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Rain batters the pavement, torrenting down the streets in icy sheets that soak through Murphy’s already-wet jacket like it’s not even there. He shivers, shaking his flashlight off for the third time, sweeping its beam back and forth across the shifting fog: it’s bad out here, but anything’s better than where he came from. That monastery was no safe house (honestly, he thinks, even prison was less hostile), and he welcomes the biting cold as proof that he’s still alive.
Still, though, he knows he needs to find shelter soon; the streets get dangerous when the rain comes down like this, and he’s not in any shape to fight. Wind kicks at his back, sending wet leaves and garbage skittering past him down the street with a sound like the whole town sighing, as he skirts the sides of buildings trying every door that still has a handle. It’s not long before one of the doors actually opens, and Murphy ducks inside, kicking the door closed and shaking rain out of his hair as he does so.
“God,” he says to no one in particular, sniffing back the beginnings of a runny nose and almost basking in the stuffy dustiness of the apartment he’s wandered into – it’s warmer here than it is out there, and dryer by a landslide. He’ll stay till it clears up (he wipes a clean patch on one of the front windows with his sleeve so he can keep an eye on the street) and in the meantime look for supplies.
The floorboards creak as he crosses them cautiously, making a beeline for the only door on this level of the house: it’s locked, though, so he heads back the way he came, checking the street again before starting up the narrow stairs. Pictures line the walls, but the faces are all torn off, blank spaces matching the peeling paint to an almost uncanny degree – a wedding photo next to what looks like a picture from the beach next to a portrait, all of seemingly the same people, all defaced. He can see another up ahead, half-cast into shadow by light filtering in from behind a partially-opened door. “At least it’s not locked,” Murphy mumbles under his breath, itching for a weapon, a plank, a rock, something. “Hello?”
No answer. He pushes the door open, on guard. The room’s in complete disrepair, but he can tell it was a bedroom at one point: every drawer in the room hangs open, every window’s been sloppily boarded up. There’s an empty vase on the far windowsill, strangely untouched, and papers on the bed, but the rest of the room looks like it’s been tossed about in a hurricane. “Shame,” says Murphy, absently touching the bloody gash in his side from his last fight with the Bogeyman – a health kit would’ve been nice, or a box of bullets at the very least.
He approaches the bed carefully: there’s a little irony in checking under the bed for monsters, but he stifles it in favor of his own safety, reaching for the papers as soon as he’s made sure nothing awful’s waiting to grab him. There’s a sealed envelope and something that looks like it might’ve been clipped out of a newspaper that Murphy quickly realizes is an obituary.
“…---- -------------------, aged --, was found dead with her husband ----- ---------- in a car at the bottom of Lake Toluca, nearly fifty miles from her home in ------. Authorities say that the deaths are suspected to be a murder-suicide, as ----‘s body was ruled to have been dead for nearly a week longer than her husband’s. She was first reported missing on ------ --, after a week of hospital leave that she spent at home…” The rest of the obituary is blurred and torn, made illegible by water damage, but there’s a tiny picture of the woman and her husband at the top – it looks a little like the undamaged version of the beach photograph hanging in the stairway.
Murphy steps away from the bed to open the letter, half-expecting the husband’s suicide note to fall out and ghosts to swarm the room (stranger things have happened, and it’s better to be safe than dead), but it’s just a black-and-white photograph of a dock with something scrawled in faint pencil underneath: “To whoever finds this, please scatter our ashes in our special place.” The vase on the windowsill isn’t a vase at all, then, it’s an urn, and it’s occupied. Hard to be surprised at that, somehow.
Well – Murphy bites back a grimace, eyes on the urn. This isn’t the first time the town’s thrown something like this at him. He drops his shoulders in defeat and takes the urn off the sill, jamming the photograph in his pocket and leaving the obituary behind – it’s not that he can’t ignore it, it’s that he feels like he shouldn’t. It’s here for a reason, isn’t it?
Something – the ghost of a memory, maybe, déjà vu of the feeling of finding out someone has just died – makes him close the door behind him almost reverentially, lingering for just a second at the top of the stairs with his hand still on the knob, feeling the weight of silence settling on his chest as the house creaks around him.
--
Back on the ground floor, the rain’s stopped, and in its place mist swirls on the empty blue street: he can see the drawbridge he’d lowered earlier from here, looming in the distance. Shaking out his map, squinting in the dim light, Murphy traces a finger down across the bridge: there’s a marina on that side of town, which would suggest docks. “Worth a try,” he shrugs, tapping his index finger on the urn.
Mist clings to his clothing the second Murphy steps outside; making sure his flashlight’s still clipped to his belt, he sets off towards the bridge, eyeing his surroundings for any rogue monsters. Not only is he barely in shape to fight, he doesn’t have a working weapon – his gun’s empty thanks to everything that went down at Saint Maria’s.
