Dark Descent

Disclaimer 2: Konami owns Silent Hill and its characters.

AN: There are a number of references here you might interesting. One is for a movie I recently saw and was rather impressed by. The others...well, I'll leave that for you to discover. ;)

The mystery of Alessa's mother deepens in this chapter. All I can say is that situation here is both loyal to the canon and rooted in an AU premise.

 

Chapter 4: Deeper into the Fire

Alternate Central Square – Part 2

 

Adjacent to the apparently haunted restroom was a room that, on first glance, was totally nondescript. It looked like a storage room. It certainly smelled like a storage room, Alessa thought as she wrinkled her nose: musty and dry, the air stale with the scent of dusty boxes and shelves. For all intents and purposes, it was an ordinary run-of-the-mill storage room.

However, from the viewpoint of a certain young woman, this seemingly inconspicuous storage represented the first lucky break in her quest to escape this wasted hell.

Alessa grinned joyfully when she spotted the small case of ammunition laying on one of the shelves. Thirty handgun bullets: not a lot, but definitely a lifesaver given the circumstances. There didn't seem to be anything else, until she noticed a most peculiar sign posted along the wall near the entryway.

Warning: When leaving the room, please do not turn off the lights. It will be obvious if they are not switched on.

"Hm."

The warning was clear as could be. Common sense dictated that she listen to said warning and leave the light switch alone. But common sense was not always all it was cracked up to be. Alessa had learned that lesson well. And so when faced with a dilemma such as this, she did the only logical thing there was to do in this type of situation.

She turned the light switch off.

Immediately the storage room became enveloped in a beam of iridescent white. Alessa turned around to find the source of the beam and there it was: a pocket flashlight shining brightly from between two shelves, like a beacon of comfort standing out amidst the darkness. Never had Alessa been so glad to see a common household item before and she eagerly snatched the flashlight from its deceptively obvious hiding place. She noted with mild surprise that this particular flashlight was even equipped with a strap of some kind, with which she could attach it to her body.

Slipping off her backpack momentarily, she secured the flashlight on the upper left part of her chest. As long as she didn't get struck there by some monster or fall down hard face first on the ground, it would be all right.

The moment her hand touched the doorknob, a gigantic roar emanated suddenly and inexplicably from the outside. The hairs on the back of Alessa's neck stood up in response as the monstrous sound echoed throughout the shopping mall with inhuman force, shaking the building right down to the foundations.

"What the hell?" Alessa quietly exclaimed. Her hand trembled as she gripped the doorknob with instinctive tightness. It was like a massive breeze had swept out of nowhere through the area, leaving her in shock and the ground itself humming with uncontrollable reverberations.

Something was out there.

The corridor had gone deathly still. Where before were the growls and moans of numerous aberrations there was now only an ominous silence. Each footstep she took echoed loudly in the air, ringing loudly in Alessa's ears like a pin drop in a derelict morgue.

She traversed the area with unusual ease. There was something...unnatural about the lack of a menace, as though a place such as this demanded the vicious sights and tones of inhuman aggression. Amidst this disquieting stillness burned a confounding question: where had the monsters gone?

Thanks to the piercing beam of her newly found flashlight, the few yards ahead of her were brightly lit. Alessa barely believed her good fortune. Just when she was realizing she would never get out of here without a tangible source of light, she discovered a conveniently placed flashlight in an otherwise unremarkable storage room. As if something were directing her every move, manipulating her through this place the way a rat was coerced into a maze in a laboratory.

And there was still the matter of that roar when she switched off the lights...

Crawling beneath a half-closed shutter, she found herself in front of a very familiar boutique. Again, there were no signs of any aberrant creatures in sight. Alessa could not help but wonder. Had she somehow caught a lucky break, or just the opposite? Was the shopping mall returning to normal or was thus the start of something much worse?

The boutique was but a mere shadow of how Alessa left it. Most of the items for sale were gone, and the few remaining articles of clothing were tattered and destroyed. Out of curiosity more than anything else, she picked up the one thing that looked to be of any value, a clothing hanger set conspicuously on the single remaining dress rack. It looked like a regular old hanger, but her instincts told her there might be some use for it.

