Rachel's Car
Rachel was tieing a single knot into the top of the bag while Kay sat on the bed across from her, unbelieving her actions. The length of his hair was just long enough for the tips of it to touch on his shoulders and it hung freely as he leaned slightly forward to watch her.
"I can't believe you still aren't listening to me," he said, "I'm telling you, Rachel, you won't be able to leave here."
He still watched her, but she did not respond to him with more than a distracted sound from her throat. Rachel felt awkward not answering him, but in honesty, she did not know how to answer him. She refused to believe that this town just swallowed people, like some kind of earthy black hole. There was no way she was perminantly stuck here. Not in this place. It was too large and vast; it was far too empty. Anyone would begin to endure mental suffering, just by the isolation alone. She refused to consider that as any kind of possibility. If this town sought to challange her, then by god, she would take the whole damned place on.
Kay's voice broke into the silence again as he asked, "Do you really think those are going to be useful to you? I mean carrying them around like that without a gun might prove more of a hindrence."
"I don't like the tone of your voice, sir," Rachel answered, with a sing-song manner of her own.
"You see," she continued, "those monsters are definitly getting in the way for us. If we're going to take the road out of town on foot, we're going to need a weapon. And a weapon is something I just so happen to have," she smiled at him. Perhaps the first smile she'd actually given since they'd met. To her subtle delight, surprise spred itself across Kay's face.
"You have a gun? Where the hell did you find one?"
Rachel tilted her head slightly as she answered him, "Well, I um... own one. It's in my car, as we speak."
"So, you own a gun."
"Yep, it's in my car."
But all of this was purely spoken in half truth's. Rachel remembered the dark man at the gas station, who had pointed some kind of gun at her face. She wondered if, perhaps, he might have dropped it inside of her car, if she were to be so lucky. It was a most improbable gamble but at the same time, there was an itching sensation behind Rachel's thoughts, which urged her to go on and check the car, now that she had a handfuls of clips within her possession.
She could not exactly say why she was not telling Kay that the gun was dropped by some car-jacking theif who just happened to hold a brief meeting with her. It felt as though she might gain Kay's faith in her abilities better, if he thought that she had owned the gun herself. But a much darker thought had also crossed her mind: there was less of a chance that he might try to take it from her, if he thought that she already owned it.
Still, all of that did not stop the awkward question he had managed to ask anyway, which was quite bluntly, "why do you, of all people, have a gun with you?"
Her jaw clentched tight as she tried to think of some kind of answer. She shifted her shoulders while standing up. Flinging the bag over her shoulder, she could hear the clicking of the clips as they hit against her back.
"In case I get lost and some bloke tries to abduct me, or something."
Although Kay accepted this answer, there was still a fraction of doubt in his eye, as he watched her. When he also stood up, the both of them took to the door (the motel key placed in Kay's pocket) and out they went to head for Rachel's car.
Their walk, although on high edge with thin-strung nerves, was eventless much to their liking. During the walk, they had kept their voices low and quiet, enough to hear howls from far off distances. These sounds were consumed by the thick cool fog, which seemed nonchalant in its nature, as if it were just doing its job and nothing more by sucking out most of the natural life this town could have hoped to have aquired.
Once the car was in sight, Rachel's boots tapped across the parkinglot until she was standing next to the driver's side door. Her boot still felt funny as she ran, but her habit of movement was quickly adapting to the off-balance. Now she could run as though both her boots were fine.
They heard a click from all four of the locks and Rachel placed her fingers under the handle that would open the door. She paused, uncertain of what she might find and hoping that the gun might have fallen onto the floorboard, near the gas and break petals. This gun was more than just a weapon. For Rachel's situation, it represented her only fighting chance at escaping this place alive. She needed the gun. It had to be there.
"So, are you going to open that?" Kay asked and Rachel nodded once, taking in a deep breath to hold.
The door clicked and she pulled it as far openned as she could. At first, her eyes had shut tightly, to prolong the full truth of her situation, but then she openned them.
The floor board was empty.
"No," she whispered to herself, hoping that Kay hadn't heard, and then she dropped to her knees, setting the bag down at her side so that she could feel under the dashboard and around the gas petal.
"What's going on? Can't you find it? Is it in the trunk?"
Although Kay was trying to be helpful, Rachel could only shake her head in misery whithout turning to face him. She did not want him to know that she was on the verdge of screaming in sight of her drowning luck.
Just as she was about to growl up at the roof of her car and tear at her hair, she suddenly had an inclination to try looking for the gun one more time in this spot. Not knowing exactly where she got the idea from to look under the driver's seat, she pressed her cheek to the soft carpet of the floorboard and peeked into the dark space below the velvet chair.
She saw a lump in the dark and immediately reached for it.
"Whoa," Kay spoke, as she pulled out the pistol. It was a decently sized one. From end to end, the gun was a little over four inches and it's height reached past five. The gun was entirely black with a small portion of the inner barrel visible. Rachel held the gun and it felt comfortable in her hand, but there was a surprising weight behind its size. Before she realized it, the gun was slipped out of her hand, as Kay held it up to examine it.
"It looks like a Baretta. Nine millimeter. Looks like it can take about eight rounds. That is really convenient in a creepy sort of way. You see this end of the barrel here?" he showed the barrel's end to Rachel who only watched as her knowledge of automatic weapons did not go very far.
