Chapter Text
At six years old, Claudia couldn’t understand where her best friend had gone. One day, the two of them had been playing together, drawing pictures for one another and daydreaming as they always had, and the next day Alessa was gone and Claudia was alone. The adults at church told her that Alessa was a saint, that she had died for her faith and that it would be selfish of Claudia to cry for her. Besides, Claudia’s father responded harshly to her open mourning, so she learned to keep her grief hidden and never talked about it.
However, as time went by, she found that it was impossible to forget. She constantly thought of her lost friend, the one person who she knew loved her, who had called her “sister”. She often had vivid dreams in which Alessa would come to her and talk to her, gently petting her hair as she had done in life. Claudia would wake from these dreams feeling a pain worse than any blow she had ever been dealt. She clung to her memories and to the faith that Alessa had died for, but numbed herself to everything else. Instead, she decided to continue her life in a colorless routine of going to school, going to church, going home, and never letting anyone in.
The years passed in this fashion until she was ten years old. One grey afternoon early in the year, she was walking home alone as she always did. The house she shared with her father was apart from the rest of the neighborhood, located at the end of a long driveway that was mostly concealed by unkempt foliage. She wandered along the sidewalk leading away from Midwich Elementary, watching her own bare feet as they carried her along, when suddenly she became aware of somebody else nearby.
When she glanced over her shoulder she recognized a boy from school, a sixth grader, a few feet behind her. He was thin and inelegant, with ash brown hair falling into his eyes. He wore glasses which had scuffed looking frames and a crack in one of the lenses, making Claudia wonder how he could see at all with them on. The boy noticed her looking back at him and jogged toward her a bit, closing the space between them. She moved away from him to the farthest side of the sidewalk and walked along there, balancing on the curb and hoping that he would simply pass her by and not try to talk to her. Kids from school never had anything nice to say when they talked to her. To her dismay, he slowed down when he reached her and said,
“Hey, Wolf, right?” Claudia nodded, not looking at him. The boy continued, tilting his head to the side and furrowing his brow in concentration. “First name…Claudia? Right?”
“Right…” She responded somewhat begrudgingly.
“I thought so. I recognize you from church.”
Claudia looked at him again, realizing that she had seen him at church as well. However, she couldn’t place his name and didn’t much feel like engaging him in a conversation, so she replied with a simple.
“Oh.” The boy nodded, unfazed.
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember me.” He tilted his head away from her but his eyes remained locked on her face. She shrugged.
“Sorry.”
“Ouch,” He held a hand to his chest and cringed as though he were in pain. “That’s cold.” He straightened up and grinned at her teasingly. “I’m Vincent Smith. Try to remember next time, okay?”
She watched him from the corner of her eye, frowning slightly in irritation.
“Why are you following me?”
“I’m not following you.” He insisted. “I’m going home.”
“I’ve never seen you come this way before.”
“I usually go a different way. But I saw you going this way, and I-”
“So, you are following me, then.” She looked directly at him for the first time, fixing him with her icy, accusing stare.
“Okay,” He admitted. “So maybe I am following you. Kinda. A little. So what?”
“So, how come? And what happened to your glasses?”
“Just wanted to say hi. And…” Vincent touched the frame of his glasses absently, as though he had forgotten about their existence. “Oh, right. Brian Fletcher chucked them down the hall at school.”
“That’s not very nice…” Claudia remarked drearily.
“Well,” Vincent scoffed. “he’s an asshole; what do you expect?” Claudia gasped lightly at his language and looked up again. “Oh. Sorry,” He corrected himself. “I mean: he’s a butt-hole. Better?” She shook her head.
“It still means the same thing…”
“Well, am I supposed to pretend that’s not what he is?”
“I guess not.” Vincent nodded triumphantly.
“Damn right.”
Claudia rolled her eyes.
“I’d be belted if I talked like that.” She muttered.
“What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
He regarded her incredulously but said nothing. The two of them walked along side by side, not saying a word to one another for an entire block before Vincent broke the silence.
“So, how come you’re always by yourself?”
“Nobody likes me.”
“Why not?” She glowered at him.
“How should I know?” He shrugged and didn’t answer, so she continued. “They’ve never liked me. I…I guess I’m just not meant to be liked.”
“I like you.”
Claudia regarded him in disbelief for a moment before shaking her head and sighing.
“No, you don’t.”
“Okay, not with that attitude, maybe.” He raised his chin defiantly at her. “You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. But I’m telling the truth.” Before Claudia could respond, he stopped at the corner of the street. “This is where I get off, I guess.”
“Oh…” Claudia was surprised to find herself feeling a little disappointed that he was leaving so soon. It felt nice to have a simple conversation with someone close to her own age, although she hadn’t yet been able to figure out if he was making fun of her or not. “Okay, bye.” Vincent smirked and gave her a little nod.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” He turned and walked away before she could answer.
“Okay…” She agreed quietly, giving him one last look before returning her gaze to the pavement and walking away down the long road that led to her house.
The spring day was unseasonably warm, especially for Silent Hill; it was almost unheard of to see so much sunlight so early in April, and Claudia intended to catch just a few of its rays before she had to retire to her dull room for the rest of the day. She made a detour on her way home and ended up in a grassy field, where she lay down on her stomach with her sweater rolled up under her head. When she closed her eyes, the warm breeze that played over her hair and shifted the worn material of her dress felt to her like an affectionate caress. She could imagine the cotton yarn of her sweater beneath her head as the soft lap of her only friend and sister.