That was the other thing that bothered her. Her instincts were usually sharp, but they were never quite this accurate. How was it that she could take a glance at some inane object and instantly perceive whether or not it should be discarded? There was no explanation that Alessa could discern, save that some imperceptible force was guiding her along this outlandish unsettling path. To what ends she didn't know. She shuddered to think of what the influence itself might be; certainly nothing benevolent, given the horrifying depravity of this place. Alessa was only sure of one thing: this all seemed too familiar.

She stored the hanger as best as she could. While it would do little against the tough skin of a monster, there was a chance it could be utilized to blind a more ‘human' assailant if need be. She was not foolish enough to believe anyone she might possibly encounter in this place would have her best interests at heart. From here on she would trust no one but her parents, and she didn't want them anywhere near this ghastly place.

Alternatively, perhaps she could use it to pick the lock of one of the mall's doors in case of an emergency. As the old saying went, necessity was the mother of invention. Besides, something told her it would be unwise to leave anything behind in this particular locale. There was something...elusive in the air, some ethereal sense of dread creeping up on Alessa's senses.

Nothing had changed outside the clothing shop. The monsters were still gone, the floor and walls still as filthy and ravaged as before. Everything was exactly the same.

Or so it seemed.

A peculiar smell wafted up to Alessa's nose. She frowned, flaring her nostrils as the odor intensified. It smelled like...

The thunderous clang of force on metal blared through the hall. Alessa turned and stared in shock at the shutter blocking the exit way to the plaza. Something was pounding on the barrier, creating a massive dent in the sheet metal with each deafening blow. A long set of scissor-like claws soon broke through the barrier as Alessa watched in disbelief. Something was tearing through the shutter, something powerful enough to shred through metal like it were paper. The talons tore down the barrier in five distinctive slashes, until at last the shutter gave way.

It fell through the gap with unflinching force, a mass of bulbous writhing flesh unlike anything Alessa had seen. She watched, revolted, as the creature pulled itself on two deformed limbs, leaving deep indentations in the shopping mall's tiled floor. Her mind screamed at her to run, but she was frozen where she stood, rooted to the ground by the mesmerizing horror of the creature before her. And as she obtained a closer look, she was finally sure what it was her sense of smell was detecting.

It smelled like burning flesh.

If one were to only examine its front side, the creature was vaguely human, moving along its torso with the painstaking motions of a wounded being. It's lower half however, was something out of a nightmare - a cocoon-shaped mass of twisted, deformed flesh. Curiously, various metal fragments were embedded in the monster's horrible lower body. Alessa almost thought she recognized the spokes of a wheelchair buried deep within its skin.

The chimera raised its head, and that was when it uttered a cry that shook Alessa's petrified form to the core. It sounded like a woman's scream, warped and distorted into something conspicuously monstrous. The roar almost seemed like a cry of pain and rage blended into one, as if the creature were suffering from some terrible agony no human being could even begin to imagine. Alessa covered her ears, nearly overwhelmed by the power of its fury.

And then it struck her.

The stench of burnt flesh, the charcoaled pigment of its form; the arms that were little more than incinerated bones with barely any skin to them...the torso that resembled a woman's bandaged chest, grossly misshapen by the injuries inflicted upon it. And most alarming of all, the long ebony hair flowing from the demon's scalp, somehow untouched amidst the ruins of living flesh.

It was her.

How had she not seen it before? The hair, the burns, the mixture of terrible anger and agony...it was her. It was Alessa. Alessa as she once was.

Suddenly it all came back to her. The monster neared ever so closer, its claws scraping massive slash marks along the ground. But Alessa didn't move. She was awash in a sea of memories. The vivid recollections surged out of nowhere, overtaking even her ability to see the assailant clawing its way to attack her. One by one they flowed through her mind.

The unbearable, overpowering heat of the fire as the flames enveloped her...

The smell of her own burning flesh...

The mocking laughter of her own mother as her skin was seared off her body; melted, blackened beyond recognition while she pleaded for help that never came...

"No," Alessa whispered, tears sliding down her cheeks. She would not go through that again. Remembering was hard enough. She would not be subjected to this mockery of her pain and suffering. "NO!"

The scream she let out was one of pure grief and anguish. Before she was even aware of it, she had pointed her weapon directly at the malignant creature. She fired repeatedly at the monster's face, emptying bullet after bullet into its skull, until she heard the betraying click of the gun's empty chamber. Even so, her hands continued to fire the weapon for several seconds, consumed by fury and outrage.

