Silent Hill: A town with layers
You are James Sunderland and you are having some doubts as to the quality of donation-funded cultural institutions, especially those that connect with abandoned, rusty, monster-infested prisons.
You see no sign of Eddie.
Carefully, you try to progress through the prison, all crumbling stone and rusting metal and find Eddie -- you're not sure it's safe to leave Eddie alone here.
As you explore, cautious, clutching your board tightly, you note that some of the hideous creatures are actually locked in the cells, flailing and foaming at you furiously, trying to grab you through the bars.
You wonder how the monsters got in there.
And who locked them in.
A few of the cells you have access to, but they contain few signs of previous occupants aside from vile, overflowing toilets. You do, inexplicably, find a lump of wax in a crude, almost human shape, which you take. There are also books, heavy, ominous tomes about ... black magic? What the hell are these doing here. Who would let a prisoner have books about ritual sacrifices and dark gods in their cell?
You do not take the books -- they're of no use to you, and they're creepy, besides.
You find two more pieces of clay plate art in the cells as well - a rounded woman, naked and tempting, gratifying herself and offering to gratify another figure on the plate and around that point you really have to stop looking at it. The third plate depicts an image of a man brutally inflicting pain on other figures. These things are making you truly appreciate the work of Jackson Pollock for the first time.
Away from the cells, you find a proper door, or something near enough to it, opening on a huge, almost empty room, poorly illuminated, somehow more terrifying in its bareness than you could have thought. The only thing visible in the room at all is in the centre.
It appears to be a hangman's block with three nooses.
Your stomach sinking, you approach the block. On one side is a picture of two figures who look like the helmted man who keeps appearing, who will always haunt your nightmares if you ever escape this place, who killed Maria ...
On the other side are square depressions, looking empty and in need of something. Glad to be rid of them, you put the strange pieces of art in the depressions on the block.
There's a scream.
After a minute of stomach churning silence, when nothing's appeared, you cautiously move from beside the block and back to the single door out of the room.
Inexplicably, there is now a horseshoe hanging above the door. You don't question how it appeared, although you know it wasn't there before. Instead of shunning the unsettling and impossible appearance of this item, you take it and pocket it.
Perhaps it will bring you luck.
You find the decaying prison bathrooms and the battered lighter of a former prisoner, but little else until you trip over a trap door outside the bathroom. You scramble at the edge of the door with your fingers, without success. There is a spot where the handle used to be. Who would steal a trap door handle?
After scouring the prison in hope of another way out, you're forced to return to the trap door. You prod at the corners with your board, without success. Finally, you kneel down and look at the spot where the handle once was. It almost looks like the horseshoe might fit in the depression. With some effort, you melt the wax doll and use it to bind the horseshoe to the trap door.
Then, you wait for the wax to harden.
When it looks like the wax may actually be able to hold your makeshift handle in place, you pull the trap door open.
The trap door reveals a dark, bottomless pit.
Really?
Really.
You jump down the pit, as this course of action has yet to steer you terribly wrong.
You come to in a room that reeks of decaying flesh. It looks vaguely like a room in a hospital, with stained tiles on the floor and some sort of operating table with the stinking remains of a human on it jammed through a nearby door. The wall is full of holes, intentional ones, and each hole has a body shoved in it.
Bile rises in your throat.
There's no obvious way out of the room.
You squeeze past the operating table, trying not to breathe, and into the corner of the room behind a bit of metal gate. There's no door here, either.
There is a hole in the floor, a dark pit, no ladder or rope ...
You sigh.
You jump.
And end up in another tiny, bloodstained room. With a hole in the floor.
You jump.
You get to your feet in a room larger than a closet and don't immediately see another hole in the floor. You open a door and proceed down a dark corridor, before finding an old elevator. There seems to be no way to start the elevator, no indication of where it goes. You enter the elevator car to see if there might be anything of value in it and the door slams shut behind you, the elevator slowly beginning to rumble downwards.
And down ...
... down ...
... down.
The elevator slowly, loudly grinds to a halt. When you can leave you find yourself in a featureless corridor. It bears no resemblance to the layout to any actual building you can think of and, with nothing on the walls, there's no clue about where you might be. You can't go back to the elevator, so you head in the only direction available to you.
You can't feel surprised by the fact that even in these featureless underground corridors there are armless creatures lunging towards you, trying to impede your process.
Periodically, the monotony is broken by pits with ladders leading down to dank, watery corridors, full of more armless monsters splashing awkwardly through the water and --
OH GOD IT'S HIM THE MAN THE AWFUL MAN THE MAN WITH THE HELMET THE MAN WITH THE KNIFE COMING FOR YOU, LURKING IN THE WATER, SPLASHING TOWARDS YOu, HIS BLADE DRAGGING IN THE WATER AND CLANGING ON METAL OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK YOU RUN BACK TO THE LADDERY RUN RUN RUN BEFORE HE CATCHES YOU.