"This makes it perfect for attaching a silencer. If we had one of those that'd be great. Then we would attract far less attention to ourselves."
That conclusion had amazed Rachel, for she had not even considered whether or not the other monsters would hear her, once she started pumping shots into any one of those beasts. Her amazement was betrayed by her eyes, as Kay smiled and handed back the gun, "Now the real question is, can you shoot it?"
Turning back to him, she narrowed her eyes, tucking her mouth in, as she dug her hand through a hole under the knot and pulled out a clip. She eyed the thing in her hand and then peeked back at the gun that she held in the air. She stared at the bottom of the Baretta's handle and noticed the slight projection of metal that suggested a way to pull the bottom down. She tugged at it with her thin fingers, but blamed her lack of progression on her stubby nails, which barely existed on her fingers. Rachel occasionally had a nervous habit of biting them and many times before she had cursed her inability to open containers or even pick dimes off of counter tops on these very digits that failed her again, even now.
But finally Kay took the gun out of her hand, with an easy and slow motion, to show he was not steeling the gun, but showing her what he knew about it. With some movement of his hand, suddenly Rachel heard a clack and the bottom of the gun simply fell out, bouncing once on the ground. She could only notice how the sound did not even echo, in this thick airy place.
Kay pulled the top of the gun back, and another bullet escaped through its top and then he took the clip from Rachel, sliding it into the gun's handle, just as easily as anyone could put together fitting puzzle pieces. His arm reached past Rachel as he set the gun down on the car seat, and then he leaned his back against the car with his arms resting under his elbows. The look he gave her held so much unbelieving suspicion that Rachel had to look away. She could feel her face growing hot, but her nose was annoyingly cold. She rubbed it.
"Yeah, well, I don't use it that often."
"Rachel, please. How far do you think we're going to get if neither of us are even honest with each other? How did you get that gun? Really? Did you steal it?"
A laugh escaped Rachel's mouth, and by accident she slipped.
"No. I couldn't steal a gun. I wouldn't know where to find one."
"Certainly not the one that you don't own, correct?"
"Uh, what?"
Kay shook his head, "How did you get this gun, Rachel? Please, just tell me."
By this point, Rachel was not sure how much she could say before enticing Kay's interest to further investigate her past. She could see the underlying track, here. First it was the theif at the gas station. Then, "why were you out driving so late?" then, "what were you doing in your old boyfriend's neighborhood just before then?" She did not want to light such a long wicked fuse. She did not know how to camoflodge her answer.
"Some.... guy..." was all she mumbled. This of course meant nothing to Kay and only sparked a hint of concern, which had shown in his face by the time he kneeled down next to Rachel. He leaned to look up at her cast down face, and Rachel could feel his words come, almost as silent as the fog.
"Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"Oh come ON," Rachel exploded, "if that isn't just the biggest cliche? NO. Why would I be in some kind of trouble? In case you haven't noticed, by this point we're BOTH in some kind of trouble, so it doesn't damned well make a difference anymore, now, does it?" She lifted the gun and the bag, standing up and stalking off, away from Kay and the car. She nearly had forgotten that the door was open still, but she did not car.
"I'm leaving this place, all right? There's nothing here that's gonna stop me!"
Trap
The uneven rubber at the heel of her boot was beginning to fel uncomfortable again, but Rachel paid no mind to it, adjusting the bag of clips by switching her fingers that held onto it, by the hilt of its knot. The gun she held, pointed down and slanted, away from herself, with her finger hanging out of the loop around the trigger. She had no idea what effort it would take to hold the gun in place if she tried to shooot it, but she didn't car. Maybe if she were lucky, the sound alone could scare the beasts off.
A pang of guilt caused Rachel to peek behind her. With a growl she turned faceforward again, after taking in what she had expected to see exactly.
Kay was still trailing behind her, several feet away from her, but visible enough in the fog. She noticed that he'd somehow managed to aquire and light a cigarette, which he kept in his mouth as he walked, only occasionally taking it out between his first two fingers, to release a breath of smoke that was almost nonexistant in comparisen to the current atmosphere. Kay had made no objections out loud to Rachel, as she had stormed away from him and the car. She had stolen his clips, practically, and she felt like a complete hypocrite. For this reason, she did not try to run from him or lose him. She was now his means for survival, just as the idea was reversed on her as well. As though he meant to throw a pouch of salt into the wounds of Rachel's guilty actions, Kay had shut her car door, before leaving it.
Why the hell did he have to act like that? What did he think he was? A Gentleman? He could have raided the snacks and extra junk she had packed in her car, but he'd left it all. And here she was, stealing his pistol clips. It was enough to make her groan to herself. She wondered if he was doing all of this just to make her feel guilty. And her guilt had a way of mutating into hate, very quickly.
A sharp howl burst through the fog and that caused Rachel to freeze, paralyzed right where she stood. The bag of clips dropped as Rachel's hand met with her other one, and now she held the gun between them, while her elbows shook.
She darted her eyes around the secluded horizon, throwing the gun in different directions, in case she might target the oncoming threat by chance.
She saw Kay frozen in his place, just as she was, but to Rachel's surprise she gasped when the realization hit her. Kay was unarmed! He was unable to defend himself against anything that was coming to certainly greet them.
