Dark Descent

AN: Well, I'm back! Sorry it took so long folks. The holidays were a busy time, and then I was focused on updating the Star Wars story I'm doing with another author on ff.net. To anyone who was getting worried, trust me, this story will never die. It's going all the way to the end, baby!

As this is an AU, there is some mention of things that are my own original touches. Please be patient readers. While I would love to tell you all about how I blended the canon with my own original stuff, I have to tell the story slowly. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and please leave feedback. As any author will tell you, it can be a vital brain food for our muse.

 

Chapter 5: Obstacles and Memories

Alternate Central Square – Part 3

 

Once when Alessa was five years old, she was the victim of a vicious attack by a large dog. It was an utterly terrifying experience, and one that had left an indelible mark on the young woman's life.

Alessa had been playing outside her house when the savage assault occurred. The dog had come out of nowhere and clamped down with ferocious resolve onto the little girl's leg. She'd immediately cried out for help, and tried to get away, but the dog was too strong for a five year old to drive back alone. The terrified screams startled Alessa's parents, who soon realized in horror that a ruthless dog was trying to chew off their daughter's leg.

Chris was the first to act. He instantly ran over in an attempt to pry the animal off his daughter, but the dog was far too strong for that. Julie joined in the effort, to no avail. They screamed for help in the hopes that someone would hear, but for some inexplicable reason, none of the neighbors came outside to lend a hand. Knowing time was of the essence, Chris sent Julie inside to get something, anything, he could use against the beast. Julie was reluctant, not willing for an instant to leave her daughter at the mercy of a vicious predator. However, she knew someone had to call 911, and there was no way Chris would risk his wife getting mauled as well.

Julie had gone inside and grabbed the first thing she could from the kitchen drawer - a hammer. After calling 911, she then bolted back outside and passed it to Chris, who proceeded to strike the animal as hard as possible. It took several tries, but finally the dog released its hold on Alessa. A brutal strike to the head did the trick, and the creature died soon afterwards. The frantic parents took no chances, though. They quickly ushered their daughter inside and tended to her wound while they waited for the paramedics to arrive.

To this day, Alessa still wasn't sure what breed of canine had been responsible for the attack. The memories were foggy after so long, thanks in part to all the anguish she had been through over those years. Pain, she had learned, was a good way of suppressing experiences one had no desire to remember.



All she knew was that the incident had changed her outlook on dogs forever. Physically, Alessa was mostly fine, except for a six inch scar she retained on her left leg, right along the thigh. But the emotional and psychological damage she received were long-lasting. From then on, dogs were no longer something cute and cuddly to be laughed at. They were vicious predators that could do her serious harm in the blink of an eye, and she never once forgot it.

Her parents were affected too. Julie blamed herself for the whole ordeal. She had been keeping an eye on Alessa from inside the house, but she'd turned for one single moment and that was all it took for her daughter to suffer a horrific, life scarring experience. For a long time afterwards she was extremely reluctant to let Alessa out of her site even for an instant. As far as Chris went, the young father was badly shaken at how easily he could have lost his daughter had they not come to her aid fast enough.

The incident also changed the dynamic between the Gillespie family and their neighbors. They had asked for help in their time of need and nobody had responded, even though Chris knew some of them had been watching from inside. From them on, he was forever an enemy of them. He had tolerated them before, but combined with the torment his daughter endured from their kids at school, he now hated them with a vengeance.

Since that time, Alessa had retained an instinctive apprehension for large dogs, one that fourteen years and countless other experiences couldn't entirely erase. She kept her distance and generally tended to avoid them whenever possible.

That didn't mean she actually hated large dogs. At heart she knew it was the owners who were ultimately responsible for their animals, and some dogs were more dangerous than others. She wasn't comfortable around them, but she didn't bear them any will.

And she certainly didn't want to see them treated with the sadism on display before her.

The creature was lying on a table in front of her. Its body was placed on a platter, as though it were the main course in some twisted five star meal. Alessa shook her head in mute astonishment. The smell coming from the creature was awful, and the sight was even worse. There were no distinguishing marks on the body that indicated a gunshot wound or any other source of trauma besides the obvious. Alessa didn't need one. Somehow she knew instinctively that the dog had been burned alive, roasted horrifically for nothing more than someone's sick, psychotic pleasure.