Now that you know he's here, you'll proceed with great care.
Greater care.
Fuck.
You see no sign of Eddie.
Carefully, you try to progress through the prison, all crumbling stone and rusting metal and find Eddie -- you're not sure it's safe to leave Eddie alone here.
As you explore, cautious, clutching your board tightly, you note that some of the hideous creatures are actually locked in the cells, flailing and foaming at you furiously, trying to grab you through the bars.
You wonder how the monsters got in there.
And who locked them in.
A few of the cells you have access to, but they contain few signs of previous occupants aside from vile, overflowing toilets. You do, inexplicably, find a lump of wax in a crude, almost human shape, which you take. There are also books, heavy, ominous tomes about ... black magic? What the hell are these doing here. Who would let a prisoner have books about ritual sacrifices and dark gods in their cell?
You do not take the books -- they're of no use to you, and they're creepy, besides.
You find two more pieces of clay plate art in the cells as well - a rounded woman, naked and tempting, gratifying herself and offering to gratify another figure on the plate and around that point you really have to stop looking at it. The third plate depicts an image of a man brutally inflicting pain on other figures. These things are making you truly appreciate the work of Jackson Pollock for the first time.
Away from the cells, you find a proper door, or something near enough to it, opening on a huge, almost empty room, poorly illuminated, somehow more terrifying in its bareness than you could have thought. The only thing visible in the room at all is in the centre.
It appears to be a hangman's block with three nooses.
Your stomach sinking, you approach the block. On one side is a picture of two figures who look like the helmted man who keeps appearing, who will always haunt your nightmares if you ever escape this place, who killed Maria ...
On the other side are square depressions, looking empty and in need of something. Glad to be rid of them, you put the strange pieces of art in the depressions on the block.
There's a scream.
After a minute of stomach churning silence, when nothing's appeared, you cautiously move from beside the block and back to the single door out of the room.
Inexplicably, there is now a horseshoe hanging above the door. You don't question how it appeared, although you know it wasn't there before. Instead of shunning the unsettling and impossible appearance of this item, you take it and pocket it.
Perhaps it will bring you luck.
You find the decaying prison bathrooms and the battered lighter of a former prisoner, but little else until you trip over a trap door outside the bathroom. You scramble at the edge of the door with your fingers, without success. There is a spot where the handle used to be. Who would steal a trap door handle?
After scouring the prison in hope of another way out, you're forced to return to the trap door. You prod at the corners with your board, without success. Finally, you kneel down and look at the spot where the handle once was. It almost looks like the horseshoe might fit in the depression. With some effort, you melt the wax doll and use it to bind the horseshoe to the trap door.
Then, you wait for the wax to harden.
When it looks like the wax may actually be able to hold your makeshift handle in place, you pull the trap door open.
The trap door reveals a dark, bottomless pit.
Really?
Really.
You jump down the pit, as this course of action has yet to steer you terribly wrong.
You come to in a room that reeks of decaying flesh. It looks vaguely like a room in a hospital, with stained tiles on the floor and some sort of operating table with the stinking remains of a human on it jammed through a nearby door. The wall is full of holes, intentional ones, and each hole has a body shoved in it.
Bile rises in your throat.
There's no obvious way out of the room.
You squeeze past the operating table, trying not to breathe, and into the corner of the room behind a bit of metal gate. There's no door here, either.
There is a hole in the floor, a dark pit, no ladder or rope ...
You sigh.
You jump.
And end up in another tiny, bloodstained room. With a hole in the floor.
You jump.
You get to your feet in a room larger than a closet and don't immediately see another hole in the floor. You open a door and proceed down a dark corridor, before finding an old elevator. There seems to be no way to start the elevator, no indication of where it goes. You enter the elevator car to see if there might be anything of value in it and the door slams shut behind you, the elevator slowly beginning to rumble downwards.
And down ...
... down ...
... down.
The elevator slowly, loudly grinds to a halt. When you can leave you find yourself in a featureless corridor. It bears no resemblance to the layout to any actual building you can think of and, with nothing on the walls, there's no clue about where you might be. You can't go back to the elevator, so you head in the only direction available to you.
You can't feel surprised by the fact that even in these featureless underground corridors there are armless creatures lunging towards you, trying to impede your process.
Periodically, the monotony is broken by pits with ladders leading down to dank, watery corridors, full of more armless monsters splashing awkwardly through the water and --
OH GOD IT'S HIM THE MAN THE AWFUL MAN THE MAN WITH THE HELMET THE MAN WITH THE KNIFE COMING FOR YOU, LURKING IN THE WATER, SPLASHING TOWARDS YOu, HIS BLADE DRAGGING IN THE WATER AND CLANGING ON METAL OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK YOU RUN BACK TO THE LADDERY RUN RUN RUN BEFORE HE CATCHES YOU.
Now that you know he's here, you'll proceed with great care.
Greater care.
Fuck.