo of the Sun' represents the 'God' and is used as a symbol of the cult. The two outer circles signify charity and resurrection, while the three inner circles represent the present, past, and future. It is typically drawn in red. While it can be depicted in colors other than red, blue reverses its meaning, turning it into a curse against 'God,' which is forbidden."
Charity. Resurrection. And yet they slaughtered and sacrificed in the name of it. Their ‘God’ wore red, but bled others for its mercy. The mysterious circular patterns came to her mind. She had seen them many times now, each one etched like a brand upon the world. They marked doors, floors, walls. They lingered in her memory longer than they should but the red made it all harder to forget.
And then...
She pulled the medallion she found in the hospital out of her down jacket pocket and examined it.
"The pattern is different... What symbol is this?"
Heather tucked it away and stepped back into the hallway. The air beyond had thickened, heavy with the scent of rot and iron. Sitting in front of a door, It sat like a grotesque sentinel, folded upon itself, its pale, swollen flesh heaving with breath too wet to be human. The same kind she'd seen before, it had the same flabby, pale skin, and flesh like milk left to curdle. It rose slowly, fat shifting like wet sacks of grain, its limbs trembling from the weight of its own obscene form. Back then, she managed to escape, but this time, it was clear there would be no running away without a fight.
"Fine, then. I didn't have enough bullets last time, but now I've got plenty," Heather taunted as the first shot cracked through the silence. Then came another. Then three more. Its flesh split like boiled sausage, spilling black ichor across the floor tiles.
With a final grotesque scream, the monster fell, lifeless. Although Heather had initially had plenty of spare ammunition, her reserves were now significantly diminished. Less than she’d hoped. Fewer than she needed. She needed to find Claudia soon, or else she might not have any bullets left to deal with her... if it came to that. Heather reluctantly stepped over its warm bulk, its skin sighing as she pressed her boots into it. Even in death, it clung to the path. The tiles beyond were white, clean in theory, though here they bore footprints and splashes like the petals of some rotten flower. Then, a sound of crying. It was a child's soft sobbing, like that of a young girl.
Heather doubted the child was mourning the dead monster. She followed the sound and came upon a large painting hanging on the corridor wall, depicting an angel in flight. Its wings outspread, its gaze lifted toward some divine promise. There was no child in the image.
The moment she stood before the painting, the sobbing ceased. Heather stood still, eyes scanning the canvas, waiting for something to move. But there was nothing, nothing unusual, only stillness. Puzzled, Heather moved away, only for the sobbing to returned at once. Her heart clenched at the sound, like sorrow aged in the dark, fermented into madness. She covered her ears and pressed on. At the end of the corridor, she found a door yielded to her hand with a slow, groaning reluctance. Beyond it lay a room of stone and echo. The belfry, the place where the church bell was rung. Octagonal, towering, its ceiling lost in shadow. Three paintings hung on the walls like saints in judgment. At her feet, the Halo of the Sun bloomed red across the floor with its lines etched with care, and its color deep in blood.
To her right was a painting titled "Portrait of Nicholas" with the description "Miraculous Hands, a Doctor of God."
To her left was a painting of a woman titled "Portrait of Saint Jennifer" with the description "Unwavering Faith under Death's Blade."
The central painting made Heather's eyes widen in shock. It was titled "Portrait of Saint Alessa" with the description "Mother of God, Daughter of God."
The painting depicted a woman holding a baby.
"...This is me..." Heather whispered. "I'm the one holding, and the one being held... The me who vanished seventeen years ago with 'God,' and the me who is here now, alive."
Tears welled up in her eyes without her realizing. She hadn’t meant to cry, but It crawled up from the deep places and spilled over without shame. A flood of nostalgic, bittersweet emotions surged through her. Alessa was crying inside her, filled with sorrow and anger. It was too much for one girl to bear. Heather turned her back on the painting, her face clouded with conflicting emotions. Anger and sadness threatened to overwhelm her.
I can't look at this anymore.
She reminded herself of her special "power," something tied to her suppressed emotions. She knew she had to remain calm and not let her heart be consumed by darkness.
Calm down, Alessa. It's over now. Don't let memories of the past trap you. Look to the future. Let's end this nonsense quickly. Heather told herself.
With no passage hidden among the stones of the belfry, Heather had no choice but to turn back down the hallway. The sobbing had not ceased. It lingered still in the corridor beyond, curling through the air like incense in a dying chapel. She thought of forcing open the door at the end of the hallway, the one that had previously blocked her way. She kept her eyes from the paintings now, unwilling to let their stares pull her under again. Instead, she watched her own feet, the rhythm of her steps a thread of sanity. Suddenly, she saw them. The footsteps that were not hers, blooming upon the floor ahead, one after another.
A ghost? she thought, though the word felt too clean.
The footprints trailed off behind the angel painting. Could this be another one of Alessa's delusions?
She stepped forward, heart hammering, and once more stood before the angel in flight. A vague memory surfaced: Alessa, young and hollow-eyed, walking the church corridors with tears silent on her cheeks, bullied and broken at school. During that time, by accident or fate, Alessa had accidentally discovered a hidden passage.
Grabbing the frame, Heather applied force. The painting groaned against its hinges, and then it slid open like a secret mouth. A new passage stretched before her, narrow and raw, lined with metal mesh that squelched underfoot. The walls bled red and the ceiling wept rust. It smelled not of incense and candlewax, but of antiseptic, blood, and mold, with an abandoned stretcher and an IV stand stood solemnly in the corner. In truth, it looked more like a hospital than a church.
A short way down, Heather saw an elevator, but she decided to explore the hallway further. The path soon ended at a dead end, but there was a room to the side. She opened the door and found a library. The scent of mildew rose to greet her, heavy and familiar, like the air of a locked tomb. Books lined the shelves, their spines split and sagging with age. The dust was thick enough to write in.
But on one shelf, alone and waiting, a book lay open and its pages untouched by grime, its ink still black. The word "God" stood out on the page, prompting Heather to delve in further.
---Silent Hill's Ancient Gods: A Study of Their Etymology and Evolution---
"As with any religion, this one, too, has not remained unchanged throughout the ages. Particularly when the settlers took over, their original religion, Christianity, greatly influenced it. For example, the names and appearances of the gods' messengers seen in the teachings and traditions bear similarities and commonalities with angels in Christianity. There are even rare instances where the main deity, 'Creator of Paradise' or 'King of Serpents and Reeds,' was named after a demon. Naturally, it is not the believers but their opponents who call it that."