What kind of sick, demented human being would do something like this? This was monstrous and despicable, and it matched nearly anything she had seen thus far. And if that weren't enough, whoever did this had gone to the trouble of laying out the poor animal in the manner of a gourmet meal, as though he or she really intended to eat their gruesome victim. There was even a large chunk of flesh carved from the middle of the body, ready and eager to meet someone's approval.

It nauseated Alessa to her core, and for the nth time thus far, she had to fight to keep the contents of her stomach in check. This wasn't what she expected when she wandered into this abandoned restaurant, and it angered her greatly to realize that someone could do this to a defenseless animal. Silently she vowed that if she found the sadistic bastard behind this, she was going to shoot first, no questions asked.

Tearing her eyes away from the grotesque sight, Alessa examined the rest of the restaurant. Like every other part of the mall, it was covered in a layer of grime and decay. But there was something different about this one. Unlike the other areas, this part had a wide array of windows stretching across the wall to the right, enabling her to finally get a good look at the outside environment. And what she saw took her breath away.

Outside was a large building opposite the structure of the mall, and to Alessa's utter horror, the building was coated in the same rusted filth present all over the mall. As was the building next to it, and the one next to that. She could barely believe her eyes. It wasn't just the shopping center. Every part of the environment had been taking over by the darkness that grew and extended itself almost like an entity. Which could only mean one thing: she truly was in another realm of existence, some place beyond the reality she and everyone else in the world called home.

She had suspected of course, but seeing the outside world give confirmation with its ruin and creepy horizon was an entirely different situation.

Alessa's hopes began to sink into a pool of despair. Even if she escaped from this place, she would still be stuck in a foreign world as alien to her as anything the best science fiction and horror writers could imagine. And if there was an abundance of those creatures here in the mall, how many were waiting outside the ‘sanctuary' of this place, eager to welcome a new prey to sink their teeth into?

Out of sheer frustration, she brought her fist down on of the tables. Why was this happening to her? Hadn't she been through enough in the past sixteen years?

No response was forthcoming. Alessa knew she wouldn't find the answers here in a dingy restaurant with soot-stained windows.

The contents of the establishment were not of much interest. There was a large cabinet in the back filled with bottles of wine, brandy and other alcoholic beverages. Alessa wasn't much of a drinker. In fact, she had yet to have a single alcoholic beverage in her life. She sure wasn't going to drink something from an alternate dimension either.

There was a pot with a semi-open lid on the stovetop. One sniff of the pot told the young woman she had better not take a look inside. The smell was absolutely foul; Alessa shuddered to think what lay inside stewing. Last but not least, there was a solitary health drink sitting on the kitchen counter. Having seen the curative effects of the liquid earlier on, Alessa quickly snatched it up.

I guess that's it then, she thought to herself. Nonetheless, she got the feeling that she was missing something. Maybe she should take a second look around...

A loud thud snapped her out of her thoughts. Alessa immediately turned her attention upwards - it had come from the ceiling. Or more accurately, the roof on this part of the shopping center. Something was up there.

She didn't know why, but a chill suddenly went down her spine. Her hands began to shake, almost against their will. What was going on? There wasn't any reason to be this petrified, was there? It was probably just another one of those monsters.

Unless it was that doppelganger...

Another stomp, this one just as loud as before. Dust and minor bits of debris rained down from the ceiling as the heavy step was followed by several more. The footsteps seemed to be heading towards the exit. Alessa aimed her gun unsteadily at the ceiling. What the hell was up there? Was it waiting to ambush her as soon as she tried to leave?

The footsteps ceased. Alessa regarded the silence with an air of mistrust. She wasn't about to be lured into a false sense of security. However, she had to get out of there eventually. She set foot cautiously towards the exit, eyes steady, hands never wavering from their aiming stance up above. She passed the roasted dog on the dinner table, not looking once at the hideous meal. Just a few more steps until she was in the clear...

The unseen creature struck.

Alessa screamed as an enormous knife plunged through the ground in front of her, almost skewering her in half. She hurried to move away from the blade, realizing she had made a grave assumption about the enemy's position. There was a monster present, but not where she expected. Not on the roof of the restaurant, but the second floor below it, where she had no way of detecting the creature's movements. It was a façade, and Alessa had fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

Again, the knife stabbed viciously through the floor. Alessa tripped as she tried to escape the fearsome weapon, though she continued to move towards the back of the restaurant. If there was one benefit to the enemy's position, it was that he couldn't pinpoint Alessa's location either. All he could do was guess, which was evident by the random stabbings of the knife. The creature thrust the blade repeatedly through the floor, each blind attack getting steadily closer to its target.

