Categories > Games > Silent Hill > The Music Man
“Where the hell is he?”
“I don’t know…”
“He’s never late for these sessions. Ever.”
“There’s always a first. He’s probably getting coffee on his way here.”
“He’s an hour late.”
“Coffee could take a while to get…”
“Seriously, I’ve tried calling him like five times and he hasn’t answered.”
“His phone on?”
“Yes. Keep getting his voicemail.”
“Strange.”
“Yeah… He never leaves his phone on unless he has it on him.”
“And he always answers it too.”
“You think he’s okay?”
“I hope so.”
“I’m worried…”
“Me too.”
“Same.”
“Yeah…”
“Well, I’m sure he won’t mind if we just practice without him.”
“Yeah. We can start back from the top when he gets here.”
“If he gets here…”
“Don’t say that.”
“Yeah… He’ll be here…”
“He’ll be here…”
+++
Upon stepping through the door, Josh was met with a thick cloud of gray, stale fog. It was almost like ash, the way it felt on his skin. He squint his eyes as he carefully treaded through the clouds, walking a few yards before the fog was clear enough to give him a better view of what he had stepped into. He stopped in his tracks, looking around him with narrowed eyes. He was silent, having a good feeling where he had ended up.
Around him was a town—a small town most definitely. The streets were empty and the buildings were bland, the town itself, like the fog, holding a bland, tasteless gray color about it, some shades darker than most. The buildings were dead and abandoned, the fog straying through open yards and thin alleyways. Large, distant cockroaches caught his eyes as they scurried underneath the occasional car parked on the side of the road.
“This…” he said softly to himself as he looked up at the gray, cloudy yet rainless sky, “…this can’t be it.”
Looking back ahead of him, Josh started his walk through the town, looking around and even calling out for someone from time to time, “Hello! Is anybody here?”
Josh continued his slow stride for a short while, the town’s silence weighing heavy on his bony shoulders. The town seemed deserted… abandoned in its wake with nothing more than a few bugs here and there and a Welcome sign. The sign itself old and rusted, paint chipping from borderlines and corners as well as its midriff, the metal grated post holding it up frozen in time with age and experience, rust streaming down its neck from the bolted connections between itself and the sign like blood from a wound.
The words across it, “Welcome to Silent Hill,” read robotically, like a dead, stale recording created merely to fill the void in the absence of a proper greeter. Such absence was taken with a form of understanding. Leaves had been abruptly taken, not just be residents but by the very town itself. As Josh travelled the hard, concrete streets, the town to him almost didn’t seem like a town any longer. Not a town, but a realm. His skin perked with goose bumps and hairs, tiny and long, stood on end.
He slowed to a gradual stop, standing in the middle of a four-way as his free hand strayed into the pocket of his pants. He withdrew the note he had received. The note from Silent Hill. He looked at it again and read it over silently with slow moving eyes. Looking up from the note, Josh twisted his neck, looking around him silently as his arm slowly lowered, note clasped between index and thumb.
“Is this really the place…?” he whispered to himself, “But… it’s so barren…”
Josh’s shoulders slumped, both with pain and yet a sense of relief. Had this trip—horrifying as it was to make—been all for naught? Was all the sweat and tears he had endured—both conscious and not—been all for nothing? Had he truly nothing to worry about?
Something about it seemed anticlimactic, though Josh couldn’t help but feel somewhat relieved that he had nothing to worry about. Perhaps now the nightmares will cease. Still, despite his subtle elation, something didn’t seem quite right. Still, Josh started down the road, unable to tell which direction was what, but he could only assume if he wandered far enough along the main streets, he would find something of an exit sooner or later.
The roads seemed to stretch on for miles, despite the view blocked precariously from Josh’s vision by the thick clouds of fog before him. His eyes darted about his surroundings, almost in a sense of paranoia as the town itself seemed to loom over him in silent judgment, a cold jury of concrete deciding some sort of sentence as if he were the defendant of a murder trial. He ducked his head meekly and continued on, ears feeling clogged from an imbalance in the air, filled with the howling silence that seemed to swarm through the town like a cloud of locusts.
Josh couldn’t keep himself from wincing and gritting his teeth as he walked, feeling lost in a maze with a siren blaring in his ears. There didn’t seem to be any exit that he could feel out, with the loss of his vision. He could hardly see ten feet in front of him. “This fog is just awful…” he said softly as he stopped to look around him, “I can barely see anything.”
