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'Silent Hill: Crimson Memories' by River Acheron.
Chapter 4
THEN (January 23rd 2019)
"ANOTHER strike! Hey, you're pretty good, El!" Andrew exclaimed as ten pins exploded at the end of the lane.
Donnie, Andrew, Jon, Elliott, Jeff and Matt decided to spend the afternoon over at Pete's Bowl-O-Rama on the corner of Carroll Street and Nathan Avenue. While Lakeside Arcade - deep in the bowels of Lakeside Amusement Park - WAS open for business during the cold winter months, it was decided that today they would try something different. The amusement park was lonely and quiet this time of year, with a slight abandoned feel to it. It was Jeff's idea that they go bowling instead, after all that investigating into the town's history they did this morning. The teams were Donnie, Andrew and Elliott versus Matt, Jon, and Jeff. Elliott gave Andrew's complement a mock-bow complete with a shit-eating grin.
"I'm glad he's on OUR team!" Donnie said to Andrew. "If I didn't know you any better, El, I'd say you tried to hustle us!" He added.
"Oh, I DO know him, Donnie." Jeff mumbled with a mouthful of pizza, as he got up to bowl next. "That's EXACTLY what he did! Let me take YOU to school, Professor Farnsworth!" Jeff joked, a play on Elliott's last name and a character from 'Futurama'. He cracked his knuckles, picked up a ball and let it fly down the lane, leaving a seven-ten split. "Fuck! Fuckity-Fuck!" he cursed. His team was down by twenty points and had four frames to go.
"I mean it's not like we have anything riding on it!" Elliott said. "I wanted to surprise you guys. In elementary school I was in a league for a few years. The Holmepoint Hornets." He added proudly. "Impressed?"
"The Holmepoint Hustlers seems more apt" Matt interjected and rolled his eyes as Jeff bowled his second ball....right between the seven and ten pins, earning his team only eight points.
"And by the way, just for the record...." Elliott added. "Do you think I haven't heard that 'Professor Farnsworth' joke like a zillion times growing up? Eight points on that frame, and ZERO points for originality!"
Elliott sighed inwardly. He always had to limit how much he talked about his Holmepoint Heights days....he went slightly over that limit just now, and with it, brought intense feelings of shame and guilt he knew he would not and could not ever truly get over. His mind went back to that day that changed everything....eleven years ago now.
"I'm Elliott Farnswoth. Thank you so much for what you did for me, by the way. If....if you didn't step in, I'd...."
"Well, Professor Farnsworth, glad I was here at the right time! They're just jerks! Wanna hang out with me? Maybe throw the football around or something? I...don't have many friends. By the way, my name is..."
Elliott shuddered. NO! He promised himself when he and his family moved to Silent Hill that he would put THOSE days behind him. He would NEVER think about Holmepoint Heights, and especially.....him....ever again. It turned out that was easier said than done. It didn't matter how many years go by, or how much space you put between yourself and the past....it's something that a man could not run from. The past remembers.
The past ALWAYS remembers.
Donnie got up to bowl next, which meant unclasping his fingers from Andrew's...something both boys were loath to do. They were content, and all-in-all, it was a great Wednesday. School was canceled today due to a teacher's conference, so this morning, Donnie and Andrew met up in the Old Silent Hill district, and hung out at 'Cafe 5-To-2' on Bachman Road which included some intensely hot dick-sucking action in the cafe's bathroom. After that, they took a bus down to the Chastain Heights district to meet up with the others. The plan was to investigate the South bank of Toluca Lake, where the lake meets Pleasant River. From what the boys researched at the Historical Society, it was roughly around that spot where the Little Baroness Incident of 1918 occured. To solve that was the holy grail of Silent Hill's lore. Their little field trip was a waste, though and the boys discovered nothing.
As Donnie knocked down nine pins, Elliott was thinking back on the day's events, trying to get his tortured mind back into his new Silent Hill-based life.
"Are we even sure the Little Baroness-dealie even HAPPENED? We're talking....a hundred and one years ago!" Elliott declared..