He manages to cross the bridge without incident. Strange how empty the streets are on this side of Silent Hill, he thinks: once he’d made it to the bridge, everything went, well, silent – no screamers, not even any static from the walkie-talkie. The only monster he’d seen had been a dead one, recently killed by the looks of it, already starting to dissolve in that weird way monsters do (not to say that wasn’t worrying by itself – what killed it?), but he doesn’t let down his guard, checking over his shoulder every couple of steps to make sure he’s still alright.
A scuffling sound starts up behind him once he’s passed his first intersection, though, low and soft and sporadic. The first time he hears it he nearly freezes, stepping on his own feet and snapping his head around: nothing’s there, though, and he turns all the way around, going stock-still and waiting for it to happen again.
It doesn’t happen again, though, and his walkie-talkie’s still quiet. “Probably just hearing things,” he mumbles under his breath, but he checks over his shoulder again anyway, thinking wistfully of all the bullets he’d wasted back in the monastery – an empty gun might work as a bluff if Cunningham’s tailing him, but no monster’s going to fall for it, and if it comes to a fight he knows he won’t get very far. He turns the corner into an alley, and after a few steps the scuffle’s unmistakable – louder, closer, more purposeful than before.
Murphy swings around fast, blood roaring in his ears when he sees a shadow flit just out of sight behind a pile of debris. They’re too close to run from, he realizes, clenching and unclenching his free hand in preparation to throw a punch. Maybe he’ll just put the urn down, get a few punches in – but if he has to pick the urn back up it’s going to cost him time – can he smash whatever’s after him with the urn without feeling bad about it later?
He walks a couple more purposeful steps forward, then presses himself against the wall behind what looks like the wreckage of a fire escape and waits. Sure enough, whatever’s following him sticks its head out from behind the debris, following up the gesture by bringing out –
A flashlight? Either this is some kind of anglerfish nightmare of a monster, or it’s carrying a flashlight. The figure emerges completely, and it’s more human-shaped than Murphy really knows what to do with, sweeping its flashlight beam down the alley with an almost palpable air of confusion: “Is someone there?” calls the figure after a beat, unfamiliar voice unsure and nervous, and Murphy’s conflicted into ducking back behind his cover. Showing himself could be a mistake – not showing himself could be worse, considering they’re going to pass him soon.
He steps out from behind the fire escape after a moment and is immediately met with the sound of a gun being cocked and a light in his face. In return he swings at the figure, closer than he thought they’d be: he doesn’t connect, but they reel back anyway, flashlight and gun both rattling in their hands. He can see now that the person facing him’s a man just a little younger than he is, blond and grimy and scared – he readies to throw another punch, but “Wait, wait wait!” says his adversary, dropping the gun to his side, still backing up.
Murphy stops advancing, eyes locked on the man’s gun. “Why the hell are you following me?” he says carefully, half-wondering why there isn’t a bullet in him already.
“You’re human?” blurts the fair-haired man, flashlight still shining directly into Murphy’s eyes. “I mean – you’re not –“
“Not from around here?” Murphy suggests, slowly bringing his free hand up to shield his eyes. “No, I’m not. Name’s Murphy.” Shit, probably not smart to spread his name around like this, not with Cunningham still after him – he backpedals a little too late, internally cursing himself. “You?”
“James, James Sunderland.” James doesn’t seem as worried about Murphy as Murphy is about him, and puts his gun back in his belt. “You’re not who I’m looking for, but it sure is nice to know I’m not alone in here.”
Considering what happened to the last person Murphy met, it’s better not to reciprocate that particular statement. Instead, “Sorry for swinging at you,” he says, touching his own jaw in sympathy. “It’s been rough out here the past couple days. Thought you were someone else.”
“Are you looking for someone, too?”
Charlie, thinks Murphy. “The exit.”
James laughs a little ruefully. “It’d be a damn nice thing to find, huh? Listen–” He digs in his pocket, and Murphy tenses, ready to run; he relaxes when James produces a battered square of paper and offers it to him. “Have you seen this woman? Uh, her name’s Mary – my wife. She told me in a letter that she was waiting here for me, but…”
The woman in the picture has tired eyes and a smile like she knows something. She looks familiar somehow, but not like anyone he’s seen walking around – not the screamers, thank God, and not Cunningham. “I’m sorry,” he says, handing the picture back. “I hope you find her soon.”
“Yeah.” James’ voice is unspeakably sad as he puts the picture away. “If you see her, could you tell her I’m here? I’m worried about her. There’s so much…” He waves his hands vaguely. “Weird shit here. It – wasn’t like this before.”
“Before?” It’s started to rain; Murphy tilts his head towards the road, indicating this conversation’s best taken elsewhere, and James falls into step next to him. Their flashlight beams bounce off the road a little eerily, illuminating the drizzle.
James hums in response. “A long time ago now, I guess. Three years. My wife really loved this place – called it our ‘special place’. The last time I was here was with her, about a week before she,” He runs a hand down his face, all of a sudden sounding hesitant. “Before she died.”