Josh sighed as he lowered himself down to sit in the middle of the empty street, pulling his knees up in front of his chest. “I feel like I’m stuck in a maze… Or like… I’m on the wrong side of something… But the wrong side of what? And where are these thoughts coming from?”
He sat there for a while, staring down at the granules of the concrete surface beneath him. A faintly audible sound streaked through the air like lightning however, and caught his attention, eyes wide and face hardened with knowing recognition. The sound was a bark. A dog’s bark.
Josh stood up and listened for the sound again as it rang through the air. “Sweeney?” Josh called out, looking in direction of the sound’s origin, “Sweeney, is that you?” The bark sounded louder as if in direct response and it sent Josh dashing down the street. It was a call that was unmistakable. The pitch, the tone, the simple nature of the bark. It had to be Sweeney. Josh’s Sweeney. Faster he ran, only pausing momentarily from time to time to listen for it again and get a better sense of the direction from which it came. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. It was impossible for Sweeney to have followed him—and beat him—to his destination. Assuming the dog went… the long way.
The barking brought Josh to an alley, buried deep into the heart of the town. It was long and fairly narrow, leading to a tall staircase that ended with a door gussied up in bright neon pink lights that spelled out ‘Heaven’s Night’ and a raunchy female figure below it. The door itself was obscured by a shadowy silhouette. A dog’s silhouette, though it wasn’t the normal straight-backed, somewhat proud-looking Sweeney stand. The figure was bent, head low to the ground with spine curved sharply about the middle, twitching and now silent, saved for a soft guttural growl seeping from the creature’s throat.
Josh stopped at the base of the metal staircase, narrowing his eyes some to see it through the fog. His breathing was heavy and labored from the run, though his mouth was curved into a smile—one that was hopeful and short-lived. “Sweeney? Is… is it you? C’mon boy… C’mere…”he took a step back, patting his knee with his free hand to get the dog to come to him.
The creature shriveled in its stance, low head pointing in direction of the two-legged thing that called to it. It took a weak step forward on the final step in front of the door to the strip club and growled, pushing itself up in the air and leaping down at an angle at the singer. Josh blinked, his smile gone as he turned and dashed back, the dog landing on the ground and crashing against a couple of trashcans lining the eastern building of the alley. It was quick to get back to its feet, unfazed by the crash landing. Josh had since turned back to face it, face twisted with shock, “Sweeney?”
The dog raised itself up in a standing position, spine still curved and head low. The creature’s image was clear and Josh knew that this thing surely wasn’t his dog. Its skin was leathery, dark reddish brown and covered with what looked like burns, light blue and red lines branching over its slick, scrawny body. Its face was nothing but its snarling jaws, eyes seeming to have caved in on themselves and its skull collapsed. It was both earless and tailless, making up for these lacks with peak musculature, almost like that of a Doberman.
“Easy…” Josh whispered, face pale and horror-stricken. This thing was definitely not Sweeney. Even though those sounds earlier that lead him to this… beast… were unmistakably that of his sweet, loving Wheaten Terrier… This dog was not his sweet and loving Wheaten Terrier. “Easy boy…”
With a loud growl, the dog launched itself at the singer, who in turn pivoted once again and fled with a frightened sound. It chased him down the street, Josh’s mind racing for something to do to keep from becoming mince meat. He zipped through the streets, taking wild turns into alleyways and climbing over and crawling under fences. The dog followed effortlessly, growling deep in its throat and baring multiple vicious teeth.
Before Josh knew it, he was cornered, backing up towards an alleyway fence too high for him to climb. The dog slowed, growling jaws dribbling saliva saturated with red. “Nice dog… Good dog… Just back up… and run along now… Please…” Josh breathed, his eyes wide and lips tight as his chest heaved with heavy breaths, from both running and fear. In his hand, Josh squeezed the gun, not wanting to turn to bullets to brush the beast off and escape unscathed.
“I can’t… I can’t…” he choked, closing his eyes tightly at the thought of shooting an animal, aggressive or not. He couldn’t stand the idea of hurting anything, much less a dog. He thought of Sweeney, how precious his fuzzy buddy was to him, automatically putting his image in this malformed creature’s place. How horrible an image the white fuzzy curls stained with the darkest hue of a dead rose in his mind.
The thoughts and pain in his chest immediately ceased when his head perked up, eyes wide and teeth tightly grit as the monster let out a grotesque howl and leapt at the singer’s head. Almost immediately, his arms raised up, gun at the ready, head ducking and eyes closing tightly, teeth grinding against each other as his body stilled in the hollow wind, the town’s groans dying down as it was replaced by 7 shots, echoing through the sky like a eulogy.