"Oh, it happened alright. You saw the microfiche...same as we all did." Jon replied. "Almost the entire TOWN packed up their shit and left after that!"
"Fuck yeah!" Donnie interupted, picking up the spare, as he high-fived Andrew and kissed him. "Let's see what ya got, Matt!"
Elliott thought about it and shuddered once again, but this time for a much different reason. As shit as his life was, sometimes he wondered if by moving to Silent Hill, he escaped the frying pan and jumped straight into the fire. Was it karma for his past sins? Bad luck that out of all the towns in America, his parents had to pick 'Twin Peaks' meets 'Stranger Things'? Elliott wouldn't give up his new friends for anything, but he knew deep down to his core that they were all brought together for a reason....that they had their own issues, secrets, and shame. In one way or another, they were all misfits of sorts, and that couldn't be a coincidence. This town brought them together. Why?
Something happened just then as he stared at Donnie and Andrew laughing and giggling with eachother. He felt sorry for them. Something big was coming. Something massive that made his pain pale in comparison to what was about to befall his friends.At that moment, Elliott knew deep in his heart that he didn't come to Silent Hill. He was BROUGHT here. They all were. Even Jon, who was born and raised here....it was all predestined. Elliott didn't know how he could know all that, but he did.
"STRIKE!" Matt boasted. "Okay, NOW we have a game! I have an idea! The person with the lowest average in three games must be a slave to the person with the highest average score! For a week!"
"You're ON!" Donnie said. "Make it ten days!"
"Hey El, if things keep going the way they are, it looks like you'll have Jeff as a slave to order around for ten days! Haha! Make him do embarrassing shit, PLEASE!" Jon joked.
"At least I don't have an embarrassing FACE, you jerk! You'd fit right in with those goons in Brookhaven!"
Their outing was cut short, because at that moment, Elliott broke into hysterics. Later on, he was able to convince his friends he had a panic attack, which wasn't really far from the truth at all. He convinced them easily, mostly because they seemed a bit weirded out themselves.
As Elliott tossed and turned all night in his bed, he couldn't help thinking back to Donnie and Andrew. In some ways, out of all of them, they were the two innocents....their secrets were for the future. How was that possible? The 'slavery' comment, while truamaic as fuck for Elliott, wasn't a coincidence at all, and was somehow meant to weaken him....that wasn't what caused him to break down that afternoon, though. It was the mention of Brookhaven for whatever reason. Brookhaven, Donnie, and Andrew. WHY!? Elliott never paid that mental institution any mind at all since he moved here. Why NOW!? What was coming for Donnie?
Elliott didn't know, but as he thought to himself once again, "The past always remembers"....
...came a soft-spoken voice within his core that was him/not him.
'So does the future.' it whispered in his mind.
Tonight he, along with Matt, Jeff and Jon would dream of Brookhaven. And a bottomless hole. A hole and a siren. The hole was Andrew's, and the siren was Donnie's. None of them would remember upon waking the next morning. One thing was clear, however.
Something was coming.
NOW (April 13th 2019)
DING
The elevator came to a stop and the metal doors swung open. I turned right, around the corner, and surrounding me was a Day Room, a door marked 'Store room', another heavy-bound door labeled 'Special Treatment Room'. On the opposite side, there was an unmarked double-door which I slowly pushed open. I slowly went inside. On the left-hand side there were numerous doors, labeled S-1 all the way to S-14.
"Patient rooms", I reasoned. I tried each door, but they were all locked and there was no hope in breaking them open.
I slowly walked down the long narrow hall, careful of every slow and quiet step I made. The right hand wall was pretty bare, with only an examination room, a shower room, and a bath. 'Well, this looks like a dead-end', I frowned. 'So much for starting at the top. I guess I'll head down to the 2nd floor.'
No sooner did I reach the end of the hall near S-14, when I heard a high-pitched metallic creek coming from back up the hallway.