Murphy glances sharply at James, eyes flicking across the man’s face. “She sent you a letter, though?” he asks, still eyeing James, unsure if he wants to run or not. “And that doesn’t seem suspicious to you?”
The rain’s picked up; thunder rolls gently overhead, and Murphy thinks he hears screamers calling to each other in the distance. “I want to believe she’s here,” James says, almost too soft to hear over the rain. “I missed her for so long, and for there to be even a possibility that she’s alive–”
“I really do hope you find her,” Murphy says firmly, and he means it. He thinks of Charlie with a pang – no chance, his brain says, but hope is a hard thing to kill.
Neither of them speaks for a long moment. Murphy blinks rain out of his eyes as he checks every alley they pass for monsters. “I never saw a body,” James finally offers, sounding embarrassed. “At least, I don’t remember seeing a body. Or a funeral.” He falls silent again, and Murphy’s sure he’s embarrassed now. “And the letter – it’s her handwriting, I’d know it anywhere. But that’s not your problem, I’m sorry.”
“S’fine,” says Murphy, waving him off. “I’ve spent my entire time here dealing with other people’s problems.” The urn he’s carrying is a testament to that; he shifts his grip on it, pressing the cold marble into his hip so he doesn’t drop it.
Actually –
He remembers where he’s seen Mary before.
He stops walking. James keeps going, but stumbles once he’s about five steps away and turns back to look at Murphy. “You alright?”
“Fine,” Murphy assures him absently. Funny how James only showed up after he’d picked up that urn. Funny, too, how he could swear he punched James, but doesn’t remember his fist connecting – after everything he’s been through so far, he thinks, a human ghost would hardly be surprising. Preferable, even, to some of the bullshit he’s seen. At least James hasn’t started laughing like the dolls yet. “I’m fine. You – you never saw a body?”
“Oh – no.” The two of them continue down the street, sticking to the dark sides of buildings to keep out of the rain. “At least I don’t think I did? The last three years are all a blur. I wish I could remember.”
James keeps talking – about bodies and burials, fuzzy memories of three years past; Murphy thinks about the ashes in the urn and says nothing. It makes sense that there’d be ghosts in Silent Hill, considering what a hellscape Silent Hill is (Murphy decides not to think about how many people were pulled here and ended up dead). He wonders a little wryly if his entire purpose in being here is to lay the whole town to rest.
(He decides not to think about his own ghosts, either, because he’s not sure if they’re even able to rest at this point.)
Lights shine dimly out of the fog up ahead, illuminating a dilapidated dock and a bench that Murphy knows he’s seen before. He fumbles in his pocket for the photo he found next to the urn. “This is the place,” he mutters, holding the picture up over the misty dock in front of them, and James looks at him curiously.
“What’s up? Running an errand?”
“You could say that.” The urn feels colder than ever, like he’s carrying a block of ice; it burns his hands as he lifts it up to show James. “Found this in a house on Rice Street, next to an obituary and a letter asking whoever found it to scatter the ashes in their ‘special place’. So I guess I’m carrying out a will.”
He pours the ashes out on the bench. The wind makes them swirl and dance, picking them up and carrying them out towards the lake like snow; “The names on the obituary were blacked out, but not the faces,” he continues, voice soft in his throat, almost a whisper. “The woman was reported missing a week before they found her dead with her husband. You wanna guess where they found the husband’s body, James?”
“Ah,” says James, sounding very small, but Murphy doesn’t – can’t – look back. “Oh.”
Murphy sets the urn down, flexing his sore fingers as he comes back up. “I remember now,” James says weakly. “I went to Silent Hill to look for Mary, because a letter she sent to me got delayed. When I found out that she really was dead – that it was…me who killed her – I drove my car into the lake.”
“So is this it?” Murphy asks the ground. “You’re at rest?”
“I’m not sure.” The dock creaks gently in the following pause, and James shuffles, the movement not much louder than a sigh. “It hurt so much to see her suffering – she was sick, you know, dying right in front of me. Every day…” He stops, voice choked, overwhelmed. “I loved her. No – I love her. If she’s already resting, she deserves to rest – but me, I deserve to rot in hell.”
“Take heed, it’s not too late.” Murphy doesn’t have to look at the rhyme to remember it, not when he watched Charlie die right in front of him all over again, not when he knows what it feels like to carry blood on his hands. “Mistakes needn’t haunt you forever. Though you have regret, you can’t just forget – you alone decide your fate.”
There’s a silence heavier than lead; the lake seems to open up as the sun begins to filter through the fog, shining like a mirror thick with dust.
Murphy finally turns to look at James –
From here, he can see the smudged outlines of the town, snaking trails of power lines marching onwards towards the far-off, watchful skeleton of the bridge. Murphy stands silent and alone for just a moment before switching his flashlight off, pulling his wet coat tightly around him as he retraces his steps back up the dock and into the fog again.