Heather shrugged. It didn't seem particularly useful.
She continued deeper into the library and found another open book on a reading table by the wall. As she glanced at the pages, she heard footsteps approaching.
"Hiya, Heather."
It was Vincent, addressing her casually.
Heather frowned. "You again."
"Ah, don’t say it like that," Vincent said with a wry smile. "You make me sound like some kind of unwanted pest."
"Well, who are you really? What are you scheming?"
"Oh? I thought you already knew..."
"I know you're with Claudia."
"I told you to not lump me in the same category as that madwoman!" Vincent snapped, looking genuinely displeased.
"Well, I still think you're pretty loony yourself," Heather retorted.
"I'm perfectly sane," Vincent replied, sulking. "Even if we're in the same cult, Claudia and I are different."
"So why did you help me out then? Is this part of your plan to resurrect 'God'?"
"It's not uncommon for those who believe in the same god to be at odds. You may not believe me, but I'm on your side. I don't want 'God' to be born. It's just too reckless, too unpredictable."
"So you've been using me to stop Claudia? Why don't you do your own dirty work yourself?"
"Using? It's such an ugly world. I'd prefer to call it mutual benefit. You hate her too, don't you? Besides, there are things that only you can do. I don't have any special powers like you two. And honestly, I am not the one to sweat or getting into trouble."
"How selfless of you."
"Don't pretend to be a saint. You act like a martyr, but I think you're the worse person in the room. You stay calm while they bleed and suffer. Do you enjoy the cries and screams under your feet?"
"They? You mean those monsters?"
"Monsters...?" Vincent frowned. "...They looked like monsters to you?"
He covered his mouth with his hand and chuckled, making Heather uncomfortable.
"What!? What do you mean?!" she demanded.
"Nothing, it's just a joke. Don't worry about it," Vincent said, stifling his laugther and quickly changing the subject. "By the way, I forgot to ask at the motel... did you get the Seal of Metatron?"
"The what?"
"Leonard should have had it."
"...You mean this thing?" Heather pulled the medallion from her pocket. "I found it in his hospital room, but I don't know if it was Leonard's."
Vincent looked relieved. "Yes, that's it. As long as we have that, there won't be any problem. Now, take this..."
He handed her a thick, ancient-looking book.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" Heather asked, looking up, but Vincent was already gone. She shrugged, feeling somewhat relieved. Opening the bookmarked page, she read:
---The Rules of Heresy---
"This magic circle, known as the 'Seventh Seal of Virun' or the 'Seal of Metatron,' possesses powerful exorcism and sealing powers. Its influence extends regardless of the target's nature, and its strength places a heavy burden on the caster. Due to its complexity, it's rarely used, which is why it's named after the angel Metatron, also known as Matatron."
The elevator offered only two choices. The first floor and the basement. Heather chose the latter, and the metal box groaned as it lowered her into shadow. The doors opened with a sigh. She turned right, her boots silent against the cold floor. Something about basements always felt heavier, as though the weight of the world pressed down through stone and soil. The dark here wasn’t just a lack of light. It was thick, oppressive, like breath before a scream. Even her flashlight struggled to carve paths through it. The beam flickered across bloodstained walls, old and new streaks mingling like veins beneath skin.
Then the static returned, humming softly. No monsters were visible yet, but Heather quickly dashed to a nearby door and took cover inside. The small room contained a single bed, its mattress yellowed with age and neglect. On the mattress lay a familiar-looking book. It was a diary and the handwriting on the pages caught her eye immediately.
"It's Dad's! How did it end up here?"
This diary should have been in Harry’s study back at their apartment. Although Heather had never read it before, she had seen it resting on his desk many times.
Was it drawn here by the distortion of space and time? Could this be another message from Harry?
"I still sometimes feel that she is the reincarnation of that girl, Alessa. But lately, I’ve been less troubled by it. I can forgive everything now. You were unloved, Cheryl. Or was that Alessa? Now Cheryl is also Alessa. Above all, regardless of who she is a reincarnation of, she is my most beloved treasure. However, naming her that was a mistake. Back then, I still only thought of her as a replacement for Cheryl. When she learns the truth, I worry that she will be feel bad…”
The tears came quiety, for Heather did not sob nor did she wept.
Cheryl… the girl Harry had adopted, who disappeared seventeen years ago. Cheryl… her real name.
Heather’s childhood memories surged in like a tide unshackled. Pale things, seen through the eyes of a child scarcely old enough to hold them. Cheryl, he had called her. Always with love. But there was sorrow, too, nestled behind his eyes like dusk behind clouds. And then, on the day they decided to fled from Portland, Harry called her over:
"Heather, come here."
"But I’m not Heather, I’m Cheryl."
"No. You are Heather now. From today, Heather is your name."
"But why?"
"Because it’s a wonderful name. A girl as wonderful as you deserves to be called Heather. And remember, when you introduce yourself to people, say you are Heather, okay? Never say you are Cheryl. Forget the name Cheryl. Promise me!"
Young Heather had nodded without understanding, and since then, Cheryl faded. Bit by bit. Until she became someone else entirely.
Heather wiped her eyes now, alone in the dim of the basement. The diary lay on her lap like a weight, its pages soaked in the ink of her father’s fears.
Dad must have given me the fake name "Heather" to protect me. She thought to herself. He must have sensed the cult was after us and wanted to deceive them. I’m crying, but not because I’m sad, Dad.
Thank you for looking out for me.
Encouraged by the words her father had left behind, the dark no longer smothered her. It pressed around her still, thick as wool and twice as heavy, but she had learned to breathe through it. Heather walked briskly down the corridor stretched ahead in mesh and shadow. Every step clanged softly beneath her boots, echoing like half-formed thoughts in the vastness of her mind. She left and returned to the elevator. This time, she took the left fork in the corridor. Neither the burly monsters nor the obese ones frightened her anymore; she was familiar with them now. To conserve her dwindling ammunition, she dashed past these slow-moving creatures.
There was another reason she avoided these fights: Vincent’s words lingered in her mind. “Monsters... they looked like monsters to you?”
Though he claimed it was a joke, Heather had realized a disturbing possibility. The monsters were undoubtedly terrifying, but were they always been monsters? If not, what had they been before? Were they people transformed by the dark magic swirling through Silent Hill? Victims twisted into things of sinew and horror? Or was she the one twisted, her eyes altered by some unseen spell, her fear painted over flesh like a veil? Was her own vision to be trusted?