One of her pale hands reached out and her fingers threaded through the long grass and stems of budding wildflowers; when she held her breath, she could hear Alessa’s sweet voice, as though she were very nearby, blithely talking about anything that came into her mind.
Her daydreaming was interrupted by the sound of footsteps shuffling in the sod, growing nearer until a familiar voice greeted her idly,
“Hiya…”
She didn’t have to look up to know that it was Vincent, so she didn’t, she simply returned the greeting,
“H’lo.” Since their first meeting, he had managed to catch up to her most days as she walked home. Sometimes he annoyed her with his presence, but often she found herself delaying to give him enough time to reach her.
“What’cha doin down there?”
“Nothing,” She sighed and opened her eyes to glance up at him. He had his head cocked to the side like he usually did and she wondered for a moment if there was something wrong with his neck. “I’m just lying here.”
“You look like someone ought to draw a chalk line around you.” He chuckled. She watched him drop to the ground next to her in a way that suggested a poorly executed push-up. He had probably meant for it to look less awkward, she thought.
“What’s that mean?” She asked, frowning at his comment. “Why would someone draw chalk around me?”
“Oh, you know, like they do to dead bodies. Or at least that’s what they do on tv. Maybe they don’t do it for real, but it always looks like you right now, with the legs all bent and one arm out.” One of his hands moved toward her own and she felt his fingertips brush hers for an instant before she withdrew her arm. If he was bothered, he didn’t let it show. “Why are you on your face?”
“The sun’s too bright.” She explained, not caring to explore the suggestion that she looked dead. “I don’t watch tv.”
“Hey, me neither.” He grinned at her before rolling onto his back and folding his hands over his chest. “If you did die, how would you want to do it? What way do you think is best?”
The question was so unexpected that it caused Claudia to sit up and pull her sweater up against her body.
“I don’t want to die.” She insisted.
“I know, I know,” He turned his head to nod reassuringly in her direction. “But it’s like…if you had to choose. Like a genie asked you or something.”
“Why would-”
“I think I’d want to explode.” He added before she could finish her question. However, his answer only raised different questions.
“What? Like you mean if you drank too much tonic or something?”
“I-?” He laughed out loud and turned on his side to face her fully again, leaning his head on his hand. “No! I mean like stepping on a landmine or something. Something where I’d never know about it, I’d just be here one minute and- poof!- gone. Over there. And there. And there….”
He gestured around the hillside with a disinterested flutter of his hand. Claudia felt a little queasy thinking of such a thing, but she hoped it was as painless as he described.
“Oh…” She muttered. “I think…I think I’d want to be burned.” It was the most noble death she could think of, but she felt alarmed when she looked back at him and saw his moss-colored eyes go wide with concern.
“Burned alive?” He repeated. “That’s pretty much the worst way to go, I don’t know why anyone would-” His words stopped abruptly when he noticed a pained expression cross the young girl’s face and he seemed to realize what he had said and to whom he had said it. “Well, actually I heard somewhere that most people die from the smoke…” He hurried to add, sitting up and dusting blades of grass off of his elbows. “Or…they pass out but then they don’t feel any of the burning. So, it’s like going to sleep, right? So, it doesn’t really hurt.”
Claudia nodded stiffly.
“Yes…that makes sense.”
The two of them sat facing one another, but neither of them looked at the other. Claudia was about to stand and continue on her way home in silence when Vincent piped up again, his tone completely changed, back to the flippant yet bored amusement that she was used to hearing from him.
“Hey, hold out your hand, I found something.”
“Uh…” She looked at his loosely closed fist, the telltale sign of a boy who is about to put a bug in your hand, and folded her arms behind her back. “You can keep it.”
“Oh, come on, don’t you want to see what it is?”
“I can see with my eyes,” She pointed out. “Why don’t you just show me.”
“You are no fun.” He sighed, carefully unfolding his fingers to display a tiny inchworm making its way across his palm.
“That’s what I thought it was going to be.”
“Wow, you must be psychic.” He said dryly. “Wanna hold it?”
“Does it bite?” She eyed the tiny creature with uncertainty.
“Are you kidding? I can’t tell if you’re kidding.” When she didn’t answer, he sighed again, this time with a sense of weariness that was ill-fitting for a twelve-year-old. “No, it doesn’t bite. It’s so light, it barely feels like anything.”
“Fine.” She faltered but finally reached out toward him. When he laid his hand next to hers to let the worm inch its way onto her palm, something twisted deep inside of her and began to work its way to the surface of her mind. When was the last time anyone had simply touched her hand? When was the last time anyone had touched her gently at all? Even the inchworm, as it scooted across her soft palm, felt friendly and welcoming. “It kinda tickles…” She observed, looking up with a suggestion of a smile on her lips.
“See?” He let his hand drop back to the ground, where it plucked carelessly at a few blades of grass. “I thought you might like that. It’s cute, right?”
“Yeah.” She carefully brought her hand to eye-level so she could watch the velvety little creature trek its way up to her wrist, where she intercepted it with her other hand. “Will it be a butterfly?”
“Hm,” Vincent leaned his head back to watch the clouds sailing along the breeze. “Moth, I think.”
“Oh….” Claudia sounded disappointed. “I like butterflies better.”
“Tell that to him.”
She looked back down at the inchworm to appreciate it one last time before releasing it into a patch of clover.
“Moths drink tears.” She couldn’t remember where she had heard that, but it sounded true.
“Someone ought to, right?” He lifted his head and looked at her. “It’s not like we get anything out of them.”