The creature howled in agony. Blood and gore dripped from the gaping wound on its forehead, flowing down the demon's face to pool on the ground. But the creature did not fall as she expected. Instead it remained upright, struggling to maintain itself on its hideously immolated arms. A series of low guttural noises emerged from deep within its throat, and Alessa realized to her horror that the monster wasn't just still alive, it was regenerating; refusing to die...

...Exactly as Alessa once had, entirely against her will.

In mere seconds, it was as if Alessa had never fired a round. The creature lunged at her with renewed vigor, striking with the fury of a monstrous array of rage. Alessa barely sidestepped the inhuman blow. It missed her by mere inches, carving out a substantial chink of the floor as the claw struck the ground in rage.

Alessa wanted nothing more than to keep firing at the abomination; to see its repulsive features crumble under a hail of bullets...to see it collapse into a bloody, destroyed carcass. She wanted to see it dead - no, annihilated! The irrational part of her brain told her to reload her weapon and fire at this offensive representation of her misery until its very existence was wiped from the face of this world. Let it try to heal itself in vain; let it suffer and bleed just as Alessa had!

But, the logical side of her told her that it would be foolish to stay here and fight. She would do nothing by squandering her precious ammo on this beast. The handgun was her only means of defense against the servants of this encroaching darkness, unless she counted her switch blade. Without it, she would be left at the mercy of this insane living nightmare.

She hated to leave from this confrontation. But she had no choice. It was either retreat or risk losing control and possibly her life.

Alessa swiftly fled the trap that was this section of the mall. She moved with no regard to caution or safety, attempting to put some distance between herself and her ungodly doppelganger.

But her adversary had other ideas.



To the young woman's utter dread, Alessa heard the scratching noises of claws on tiling as the monster gave pursuit. She risked a glance back to gauge how far away her enemy was. What she saw was not optimistic. The creature was at the barely raised shudder separating the two segments of the mall. Its low height proved to be an advantage: it maneuvered easily beneath the barrier. Worse yet, it was far from slow. For a creature crawling on the ground it moved unnervingly fast, almost like the constant suffering it was in provided it with an extra boost of energy. It was determined to take out its misery on something tangible, and Alessa was its unfortunate prey.

As Alessa rounded the corner, a jarring force suddenly slammed into her. Her gun went flying by the wayside, leaving her to face her situation with only her bare hands. The snarling beast stood over her with ravenous intent. Trickle of saliva dripped from its jaws as it prepared to sink its teeth into its latest capture. Alessa recoiled at the creature's foul breath. She quickly grabbed the sides of the demon's jaws before it lunged, trying to stop the clamping of said jaws that would surely devour most of her face in one piece.

The canine's paws dug into her chest. It was right on top of her, struggling for supremacy against its defiant prey. Alessa cursed viciously to herself. If she could only bring up her knees from underneath it and kick the damn thing away...



The strain on her arms was enormous. The creature's jaws were incredibly powerful. It took everything Alessa had to just barely hold them apart. Her arms trembled from the strenuous effort. Alessa gritted her teeth. The pressure on her arms was only increasing, and she was already tiring from the exertion.

And only mere yards away, her doppelganger approached.

Alessa heard its groans of distress-filled anger getting closer every second. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the looming shadow on the wall, foretelling the arrival of the gruesome sight to follow. This enemy was relentless; Alessa knew she had to end this little predicament she was in and get the hell out of there before that thing reached her.

Grimacing at what she was about to do, Alessa dug her fingers into the jaws of her attacker. The demon howled in pain as her nails broke through its putrid skin. It refused to relinquish the struggle, but the more it fought, the tighter Alessa squeezed. Moisture surrounded her fingers as they borrowed deep inside the monster's rotting flesh, and with a look of grim determination, she attempted to pull the demon's jaws apart. The dog resisted; Alessa gave a cry of frustration.

Perhaps it was the stress of the situation motivating her body to harness any and all of its untapped strength. Or else, it may have been the desperate nature of the situation bringing forth a surge of adrenaline which gave her an extra boost of strength. Either way, Alessa's will triumphed. The monster found itself quickly losing the struggle as Alessa pried its slime covered jaws away from her body. And then, a sickening crack pierced the air as the demon's jaws were snapped back forcefully by Alessa's iron grip. Its body slackened, allowing the raven-haired woman to seize the opportunity. With a vicious kick she threw the rancid beast off her body.