"KAY!" Rachel shouted, and at once was horrified that she'd done such an idiotic thing. As Kay darted a glance toward Rachel's direction, she saw the beast-dog bounding up from his unobsurved side and she screamed.
Just as the beast blew past him, Kay had dropped to the ground, throwing his hands out to push himself into a roll and from that point on, Rachel did not know where he went. The dog beast persued her with blinding speed. Her knees locked together and the tears came to her eyes unwillingly. In one last second, before the dog's grotesque face became distinct in her view with every blinding detail, a shriek tore out of Rachel as her fingers pulled back on the trigger of the gun.
A rocket seemed to blast from her hands as the gun recoiled up until she brought it down again. The beast snarled in some kind of grizzly way, just as Rachel watched it's front arm bend dramatically until the bottom of its head burst toward the ground and it slid forward. A smear of red stained the powdered asphalt in a dainty shade of pink which caused sheer panic to engulf Rachel's nerves.
But the animal began to move! Its shoulders shifted, conducting a sickening sound from its joints, and this was just enough to cause an explosion of fear in Rachel. The resulting action came from her hands, which were the only limbs of her body that still could move. The gun went off again, again, two more times, each in some syncranized interval that made a pause between each shot. The dog's body jumped and jerked in its place, where it fell and it continued to squirm until finally, Rachel's finger pulled at the trigger only to be rewarded with a dreadful click that froze Rachel's heart in mid-beat.
She began to breath as the panic still held her fast in place and she dropped the point of the gun down to watch the animal as it lay, twitching, just a few feet away from her. It's jumbled body sported six brand new holes that each oozed into dark pools of thick and slow blood. Some parts of the beast twitched so badly that it caused the pools to drift into streams further away from its body.
With shock still behind her mind's thought, Rachel's glance caught quick sight of the bag set by her feet and she grabbed it up, digging her fingers through the holes around the knot to pull out another clip. She had no idea how to stuff one into the gun, but she could hear the beast groaning and spewing its salvic spit all across the ground as it moved.
With a half crazed and uncontrolled force, Rachel unsuccessfully attempted to slip the clip back into the Baretta, but her paniced fingers were holding it at too drastic an angle that caused the clip to stick. She cried out, through her teeth but then caught the sight of Kay just in front of her.
He ran up on the dog and pulled a leg back, stricking at the dog's gut with the point of his show at full force, added with the grace of momentum from the swing of his leg, and the animal howled again, sputtered a cough and then it lay still.
It's sight was of a contorted body, resting in a surrounding of its own bloody mess as Kay stumbled backward, staring at the beast in its new state of death.
The two of them met one another's glances, first with nothing but empty shock sharing its faulty surprise. And then Rachel began to drop out a laugh that was entirely conceived from the remaining panic she felt was emptying from her system.
In helpless loss for a better reaction, Kay also let out a weak laugh. He stepped around the dog's body, carfully, but Rachel could not help noticing the slight mark of red his shoe left on the ground. Kay, however, had not noticed.
"Rachel, are you all right?"
It seemed such a common thing for him to say, but perhaps the situation did not call for more than default responses in speech. So she only nodded, gulping and then she pulled the clip away from the Baretta, straightened it, and then smoothly slid the clip into place, hearing just the right sound to assure her that the gun was functional again.
"Oh, okay. So, like, next time, I'll totally have it right long enough to kill the things."
Kay shook his head, laughing, "you are crazy, do you know that?"
"Oh really? You're only the second person who's ever noticed that, in my whole life."
"Surprising," he said, and without warning, but naturally enough, his hand came across her back to rest on her opposite shoulder. Rachel was not used to such friendly contact, not by far, but her shoulders had been so cold and shaken, that the comfort was welcomed desperately, much to Rachel's own surprise. No, rather, she had felt the weight of an arm across her shoulders before. But it had felt so fake. So forced. This was something warm. It was sincere.
"I'm sorry, man," she rubbed at her eyes with one hand, "I yelled your name and that dog found us. That was so frigging stupid of me."
"Relax. You've barely gotten the chance to get to know the neighborhood, yet. You'll find out how fast you get to know the rules of survival in this place. Besides which," and though Rachel could feel him looking at her, she kept her sight to the ground, "that was the most impressive display of first time shooting I've ever seen. I think you're a damned natural."
"Yaaaay. I've always wanted to shoot a gun, actually. But its hard to hold the damned thing in place," Rachel tried all she could from leaning on the guy, but her legs felt near to colapsing.
"That's true, but it does depend on the model, too..."
While Kay went on, Rachel found herself peering at something through the fog. They were on the main road, the very road that Rachel had entered Silent Hill through, while her car was still functioning. She knew the road, because of the speed sign that she recognized.
But there was a large metal gate stretched across the path of the road. There were tall heavy wooden planks and sheets of metal all stacked across this fence that seemed more like the most inappropriate gate that Rachel had ever known. There were chains hanging from the tops of the polls holding the fence together and if that were all not enough, for she could not thing of climbing the gate with all of the heavy metal and wooden debris blocking her from its bottom, there were even strings of barbed wire wrung straight across the entire top of the barracade.
Unknowingly Rachel pulled out of Kay's hold until she found herself standing just in front of the road which she knew of as her only exit out.