Either truth was poison.
She didn't want to think about it, but both were plausible. This hesitation made her reluctant to kill the monsters. Ignoring them, Heather ran past their reaching arms and wheezing moans and entered the next room. It was another small room with a bed and a nightstand, reminiscent of an isolation ward. An open book lay on the table. Heather felt a strange compulsion, part of her didn't want to read it, but a stronger part felt she must. It was the same feeling she’d had as a child when Harry encouraged her to enter the dark woods during a camping trip.
---Aglaophotis---
"A red liquid or crystal similar to the color of blood. This name is taken from the Kabbalistic texts of Judaism, referring to an herb said to grow in the deserts of Arabia, known for its power to expel demons. In addition to ingestion, it can be heated, vaporized, and dispersed to guard against demons. While powerful, it is extremely rare and difficult to obtain."
Heather’s fingers drifted without thought to the pendant at her throat. The small, worn charm she had adorn for so long that it had become part of her, like a scar. The book's words cuts her deep, but no blades bite her skins. It was unpleasant memories that surged up like nausea.
Noticing a photograph, the bitter memories finally bleed through. The sepia-toned photo on the table, it was a picture of Alessa. Heather was overwhelmed by the explosion of resurfacing memories. Pain struck her like a hammer to the ribs. The hatred blazed through her, burning her from within. Pain struck her like a hammer to the ribs. She staggered. Her vision narrowed, flared, then turned red at the edges. She dropped to her knees, her hands splayed against the cold floor.
"I was here!"
The scream tore from her lips unbidden, her face contorted in pain, collapsing to the floor. The room, with its sterile walls, the metal-framed bed, and the sickly scent of antiseptic. Like many others, it had no place in a church. It was the memory of a room from Alchemilla Hospital, where she had once lived as Alessa.
...To suffer these burns, death should have been certain. But her mother, Dahlia, forcibly kept her alive. Dahlia’s summoning rituals denied Alessa the release of death, extending her agony in unhealed pain...
"Daddy, help me."
Heather clawed at the floor, dragging herself toward the door. If she didn’t escape this room, she would be trapped in the endless replay of past nightmares, driven to madness. The nightmares threatened to become real, the fire would rise again and her skin would split, blister, and melt with burns.
She forced herself forward, each breath a struggle, each inch a battle. Finally, she reached the threshold and tumbled into the hallway, gasping, spent. Sitting in the hallway, she panted heavily. The air out here was cold by contrast. The memories and pain quickly faded. Regaining her composure, she noticed the hallway’s changes belatedly. The church’s transformations had intensified, with veins ran along the walls and ceiling, thick and pulsing, beneath the pale and diseased skin. Perhaps this was the manifestation of Alessa’s revived torment.
At the farthest end of the twisting, bloodstained corridors, a door awaited her, and it seemed to be her final destination. There were no other rooms left in the basement. She grasped the handle but it did not yield. She tried harder and it amounted to nothing. The door wouldn’t open. There was no rattle, no sense of a mechanism resisting her. It simply refused silent and still, as if it were not locked at all, but guarded by something unseen. The stubborn refusal felt to Heather like her own heart was blocking her path.
Heather stood there for a long moment, staring at the door that would not open.
Am I not willing? she wondered. Am I not ready?
There was no answer. Lacking any reason, she felt she needed to turn back. This church, she had come to understand, was deeply tied to Alessa’s past... Even if it meant putting herself in more dangers like the ones in the hospital room earlier, she needed to see everything, prepared to accept whatever came.
Heather returned to the first floor, which she hadn’t fully explored yet. The locked door at the branching hall, once sealed, swung open easily now, with no resistance nor echo, as if granting her permission. The corridor beyond was smeared with the same dark rot. Despite the decay, the transformation had not taken full root. The first room she entered stopped her cold. It was a classroom. This time, it was real. The desks were the old kind, with its scarred wood and rusted legs, and chairs bolted into place. The chalkboard was cracked and dust clung to every surface.
But why would a school classroom be here? Heather questioned herself. Perhaps, she already knew. It was probably the same reason there was an Alessa’s hospital room earlier...
Heather tread carefully, as though her boots might crack the ice of a frozen lake. She could feel and fear an emotional eruption from the Alessa within her. Claudia wasn’t here, but she couldn’t skip this room. There might be something crucial, like a key for the locked door in the basement. One desk, in particular, drew her attention. At first, it looked no different than any dusty desk. But as she neared, she saw the surface rough, gouged, and marred. It was carved with graffiti, likely by many blades:
GO HOME!
DIE!
THIEF!
Heather recoiled, hand clutching her chest as though the pain were physical.
She realized this was Alessa’s desk.
Of course it was. The graffiti told the story in rough slashes and jagged curses, taunts made permanent in the wood by hands that hated. No one had sanded them down. No teacher had bothered to erase them.
Fearful of another explosive surge of memories and emotions, she was surprised to find none came. Instead, a cold crept inward and settled deep in her heart. Alessa might have closed herself off every day in this classroom, enduring by becoming nothing.
On the teacher’s desk, she found a notebook.
The name written inside was K. Gordon.
"There’s a child named Alessa in the class I teach. You may remember her if your memory is any good. She’s the one I mentioned before, the one labeled a ‘witch’. She’s likely being abused by her mother. I’ve never seen her come to school without any scrapes or bruises. Her expression is pitifully dark it’s hard to believe she’s only six years old. Such stories are not so uncommon. The easiest thing to do is to just watch and wait, but I wonder if there’s anything I can do to help. I’ve thought about consulting a lawyer but I do have my reservations. So first, I wanted to hear your opinion first."
--- K. Gordon
Heather read the words, and her lips curled into something that might have been a smile, though no warmth touched her eyes. A cold thing it was, brittle as frost upon a windowpane. No gallant hand had lifted her from her mother’s cruelty, and no teacher had intervened. Alessa had never been rescued from Dahlia’. In the end, they had all turned their faces away, and so do the teacher who decided to ignore the problem, pretending not to see it... Perhaps it was due to the cult’s pressure.
Heather’s thoughts returned to the basement, to Harry’s note and felt a spark of warmth, a whisper of her father's love clinging to her like a scarf against the cold.
I’m not Alessa anymore. She thought No need to let the past trouble me now.