I froze in my tracks. Terrified to turn around, but knowing that eventually I had to, considering I was at a dead-end, with a concrete wall. If I wanted to head back to the double-doors, and back to the elevator, I had to eventually go back the way I came. 'Also', I thought, 'Whatever made that sound behind me can't be any worse than anything ELSE I've seen so far.' With that, I gritted my chattering teeth and slowly turned around, and saw that one of the doors swung open! I furrowed my brow and slowly walked back up the hallway. "S-4", I said out loud. I slowly peered inside. There was a narrow hospital bed with straps, a toilet, a sink, and a window with bars attached. Aside from that, the room was totally empty. I slowly made my way inside and sat on the bed, wishing I had my smokes. My mind and my heart ached. This room filled me with despair and defeat, for some odd reason. Even more so than the rest of Brookhaven Hospital. I just couldn't shake the Deja-Vu feeling that I've been in here before. It wasn't like recalling a dream, however. It was like recalling a memory one would have from early childhood; that feeling that you're not sure if it was an actual memory or just imagination.
Suddenly the door slammed shut with no warning. I jumped up from the bed, faster than the crack of a whip and slammed my hand against the cold metal doorknob. No luck. I pushed and pulled and turned the knob in both directions, but the door refused to move.
"Fucking let me out of here! NOW!", I screamed.
"Now now now...take it easy Mr. Culpa. It's for your own good", came a ghostly female voice, muffled from the other side of the door. In my entire life, I never heard a more demonic sounding voice. If I lived to be two hundred years old, the memory of that voice would terrorize me every single day and night, and haunt my descendants for generations.
"Wha...what...let...me...out please...", I whimpered.
"Not until you receive the help you need", responded the evil female voice. "We all want to help you through the trauma you suffered. You must let go of your guilt."
"I...I...don't need psych help, though. I just...I need to get out of here. Please!"
As I leaned against the door, it suddenly popped open and I crashed out onto the hallway, landing hard on my elbow. "Ow! FUCK!", I yelled. I looked up quickly in both directions...no one was there, and there was no evidence there ever was. "Well...", I said, getting up, "If I'm crazy, at least I'm in the right place!"
As I soaked in my dismal surroundings, I briefly wondered what happened to Jon, Elliott, Jeff and Matt during this whole thing. Were THEY okay? My mind went back three months ago, when we all chilled at Pete's Bowl-O-Rama. Something happened with Elliott that afternoon, some kinda panic attack....and while I didn't think much about it then, it suddenly weighed heavily on me. I couldn't explain why or how or what it meant EXACTLY, but it was related. I know that now.
"The past always remembers, I guess." I said out loud, not really sure why I said that or what that meant. "I just wish I could remember!" I added, sternly addressing the hospital itself.
Just then, I heard a sort of hissing sound. I couldn't tell where it was coming from at first, but then I looked above me. It was coming from the speakers. "Sounds like the intercom system is kicking on", I said. "What NOW?"
From one end of the hallway to the other, there were about 6 speakers and all of them were hissing and sizzling as the white-noise emitting from them was getting louder and louder. The hissing was then slowly transformed into what SOUNDED like applause, then finally UNMISTAKEABLE applause.
I ran down the hallway in terror as the applause was now mixed with cheers. The double doors which lead to the vestibule area where the elevator was, were now locked tight and wouldn't budge. All the while, the speakers blasted out the cheers and applause louder and louder every second. "Please God, make it stop. Make it stop. MAKE IT STOP!", I pleaded.
Suddenly, a booming mock-cheerful voice male voice, which had a 1950's gameshow-host sound to him bellowed out over the intercom, drowning out the cheers.
"WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME! HERE WE ARE AGAIN WITH BROOKHAVEN'S EVER-POPULAR GAME; NAME...THAT...TUNE!!!"
The cheers and applause roared from the intercom speakers. I began breathing heavily, as I ran to the far corner of the hallway, near S-14, and sat down, holding my knees to my chest, with my eyes wide as saucers.
"TODAY'S LUCKY CONTESTANT, STRAIGHT FROM SILENT HILL'S SOUTH VALE DISTRICT....DONNNIEEEEE CULLLLLPAAAA"
At the mention of my name, the demonic cheers and applause roared up again. "Just...stop", I begged. "Why are you doing this to me? Why?" I began to cry
"DONNIE, YOU HAVE ONE CHANCE...ONE CHANCE ONLY TO NAME THE FOLLOWING TUNE. ANSWER CORRECTLY AND WIN PEACE OF MIND!"