"No... that can't be... it's not... real..."
Her knees hit onto the roadtop and Rachel felt the tip of the gun scraping the hard, flat ground.
Had this all been done while she had slept? By who? It would have taken a machine to manuvre all of those wooden beams and metal sheets. There were ladders and orange emergancy cones even. But no tire tracks could be seen coming from anywhere. No footprints. Nothing.
It was as though the town itself had put all of that there.
Rachel released her grasp on the gun and began smacking her hands to the sides of her head, "WHAT THE HELL? That doesn't make SENSE!" she shouted. She could hear Kay's footsteps come up behind her and when she felt his hands on her shoulders to stand her up, she pushed forward, shouting "YOU SHOULDN'T BE THERE!" straight at the gate, as though she could swear it would hear her.
Here she spun around, her face holding a glare in its wake that made Kay step back. She dared him to say anything, in a silent tongue.
"There's got to be another way."
To her, Kay appeared to be as lost as she was feeling, as he rubbed the side of his arm, "I've been trying to find it," was all he said.
Rachel turned back to the blockade, staring at it with the strongest hate she could muster for it. In purse defiance, she walked over to the gate, turned and sat down right infront of a thick beam. She pulled her knees up to her chest and stared at the white dusty ground beneathe her, hating it.
It wasn't long before Kay had joined her, and she noticed his cigarette was gone as he rested one arm across his knee, while he leaned back against a board of lightly hued wood.
"It wasn't like this when I got here," Rachel muttered and Kay nodded.
"It never is. Things change around this town. Nearly all the time."
"That's not fair at all."
"No one mentioned that it had to be."
"It doesn't make any sense."
"It doesn't have to."
Rachel could only feel lost. That this place could move and change at its own inate will was too vast of a thing to even hope to overcome.
"Maybe it's like a ride. And it closed up because it doesn't want to let us off till we're safe on the ground again."
It was clear in his expression, that Kay did not know exactly what to make of Rachel's tone. He could not be sure if she was agreeing with his theories or mocking them, now.
"It's almost like Dorothy's house, you know? Like when she was stuck in that huge tornado and she wasn't about to leave it until that thing hit the ground, somewhere."
"We're not exactly in Oz, here."
Rachel rubbed her eyes, rested her forehead onto her knees now.
"This place is so empty. Isn't there anyone else here? Anywhere?"
Kay only shook his head, "None that I've ever seen."
"Never?"
"Never."
But Rachel had to think, for a moment.
"But Kay, why did you think that someone else might find the gun for those clips before you did?"
"Just a hunch and a guess, I guess. Anyway, someone did find the fun for those clips. She's sitting right here."
"So you expected someone to be here eventually? Why?"
"This place is just too big to keep only one person in it. There are monsters, but I can't be the only person capable of survival in here."
"What if this is all a dream?"
Here they both looked at each other, again. Rachel could not exactly say whether the thought had crossed Kay's mind before or not. But it seemed as though it had.
"Wouldn't one of us have woken up, by now?" he answered and Rachel could do nothing but agree.
They stared at the drifting fog for long minutes. Each becoming lost in their own well of silent thoughts, until suddenly Rachel dropped her knees, drawing in a sharp breath that caused Kay to turn to her, exclaiming, "What?"
Short of breath, Rachel said to him, "I saw two people walking around the hospital down the road, when I came here earlier today."
Kay blinked at her, his uncertainty and reluctance to believe her was obvious.
"No, I'm serious. There were two people and they went right inside the hospital doors!"
"And you didn't follow them?"
"Man, I didn't know who they were. At the time, I didn't think I'd end up as the last surviving human in this messed up Twighlight Zone town, either."
A nod from Kay told Rachel that he was wanting to believe her, but still his doubts were holding him back.
"Look, the least we can do is go to that hospital and look around for someone. Anyone. There's safety and productivity in numbers, after all."
"Yeah, but wasn't that before you took your nap?"
"Kay... it's the only place we've got to start. Maybe they left something that we could use. I don't know. We just can't sit here and do nothing. We've got to go somewhere or do something. Or I think I might just go crazy here."
"'Crazy,' will happen regardless. What you don't want to lose is your hope. Besides, you don't know how dangerous of a task it is that you're considering. You haven't seen the worst that this town can do."
"We've got to go there. I saw those people go into that building. We've got to try something. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life, cleaning out old restaurants and living in a single motel room, here."
There was a bittersweet triumph in Rachel's favor, as she saw Kay's posture slump and she knew that he was ready to agree with her. She had not meant to strike down his character or integrity. But she knew no better way to make her point. She apologized to him, saying just that and he gave her a small, sad smile with a nod, just as she knew him to do. He agreed, and told her that he'd been looking for an excuse to get out of that motel room for a while, anyway.
Hospital Visit
The way to the hospital entrance had its casual encounters with other creatures, but neither Kay nor Rachel allowed themselves to see more than their siloquettes, before running off. Rachel did not have the energy to start shooting again, her nerves were exhausted and that left her reflexes feeling brittle. Kay now carried the gun, in case any of the creatures had come too close, but he also recommended that they remain conservative with bullets.
The distance between the gated road and the hospital was a lot further than Rachel had anticipated. She had expected a walk, but not one that would last them a whopping fourty-five minutes.