Josh’s firing merely stopped to the sound of dead weight collapsing to the concrete at his feet. He lowered the gun with trembling limbs as his eyes slowly cracked open, head still lowered with almond irises wandering over the corpse before him, the beast that had just tried seconds ago to make a meal out of him now calm in its silent sleep. Its head was missing, shot away and obliterated by lead and the shrapnel of its own calcium structures. Blood painted the walls around him, as well as the concrete floor upon which the dead thing lay.
It was an unspeakable sight and Josh could only close his eyes tightly and tightly clench his teeth, gun dropped to the floor before his knees, spine curved as his body begged to simply collapse with his helplessness, the pain in his heart draining his energy and will. The only thing on his mind then was not to beg forgiveness from the creature that almost slaughtered him, but his best friend Sweeney, the sweet Wheaten Terrier that was Josh’s kindred spirit.
One glance at the shattered being before him sent Josh into a state of sadness unfelt, his body racking with grief and intolerance at his own violence, though undoable. He covered his face with his arms, turning himself away from the silent carcass, chest and stomach aching purely from disgust and self-loathing and the sort of catharsis that came over him and caused him to violently shake. He grit his teeth, trying to stifle his own sounds that flowed into the air like milk or honey, graceful in its sadness as if in the theatre.
He blubbered to himself, sounds muffled by his arms and teeth, about how horrible it was to take a life, no matter what the intention was. Perhaps the snarling thing was excited to see someone in this desolate place and simply wanted a game of fetch? But never before did Josh feel so threatened with those oral talons bared so willingly and offering physical harm to him almost like candy to a child.
When Josh was calm and quiet, he wiped at his face with his arm, averting his eyes to the atrocity before him as he stood and dashed out of the alleyway. He fled down the main streets, in hopes of an exit. “I’m not staying here…” he thought to himself as he ran, “No way in hell…”
After a moment or so of running, Josh came upon what looked like a road out of the town, causing a big, almost crazed smile to form over his reddened face. Oh what joy it was to be free of this burden! But Josh was stopped short, the wide grin crashing into a horrified look, face ghostly pale as he stopped himself and collapsed once again to his knees.
The main road before him, once cloaked thickly by fog, was gone, and seemingly fallen into a ravine below, the continent split into two, the other side hidden by gray. “No…” he breathed, staring down the cliff upon which he now sat trembling, “How is this… possible…” He looked up, beads of sweat forming on his forehead and stroking down his pale face, “I can… never leave…?”
“What am I… supposed to do now…?”
“I don’t know…”
“He’s never late for these sessions. Ever.”
“There’s always a first. He’s probably getting coffee on his way here.”
“He’s an hour late.”
“Coffee could take a while to get…”
“Seriously, I’ve tried calling him like five times and he hasn’t answered.”
“His phone on?”
“Yes. Keep getting his voicemail.”
“Strange.”
“Yeah… He never leaves his phone on unless he has it on him.”
“And he always answers it too.”
“You think he’s okay?”
“I hope so.”
“I’m worried…”
“Me too.”
“Same.”
“Yeah…”
“Well, I’m sure he won’t mind if we just practice without him.”
“Yeah. We can start back from the top when he gets here.”
“If he gets here…”
“Don’t say that.”
“Yeah… He’ll be here…”
“He’ll be here…”
+++
Upon stepping through the door, Josh was met with a thick cloud of gray, stale fog. It was almost like ash, the way it felt on his skin. He squint his eyes as he carefully treaded through the clouds, walking a few yards before the fog was clear enough to give him a better view of what he had stepped into. He stopped in his tracks, looking around him with narrowed eyes. He was silent, having a good feeling where he had ended up.
Around him was a town—a small town most definitely. The streets were empty and the buildings were bland, the town itself, like the fog, holding a bland, tasteless gray color about it, some shades darker than most. The buildings were dead and abandoned, the fog straying through open yards and thin alleyways. Large, distant cockroaches caught his eyes as they scurried underneath the occasional car parked on the side of the road.
“This…” he said softly to himself as he looked up at the gray, cloudy yet rainless sky, “…this can’t be it.”
Looking back ahead of him, Josh started his walk through the town, looking around and even calling out for someone from time to time, “Hello! Is anybody here?”