Encouraging herself, she moved on to the next room. At its far end stood two doors, side by side like sentries. She opened the nearer one first. The room beyond was modest, almost monastic in its simplicity, a bed tightly made, shelves aligned with geometric precision, and a desk scrubbed clean save for a single item. It was immaculately clean, likely a place where a cult member lived. Among the neatly arranged items, there was a letter haphazardly tossed on the desk. Out of place amidst the tidiness, it drew her eye at once. She stepped closer and unfolded it, the ink slightly smeared, the handwriting sharp with bitterness. A complaint, it seemed, penned by a follower.
"There are complaints that Father Vincent is using the organization’s funds for his own personal benefit. I’ve also heard rumors from some members that he is extorting donations. Is he truly fit for his position? While I do not deny his achievements in expanding our organization, should not those who serve our God be valued for their depth of faith rather than their limited talents or talkativeness?"
--- L.S.
“Hmm... interesting.” she murmured, almost to herself. Her voice carried no amusement, only a grim sort of recognition.
Heather smiled faintly, imagining the smug face of Vincent. She could all but see him leaning back in his chair, his fingers steepled, lips curled in that infuriating half-smile he wore like armor. It seemed like exactly the kind of thing he would do. Soft corruption masked as charm, ambition hidden beneath silk and scripture. Heather could gauge the extent of Vincent's popularity within the cult. She started to leave the room but her gaze settled upon the shelf. There, in solemn repose among books of doctrine and dust, sat a cassette deck.
"Oh, that's right..." she remembered, pulling a cassette tape from her pocket. Unmarked but for a scrawl too faded to read, it had lain buried among documents detailing the cult’s emblem and had taken it, hoping it contained some secret that could expose and destroy the cult.
She slid the cassette into the deck. There was a soft click, then a low hiss. A conversation between two men started to play and one of the voices was unquestionably Vincent’s.
“Do you know anything about the incident seventeen years ago? As a veteran, you must have heard some details?”
A follower-like man responded to Vincent’s question.
“...Heretics, ensnared by their immediate desires, tried to obstruct the awakening of our God by using the Seal of Metatron. But our great God overcame this, and the heretics fell into the abyss. However, because of this, our God could not be born in proper form and went back to sleep within the Holy Mother, awaiting the time to awaken again... That’s all I know.”
“Is that so... Thank you.”
“Father Vincent, is it true that the Holy Mother has been found?”
“Did Claudia say that Alessa has been found?”
“Yes.”
“Then it must be true. She has a special power.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“Perhaps due to her deep faith... Something I could never emulate. Nor would I want to.”
“Nor I. Sister Claudia is somewhat frightening.”
“That was a faithless remark from both of us. Let’s pretend it never happened. If you forget it, I will too.”
“Yes. But will the miraculous paradise truly be created here?”
“If now is the time appointed by God...”
Heretics fell into the abyss, did they? Heather frowned. They must be referring to Harry, but he had been very much alive until recently... and now he was undoubtedly in heaven. It seemed the cult had weaved their own tale to deceive their followers.
Of course, Harry’s heart had indeed sunk after losing Cheryl. And because of them, my own heart was cast into the abyss alongside him. She thought bitterly.
Heather bit her lip and turned from the cassette deck. The next room beckoned, its door half-open like a mouth waiting to speak. She pushed it inward and stepped across the threshold. The room mirrored the last in form, but not in spirit. Where the previous room had been pristine, this one bore the marks of a more chaotic mind. Heather could sensed a feminine touch in the atmosphere. She moved carefully, her eyes roving. Amidst the clutter, a piece of paper on the desk caught her attention.
It was an old birthday card.
“To little Claudia, Happy 6th birthday. I love you as if you were my real sister. Here's to you!”
The words struck Heather like a blow. Her breath caught. The handwriting was unmistakable, rounded, careful, the letters uneven with a child's earnestness.
This was mine or rather Alessa had given her back then.
So, this must be Claudia’s room.
She had kept the birthday card from me all these years.
Heather felt unease stir in her gut. She moved to the shelf with mechanical purpose, her fingers brushing aside ornaments and worn volumes. There, she found it: a diary with its binding cracked from use. Even if they were once like sisters, it would not change that they were enemies now. She had to uncover Claudia's secrets.
“November 10th“
She was not dead back then; she was born. I certainly knew that for a fact. But why hasn’t she been found yet? We need her power to build Paradise and ensure people’s happiness. She must have been reborn for that purpose. And I'd really like to meet her again.”
“November 14th“
I read the sacred text, the ‘Laudation Scriptures.’ I must thank Father for lending me such a precious book. In it, I found what I was looking for; a method to awaken ‘God.’ But it is too much cruel. When I meet her, will I be able to pull it off?”
“November 16th“
Today, I had time to read ‘A Modern History of Refugees’ and ‘Young Slaves: Child Exploitation.’ I do not wish to be a mere bystander of this world. But currently, there is nothing I can do, and that's what's hard.”
Heather was convinced that Claudia had written it. The writings, and her flow of thoughts; they all bore her marks. This was indeed her room. It made sense for a high-ranking cult member, but it was ironic that Claudia and Vincent, two priests, one clothed in venomous silk, and the other in the ashes of her own childhood, had lived in adjacent rooms.
Even so... Heather pondered.
She could understand Claudia’s wish to save exploited children, given her own abuse as a child, as stated in her diary... But what she couldn’t comprehend was why someone who had been abused by her parents would believe in the same religion as them, so fervently that she became a priest. Perhaps, it was because she was indoctrinated at such a young age and felt it was natural for to seek out salvation from the ‘God’ described in their teachings, even to the extent of trying to bring about Paradise as per the doctrines. It was no more different than an animal born and raised in a zoo trying to teach its wild counterparts about its idealistic world, not realizing that the world itself was a cage.
Poor Claudia... my dear sister. The words echoed in Heather’s mind like a hymn sung in a cracked cathedral.
She turned on her heel and fled the room, boots striking stone with renewed sense of determination. Down the corridors she raced, breath sharp and steady as the shadows seemed to part before her. Knowing Claudia's feelings had brought a new sense of purpose. Her heart was filled with resolve, and she felt confident that this time, the final door would open. There was no hesitation or fear left to be savored.
The basement waited below, deeper than mere stone. However, the place had undergone a disturbing transformation. The blood was no longer still. It pulsed a dark rythm like beat and writhe as if they were blood clots forcing its way through veins. The stains on the walls heaved and twisted and the air was thick and viscous. The increasing power of whatever was trying to be born was affecting the outside world.