When they finally found their selves at the concrete step entrance of the hospital, Rachel leaned back against a high risen wall, which decorated the fenced in entrance to the front doors.
"I really wish I hade a bike," Rachel mumbled. She thought she'd caught a smile from Kay, but it was soon gone when he gazed at the front entrance of the building. He took in a breath before speaking.
"Well, this is it. It's going to be dark in there."
With that said, Rachel watched Kay pull a small black keychain pen out of his pocket, which he placed in the palm of his hand, to squeeze. It's small pale blue bulb blinked on at Rachel's face and she squinted.
"Dark in there? Like, how dark?"
"Black. You can't see s**t."
"Oh, really."
For some reason, Kay's sudden profanity had seemed out of place to her. He had an odd persona, which seemed to switch gears depending on the situation. One moment he was high class, the next, a regular grunge groupie. She could not be quite sure just how to precieve him, even now. But, then again, these were not the best terms to begin aquainting yourself with anyone, under.
His hand reached out to her, the Baretta haning casually in his other lowered hand, and he took just the slightest tilt into his posture as he invited Rachel to join him.
"Shall we go, then?"
Rachel stared at him for a moment, taking into account that his nose was incredibly straight, but also that his eyes were wide. They were not as confident as he was playing himself out to be. He was scared beyond all reason. She wanted to comfort him, but she refrained, also not wanting to embaress him. He was trying very hard to be brave for her. It was awful that she could see how frightened he really was, so she said nothing about it, gave a short curtsie, and took his hand as he led her to the doors.
There was only a brief peek at the black and white tiled floor, before all light was choked out by the heavy sound of the doors slamming behind Rachel and Kay. The loud sound caused Rachel to grimace, in the dark.
The dark.
It was blank with as empty a sound as there was even less scenary to be seen. Rachel could hear soft brathing, which in turn irritated her. Both because the sound was so slight and because it was too soft for their situation. She began to see shadows within the dark. They were strange grainy spots that flickered before her eyes, like some strange imaginary version of white noise that could be seen only in this darknesss.
"Okay, so let's see what we've got here," Kay said and then suddenly the pluck of his penlight initiated a surprisingly bright range of blue light for their eyes to adjust with.
"Wow," Rachel blinked her eyes, "dat's bright," she said and now she could see that there was a horizontal hallway crossing past them, with a front office window and a bench sitting just to the left of it. Aside from this visage of proffesionalism, Rachel could see no other characteristics of the building.
She took a few short steps up to the window of the office, which had a shade pulled down. On the shade read the words: Welcome to Brookehaven Hospital. Office Hours: 6:00AM - 8:00PM. Visiting Hours upon scheduled request.
The words were black, but chafing right off of the material that they were printed on. Rachel could see that this building was old, and now she was beginning to notice how dusty and foggy the office windows were. There were strands of crossed wiring inside of the glass, which reminded her of the glass windows on the doors in her old high school.
"So this place is called... Brookehaven."
Rachel glanced back at Kay, who was engulfed in an eariee blue light that seemed oddly fitting for him. To Rachel, he almost appeared ghost-like. As he came over to inspect the writing on the closed office shade, he made a gruffed sound from his throat and turned the penlight to peer down both ends of the left and right hallways.
"Come on, we'd better start somewhere, then. How about this door," Kay spoke, and Rachel followed him to a narrow wooden door, set just to the right of the office windows. Rachel had not even noticed this door, but they both could see that it was unlocked the moment that Kay turned the knob. They entered the room.
It was a closed in space, but Rachel could see it was an office just next to the one sporting windows. Rachel could not say what the room was for, but Kay noted that there was a cabinet holding various kinds of medications inside of it. He picked one up and inspected it closely, saying that most of these plastic bottled medications did not seem to have notable expiration dates.
Now, Rachel toured the one single desk that was split in half by an office divider, so that two people would be able to work, executively, on either die of it. There were papers and folders, surrounded by phones and computer keyboards with monitors wedged on inversed sides of the desk.
As her hand lightly slid over the papers, she caught one between her fingers and pulled it up to see it. Her eyes tried to adjust to the dull writing and she was about to ask Kay for his pen light, before he pulled open a drawer and shuffled the contents in it aside.
"Hey, now," he said, as Rachel saw him pull out another small flashlight, holding it up to Rachel and smiling.
"Yay, does it work?"
Kay clicked it on and surprisingly, the bulb did not even flicker. With their combined lights, both of them could see the entire room.
Looking down at the paper in her hands, now, Rachel clearly saw the blue label stamped clearly across the top of the sheet.
Brookehaven Institutional Hospital.
Rachel blinked, holding the paper even closer with a second glance, "Whoa, this is a mental hospital!"
"Mental?" Kay moved closer to her, peeking at the paper as he slid the new flashlight into her hand.
"For crazy people. This is an institution. Uh, for the emotionally disturbed."
"Hm. How about that."
Rachel looked at him, resting the flashlight on her hip and irritated that he did not grasp the hightened unease such a setting as this could easily provide for anyone in this type of situation. But Kay apparently did not grasp the severity of this creepy factor, yet just as Rachel was about to explain this to him, the both of them suddenly heard the sounds of strained and raspy breathing. It was coming from the hallway closest to the office door and the sound was steadily growing more pronounced.