Josh continued his slow stride for a short while, the town’s silence weighing heavy on his bony shoulders. The town seemed deserted… abandoned in its wake with nothing more than a few bugs here and there and a Welcome sign. The sign itself old and rusted, paint chipping from borderlines and corners as well as its midriff, the metal grated post holding it up frozen in time with age and experience, rust streaming down its neck from the bolted connections between itself and the sign like blood from a wound.
The words across it, “Welcome to Silent Hill,” read robotically, like a dead, stale recording created merely to fill the void in the absence of a proper greeter. Such absence was taken with a form of understanding. Leaves had been abruptly taken, not just be residents but by the very town itself. As Josh travelled the hard, concrete streets, the town to him almost didn’t seem like a town any longer. Not a town, but a realm. His skin perked with goose bumps and hairs, tiny and long, stood on end.
He slowed to a gradual stop, standing in the middle of a four-way as his free hand strayed into the pocket of his pants. He withdrew the note he had received. The note from Silent Hill. He looked at it again and read it over silently with slow moving eyes. Looking up from the note, Josh twisted his neck, looking around him silently as his arm slowly lowered, note clasped between index and thumb.
“Is this really the place…?” he whispered to himself, “But… it’s so barren…”
Josh’s shoulders slumped, both with pain and yet a sense of relief. Had this trip—horrifying as it was to make—been all for naught? Was all the sweat and tears he had endured—both conscious and not—been all for nothing? Had he truly nothing to worry about?
Something about it seemed anticlimactic, though Josh couldn’t help but feel somewhat relieved that he had nothing to worry about. Perhaps now the nightmares will cease. Still, despite his subtle elation, something didn’t seem quite right. Still, Josh started down the road, unable to tell which direction was what, but he could only assume if he wandered far enough along the main streets, he would find something of an exit sooner or later.
The roads seemed to stretch on for miles, despite the view blocked precariously from Josh’s vision by the thick clouds of fog before him. His eyes darted about his surroundings, almost in a sense of paranoia as the town itself seemed to loom over him in silent judgment, a cold jury of concrete deciding some sort of sentence as if he were the defendant of a murder trial. He ducked his head meekly and continued on, ears feeling clogged from an imbalance in the air, filled with the howling silence that seemed to swarm through the town like a cloud of locusts.
Josh couldn’t keep himself from wincing and gritting his teeth as he walked, feeling lost in a maze with a siren blaring in his ears. There didn’t seem to be any exit that he could feel out, with the loss of his vision. He could hardly see ten feet in front of him. “This fog is just awful…” he said softly as he stopped to look around him, “I can barely see anything.”
Josh sighed as he lowered himself down to sit in the middle of the empty street, pulling his knees up in front of his chest. “I feel like I’m stuck in a maze… Or like… I’m on the wrong side of something… But the wrong side of what? And where are these thoughts coming from?”
He sat there for a while, staring down at the granules of the concrete surface beneath him. A faintly audible sound streaked through the air like lightning however, and caught his attention, eyes wide and face hardened with knowing recognition. The sound was a bark. A dog’s bark.
Josh stood up and listened for the sound again as it rang through the air. “Sweeney?” Josh called out, looking in direction of the sound’s origin, “Sweeney, is that you?” The bark sounded louder as if in direct response and it sent Josh dashing down the street. It was a call that was unmistakable. The pitch, the tone, the simple nature of the bark. It had to be Sweeney. Josh’s Sweeney. Faster he ran, only pausing momentarily from time to time to listen for it again and get a better sense of the direction from which it came. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. It was impossible for Sweeney to have followed him—and beat him—to his destination. Assuming the dog went… the long way.
The barking brought Josh to an alley, buried deep into the heart of the town. It was long and fairly narrow, leading to a tall staircase that ended with a door gussied up in bright neon pink lights that spelled out ‘Heaven’s Night’ and a raunchy female figure below it. The door itself was obscured by a shadowy silhouette. A dog’s silhouette, though it wasn’t the normal straight-backed, somewhat proud-looking Sweeney stand. The figure was bent, head low to the ground with spine curved sharply about the middle, twitching and now silent, saved for a soft guttural growl seeping from the creature’s throat.
Josh stopped at the base of the metal staircase, narrowing his eyes some to see it through the fog. His breathing was heavy and labored from the run, though his mouth was curved into a smile—one that was hopeful and short-lived. “Sweeney? Is… is it you? C’mon boy… C’mere…”he took a step back, patting his knee with his free hand to get the dog to come to him.
