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Silence ch. 6

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This building doesn’t have a working heating system—what a surprise. I’ve stopped trying to convince myself that anything works in Silent Hill. The lights do work, albeit badly—they’re dim and one lightbulb in a corner of the ceiling is flickering. The lobby smells like wet grass, and the furniture like cat. Still, it’s a big improvement over outside.

Hoodie-guy sits down in one of the moss-green sofas pushed against the left wall. After seeing that there’s no one behind the counter, I do the same on a different couch. Oh, and I’m uncomfortable as hell. Did I really need to tell you that?

“All right,” I tell him. “We’re inside. Start talking.”

He folds his arms over his chest. “Not very patient, are you? Guess I’ve held out long enough,” he adds (presumably before I can strangle him). “But since you’re the one making all the demands here, it’s only fair that you tell me your name first. I need to know who I’m talking to.”

Hesitation. “Will I regret this later?”

“Only if I lose you, have to find the police and can’t identify you,” he says. Doesn’t really help.

“Rock Light,” I say after a bit.

“Well, Rock, you’ll be happy to know that you’ve come off as quite the asshole.”

“I figured. Sorry, but I’m really not in the mood to not be an asshole. I’m stranded.”

He finally puts his knife down. Now that we’re in a place without fog, I can see it’s stained with blood—not all of it the creature’s. “That’s not a helpful attitude to adopt if you’re expecting help.”

“So I noticed. Is that all you need to know?”

“Yeah. Name’s Jacob Grant; I’ve been living in Silent Hill for a while now.”

There aren’t any windows for me to look out of, so I have to avert my eyes to the ceiling. Don’t know why. Something about not being able to see Jacob’s face bothers me; human fear of blanks must have found its way into me.

“Were these…things always here?”

“Not when I first came here, no. Used to be a nice, quiet town—though it was boring as hell. At least now I have something to do.”

Why does that not bode well?

He ignores my tenseness and goes on. “I think it started after the crone and her daughter came in. Heard her daughter burned to death in a fire, and the mother lost it. Then…well, Silent Hill went down the crapper real fast. Started with the Air Screamers swooping down and ripping people’s scalps off. It got worse…We were finding people impaled on gates, crushed against buildings, torn in half…Soon enough the population was in the tens digits. Those who could leave, left.”

“What, where the gas stations attacked when everyone was low?”

Grant leans forward. I can’t see his eyes, so I can only assume he’s glaring at me. “I tried jumping over the gate. It brought me back to the town entrance, even though I should’ve landed outside. Tried jumping back over several times with no results. Even threw a stone over it, and it just came back. It was like being trapped in a paradox, and I suppose I am. There’s no leaving Silent Hill for those who have to stay. And, I hate to tell you this, but you can’t leave either.”

…what?

“Bullshit.” I try to hide the shakiness both in my voice and the rest of me. “I could walk out of here if I wanted to.”

“No, you couldn’t. Know why?” There’s no concern, even when he informed me that he was apparently stranded here as well. “You wouldn’t have been brought here if there wasn’t something you had to do. It’s the same with all the outsiders, whether they know it or not. Some manage to complete their business here and escape. Most don’t.”

“So…” My insides have turned into chipped ice and my outsides have gone numb. “So, you’re here because you have unfinished business?”

“Dunno. I lived here before all that shit happened, so…I guess I’m stuck here until I die.” He laughs. Fucking laughs. “It beats working at Macdonald’s, at any rate.”

“Why am I here?” On second thought, why do I expect a rational answer? Why do I still hope something about my situation will make any sense? Why do I still think you care? [Answer: Because it’s not happening to you.]

Grant stands. “It’s like I said. You have unfinished business, maybe not necessarily here. But all the roads lead into one—I think that’s how it goes.”

I can’t respond, or move. Or think. My brain is trying to escape through the back of my skull.

“I can see you’re a pretty violent person, thanks to rage…You even took it out on people. Honestly, I don’t like you. But I’m a nice guy, so tell you what: You stop being an asshole and stick with me, and I’ll see if I can help you. But once you figure out what you have to do, you’re on your own. I’ve found that I’m extraordinarily bad at personal problems that aren’t mine.”



“Who knows? The phones here might work.”

The room and everything in it spins violently for a second, and when it all settles down I’m walking down the hall. Mouth’s gone dry, insides have not re-solidified yet. Probably going to fall over shortly; my legs have turned to jelly.

I hear Grant say, “Going so soon?”

And respond with something unintelligible.


The air around me feels artificial and it burns. Walls, ceiling, floor—they’re just meaningless shapes. I’m a passenger in my own body. Nothing is going right, nothing is rational, everything’s sort of blending together and becoming a shapeless mass of backwards logic, just like that first body on the pavement. Whatever could make any kind of sense at all, what might have some logical placement (like Grant) just falls back into irrelevance (like Grant). I’m stuck here, like a realist sealed into a Salvador Dali painting. Which I am, in a way. I wish there was someone here who could actually help me, unlike Grant and his skipping around and his batshit.

[i wish protoman was here]

I need to lie down.

There are doors all around me, but they’re all closed. My hands are numb like the rest of me, and I don’t feel like checking to see which ones are unlocked anyway.

I don’t understand what Grant meant about my having unfinished business, or why he’s so passive about his own damnation for that matter. Zentradei is disbanded and all its members are dead. Wily is through with the only goal in life he had left, and is working on a less destructive one. I’ve gone back to being just another robot, weaponized left arm notwithstanding. There’s nothing left for me to do, aside from trying to make myself useful again.

I should not be here.

