In the Eyes of a Child - part 2
No wonder this place is called Silent Hill.
Ashes like snow were slowly falling from the sky as Cybil went outside, pausing to let her eyes adjust to the light. A narrow path of footsteps led down the stairs ahead of her, disappearing in the ever present mist. Probably made by Dahlia, foraging for food. They really were gone, the rest of them, and everything was quiet.
Slowly, Cybil went down the stairs until she stood on the ground, her steps muted against the thin layer of ashes. What next?
“Be careful. The monsters are still out there.” Dahlia was standing at the entrance of the church, watching from underneath ash-colored wisps of hair.
“You worry about yourself, Ma’am.” Cybil straightened her shoulders and started to walk, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. Most likely an accomplice. I’ll take her in for questioning later. Later, when Rose and the child were found. She shuddered when a faint breeze made the fog in front of her swirl.
I can do this.
She had let Rose walk into certain death, and Sharon… what had happened to Sharon? Surely, the residents of Silent Hill must be out there somewhere. Most likely, they had pulled Cybil away from the fire well in time not to kill her and then left her there unconscious, taking off with Sharon and Rose as hostages. No more than a day could have passed, considering the fact that Cybil wasn’t even hungry.
She passed rusty cars with flat tires parked in rows by the abandoned buildings. There was nothing living in sight as she tried to remember the route Christabella and the rest of those lunatics took to the hospital. She turned right into Katz St., then onto Rendell St., moving as quickly as she could rationally motivate herself to.
It had to be possible to make sense of it all. Most likely, poisonous gas from the burning coal mines underneath Silent Hill had caused the people in this town to slowly go mad and hide from the authorities over the years. She and Rose had obviously gotten their share of hallucinations as well, with visions of monsters and walls coming to life.
Pure imagination. Cybil rubbed at her face, grimy with ashes. The hospital wasn’t far, but the ever present fog made it somewhat hard to gauge distances. She turned another corner and the main building came into view. Jogging across the street to the main entrance, she quickly let herself inside. Carefully, she made her way up the stairs, trying to recall the path Christabella and the others had taken when they had led Rose to the elevator doors. She moved quietly, her ears straining for any noise, but the dimly lit corridors were deserted.
The wide space was much like Cybil remembered it, with white paint peeling off the walls and the dusty windows providing the only light source, but there was one difference. Now, the elevator doors Rose had entered through were open, the iron bent and twisted. Cybil felt hope flutter in her chest. She must be alive. Wetting her dry lips, the cop moved towards the doors, blinking as she spotted her baton in the dust, and then her emptied gun not two feet away. Putting both back at her belt where they belonged, her gaze focused on the blood splattered on the floor and walls, and the pile of rags in the corner that must be… Oh fuck, I killed one of them. This was where she’d made the fateful decision to at last let herself get caught by Christabella’s gang, distracting them as Rose went into the darkness alone. Some of that blood must be mine. I’m lucky they didn’t kill me. She pushed away memories contradicting this statement, shaking her head.
That was when something began to move in the darkness beyond the elevator doors.
They were shaped like women, wore white, stained dresses and little caps in clear mockery of nurse uniforms, but there was nothing human about the way they jerkily moved their limbs one at a time, and certainly not in the way they turned their disfigured, sightless faces towards Cybil. The four of them crowded the entrance of the elevator as Cybil backed towards the stairs, and she noticed with growing terror that two of them were wielding rusty knives. There is no fighting against this. That clear beyond any doubt, she turned and ran, boots sliding on the floor as she practically flew down the two sets of stairs. She slammed the door to the hospital behind her, and when she tried to run down the last steps outside she fell, rolling down the rest of the way onto the cracked pavement. Her ears straining to catch the sound of the dragging footsteps of the monsters, she managed to get up and once more break into a dead run. Past Heaven’s Night and the gas station she ran, then right onto Nathan Avenue. Shadows moved among the dark trees to her left, causing her breath to catch in her throat and urging her to keep running. Surely, if she could just get reinforcements somehow, they would be able to find the cultists and save Rose and the child. Back on the road towards Brahams, past the bank, the church with its doors once again closed, the clinic. Her breathing was labored from panic more than exertion, her heart pounding like a sledgehammer in her chest, and she willed herself to run slower. At least they weren’t very fast. Hallucinations.
Cybil didn’t stop until she reached the junk yard where she’d lost her helmet and jacket years ago, or so it felt. She rested her hands on her knees as she surveyed the area, chest heaving. The car. It was gone, and so was the gorge once separating Silent Hill from the rest of the world. Not wasting any more time, Cybil straightened and jogged up to her crashed bike, and miraculously managed to get it started. Just sitting astride with the engine roaring steadily, she felt a lot safer. She ran her fingers through her hair and frowned, searching her scalp with her fingertips. The wound she’d gotten when she crashed the bike was gone. I’m going crazy. I have to get back to Brahams before I go as mad as Dahlia. She swallowed and turned the bike around.