The "crowd" hooted and clapped
***"NOW, NAME...THIS...TUNE" AHHHHAHAHAHAHA!"
Suddenly Andrew's voice came screaming desperately over the intercom system
"D.C.!! Help me! Help...I can't....I'm slippi...Noooooooo................!"
The intercom system went dead, and Brookhaven Hospital's 3rd floor went silent once again. "An...drew", I sobbed. All I could do was cry in the corner, totally helpless. The man on the phone back at my house was correct; there was a truth here. I couldn't face it, though. That much I knew. "I'm...I'm being tricked.", I reasoned. "I...no..I gotta find Andrew. THAT'S the way out of this mess. He's with me somewhere in town.
He's gotta be.
THEN (8 Days Ago)
"No! Don't try to calm him down, nurse! No, not...Oh, just restrain him for Christ's sake, are you deaf!?"
"I'm trying, Doctor, but...OW!...He kicked me! It will be okay, kiddo. Just stop fighting us!!"
"NO! You both go FUCK yourselves! It's my fucking fault, do you fucking hear me you cocksuckers!? It's my fault!"
"Son, no one is blaming you. We received the reports from the police and Alchemilla Hospital. There's nothing that..."
"Go to Hell, you piece of shit!"
"Nurse, he's tearing up the room...grab him by the legs while I inject him with this."
"Yes doctor"
NOW
After the frightening encounter with the intercom system, I slowly and miserably got up and lumbered down the hallway, back to the doors leading to the elevator. I wasn't surprised to find that they were now unlocked. I creaked open the doors and made my way to the elevator. Before I hit the 2nd Floor button, however, I learned against the wall in an exhausted slump. I cried. I cried harder than I ever have in my entire life. My world crashed down around me, I lost everyone and everything I ever cared about...including my own mind.
'I just wanna close my eyes and wish this all away', I thought to myself. 'I want everything to be back the way it was. I want...I want Andrew back with me again!!'
I closed my eyes and prayed to every god mankind has ever dreamed up that I could be released from this Hell I created for myself. I couldn't face the truth that no matter WHAT happens, things can never be as they once were.
It seemed only yesterday when everything was okay and life was simple. I began to think back to a little over a week ago, when Andrew and I made plans to go to Rosewater Park after school...
THEN (8 Days Ago)
"Mom, can you get that? It's probably Andrew. We're heading out"
"Si, Donatello"
"Hey, Mrs. C!"
"Oh, Andrew...how many times must I tell you? Call me Gina already. After all, you're my son's Ragazzo di amcio. Come in!"
"Thanks...Gina. So where's D.C.?"
"Oh, you know him....he take-a-forever to get ready, no?"
"Haha! Totally! Coming AND going! I swear, you should have seen it last Sunday when we were at Lakeside Arcade. So, Mr. Noel - that's the owner - he's wanting to close the place, right? And D.C. is holding him up, because he lost his wallet. Meanwhile, I gotta get home because The Walking Dead is about to come on, so we're all helping him search for it, when Jon finds it on the Skeeball machine! Can you believe that?"
"Oh, I can picture it...believe you me. Donatello has always been...."
"Well, I'm glad that my two favorite people in the world are having SUCH a nice chat about me while I'm out of the room!"
"Oh, Donatello, you know I love ya, no?"
"And so do I, D.C. muah So you ready, babe?"
"Yep! I figure we might as well walk. I made some sandwiches, so we can have a little picnic in one of the gazebos"
"Sounds great!"
"You ragazzi have fun, yes? Oh, and be careful. Rosewater Park and it's damn wells."
"We're not morons, mom. We'll be fine....."
NOW
While I was thinking back to that day, a horrific thought occurred to me. 'I don't remember being at Rosewater Park with Andrew at all', I thought, startling myself. This realization frightened the living Hell right out of me. We planned our picnic for over a week. I REMEMBER leaving my house with Andrew. I remember us making a pit stop at Neely's Bar up the corner, because old Mr. Levine was bartending and he always gives me and Andrew shots of whiskey on the down-low. After being buzzed, I remember leaving with Andrew - staggering and giggling with him as we walked up Neely Street and then.....nothing.