I need to hurry!
A dull ache bloomed in her abdomen. Reflexively, she pressed a hand to it. The warmth there felt foreign, life or death, she could not yet say.
She sprinted onward and the door loomed ahead. It had denied her before, unmoved by force or plea. She grasped the cold brass knob, turning it with a prayerful determination. The stubborn door finally opened, and Heather stepped inside. But as soon as she did, the vertigo struck like a hammer, not a blow to the head, but to the self. The floor twisted beneath her feet. The walls stretched and shrank, and the air folded over itself, and time shattered. It was unlike anything she had ever felt, and it swept her away.
I used to live here!
It wasn't a guess. It wasn’t even a memory. She felt it, no, she was certain of it. The room was modest, even gentle and childish in a way. There was a study desk, a small bed, insect specimens displayed on the wall, and children's clothes hanging on a hanger. All of it was familiar.
This is Alessa’s!
She couldn’t explain it, but she knew it was true. It was as if time and space had warped. This was undoubtedly the bedroom she had shared with her mother, Dahlia. On the desk sat a memo pad, paper yellowed and curling, clipped to a board just like the kind used for orders at that ice cream stand. back in the amusement park.
“Dad…” Heather whispered the word as if it were sacred.
“Beyond this door is where she is. I have no reason to believe it, but I feel it. But she is not the only one beyond this door. There is something terribly dangerous, something that makes me feel sick, perhaps it’s what they call ‘God.’ Even so, I will open this door and end this absurd tale. I am not a ‘God.’ But I want to save her… no, I want to save them both.”
The date at the end was from seventeen years ago. Seventeen years. A lifetime, and yet he had stood in this room before her.
Heather scanned the room again, now cast in a different light. Something else caught her eye. There was a sketchbook left on the bed. Heather recognized it immediately. The frayed edges, the cover adorned with a childish drawing of Harry, his arms too long, and his smiles too wide. It wasn’t Alessa’s; it was Cheryl’s beloved sketchbook.
A message from Cheryl?
She turned the pages, slowly. The handwriting was that of a small child, round letters, crayon-thick, and the lines trailed with uncertainty. It read like a poem or a fairy tale. The last few lines pierced Heather's heart like a needle through silk.
"But really, are you going to open it? It's dangerous beyond the door, let's not. Let's play, stay here, don't leave, or I'll be all alone again."
She was afraid.
Heather approached the door at the back of the room.
Are you really going to open it? It’s dangerous beyond the door.
Cheryl. Alessa. Whatever fragments of them remained, they had bled into the paper, into memory, into this place that was no place. The voice that rose in Heather’s mind now was soft, frightened, familiar. It pleaded, like a sister at the edge of a cliff.
"It’s okay." She told them. "This time, I’m here. It won’t happen again. We’ll end this, together with you, me, and Cheryl."
The door creaked open. What lay beyond was a corridor without end. It stretched forward into shadows that pressed like weights against her chest. It was filled with an oppressive, unpleasant atmosphere, but no monsters prowled here. Heather stepped forward, each movement a vow. The pressure grew with every pace, invisible hands pushing against her shoulders, her skull, her heart. And then she saw them, twin doors at the end of the hall, vast and terrible.
The chapel groaned with ancient wood and flickering flame, a hollow sanctuary beneath the world. Amber light danced across the stones, casting long, twitching shadows. Its hall echoed with two voices that rose like dueling blades.
“What do I wish for, you ask?” Vincent’s smile was thin and bloodless, a dagger sheathed in silk. “I wish for both of you to die... That’s my wish. That will bring peace.”
Claudia shook her head sadly.
“You're a priest of the Order, Vincent... When did you stop believing in ‘God’? ‘God’ lives. Just look at this world.”
“I do believe Her. I fear Her, even. I respect Her… in my own way. Just not with your fanaticism.”
Vincent gestured towards the chapel ceiling with both hands.
“Look at the state of the world you speak of! Is that the work of God? If so, quite a tasteless ‘God’. No, what you see is merely your own personal nightmare... just like Alessa’s seventeen years ago.”
“Do not blaspheme ‘God’! Traitor! You will rot in hell!”
“I’m tired of that line. Who do you think you are? Don’t pretend to speak for God with such insults.”
"Go home, Vincent, leave this sacred place, immediately! In the name of ‘God,’ I excommunicate you!”
“Oh, dear, you’re ridiculous. When did you get so high and mighty? This is my church. It was built with my power, the power of money that you so despised... Though I’ll admit this atrocious scenary was your idea.”
“If you continue to interfere any further, you too...”
“What? Are you planning to kill me? Just like you did Harry Mason? You simple-minded woman.” Vincent snorted.
Heather stepped into the basement chapel, which resembled a solid fortress or prison rather than a graceful sanctuary. Stone walls bore no crosses, no blessings, only weight. Cold, thick air curled around the pillars like smoke from a funeral pyre. She approached the arguing pair.
“Well, the guest of honor has arrived!” Vincent turned to Heather. “Let’s get this party started! Go on, Heather, kill this crazy bitch! The demon who falsely claims to speak for God! Now that the time has come, you can kill her now!”
“You'll go to hell!”
Claudia shouted, her voice filled with hatred echoing through the shadowy chapel.
She rushed towards Vincent, who had turned his back, and collided with him. Her robes trailing behind her, her hair unbound and wild with fury. In her hand gleamed a sliver of steel. Before Vincent could so much as smirk again, she was upon him. The blade sank deep. Then, there was a gasp. Then silence. Vincent fell like a curtain pulled down at the end of a play, his blood flowering beneath him like a dark prayer unanswered.
“Claudia!” Heather gasped. “What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing... nothing important.”
Claudia replied calmly, gazed down at Vincent’s body as if she were watching a fire burn out, the knife in her hand gleamed red, but her face bore no guilt, no fear. She was unfazed by Heather’s accusatory gaze.
“So, you’re not running away anymore? Is this the end?”
“No, this is the beginning. As Vincent said, the time has come. Alessa, it’s unfortunate you didn't wholeheartedly agree... But even so, with your heart filled with hatred and pain under the guise of revenge, you nurtured ‘God’. I thank you. The sinful era of imprisonment ends now, and all mankind will be freed from suffering.”