Out of desperation, his prey climbed onto the counter next to the stovetop. It would only be a matter of seconds until the knife reached the kitchen area; Alessa had no desire to see whether the monstrous weapon could pierce all the way up to her. She timed the intervals of the attacks carefully, taking note of the approximate seconds between each stab. If she was even a second off, she would be shish kebab.

And when the moment was right, she took the risk of her life.

Alessa leaped over the incoming weapon, landing barely three feet away from the blade. Over the pounding of her own heart, she heard the creature stalking her give a growl of rage at being thwarted by its prey. Alessa knew she had only seconds to make her getaway. It was then that something caught her eye, and she was amazed she hadn't noticed it before. There was a shiny object on the same platter as the dog's carcass, glistening with the eerie orange light from outside. It was a key, and it was right in the center of the dog's charred stomach.

The woman shuddered at touching the animal's innards, but she had no choice. She quickly stuck her fingers into the cooked meat and retrieved the errant key, only seconds before a massive knife impaled the sordid feast. Alessa had no time to be relieved. She was out of there, running once again in fear from a nightmare she had absolutely no chance of overcoming.

Point two for the Red One.

~

Once outside the transformed restaurant, Alessa grimaced at the pain radiating throughout her knees and her feet. She muttered a disgruntled swear as she bent down to rub her injured legs. God, I really shouldn't have done that, she thought. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect, she should have just gotten on one of the damn tables.

At least she has something for her troubles. She pulled out the key she retrieved from the barbecued canine. There was no label on the key, nor any numbers inscribed. The surface was a little charred, but none the worse for wear. Alessa wondered what it was for. Then she remembered a hallway she went through downstairs, where she encountered another of those lumbering giants with spiked arms. There was a locked door in the darkness there, and the lock just happened to be a perfect fit for this key.

The next few parts of her journey proved to be uneventful. Prior to opening the locked door, she was met with a room that used to be an excellent jewelry store. She had seen several pieces worthy of interest in its prior state, but the only thing there now was a small velvet box in one of the display counters. Carefully avoiding the shattered glass, Alessa was bemused to find the thing inside the jewelry box was not a ring or a necklace, but a walnut.

"A walnut?" Alessa thought aloud. Of all the things in the world the item could have been, what the hell could she do with a walnut? What kind of value could such a thing possibly have in this place? She couldn't eat it - that was for sure. And what monster would be dumb enough to be bribed by such a tiny little thing?



Oh well. Knowing the way this place worked, there probably was some use for it, bizarre as it seemed. Maybe she would find some nut-oriented puzzle or something. She stuffed the walnut into a pocket and went on her way.

Just as she expected, the cooked key was a perfect match for the locked door. Beyond it was an unexpected, yet somewhat pleasant surprise.

It was a diner. Or rather, the ravaged remains of a diner. The walls were discolored, the tables overturned, and the floor was flooded with the water pouring from a broken pipe.

There was a long piece of piping sticking out of a wall. Alessa took notice of the rusted steel, realizing that she had found her first non-ammunition based weapon. The pipe was heavy and sturdy, and it looked quite durable. She cringed at the thick layer of corrosion coating the metal fragment, but there was no getting around that. While she preferred the handgun, this would do in a pinch if she ran out of ammo.

Alessa pried out the steel pipe, turning it over as she held its formidable weight in her hands. She couldn't wait to try it out on one of those freaks.

She pressed onwards, picking up a bottle of detergent along the way. Another questionable item, though she barely paid it any mind - she had given up trying to figure out the logic behind this place. Eventually she came to an area that was rather odd at first. It was the hallway behind one of two doors, situated opposite each other at a dead end. There was an exhaust fan out in the corridor, on the upper center wall, which Alessa thought was a little strange. She supposed the building had to get ventilated somehow, but she wouldn't have thought this...reality would be concerned with something like that. And there was something off about it too. For some unknown reason, it reminded her of something. Something vague and ominous.

The right door was locked, so she took the left. Soon afterwards, she noticed there were tiny black specks floating in that second corridor. Alessa wasn't sure what they were until she got a closer look...close enough for one to brush her arm with a distinctly fuzzy wing. Alessa instantly drew back as if burned by a flame.

They were moths. Hundreds of them, congregated in a menacing black wall that made it impossible for her to pass. She shuddered visibly over her entire body.