Alessa wasted little time in retrieving her gun. The hideous dog attempted to attack, but the creature was clearly disoriented from its injury. Its cranial jaws were hanging lifeless from its neck, and it appeared to have some trouble even getting to its feet. Alessa didn't wait around to see if it recovered. Counting her blessings, she sped away from the battleground.

The demon hound tried to give pursuit. But its injury was apparently more debilitating than Alessa thought. It legs failed to serve it and the creature would try to make it to all fours only to fall down again on the ground. Little did it know its fate awaited mere inches away. The dog tried one last time to rise to its feet, but its effort was in vain as it fell to the ground once more.

And then the doppelganger was on it.

With one mighty slash of its arm the female demon sent its prey flying. It struck the wall with a sickening crunch, sliding down boneless to the floor. Alessa risked a look backwards just in time to see her doppelganger looming over the wounded creature's body. The demon barely raised its head and none of its body below that moved; Alessa suspected it had broken its neck. And then, something happened that completely revolted Alessa's stomach. With no prior warning, the doppelganger vomited a repulsive reddish brown substance onto the hellhound's broken body. Immediately a cloud of steam rose from the creature's form as the substance proceeded to eat through its torso at an alarming rate, burning and melting its bandaged flesh with impeccable ruthlessness.

Alessa turned from the stomach-churning display and continued running. She couldn't watch anymore. It was then she heard something she would never, ever forget: the chilling cry of the doppelganger's victim as the acid wreaked its deadly toll. The demon howled in monstrous agony as the bandaged flesh was viciously seared off its body in a bubbling mass of tissue. Finally the dog went limp.

Alessa didn't look back once. She didn't feel, didn't think about anything else except finding a way out of this lunacy. She did not stop until she reached a miraculous haven in the most unexpected of places nearby.

~

Alessa did not relax immediately upon entering the unanticipated sanctuary. She startled when she heard the haunting roar of her gruesome twin echo from the outside. She stood with her weapon drawn, ready to attack anything that came through the door. Several minutes passed; Alessa stood her ground. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, still driven by the adrenaline coursing through her veins. After a while, it appeared that activity had tempered off on the outside. Still, she remained cautious. Better safe than sorry.

Only when it became apparent that no unconscionable assailant was going to burst through the door did Alessa finally lower her guard.

Alessa breathed an enormous sigh of relief. That was a close one - far too close for comfort. Had she not snapped that demon's jaws when she did, or had the doppelganger been quicker in reaching them...

She shook away the unsettling thoughts; no use in worrying about what-ifs. She was thankful to be alive and that was that.

It seemed at last she had a respite from the madness. Despite the lack of danger though, her heartbeat was still pounding in her chest. She was riding on an emotional high, and as the adrenaline faded from her system, it was replaced by an overpowering weariness. What was she doing here? She was killing herself trying to find an escape route from this place, and for what? Was there even a way out of here? There certainly didn't seem to be. Everywhere she turned she found herself staring a dead end in the face. This place was like a maze. A horrible, deranged, inhumanly sadistic maze...and one with no available exit in sight.

Alessa leaned against a nearby wall, not caring that it was streaked with the same omnipresent decay as everything else in this hell. She slid tiredly to the ground, letting her gun fall at her side.

God, she almost wished she'd gone with that detective back when he confronted her at the phones. Maybe then...maybe then she wouldn't have gotten caught up in this mess. For god sakes, she was only a twenty year old girl! What was she supposed to do against a fucked up situation like this?

Alessa tried not to give in. She felt a tidal wave building and tried her best to hold back the rush of emotions. But it was too much. It was too much and she was tired; oh so tired. She buried her face in her forearm, since her hands were coated with the blood of the demon she had mangled.

It wasn't long before the tears came, with only the silence of the nightmare world to register her sobs.

~

She didn't know how long she stayed there, pouring out her frustrations. Eventually the tears came to an end and she shakily got to her feet. She wiped her eyes with her forearm, not wanting to get the stuff on her hands anywhere near her face. As her vision returned to normal, Alessa was able to get a clear glance at the place where she had taken refuge.