“But, A ‘God’ born out of hatred cannot build a paradise, Claudia...”
Heather sighed as she spoke. Her piercing gaze softened with sadness.
“...my dear sister.”
The weight in Heather’s chest shifted. Her rage, the fire that had burned so hot since Harry’s murder, dimmed now into ash. In Claudia’s eyes, she saw not an enemy to hate, only the shape of a girl she had once loved and cherished like a sister.
Alessa and Claudia, two close friends, were always together. Although they lived in the same town, their homes lay far apart, across the dust-choked roads. However, their parents were both followers of the same cult, so they often saw each other. The reason they were "always" together was that neither had any other friends. Their parents forbade close interactions with other children, deeming those who did not believe in the same "God" as wicked heretics, unclean and dangerous. So it was that the two girls, orphaned in spirit though not in blood, found solace in each other.
During the sermons, when the priest’s voice droned on like the low hum of an insect, the two would exchange glances and smiles at each other. Afterwards, they would slip into the backyard of the church, where the weeds grew tall and wildflowers bloomed like rebels. There, they wove crowns from dandelions and clover, placing them on each other’s heads with the solemnity of queens in exile. They would chat about the events that happened while they were apart. Yet, there was an unspoken understanding that there were things they would never talk about, a secret that should never be uttered.
"What happened there? Doesn't it hurt?"
One day, Alessa noticed a blue bruise peeking out from Claudia’s chest and voiced her concern. She had a suspicion. Though she didn't intend to eavesdrop, she had once overheard Claudia’s father speaking in the confessional.
"Did... your father do this?"
"No!"
Claudia flinched, as if struck anew. Her eyes widened, and for the first time, Alessa saw hardness in her friend’s face, like ice forming on a lake that had once been clear.
"I fell and hurt myself. It’s my fault."
Claudia smiled, but the smile was broken glass, fragile and sharp. Her voice wavered like a hymn sung through tears.
"My father would never do such a thing. My father is kind. I love my father very much. Really, really, I do."
With those words, Claudia clung to Alessa, clutching her with a desperation that made Alessa’s chest ache. Claudia buried her face in her friend’s dress, her sobs muffled, warm and wet against the fabric.
"You feel the same, don't you, Alessa?"
Alessa’s mouth moved before her heart could stop it.
"Yes." she whispered. "I love my mother very much too."
And she smiled, just like Claudia did. A sad, aching thing. She stroked Claudia’s hair as though soothing a frightened bird.
"But, A 'God' born from hatred isn’t a true God."
Heather pleaded with her once-beloved sister.
"Why are you trying to bring forth a 'God' that requires someone’s sacrifice? Claudia, remember the kind girl you once were, who dreamed of saving underprivileged children around the world. End this madness!"
Claudia responded with a scornful look.
"It seems you are not entirely Alessa. You are just a stranger who grew up without knowing sadness or suffering. Happy people can be so cruel... they don’t understand others’ misfortunes. Is it so strange that compassion can be born from pain and suffering? Just as only those who have experienced hardship know true kindness, God is also born from people’s grief and sorrow. Why do you deny God’s love? What is so good about this corrupt world? In the new world created by 'God', everyone will be saved."
"...You want to save yourself, don’t you, Claudia?"
Heather looked at her with sympathetic eyes. She thought she finally understood Claudia's inner turmoil. Claudia was still the same sad little girl, pretending to be strong while holding back tears.
"Saving everyone and thus saving yourself? I won’t let you have such a happy ending!"
Heather’s glare returned. Her desire for revenge was gone, but her forgiveness was not owed, nor earned. It was simply withheld.
"No!"
Claudia retorted, reacting intensely just as she had that day.
"I only want to save people! It doesn't matter what happens to me. I do not expect to be saved, and that’s fine... I don’t expect forgiveness for the pain I’ve caused you. It was a grave sin, even if it was for mankind's salvation. Yes, I hastened the promised day out of my own selfishness. Sacrifices were made, and those are my sins"
It hurts.
Vincent’s hands scraped against the cold stone as he dragged himself across the blood-slick floor. His breath came in ragged pulls, the copper taste thick in his mouth. Pain lanced through his ribs with every movement. Though he felt as if he were dying, the pain was proof he was still alive. He wouldn’t die just yet. He would keep living. Why else had he become a priest? Why had he devoted himself to the cult? It hadn’t been faith. He hadn’t heard any divine calling in the dead of night, no angels had whispered to him. He was fed up with the cutthroat life of competing with rivals, chasing money, and being hounded by numbers. He fought for every coin, every contract, every cruel little victory. So he had donated all the wealth he had painstakingly earned to the cult in exchange for the priestly position.
What’s wrong with joining a cult if it brings peace? He thought a long life would be boring if that was all he had, so he sought a bit of thrill. The cult had grown so large thanks to his acumen and assets. They never criticize how the donations were collected or used. Claudia, that crazy bitch, always opposed his methods, spat on his pragmatism. He'd brought the cult money, power, growth. She spent it chasing visions and prophecy, obsessing over the birth of 'God' as if the world were a stage for martyrdom. No, The birth of 'God' had always been meant for some distant age. It wasn't something to spend the cult’s budget on. Paradise? It was already here. A quiet life praying to God in the foggy town, away from outsiders, with thrilling magical rituals... that was enough. She was the threat, not him.
"Sinful, you say?"
Vincent’s voice was a broken whisper.
"If you know it’s sinful, then why don't you go to hell first." He roared the last word with all that remained to him, a dying man’s defiance hurled into the face of a fanatic. "Heather, use the seal!"
"The seal?"
Heather looked at Vincent, then her hand reached into her pocket and pulled forth the small metal disc.
"You mean this?"
"Yes, that’s it. This will end.... this whole damned farce."
"The Seal of Metatron!" Claudia’s expression shifted at the sight of it. Her breath caught.
However, it was only for a moment before she averted her face and sneered.
"Oh, that’s just a piece of junk. Such a little thing can do nothing. You know nothing about the Seal of Metatron. You think that medal can kill 'God'? Is that what Leonard told you? Thank you for indulging my poor father’s delusions, Vincent."
She stepped forward, robes whispering against the stone. Her hand moved with sudden grace and the knife gleamed in the low light. Claudia swung her knife, and the blade gouged through Vincent’s chest. Heather had no time to stop her. Blood bloomed red and thick from the wound. Vincent gasped, his eyes wide behind his cracked spectacles. His gaze drifted upward, to the chapel ceiling, to something far beyond. He didn’t speak again.