"What...the...fuck...", I exclaimed, as I got a weird chill up my spine. "Wait a minute!", I said out loud. "Today is Saturday. I left with Andrew to go to Rosewater Park last Friday.....8 days ago.", I finally put two and two together, and thought back to that doctor's note in the lobby, saying I was admitted here 8 days ago.
'What the FUCK happened at that park?', I thought.
Suddenly, my brain hurt. Hard. It felt like someone was sticking ice-picks in my temple, trying to prevent me from remembering. Like it was my subconscious....afraid to take the next step and REMEMBER. As the pain got sharper, my vision began to blur and that's when I heard it:
AAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
A loud air-raid siren blared out in the distance, as my vision blurred and my head got dizzy. I collapsed on the floor, screaming out in mental and physical pain. At first, I thought I was hallucinating. The paint began to peel off the walls, the floor was shifting, the hospital was getting much colder and darker as all the lights began to smash out, and the whole place was beginning to smell like rotted flesh. "What's happening!", I screamed out. Behind the rapidly peeling paint was rusted metal as I squinted my eyes. I looked down at the floor I was crouched on and it too was a slab of metal. The siren wailed on, the pain in my head increased, and everything now was pitch black due to every single light bulb smashing.
I then passed out.
When I woke up, at first I didn't know where I was. I was still confused as I stirred up in the pitch blackness. 'It's...cold', I thought. Slowly, and gradually, I remembered my ordeal and fumbled for my Mag-lite. Shining it around, I was met with horrors I wish I never saw. The walls were metal and rusted, the floor was a metal grating, the ceiling was now a gate, allowing me to see outside in a pitch black starless sky. I shined my flashlight on the elevator, which was now just a metal box with bars leading down. (Yet it seemed operational) "Wha....oh my God", I whispered. "What....where...what the FUCK". The double doors leading back out to the long hallway were still there, yet radically altered. Curiosity got the best of me, and I cracked them open. The hallway was just like the room with the elevator. The floor was a grating allowing me to see down to the 2nd Floor, and the walls were a burnt red rusted metal. The patient rooms were still there, the doors - like the wall - were totally rusted. The S1 to S14 labels on the door were gone, and where there used to be a wall at the end of the hallway, was now a gigantic rusted metal fan with three large blades slowly turning. Littered about were a few overturned ancient wheelchairs that looked like they came straight out of the 1930's, a gurney with a bloody white sheet, and syringes filled with a disgusting yellowish liquid. I wanted to vomit. Also, there was the sound of ghostly muffled whispers coming from below me, somewhere down on the 2nd Flood.
It was at that moment that...once again...the door to room S-4 creaked open again. I knew this time it would not be empty. I slowly made my way down the radically altered hellish hallway, towards S-4. From the opened door, I could see a flickering electric light come from inside the patient room, which bounced off the hallway's opposite rusted wall. Muffled was the sound of The Andrews Sisters 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Of Company B' which played eerily from the inside of patient room S-4. Although I wasn't close enough yet to see inside the room, I could feel both comfort and despair come from it at once - mixed in a blender of conflicting emotions. It was almost as if one of my legs wanted to press forward while the other one reeled back. A part of me wanted to rush into the open door, while another part of me wanted to run back to the corner of the hallway to curl back up into a little ball.
**** ..."They made him blow a bugle for his Uncle Sam!
It really brought him down because he couldn't jam!
The captain seemed to understand
Because the next day the cap' went out and drafted a band!
And now the company jumps when he plays reveille!
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B..." ***
The 1941 song quietly haunted the hallway, the cracks and pops indicating that it was being played on an old gramophone player. The electric light continued to peer out from the open door. I reasoned it was one of the early fluorescent models invented sometime in the 1930's, as evidenced by the rapid flickering and the blueish tint that coated the hallway from the open door. "Who...or what...the Hell is in there!?" I asked myself, as I forced myself to press on. As I got closer, I detected a strange smell coming from the open door; kinda like the way an attic smells in a large old house...the smell of musk, age, and old books. The smell of the past. The over-70-year-old song played on, so out of place in the hellish hospital. When I finally reached the open door, I squeezed my eyes tight to prepare myself. I took a deep breath, cleared my mind, and finally peeked inside.