The former Happy Burger was completely destroyed. Were once there were tables, chairs and booths, there was now an open dilapidated space with only one splintered table in the center. The countertops and condiments were gone, replaced by vacant decay and corruption. Indeed, the entire area behind the order counter was sealed off by sheets of rusted tin. Alessa could only imagine what lay inside.

Were someone to examine the restaurant without seeing its prior state, they would have no way of telling it was ever a lively fast food shack where people relaxed and indulged their appetites.

Alessa searched for anything that might provide an alternate way out. Things looked pretty hopeless until she noticed something that she had missed before: a ladder, hovering several feet over the lone table in the room.

A small smile formed on Alessa's face - finally a break amidst all the insanity.

Climbing onto the table, she made a jump for the ladder. No luck the first time. She tried a second time and a third. Nothing; the ladder was too far out of reach. A fourth attempt resulted in the table sliding a few inches along the ground, causing Alessa to nearly fall off the surface. Fortunately she ended up on her knees, holding on tightly to the edges to steady herself.

"Whoa. Almost killed myself there," Alessa muttered. She stared up at the ladder. It looked imposing as ever, a good foot and a half away from her grasp.

"Shoot," the young woman swore. The ladder was simply too far out of reach. If only she had something to pull it with...

Suddenly it hit her. She did have something to pull it with. The hanger!

She took out the clothes hanger she somehow managed to stuff inside her backpack. Uncoiling its familiar form, she straightened out the hanger into a single long wire, then twisted the end on one side into a suitable makeshift hook. Alessa surveyed her improvised tool approvingly. Now she was ready to bring down that ladder.

Alessa climbed back onto the table. Once again, she tried to obtain a grasp on her lower end of the ladder. It took a couple tries, but eventually, the makeshift tool hooked successfully onto the end of the ladder. Alessa gave a silent "yes!" of triumph as she pulled the ladder downwards. Once it was secure, she was ready to climb up into another area of the mall.

But there was a problem.

Funny that she hadn't noticed how much blood was on her hands, until now. Her hands were absolutely covered with the pungent life force. The substance was sticky on her skin and it was drying fast. A few minutes more and she would be hard pressed to scrub it off under present conditions.

The blood taunted her with its reminder of what she had done; how vicious she had become in the spur of the moment. Alessa shivered from its crimson hue on her skin. It was poisonous; she could almost fell it burning through her pores, infiltrating its way into her system. She had to get it off.

Alessa wiped her hands on the sides of her jeans. But the blood would not come off. She tried rubbing it off using the rough denim material of said jeans. When that didn't work, she attempted a more desperate method. Her behavior became increasingly frantic as she resorted to using her own fingernails against the substance, clawing harshly at her skin with the desperation of a person pushed too far, too soon. When the effort proved to be in vain, she hopped off the table and began scraping her hands against the table's hard, uneven surface.

Again her efforts resulted in failure, and she slammed her fists on the table in outrage.



Was this some sick joke on the part of this place; yet another sadistic minded attempt to send her over the edge?

Trembling with barely-suppressed rage, a growl of enormous frustration emanated from her throat. Why couldn't she get the blood off her hands?!

Alessa stared at her crimson covered palms. There had to be some way of scraping this stuff off. She would not be marked permanently by the blood of some foul, degenerate abomination. Her backpack went crashing to the flood, a victim of the smoldering ire that had taken grip of her out of nowhere.

The contents of her knapsack lay spilled on the floor. Somehow the bag had been opened despite the zipper being securely closed the last time Alessa checked. An odd occurrence to be sure, though not very surprising given the weirdness of this place. Crouching low to the ground, Alessa sifted through the contents of the book bag. There wasn't much to speak of: a couple cases of handgun ammo, the bottle of bleach she'd acquired earlier, the glint of her self-defense knife...

Alessa paused. It could work, couldn't it? Maybe if she was really careful with the edge of the blade...

Suddenly she realized exactly what she was contemplating. She feverishly shook her head, trying to clear away the unreasonable idea. What was she thinking? Using a knife wouldn't take away the blood, it would just draw out some of her own. God, what the hell was wrong with her, that she would even contemplate doing something like that even for an instant?

And she had contemplated it. For one moment, she truly did consider picking up the knife and taking it to her skin.