"Pitiful man... but 'God' will save you too."
Claudia offered a perfunctory prayer over the body, then turned to Heather.
"Now, Alessa. There is nowhere else to run."
That was when the pain struck. Heather dropped to one knee, clutching her stomach as if it had been split open. The agony was like fire, like birth, like death. Her skin burned. Her vision blurred. She felt it inside her, moving, and growing, and reaching. The entity writhed within like a storm of amoeba-like tendrils that invade every corner of her body, every cell. Her blood sang with heat, her nerves lit like a field of pyres. Her scream was strangled, her sweat cold. Heather could felt herself being slowly consumed.
"Just accept it, Alessa. It will ease the pain."
It's painful.
Every breath was fire, every heartbeat a hammer. The thing inside her writhed, pressing against her from within, like a serpent coiled in her gut, biting and twisting. Heather doubled over, her fingernails digging into the stone floor.
It's like I've swallowed poison. The thought was bitter on her tongue, and yet familiar.
That's why he said it, she thought, hearing Harry's voice in her mind.
It's poison. A terrifying drug.
In the hazy, dizzying view of the chapel, Heather felt like she saw Harry watching her from the shadows. Memories of the one time her gentle father had yelled at her flashed through her mind. He had never shouted at her like that. Not before. Not after. Only that once. There was only one time that Harry, normally so kind, had twisted in rage and sneered at Heather like a demon.
"Don't touch that! It's poison. It may look pretty, but it's a terrifying drug. If you accidentally ingest it, who knows what could happen!"
However, the vision of Harry standing in the chapel was with the gentle face he had when he gave her a birthday present. At that time, he had given her something he had previously forbidden her to touch and said:
"This is called Aglaophotis. It's a deadly poison, but it can also be used as a charm against demons. Keep it with you. It might come in handy someday. But until then, never touch the contents."
Heather's fingers moved with instinct, reaching for the pendant that hung warm and heavy at her chest.
Watching Heather grimace and curl up, Claudia stood above her, radiant in the flickering light. Her smile was wide, too wide, her eyes burning with the fever of prophecy fulfilled.
"I've been waiting. I've been waiting so long for this. Since I was a child, I believed this day would come. While witnessing the miracle that is you, Alessa, I always knew this Judgement Day would arrive!"
Enduring the pain, Heather rose like a storm and spoke to Claudia.
The words cracked the air like thunder. For a heartbeat, it was as if Alessa's voice was moving through her lips. The outburst was Alessa's anger. Claudia's fervor reminded her too much of her mother, Dahlia. Heather opened the pendant and gazed at the contents. The red crystal gleamed, faint and foul.
"What are you doing?" Claudia asked.
Heather didn’t answer her.
She looked down at the crystal.
"Dad..." Heather murmured, and she swallowed the red capsule-like crystal from the pendant. She was half-doubtful that it would really work against the thing growing inside her. She thought that even if it was just poison, it would be a better alternative than giving birth to an evil "God."
The small lump slid down her throat, and the taste was bitter and cold, and strangely metallic. She felt it dissolve quickly and be absorbed from her stomach. The pain subsided, disappearing as if it had been a lie. The searing torment in her gut, the writhing serpent in her womb, the unnatural pressure in her bones. All were gone.
"Alessa, what have you done? What did you swallow?"
Claudia's voice was filled with shock as she witnessed something even more astonishing. Heather doubled over. Her body convulsed, retching deep from within. And then, it came out.
A wet, choking sound echoed through the chapel as Heather vomited the thing onto the cold stone floor. It writhed, a mass of raw, twitching flesh, steaming and unformed. It pulsed with the rhythm of something alive, but barely.
"This is..." Claudia gasped, and Heather laughed.
"It looks like your 'God' has fallen."
Heather moved to crush the writhing lump under her boot.
"Stop!"
Claudia, with a frantic look, rushed over and pushed Heather aside.
"'God'..."
She lovingly cradled the lump in her hands like a mother with a stillborn child, and brought it to her mouth.
"You cannot kill 'God', Alessa. I'll... take its place..."
Suddenly, something began to change within Claudia. It was the same kind of transformation that Heather had encountered before. The walls, floors, and ceiling of the building began to change.
"...If you won't do it, I'll take your place..."
Claudia staggered, limbs trembling, her face twisted in anguish. Her face and arms became marred with dark veins rippled beneath her skin, black and thick, like serpents trapped beneath translucent flesh. Claudia groaned in pain, seemingly tormented by the burden of bearing 'God.' Her breath came in ragged gasps, each one a cry of agony and ecstasy entwined. Her hands clutched her stomach as if she could still control what festered inside her. She staggered towards the suspicious-looking altar.
There was a long vertical hole in front of the altar, a dark abyss peering up from below. It seemed to be a pit meant to protect and nurture the newly born "God."
A womb for a god and a tomb for its mother.
Claudia reached the edge of the pit, swaying like a drunkard at the end of her tale and bent over. Her groans deepened, her voice hoarse, cracking with strain. Suddenly, a howl, like the roar of a beast, echoed from within the pit. The floor around the chasm buckled, stone warping like flesh, the air rippled with heat and rot. In that instant, a mummified creature clinging to the inside of the pit extended its hand, grabbed Claudia's ankle, and dragged her into the hole.
"Claudia!"
Heather rushed to the edge of the pit and looked in. Her voice rang down the pit like a chime in a tomb.
Heather's words had been right.
Claudia wanted to be saved. She wanted to heal the wounds inflicted by her father Leonard, to erase the indelible hatred. If possible, she wanted "God" to rewrite their relationship into a good parent-child relationship. Even if it meant she wouldn't be saved, she believed that with the destruction of the old world, her existence and her past with her father would also vanish, as if they had never existed. She had preached love and adorned herself with hypocrisy, but in the end, she just wanted to save herself.
"I'm sorry, Alessa."
Muttering in a voice that could no longer be heard, she took her last breath in her transformed state and fell into an eternal sleep.
"Claudia!"
Heather, now in the pit, rushed over. Claudia’s body lay twisted, pale as wax, veins like dried rivers of ink upon her skin. Her limbs, once so graceful in their ritual, now sprawled lifeless like a marionette cut from its strings. She mourned before the body of her beloved sister.
"You can't be dead! I promised I would kill you myself!"