Both of them had stopped breathing, and Kay whispered to Rachel that she must turn her flashlight off, which she did. He cupped the penlight in the palm of his own hand, which still sported the Baretta and he faced the office door, which had carelessly been left wide openned.
Rachel stood behind Kay, peeking around his shoulder while she was already beginning to feel the back her calves submit to a state of unsteady rubber.
A gurgled growl mixed in with the raspy breath as the sound grew in volume, but that had not been what started Rachel's arms to shake. It was that sound of metal scraping plaster tile flooring. An irritated screeching sound marked the end of each secondary step that the oncoming being took and Rachel knew that the creature must be dragging something.
"Oh my god, Kay--" Rachel began, but instantly Kay hushed her. He placed the penlight in his mouth, while clutching the gun between both of his hands. Rachel leaned against the corner of the office desk, while Kay moved sideways to the entrance of the office door, where he stopped, just peeking through the edge of it.
Suddenly the creature's entire form moved in front of the door and Rachel gasped, clasping a hand over her mouth and biting down onto her palm.
OH MY GOD.
The creature was pale, almost as pale as the white uniform it wore, with a low cut front and a skirt that stopped at mid-thigh. The posture of this being was slumped so heavily that Rachel could only marvel that its back did not break as it walked, dragging what looked like a heavy black crowbar down on the ground behind it. The crowbar was easily two and a half feet long, and its tip stopped, just at the back of the figure's high heels.
High heels. Arms. Legs. A uniform.
A NURSE?!
Rachel's spine stiffened and her shoulders tensed when the gaunt woman's figure suddenly hesitated in mid motion. Her shoulders twisted to accompodate for that stiff neck, which held up that thing that almost caused Rachel to scream in an uncontrolable frenzy as it turned to her.
From the top of her hat down, the woman's face was absent, covered in some great calist, which sported several deep gashes all across the sides of her temples and across her forehead. The lesions pulsed slowly giving off that raspy labored gasping that Rachel had heard coming from down the hall. The back of the nurses head was wrapped in what appeared to be excess skin. What could not have fit across her face. The nurse stood in the fram of the doorway, while Kay kept his penlight hidden again, between his hands that he'd brought closer to his face and pointing the gun to the ceiling.
There the nurse stood, breathing as her chest heaved and sunk in. Rachel bit her teeth together so tightly that they ached, for she could not even be certain if the nurse was even seeing her, or by the very least sensing her presence.
Rachel watched the lesions graced across the nurses face as they slowly flexed. The nurses arm began to move, the one stiffly clasping onto the black crowbar. Rachel felt herself lean back, ready to take the blow she was expecting.
The nurse dragged the crowbar around the side of her. But only to turn back down the hallway, where she'd come from. Soon, just the sound of her heavy breathing and the scrape of the thick metal crowbar became the last hints of her previous occupance within the doorframe.
"Whua," Rachel wishpered and without warning, Kay pulled the gun back down from his face and stepped out into the hallway.
"Kay-" Rachel began, snapping on her light, but then a scream belted out of her as she suddenly heard the cracking boom of gunfire just outside of the door. There was a heavy scream but this was not Rachel's. A final gurgling sound could be heard and another gunshot set Rachel into a convulsive shake that caused her to sit against the wall.
Then all was silent.
Suddently Kay's figure entered the office and Rachel's glazed eyes looked up to his. She paled, upon seeing the absent life within them, but she could say nothing while he pulled her up and turned from her, shutting the door tightly but holding his ground just beside it. Rachel's legs felt weak as she held herself up against the desk.
"They usually come in pairs. I don't know how safe we really are in this room, so stay quiet, but be ready to run, okay?"
"Ready to run? In this dark building, are you crazy?!"
"Well at least there are no holes in the floor, yet!"
Rachel's surprise and confusion about Kay's last statement left her subconciously obeying his request that she remain quiet.
They waited for a moment, until Kay finally concluded that the nurse they had just witnessed had been touring the hallways solo.
The silence became too heavy for Rachel to bare, so she forced out her words under the thick air.
"That was a person," she peeped.
"No it wasn't. That thing was no more human than those ******** hounds we see around the motel."
"Yes it was! She was mutated by this town! She was corrupted! It took her!"
Kay peered at Rachel, in her apparent hysterics.
"IT TOOK HER, KAY! IT STOLE HER FACE AND MADE HER INTO A MONSTER!"
She began to shake, grabbing her own face in her hands, as though she were afraid of losing it and she began to cry once again. This place practically drained the tears out of her.
"Rachel," she heard her name being called, but she just pressed her face deeper into her hands. The side of her flashlight was held against her cheek and it was painful, but she was too afraid to let that bother her.
"Rachel," her name was said again, and suddenly she felt a light touch on her shoulder. In the pit of her darkened mind, she felt like throwing his hand away from her shoulder, but instead she tensed up and glared at him, from behind her hands.
Her tone gave out a nasty, "What?" which caused Kay to pull away from her, just a bit. His hand, however, did not leave her shoulder.
"Those nurses? They're just one of the creatures around this town. Just like the dogs you saw. They're not human," he paused with concern crowding his forehead with slight wrinkles, "you are not going to turn into one of those things."