Alessa hated moths; had ever since she was a kid. When she was only five, the other kids at school used to hide them in her book bag, so that when she opened it, the moths would fly right out in front of her face. Or, she'd get a handful of small fuzzy insects when she reached into the book bag for something. Worse, her gr...the woman who raised her mother insisted on giving her a set of dead moth specimens as a gift, knowing full well the effect they had on her. Things got so bad that Alessa reached the point where she would not sleep unless her mother stayed with her for an hour after bedtime.

Things had not changed much over time. Her father knew a police officer who was bitten in the eye by a moth and was left completely blind in that eye; he needed surgery in order to restore his vision. And when Chris told that story to Alessa a few months after she came to stay with him, the old fear came back. Granted, it wasn't exactly his fault; Chris didn't know that a simple anecdote would re-establish a phobia from years past in his daughter. Unfortunately it did, and there was no fixing this particular screw-up.

No, moths were definitely not a favorite thing in the former Gillespie's life. She'd rather dive into a pack of demons than face a cloud full of moths alone, and unarmed. Fortunately things weren't completely hopeless. She was becoming used to this place and the way it operated. It would not have placed the wall of moths in her path unless there was some way she could get past them. The question was, how?

She couldn't shoot them down, that was for sure. And she didn't have any bug spray on them. A flamethrower would work, but just her luck, there wasn't one around. Stupid nightmare world with its crappy weapons...

Think, Alessa, think, she told herself. Suddenly, she remembered the warning on the back of the bleach she found.

"Do not mix with detergent. Mixing of the two chemicals may result in a toxic reaction."

Toxic reaction...



Alessa grinned. She knew what to do now.

There was a bucket set just ahead of her. Kneeling down, she poured in the bleach first, emptying the whole plastic bottle. Tossing that aside, she added in the dreaded container of detergent.

The fumes hit Alessa like a brick wall. She instantly covered her face to block the noxious vapors, holding back a scream as they still seared her face for the better part of a second. She got out of there ASAP, hoping beyond measure she hadn't just burned her eyes out. Thankfully, the stinging sensation disappeared after a few seconds. Alessa released a painful breath, desperately sucking air into her lungs. Stupid, stupid, she chided herself. She felt like smacking herself upside the head for that one. Didn't she know to be cautious when dealing with dangerous chemicals?

Still, if it was that effective against her, those moths wouldn't stand a chance. The question was, how to get it to them? The vapors had to spread beyond a few feet.

The answer came to her within a fraction of a second. The exhaust fan!

Looking up at the fan, she finally realized why it had been placed in this particular location. This place was like a puzzle, or a math problem. Each item she found was but a piece of the whole, with its own distant purpose in solving the larger equation.

She turned on the exhaust fan and waited for the poison to take its course. Then she gave it time to evaporate. After waiting for it to disperse, she went back inside and beheld her handiwork, covering her mouth just in case. It worked better than she could have hoped for. Lying on the floor were the remains of hundreds of moths, forming a layer of black that blanketed the floor.

Free of the airborne threat, Alessa continued on her way. Corridors and dead ends passed, each more dangerous than the next. She didn't let that stop her. Anything that got in her way was either sidestepped or gunned down without a flicker of hesitation. Although they still intimidated her, Alessa had to admit it felt good to take out her frustrations on those twisted abominations. Whether it was the thrill of victory or justification for her ordeal, it seemed to awaken some dark part of her she hadn't touched in a very long time.

A part of her she could easily grow to like...

~

She had entered the torture room.

Alessa stared in revulsion at the devices encircling her in the chamber. The area outside was bad, with its pitch black darkness and fearsome assortment of beasts, but this particular room had an even grimmer aura about it than usual. It was obvious what this place was, and there was no doubt as to the use of the contraptions within.

The blood soaked tables spoke of horror almost as chilling as those Alessa had encountered. Tiny grooves were set into the wooden restraints - indentations left behind by victims whose agony was so intense, they literally sunk their fingernails deep into the wood. One could almost imagine the victims strapped down to the tables, being ‘operated' on by the devices scattered around the room. Saws, clamps, chains...it all looked like something straight from a medieval dungeon.

These were human artifacts, created and utilized by men who sought to take out their sick, perverted fantasies of pain on innocent people. Alessa shook her head, reminded of the Inquisition, among other things. Monsters she could handle. She would never understand how human beings could willfully torture one another over things like religious differences.