Heather was overwhelmed with frustration. It was unbearable that her pitiful sister would die in such a pitiful state. Tears welled in her eyes, spilling unbidden down her cheeks, Heather prayed for Claudia's soul.
A voice interrupted her grief. A newborn’s howl, warped and terrible, scraped the air like iron across stone. Crawling across the stone floor of the dome, a grotesque figure approached.
"So this is 'God'..."
She spoke the word with disbelief curdled into disgust. There was nothing holy in the thing that lurched toward her. The creature before her was far removed from any image of a god. It resembled the mummified monsters she had encountered before. Its emaciated body was skeletal yet bulky, contrasting with its underdeveloped and frail lower half, a result of being born from a false mother. This "God" could barely stand, collapsing onto the floor in a manner reminiscent of an insect. Most disturbing of all was its face, bearing a resemblance to Alessa's tormented visage she had seen on the merry-go-round.
The 'God' rose and took a deep breath, exhaling a torrent of flame. It seemed to be a purifying fire meant to burn away the old world in preparation for the new. Claudia’s body caught first, engulfed in seconds, her robes turned to ash. Heather's fury ignited.
"Because of you, my father was killed. Alessa and Cheryl were sacrificed for you. Even Claudia...if it weren't for you, none of this would have happened. You have no right to exist in this world. I will avenge them!"
The gun cracked three times. The 'God' shrieked with an ear-splitting cry as the bullets struck it in rapid succession. It trembled and fell to its knees, its already weak lower body unable to support its weight. But Heather, too, was running out of strength. Her bullets were spent, and she had no spare magazines left. She had nothing left but a survival knife, the size of a small dagger, bloodstained, barely fit to butcher meat. Whether it would be enough, she could not say.
It seemed that 'God' could not breathe fire while prone. As Heather circled to avoid the flames, it swung its fists in a futile attempt to retaliate. Its awkward attacks mostly missed, but a few blows landed, infuriating Heather and fueling her determination. With a growl, Heather gripped the knife and lunged, hacking, slashing, stabbing in blind fury. The blade bit into flesh over and over, blood spraying across her hands, her chest, her face. The 'God' screamed in agony, its death throes echoing through the dome. It twisted its body, managing to strike Heather with a powerful blow.
The impact was severe. She might have broken a few ribs. Fighting to remain conscious, Heather forced herself to rise from the floor, searching for her dropped knife. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw 'God' inhale deeply. Grabbing the knife and pointing its tip towards the creature, Heather charged.
It was a desperate, suicidal attack. With her remaining strength, she had no other options. If she could at least bring it down with her... She didn't care if she died. She had no desire to live in the new world this repugnant 'God' would create. The flames came for her. The heat peeled at her skin, burned her lungs, but Heather hurled herself at the creature.
"Is it over? Dad..." Heather murmured to no one in particular. She wandered through the smoking dome, each step unmoored from thought, now devoid of "God", like a sleepwalker. The fire had burned itself out and the silence left behind was oppressive. Above her, high above, was the exit, in the heavens. There was no other way out. She walked as though dreaming, her legs folding beneath her without warning. The ground rose up to catch her, hard and cold, and she fell like ash from a burnt page.
What, not again?
Don't touch me. Let go of your filthy hands.
In a state between dream and reality, Heather thought hazily. Pain made itself known only in fragments, sharp flashes in her shoulders, a dull throb in her ribs, the slow ache of breath drawn through broken cartilage. Her skin stung. Her body felt stuffed with sand, heavy and grainy, as though she had drowned in the desert. She felt an exhaustion as if her body had been filled with sand.
Through her bleary vision, a shape emerged. She saw a shriveled, mummy-like figure. It moved with the slow inevitability of a tide, dragging her limp body behind it across the broken stone.
Where are you taking me? To hell? Are you the Grim Reaper? What do you plan to do with me? Eat me? I'll taste awful. Dad always said I was a girl who couldn't be eaten, no matter how you cooked me.
The laugh bubbled out of her like water from a cracked pot. It was hurt to laugh, but she laughed anyway. There was nothing else to do. All she could do was laugh; she couldn't put up any resistance.
The bench groaned as Douglas stirred, lifting his weathered face from his hands. He leaned back against the bench and looked up at the approaching figure.
"Heather... is it really over?"
"Not yet" she said. You're still alive," Heather stood there, gun in hand, her face shadowed beneath the morning light. She glared at his bewildered, unshaven face and then burst into laughter.
"Boo, just kidding. Payback for earlier."
Douglas exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, a laugh escaping his cracked lips. He clutched his chest theatrically.
"Heather, so..."
"You don't have to call me that. I don't need that name anymore," the girl said, shaking her head.
Douglas looked at her quietly.
"You want me to use your real name? If I recall..."
"Cheryl. The name my dad gave me."
"I see."
Douglas nodded. He had investigated and found out that Heather was an alias. He figured there must have been a reason beyond his imagination. Now that it was no longer needed, her burden was gone, which was a joyous thing.
"You gonna let your hair go back too?"
"You knew it was dyed?"
"I'm the great detective Douglas."
"I don't know? Don’t you think this color suits me better than black?" Cheryl said, striking a pose like a model and laughing.
Together they walked, her shoulder beneath his arm, steadying his limp. The road out of Silent Hill was still cloaked in fog, but the pocket radio on her hip remained silent. There was no longer any sign of the wandering monsters in the town. However, there was just one...
At the edge of town, a figure stood still. She felt its gaze bore into her.
It was the mummy-like creature that had pulled her out of the cavernous dome and nursed her with a kind of magical power. She didn’t feel any need to thank it; it was an unnecessary favor. Maybe it was simply tasked with protecting the Holy Mother... though the truth was unclear, it seemed that even now, with everything over, it remained unchanged.
"This is goodbye," Cheryl waved to the mummy-like monster at the edge of town. It was a warning not to follow.
A few days later, beneath a sky scrubbed clean by wind and time, a girl was placing flowers on her father's grave. They were simple, the kind that grew wild beyond the fences of towns. She placed them gently at the base of the headstone. The grave was modest. The name carved into the stone was known only to her and a few others. She reported that she was okay. That she could somehow live on her own. To not worry.
"Thank you, Dad."
The words were soft.
The wind stirred her hair as if in reply, and the flowers swayed gently beside the name of a man who had loved her fiercely enough to defy gods. The clear sky, visible as far as the eye could see, enveloped her.