"How do you know?" she growled at him.
She could see his head slightly shake to one side, "I won't let that happen."
"That's great," she answered harshly and she could see that it had cut into his ego. She felt guilty again, both hating her guilt and accepting it, so she sighed loudly, to let him know that she would be adding a lighter note to her rough statement.
"I'm sorry, man. I lost it. This place sucks. One minute I think I can take it on, full throttle, and the next I'm like, standing in the corner, crying," she grinned helplessly.
"Welcome to Silent Hill, love," he said.
Change
The two of them strolled carefully down the dark hall, sporting ample vision along the walls, and Kay noted that there was a floor plan type map for them to look off of, incase either of them were seperated. The maps were secured to the wall, with a plastic transparent covering over them and it was easy to realize that these maps were meant to instruct people on the appropriate emergancy exit routes and proceedures. Kay concluded that there should be a map like this attatched to the wall of every floor.
When Rachel asked him just how many floors were in this hospital, Kay had said "usually four." He mentioned to Rachel that the hospital sportted a downstairs basement, also accessable by elevator.
But the word "usually," did not fail to catch Rachel's attention and she intended to ask him why he had used it. Perhaps just a trip of some disorganized cognitive thought, due to some stress.
Kay was walking in an unusually fast pace, which Rachel could barely keep up with. Though she intended to ask him just what it was he seemed to know about this place that she didn't, the moment they would stop walking down the halls.
Finally they came to the end of a hall, and Kay tried the large double doors. They did not budge; a realization that caused Kay to swear indiscretely.
"Man, come on," Rachel said, "we don't have to be in this much of a hurry. I think it would be beneficial to look around for evidance that someone has been here, rather than trying to catch up with anybody..."
"Well, there are reasons to keep moving, you know. First of all, yes, we are looking for evidance of any kind that those figures you saw were actual people who had been in here. But we also don't want to have anymore of those nurses catching up with us. There are a lot more around here, you know."
But Rachel could not help noticing the destracted tone in his voice, as Kay searched the door for some kind of way that he could break it open, or if it would be effective and safe to shoot the lock off with his gun. While watching him, and taking into consideration his speech, Rachel suddenly thought of something she had not considered earlier.
"Kay... what if the two people I saw going into this building were just... a couple of those nurses?"
Kay paused, then suddenly he turned around, absentmindedly shining his penlight at Rachel's eyes, until she lifted a hand to block it. Lowering the pen light, Kay just slightly shook his head, with the strangest look of denile and determination.
"I don't think the nurses ever actually come outside of this building. I've never seen them anywhere else but here."
So Rachel answered with a simple, "oh," while streaming her eyes along the wall again.
"Wait, shine that back over here," Kay suddenly said and Rachel complied. There was a posted memo on a bulliten board that had, what looked like to Rachel, far too much writing on it to just be a simple memo.
"Is that... it can't be," Kay muttered, while reading the flyer. Rachel's thoughts began to drift elsewhere as she shown her flashlight down the hall that they'd come from. She realized how incredibly offsetting it was to see that pale white plaster wall suddenly end, revealing the bleak abyss of darkness where Rachel suddenly expected nearly anything to pop out from. She suddenly realized that she felt immensely relieved that Kay was just beside her.
But as her eyes dazed at the corner, they widened when Rachel suddenly saw a shoulder slide into her view from around the edge of the wall. It was bathed in red cloth, but Rachel could tell that it was not blood. Suddenly she saw a pale chin and black hair hanging around the shoulder, although the hair blocked most of the face.
"HEY!" Rachel shouted, which in turn caused the being to jerk back behind the wall and suddenly she heard the tapping of shoes heading farther away from them at a rapid pace.
Kay spun around just as Rachel growled to herself and bit on her knuckle, "God damnit, I need to be shot," she said and then started running down the hall. Over her shoulder she motioned for Kay to follow her, saying, "I think I just saw someone run down this hall!"
As the two of them dodged around the corner, their lights could peer down the hall just far enough to see a door fall closed. Suddenly Kay was running past Rachel and he stopped just at the door that they both had seen close.
"Okay," Rachel panted, "uh why are we standing here? Come one!"
"No, hold on. This door leads to the stairwell. We don't know who this person is or even if they are human at all. Furthermore, we don't know what state of mind this person is in, either, okay? The door to that office we came in is right down there. I just want you to wait in there, okay? I'll only take a few minutes and then I'll come back."
"Uh, uh, uh," Rachel stuttered, but Kay pulled away from her, gripping his free hand on the doorknob, with the penlight between his fingers, "Rachel, we don't have time to discuss it, just wait in the office for me. I'll be right back," and then he pulled the door open, slipping through it and letting it close.
"....********," Rachel murmered and turned away from the stairwell door, while keeping a steady eye on it, until she had to turn her head. She ambled back down the hall, marking the entrance of the office by the dead nurse's body and then she reached for the handle to open the narrow wooden door.
Before her fingers clasped the handle, she heard a small mechanical howling. It was so far off in the distance that Rachel knew the sound did not come from within the building. It was even a sound that she recognized. She'd heard such a sound while driving through Pennsylvania once, while she was gasing up her car on a vacation road trip. The sound represented an old emergancy proceedure practiced by the people, during the days of the world war, when the threat of nuclear warfare was a heightened fear factor. The sound was that of an emergancy siren.