…No. Grant’s lying. He has to be. But…how would he know I’d been looking for a working phone before I ran into him? Was he watching me? I should have heard him, at least.

I can hear someone approaching from the other end of the hallway, but my mind pushes the noise to the side. Like it’s doing everything else.

Grant implied that he and I aren’t the only ones here. Have to wonder if they’re as messed-up as he is. And where they are. What they have to do to complete their business and escape. How they ended up here.

Why Silent Hill is the way it is now. No one here but monsters.

[Maybe “monsters” is a broader term than it sounds.]

I want to leave. I don’t care about finishing anything here.

…Grant’s insane.

Maybe I am too.



No. I’m not going to fall apart over this. Grant is the one without his head screwed on, not me. I can survive this. If he decides to stop being nice, I have to be ready.


Oh. I stopped walking.

Someone walks out of the shadows—no lights are on beyond the seventh pair of doors, by the way. She was treading lightly, as if afraid something would jump out and drag her back in, but now that she sees me, she dropped the scaredy-walk and…ugh.

I don’t hate women. I do hate it when they feel the need to exploit themselves for men. That’s what she’s doing. Posing against the wall like she’s in an unwashed bar, for the crowd. “The crowd” being me, who doesn’t want to see that.

But she’s not Grant. That alone is a huge relief.

“You got a room, pal?” she asks in a tone I do not find comforting.

From what I can tell, she’s a nurse. But no hospital I know of forces the women to wear low-cut blouses and miniskirts. No merciful hospital, anyway.

“No,” I mumble.

There’s something wrong with her skin. It’s pale—almost white—and dirtier than can be healthy. It almost looks like that of the dead creature and the ptero…aw fuck it, Air Screamer.

“Mine’s…” She raps on the closest door with her knuckles. “Right here. Honestly, I’m getting tired of waking up to static every morning, and…”

Static? Does she mean dead air or white noise?

“Do you have a phone?” I blurt. I’m starting to wish I’d brought one of those shoebox-sized cell phones like Dr. Light keeps suggesting I do. This searching for a working phone is starting to piss me off, and I’ve only come across one so far. That didn’t work.

To my dismay, her face falls. “You’re trying to call someone out of area, aren’t you?” She straightens up. “The phones in this hotel work, but they’re all local. They’re only useful for calling other tenants.”



“Aside from Grant, Lee, you, and myself, there’s no one here.”

“Who’s Lee?” God…Grant and Pseudo-Nurse are bad enough.

“He lives on the top floor. I forgot why he doesn’t come out, but he still calls me. Every day, in fact.” Annoyance flashes over her face; I don’t know her well enough to determine if this is a red light or not. Probably is.

“He rants about her, mostly. Blames her for dragging his sorry ass into Silent Hill. He doesn’t realize it’s his own damn fault, but hey, it’s not my problem.”

“Great. He sounds even worse than Grant.” –oh damn, did I say that out loud?!

Luckily for me, she just laughs. “Well, don’t say that to his face.” Pseudo Nurse opens her door and takes a few steps in before glancing at me. “You want to come in or not?”

I know what she’s implying, and I don’t like it. But, she’s the only halfway friendly face I’ve encountered all day, and this hotel…No way I’m staying in it alone.

“I’m coming in.”

I can see the interior of her room from here. There’s no furniture save for a bed and a nightstand, and a radio if you count those as “furniture”. No window, either, but after being outside for several hours, I suppose that’s a good thi—

“Oh Jesus! Get back!

Pseudo Nurse shoves me out the way before I have time to decipher what she told me. As if that weren’t enough, something just stepped on my legs—something large. As you probably can’t imagine, it hurts, and the pain’s enough to wring another expletive out of me.

I get back on my feet right as Pseudo Nurse pulls something out of the drawer. Whatever just forced its way in here, she has to keep kicking it ba—

Wait…

What is THAT?!

It…looks like the first body I stumbled across, minus the burns. And it’s convulsing. A little more humanoid this time. Thrashes more wildly every time Pseudo Nurse shoots it—she has a pistol—tries to scratch the shit out of her legs. She alternates between kicking and shooting it…it looks like it’s slowing down…

She pulls the trigger a sixth time. It freezes, slumps onto the ground…and hopefully dies.

We both stand in silence. Me, I’m trying to get my breathing back to normal. Her, she’s inspecting the dead creature. I think. So am I. It doesn’t look so similar to that first body now…too pale. I’m pretty sure the other guy didn’t get to keep his limbs.

Pseudo Nurse talks first. “What the hell?”

I’m going to assume that when someone in Silent Hill doesn’t know what’s going on, it’s a very, very bad thing. “You mean…” God, it’s so hard to speak. “You don’t know what that is?”

“No. Never seen it before.” Slowly, she puts her gun back in the drawer. She takes hold of the cadaver and drags it outside, with a thin trail of blood following her. I can hear her conversing with Grant—he can’t recognize it either. Oh shit.

I can hear the front door open, and something land on the pavement. Grant threw it outside…where its buddies might find it. [No. Don’t think about that.] Soon enough, Pseudo Nurse comes back in, locking the door behind her.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” she tells me. “Grant went up to tell Lee that they’ve made it in here.” I watch her shuffle to her bed and lay down on it. Then she smirks, for the last time this night. “So, how about you and I—”

I can’t believe this. She just killed a writhing mass of undead matter, and two minutes later she hits on me?!

“The floor’s all right.”
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DeltaPS2's avatar
Oh my gosh. :iconscaredplz:
:scared: she looks like the nurse from Silent Hill >_<