She had to get out of here and soon. This place was driving her insane, and if this was only the start of that insanity, what would she do if the situation even worse than it was now? Would she consider using that knife for something other than self-defense or scraping off dried blood? She certainly hoped not. This place could easily drive one to insanity, but Alessa prayed she would retain enough self-control not to try that alternative if it came to that. How depressing would it be if she never made it out of here, and that was her fate after everything she went through?

Returning her focus to the book bag, it was then that Alessa noticed something she had virtually forgotten about amidst the encounters with all those demons.

Laying at the edge of the backpack's opening, only an inch away from rolling was the mysterious bottle labeled simply as a "health drink". Alessa opened the small jar and took a whiff. It smelled like mineral water, emphasis on the mineral part. She stared dubiously at the bottle. There could be anything in there ranging from a harmless (and worthless) drink to acid.

Pouring a minute amount of the substance on the ground, she waited for the first negative effect to manifest. Nothing happened. There was no smoke, no sizzling; no indication of something burning. A positive sign...perhaps. Still not one hundred percent convinced, she poured a few droplets onto her right pants leg, and when the denim material didn't burn, she tipped the smallest little drop on one of her palms.

It was a little cold, to be sure. Other than that, there seemed to be no negative effects. Okay, I'm convinced, Alessa thought. She proceeded to liberally pour the health drink over her blood-stained hands...and received an enormous shock when a freezing stinging sensation spread throughout every inch of them. Alessa yelped and dropped the amber brown bottle, which amazingly enough, didn't break upon hitting the floor. It rolled along the ground spilling the remainder of its contents while Alessa clutched at her burning hands.

Mentally she screamed up a storm. What the hell was this stuff?! It was like she had dipped her hands in liquid nitrogen and boiling hot water at the same time - she half expected a billowing cloud of smoke to rise up from her skin at any moment.

And then, and suddenly as it appeared, the pain was gone. Alessa examined her hands in sheer disbelief. Everything was perfectly intact, and surprisingly enough, the blood staining her skin had completely melted away. Even more incredible was what she discovered upon looking closely at the palm of her right hand.

Up until this moment, there had been a small cut from yesterday which she got at home and which hadn't completely healed. No longer. The cut had disappeared with no trace that one had ever been there.

"Wow. I guess this stuff really does work," Alessa thought aloud with just a bit of reluctant awe. It was a shame it had been wasted on scrubbing her hands clean. Still, at least that unnerving shade of crimson was finally gone.

It seemed somebody was looking out for her. The question was: what were the intentions of that somebody? Did they want to help her survive this game or were they just teasing her with the illusion of hope while she headed blindly to her doom?

There was no way of knowing, of course. All Alessa knew for sure was that she no longer had to stare at that incriminating bloodstain.

Wearing a much calmer (and slightly satisfied) expression, she began to climb the ladder straight into the unknown.

~

How had this happened? Alessa wondered as she climbed the ladder presumably leading up to the second flood. The day started out normally. She had breakfast with her parents, she spent the morning playing video games, and when the afternoon came, she decided to go spend some time browsing at the mall. And then things went completely to hell.

She still didn't remember falling asleep back in the normal world. Even now she was puzzled as to how it happened. Yet it was clear to her that the ensuing nightmare - that twisted, horrible dream - was only the beginning.

From the moment she went back into the mall after encountering that detective, she was heading down a path into hell incarnate. Alessa wished she had crawled under the van in the alley or tried to climb over the fence there. While she couldn't be sure she would have avoided this horror, anywhere would be better than this dreadful place. She felt like one of the victims in that "Jigsaw" movie, trying desperately to find a way out of this self-enclosed deathtrap before it killed her.

She was tired, she was sore from all the running and fighting, and she was sure at least a couple hours had passed since she awoke downstairs. And she hadn't even made it out of the mall yet. Lord only knew what awaited her outside. Hell, Lord only knew what awaited her on the second floor.

She wanted to go home. But now she was beginning to wonder if she would ever see her home again.

Was she going to die in this place?

Alessa hugged herself as she took the first tentative steps into the shopping mall's second level. The air was absolutely frigid, as if she was walking through death itself. It chilled her to the bone, making goose bumps rise on every portion of her skin. A patch of fog lingered in the air with every breath she took. The area was eerily quiet, though she swore she heard some howling in the distance.