"Hm. And then sometimes this town is just so down right normal that it's-"
Rachel stared at the handle of the door, which had quickly begun to chip away into a rusty form. She brought her eyes up to the wooden frame of the door and saw the wood splinter and the paint began to chip off in unnatrually fast strides. She stepped away from the door, only to realize that the floor was also chipping itself into a decaying formation of its prior self. Dirt, rust, stains of all kinds were crawling all over the walls and up along the dark ceiling, and all the while, Rachel could hear the sounds of peeling everything.
"What the hell is going on?" she stared down at the floor again, which, to her surprise, now had no tiling at all. The entire floor was orange and black rusted grating that she could even peer right through, though she only saw black on the other side of the now metal flooring. The siren was still going off and suddenly Rachel had the incentive to clasp her hands over her ears. She flung them down and grabbed the handle to the office door, yanking it out of its rusted position and she ran into the office, without even looking where she was going.
Instead of a desk, the shins of her legs hit on a metal bolt rivited step and she had to sit before she fell completely over. The change in flooring had caught her off guard and now she sat on the cold copper metal, hugging her arms close to her body and keeping the long silver flashlight between both hands.
"Wha, what the ******** just happened?!" she demanded to no one aloud. But then she realized that she had barely heard her own voice over a strange buzzing sound that she distinctly heard, right in the very same room as herself.
She blinked and shown the flashlight just in front of her. The minute the light caught the shape of what she saw, a scream of unchecked terror escaped her as her entire body jerked back away from the thing hanging on the wall just opposite of her.
Whatever it was, there were things, hundreds of black things, crawling all over it, while it peered down at her with one large human eye covered in white film. Its mouth was gagged shut by a piece of thick dirty and damp cloth that was secured behind the head by lines of wires. The nose of the creature was nothing more than a mere hole on its face and the rest of its contorted limbs, strung to the wall, made little or no lesser sense to Rachel and she jumped off her seat, grabbing the handle on the door and she ran straight back out of the room again.
But even outside of the room and in the now rusted and decayed hallways, Rachel could still hear the buzzing sound and she glanced around herself. All she could see was blackness and metal grated flooring, caught between dirt clotted walls. Then to the right side of her, Rachel caught a moving figure in her light. The image of the figure caused her to take a step back from it.
The thing was like the other monsters from before, but its body was colored in hues of orange and dark veins of blood seemed to trail all over its upper body. It had two legs bent and walking along the floor, but the torsoe of the creature twisted awkwardly, so that its arms could also walk along the floor. The thing had no head at all and its gender was neutral. It reminded Rachel of the strange gray leg monster she had watched that dog attack, but this thing looked far more menacing.
Suddenly it began to charge straight at her, with an unnatural grace and speed as it jerked from side to side along the hallways.
"GOOD GOD!" Rachel shrieked and she immediately took to the long dark hallway. She ran straight for the stairwell door that she knew was just down the hall, but what her flashlight had shown her caused her to stomp both of her feet in front of her, to prevent herself from going any further. The floor of the hallway was curved downward into a single large black hole, which covered the entire length of the hallway. The edges of the floor curled underneathe, as though they had pulled away just for the sole purpose of creating this large purposeless hole.
"HOLE?!" Rachel barked and then spun around, watching the twisted torsoe run up along the walls and head directly for her. It leaped down from the wall and darted in a leap, like a spider, and all that Rachel could think to do was take a swing at it with her flashlight.
She hit the thing in its elbow and saw its body twitch as it slammed back against the wall she had just hit it into. The thing's joints jerked around as it turned to right itself, but Rachel knew better than to give it a sporting chance. She reached down and grabbed its vibrating arm and instantly pulled the creature sideways, where the rest of its own bulk sent it flying down the black hole in front of her.
"HAHAHA bet you can't FLY you sonovabitch!" she screamed at the abyss and then spun back around again. She shook her head, taking in the new scenary, now ten billion times more dismal than what she had started with.
"What the ********," she whispered to herself, "why did it do this...?"
At that point, Rachel dropped her sights to the nurse, which surprisingly was still lying dead beside the office door. There was no way Rachel would be venturing back into that room, no matter what Kay had said.
Kay... with that hole in the floor, she was now completely cut off from him. She did not even know if he was okay. She had no idea what had just happened. Was she in a different place? Was this even the hospital anymore? Had Kay been transfered to this place with her, like the dead nurse? She then realized that when she had seen that... that thing in the office room, it had actually been Kay's name that she had screamed out. She needed her guide here to tell her what the hell had just HAPPENED. Not only that, but to top it all off, Kay still had the Baretta.
And aside from this flashlight and her own limbs, Rachel had not a single weapon on her.
But there, she noticed, laying just beside the old nurse's leg, was that long black crowbar. Two and a half feet, it was, and stiff as any piece of a metal bludgeon as it could be.
Not even thinking about her action as she did it, Rachel came over to the nurse and kneeled down. She lifted the crowbar out of the nurse's motionless hand and then she held it clutched in her right hand. She slipped the flashlight into her pants pocket, almost up to its neck, and she clutched the crowbar in both of her hands. It was hardly much at all, but as long as anything came at her that did not have teeth, she should be all right with it.