The room didn't transform to the hellish metal and rust world that pervaded the rest of the hospital, but it WAS altered. What was just a generic patient room before, was something else entirely. The bed had a huge white curtain wrapped around it, attached to the ceiling. Protruding from the ceiling was a very old-style fluorescent tube which flickered lazily. There was (as I suspected) an old gramophone player sitting on an antique-looking desk on the far side of the room, still belting out it's tune, which somehow started over from the beginning, as if it was stuck in some loop. Next to the player was a small desk calendar which had a picture of Betty Grable on it.
...the page on the calendar read June 1941.
I thought back to what this room looked like before that damn siren heralded in...whatever happened here. It occurred to me that while the desk wasn't here, there WAS shavings of wood where the desk now stands.
"Did I....travel to the past!?", I asked out loud.
"Not exactly, Cookie", came a pleasant female voice, just as the curtain surrounding the bed swung open.
I yelped as I tried to register the sight in front of me. Sitting on the bed was a black-haired woman with a fair complexion. She was wearing an old-style nurse's uniform...a blue undershirt with a white mid-section and a red cross in the center of her chest. On top of her head, barely covering a hairstyle that was long out-of-date was a small little white cap with a black horizontal stripe. She slowly got up off the bed while looking at me with confusion and amusement.
"Are you.....human?", she asked me. "Or...."
"Yes! I'm real! I answered frantically. "What the hell is going on here!? You're the first person I've seen in Silent Hill in days! Everyone just.."
"....Vanished?", she interrupted. "Yes, I know. That's how it started for me too. I thought I flipped my wig."
"Well what the Hell happened!?", I asked. All of Silent Hill is affected somehow."
"Don't ask me, kiddo. It's above my pay-grade, you dig? I ain't in the know...I'm just like you are or...I should say WERE. In fact, yours is the first mug I've seen in a dog's age"
Wonderful, I thought. I finally find someone else in this Hellhole, thinking that I could finally get some answers, and it turns out she's in her own Hell. "Well, how did it happen for you?", I asked, as I sat down on the bed. "I mean....was everything normal for you and then....?"
She looked deep in thought for a second, and then answered, "I was originally from California. My name is Rosalie, by the way. Rosalie Summers. See, I was keen to get into the 'biz. I had some friends who swore they could get me a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Think of it, Cookie! Working with Garland, Bergman, Turner? Maybe even Gable! Now I ain't Khaki-wacky, but I always wanted to get my kicks with Gable! I remember.."
"Can you PLEASE get to the point?", I interrupted.
"Oh, fine! Put the kibosh on me, why don'tcha? ANYway...my friend ended up getting hitched up with some head-honcho corporate tycoon who ended up date-raping me. My friend took his side. So...to make a long story short...I killed them both with a dash of hemlock in their champagne" I was stunned at how matter-of-fact this woman told me all this! She shrugged her shoulders in such a way that said, 'shit happens'. I could only stand there silently, listening, as she continued; "So, I took what moolah I had left, and moved across the country, to lay low so the G-men wouldn't drag me off to the joint otherwise I'd be done for. Silent Hill seemed as good a place as any, so I put down roots and got a nursing job here at Brookhaven in '37. Everything was sharp for years! This place was a gas. It wasn't until '41 that I found out from the papers that my running away unknowingly passed the buck to some poor fool. Some innocent guy was found guilty of my murders and got 'the chamber for it."
I couldn't believe what Rosalie was telling me! Here I was, thinking I was the only one going through a dire situation here in Silent Hill, but in reality...this town seems like it's a repository of lost souls. It was at this moment when I realized that NOTHING happened to the town, per se. Something happened to ME. I wasn't dead, though. Neither was this Rosalie. We were....lost. All those disappearances throughout the years...like that Bertha woman who went into Borley Haunted Mansion and never came out...all those unexplained vanishings....even....the Little Baroness Incident.... Is THIS where they end up?