At the very center of the room was the symbol she had seen painted over various sections of the mall. The ancient crimson crest looked very out of place in the storage rooms before, but in here, it actually seemed to blend into the ghastly environment. It was fitting, she supposed, given the hideous nature of this chamber.

Beneath the crest was perhaps the most ‘interesting' contraption in the room: a rusted iron vice. Alessa wasn't naïve. She knew the type of damage a vice could, and probably had done, to countless body parts. The thought of someone's skull being crushed by the unyielding grip left her cold all over. However, the vice was the only object in the room with an actual practical purpose to it. There had to be a reason for its presence then.

What could she do with a vice? She had nothing that required cracking open, did she? Unless...

The walnut from the jewelry shop came to mind. It seemed like an ordinary walnut at the time, but what if it wasn't? What if there was something else inside the walnut? Something she needed to continue on her way?

Alessa took out the walnut and shook it. And sure enough, there was a loud rattling that indicated something was inside. Like a kid in a candy store, she set the walnut in the vice clamps with an unabashed glee. Taking hold of the device, she squeezed down on the walnut until she heard the distinct crack of the shell breaking open. She brushed aside the walnut crumbs, and there it was - a small round gemstone in a grayish white hue.

Alessa's eyes were curious as she carefully picked up the precious stone. She had seen this type of gemstone before. It was called a moonstone, and its name already gave away its purpose.

She didn't even have to think about it. She knew exactly where the object belonged.

~

"Mommy, what is that?" the five year old Alessa asked her mother.

They were in the basement below the orphanage. Alessa came there often to visit with the other children in their order. This church was much smaller than she was used to. It wasn't even a real church, just a small room with an altar in it.

The symbol the child was referring to was a large circle painted in bright red ink above the room's altar. Three smaller circles were inscribed in the middle of it, along with some odd writing Alessa could not identify. It looked like a bunch of weird triangles and scribbles done by another kid. The little girl shivered. Somehow she didn't think this drawing was made by a child.

"That is the symbol of our Lord," Alessa's mother replied. "One of Her symbols, I should say."

"I don't like it," the little girl announced.

Her mother frowned. "Alessa..."

"Mommy, it hurts when I look at it!"

"Don't be ridiculous. It's just a symbol, a sign of our faith. There is no possible way it can harm you."

"But-"

"No buts. Alessa, I have told this before. Whenever we are in the presence of our Lord, you must be respectful of Her teachings. Understood?"

Alessa gave the barest of sighs. "Yes, mother."

As her mother began to read from the scriptures, she moved in front of the drawing, partially obscuring Alessa's view of it. The little girl focused on the words coming from her mother's mouth, trying to ignore the pain in her forehead...

~

The symbol loomed overhead like a shadow. It was many times larger than before this time. Painted in faded black writing, its glow had diminished down to nothing.

That didn't mean it didn't bother her.

Alessa held her forehead as she stared at the thing. She knew the symbol was from her past. That flashback was proof enough of that. She also knew its meaning was locked somewhere in her mind. Why couldn't she remember it?

She lowered her eyes from the massive emblem, and focused instead on what was relevant to her situation at this moment. This was it: the end of her journey through the mall. The large door in front of her had bothered her ever since she first saw it on the third floor. Situated in the same area as the gourmet restaurant, the door was decorated with a moon and stars motif scrawled in subtle red ink. Below the etching was a pocket for a small round object.

Alessa held up the moonstone she'd retrieved from the walnut. Though she wondered just how the hell the thing had ended up inside a walnut, there was no denying its purpose. She had played enough video games to know that something vital always lurked behind the big door. And then there was the message also written on the door...

By the light of the moon shall this door be opened, and the Guardian unveiled from his lair.

Alessa shrugged. Seems fairly obvious, she thought, placing the moonstone in its rightful indentation. She only hoped "he" wasn't the guardian the message was talking about. Immediately after she set the stone, a massive roar swept through the area with uncanny force. Alessa dropped her steel pipe on the ground, startled out of her wits by the unexpected shock. Now she was even more worried. If that wasn't a sign of something huge and monstrous, she didn't know what was.

Nonetheless, there was nowhere else to go. Gathering her courage and her thoughts of escape, Alessa crossed the threshold.

~

I think you all know what's coming next. ;)

* Dog with a key in its stomach, on the table: from Silent Hill 3

* Warning about the bleach: from Silent Hill 3

* Message on the door about the Guardian: partly from Silent Hill 3, and partly my own writing