Probably one of those demon hounds...

Fortunately there didn't appear to be any monsters around. That didn't mean everything was peachy.

If the downstairs level was bad, then the floor she was on now was infinitely worse. At least the downstairs area retained some measure of familiarity in the layout. This new environment resembled nothing less than an image out of someone's absolute worse nightmare. There was virtually no light other than that of her flashlight, and even the actual floor itself was gone, replaced by a kind of rusted metal laid out in panels to form the ground. Each step she took echoed loudly on the metal plates. She hesitated to take more than a few at first; the sections looked liked they were barely strung together and would definitely not support themselves under her weight. Only when they did not collapse under her feet did she feel free to move about more quickly.

She felt a twinge of excitement upon seeing the escalators - maybe she had finally found a way out of here! That excitement disappeared when she saw the state they were in. The escalators did at first appear to lead down to the plaza area. Or rather, they would have, had they not had the bottom half of their sections torn off. Based on the twisted wreckage of their remains, it seemed that some incredible unknown force had literally ripped the lower halves of the escalators off. The area below was ominously dark, and Alessa shuddered to think what would happen if she fell.

As she pondered what to do next, the silence was broken as a nearby screen suddenly blared to life. Alessa turned to realize that it was a TV set mounted behind the plate glass display of a shop. Inexplicably, the television had somehow been turned on despite no one except Alessa being around.



Standing a couple feet away, Alessa peered into the TV screen. At first all she saw was static. Soon however, she jumped back slightly as a hazy image suddenly flashed on the screen. The image went by far too quickly for her to tell what it was. Within a few moments though, more images began appearing on the screen. Each was but a flicker of something indiscernible until the pause between each one was short enough for Alessa to distinguish the barest of details.

A steady image started to form. It looked like the inside of someone's house, though the ‘snow' obscured any more than that. Gradually some sound began to filter in through the speakers...

"Jul...glad to see...Have to...out of here...He's coming..."

Alessa drew a sharp intake of breath. She recognized that voice. It was one she hadn't heard in a long time.

"Cybil!"

It had been years since she heard from the police officer who helped her and her father out, during what seemed like a lifetime ago. But what was she doing here now? Was this some echo of the past, or a warning about something occurring in the here and now?

The transmission resumed; Alessa listened closely.

"Alessa...Where's...have to find her..." A pause, and then Cybil's frantic voice came over the static. "He's here!"



There was a sudden burst of gunfire, followed by the sound of someone screaming Cybil's name in horror. Alessa's heart nearly stopped when she realized the panic stricken voice was her mother's. There was a dull thud which sounded disturbingly like a body hitting the floor, and then she heard something that was the most unsettling, most intimidating thing she had experienced thus far: the ominous sound of a heavy blade being dragged along the ground.

Oh no...

Alessa went cold. Every drop of blood in her body froze in her veins. Never had she heard anything more petrifying than that grating scraping of metal on floor. Because she knew what it meant, and there was no denying the reality of the situation any longer. The transmission flickered out entirely, replaced by nothing but continuous static. It didn't matter. She knew who was behind this now. With that single menacing noise, everything added up in a way it hadn't prior to this.

She recalled the creature from the elevator which was neither a human nor a monster like the others. How had she not seen it before? The consistent decay, the creatures conjured up out of nowhere to attack her at every corner, and now the sound of a monstrous weapon which Alessa had only previously heard in her darkest nightmares.

It was him.

He was here, in this hell, directing its every move; guiding its tricks and terrors against Alessa with unflinching callousness. Judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one. And that woman she encountered in normal world, before she got trapped in this alternate dimension? She was one of his agents, no doubt sent to make sure his prey had indeed fallen into the net its repulsive powers had cast.

And now he was at her home as well...

With renewed determination, Alessa took off into the darkness. She had to find a way out of here and get back home, to where Cybil and her mother were. They were in danger - there was no doubt about it. Alessa had to help them, and that meant solving the riddle of this oversized puzzle box before too much time went by.

If it meant tearing through this with the same level of ruthlessness he displayed, then so be it.

~

AN: I'll give you two guesses as to who the "He" Alessa mentions is. ;D

* Warning for the flashlight: from Silent Hill 3.