Does that mean, in the "real" world, I'm missing?
"So...I'm guessing that's when you....lost yourself?", I asked Rosalie.
"No fooling! Went through a deep depression, hit the sauce more than once a week, and lost my will to live. Well, one day shortly after, I finished my shift, taking care of the crazies that were locked up in this place, and decided to lay down in this here room for a nap. When I woke up, everyone flew the coop. There wasn't hide or hair of anyone. It was also snowin' like the dickens, foggy as all get-out, and all ways outta town were blocked. I could hardly believe my peepers."
I looked around at the out-of-date surroundings of S-4 and nervously asked, "Just how long HAVE you been stuck here?"
"Oh I lost track after 40 years or so. Don't go flippin' your wig, Cookie...you didn't travel back in time. You just entered MY Hell. Don't you see? For me, it's ALWAYS like this. The entire town is. Time is frozen for me...that's MY Hell", she lamented as she glanced around the room. "Just like that rusted nightmare is yours", she said as she pointed out into the hallway. "You must have some wacked-out inner demons, Cookie. I ain't gunna make no bones about the fact that I'm one of the punished ones here. I'm getting what I deserve. But you, my lost little friend? I can tell your one of the tortured ones. The town placed me in my prison. You put YOURSELF in yours, I think. You best forgive yourself for whatever you think you did before it's curtains for you"
"Look, I appreciate you wanting to help me, but your mistaken, I'm not...not tortured about anything. I...I don't know WHY I'm here!", I insisted. Knowing how hollow it sounded. Yet again...I felt a truth I couldn't face.
Rosalie just shrugged her shoulders. "Whatever you say, Dollface. Just callin 'em as I see 'em. You'd do best to be on your way now. You have your own path to follow...plus all that metal and rust you're bringin around with you is cramping up my style, you dig?"
"Oh...okay. Um...take care. Maybe one day you'll be free from...all this"
Rosalie shrugged her shoulders again. "Perhaps. I hope you find what you're lookin' for, Cookie". Rosalie then turned away from me, and gazed out of the back window...undoubtedly seeing a very different Silent Hill than I see, and longing for a past that she could never change, and a future that will never come. In spite of what she did, my heart ached for her. She was right about one thing, though...I had my own problems and the answer wasn't here. As 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Of Company B' started over again, I slowly stepped out of the time-trapped room and the door shut by itself, leaving me alone back in the horrific hallway.
I made my way slowly to the elevator and it opened with a rusty creek. As I descended back down to the lobby, a single tear slowly fell out of my eye as I cried for myself and for poor Rosalie. Also, for the first time since my world turned upside down, I wondered if I ever would find my Andrew again.
THEN (March 19th 1941)
"Doctor, I don't know! She was JUST in there! I was on this wing all day and no one left any of the rooms. It's like Nurse Summers just vanished! It's the queerest thing!"
"Get Brookhaven security. Tell them the situation and have them search the whole hospital. I hate to think one of these mental freaks took her and hurt her. In fact, get the Director on the phone and ask if he will authorize a Lockdown. Rosalie Summers is one of our best nurses, and I'll be dad-blamed if she was taken hostage by one of these nut-cases."
"Doctor...I was patrolling up and down this hallway all morning. Nurse Summers NEVER left S-4! There's not a chance in Hell that anyone TOOK her. She VANISHED! It's 'The Little Baroness' incident all over again! This town is looney!"
"Just do as I say, Nurse Sunderland. We'll consider those possibilities AFTER we eliminate the rational ones. We're doctors...not WITCH doctors. Now get a hold of yourself"
"....yes Doctor."
Check out my other ongoing works:
https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/authoritarian/jack-hamilton/ (A tale of domination and revenge.) https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/authoritarian/the-fallout-of-jack-hamilton/ (A side story/prequel-sequel to the above that I wrote)
If all goes well here, look forward to 'Silent Hill: Crimson Ice', coming after this one is completed!
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or opinions, please email me at riveracheron101@gmail.com