The creature shriveled in its stance, low head pointing in direction of the two-legged thing that called to it. It took a weak step forward on the final step in front of the door to the strip club and growled, pushing itself up in the air and leaping down at an angle at the singer. Josh blinked, his smile gone as he turned and dashed back, the dog landing on the ground and crashing against a couple of trashcans lining the eastern building of the alley. It was quick to get back to its feet, unfazed by the crash landing. Josh had since turned back to face it, face twisted with shock, “Sweeney?”
The dog raised itself up in a standing position, spine still curved and head low. The creature’s image was clear and Josh knew that this thing surely wasn’t his dog. Its skin was leathery, dark reddish brown and covered with what looked like burns, light blue and red lines branching over its slick, scrawny body. Its face was nothing but its snarling jaws, eyes seeming to have caved in on themselves and its skull collapsed. It was both earless and tailless, making up for these lacks with peak musculature, almost like that of a Doberman.
“Easy…” Josh whispered, face pale and horror-stricken. This thing was definitely not Sweeney. Even though those sounds earlier that lead him to this… beast… were unmistakably that of his sweet, loving Wheaten Terrier… This dog was not his sweet and loving Wheaten Terrier. “Easy boy…”
With a loud growl, the dog launched itself at the singer, who in turn pivoted once again and fled with a frightened sound. It chased him down the street, Josh’s mind racing for something to do to keep from becoming mince meat. He zipped through the streets, taking wild turns into alleyways and climbing over and crawling under fences. The dog followed effortlessly, growling deep in its throat and baring multiple vicious teeth.
Before Josh knew it, he was cornered, backing up towards an alleyway fence too high for him to climb. The dog slowed, growling jaws dribbling saliva saturated with red. “Nice dog… Good dog… Just back up… and run along now… Please…” Josh breathed, his eyes wide and lips tight as his chest heaved with heavy breaths, from both running and fear. In his hand, Josh squeezed the gun, not wanting to turn to bullets to brush the beast off and escape unscathed.
“I can’t… I can’t…” he choked, closing his eyes tightly at the thought of shooting an animal, aggressive or not. He couldn’t stand the idea of hurting anything, much less a dog. He thought of Sweeney, how precious his fuzzy buddy was to him, automatically putting his image in this malformed creature’s place. How horrible an image the white fuzzy curls stained with the darkest hue of a dead rose in his mind.
The thoughts and pain in his chest immediately ceased when his head perked up, eyes wide and teeth tightly grit as the monster let out a grotesque howl and leapt at the singer’s head. Almost immediately, his arms raised up, gun at the ready, head ducking and eyes closing tightly, teeth grinding against each other as his body stilled in the hollow wind, the town’s groans dying down as it was replaced by 7 shots, echoing through the sky like a eulogy.
Josh’s firing merely stopped to the sound of dead weight collapsing to the concrete at his feet. He lowered the gun with trembling limbs as his eyes slowly cracked open, head still lowered with almond irises wandering over the corpse before him, the beast that had just tried seconds ago to make a meal out of him now calm in its silent sleep. Its head was missing, shot away and obliterated by lead and the shrapnel of its own calcium structures. Blood painted the walls around him, as well as the concrete floor upon which the dead thing lay.
It was an unspeakable sight and Josh could only close his eyes tightly and tightly clench his teeth, gun dropped to the floor before his knees, spine curved as his body begged to simply collapse with his helplessness, the pain in his heart draining his energy and will. The only thing on his mind then was not to beg forgiveness from the creature that almost slaughtered him, but his best friend Sweeney, the sweet Wheaten Terrier that was Josh’s kindred spirit.
One glance at the shattered being before him sent Josh into a state of sadness unfelt, his body racking with grief and intolerance at his own violence, though undoable. He covered his face with his arms, turning himself away from the silent carcass, chest and stomach aching purely from disgust and self-loathing and the sort of catharsis that came over him and caused him to violently shake. He grit his teeth, trying to stifle his own sounds that flowed into the air like milk or honey, graceful in its sadness as if in the theatre.
He blubbered to himself, sounds muffled by his arms and teeth, about how horrible it was to take a life, no matter what the intention was. Perhaps the snarling thing was excited to see someone in this desolate place and simply wanted a game of fetch? But never before did Josh feel so threatened with those oral talons bared so willingly and offering physical harm to him almost like candy to a child.
When Josh was calm and quiet, he wiped at his face with his arm, averting his eyes to the atrocity before him as he stood and dashed out of the alleyway. He fled down the main streets, in hopes of an exit. “I’m not staying here…” he thought to himself as he ran, “No way in hell…”
After a moment or so of running, Josh came upon what looked like a road out of the town, causing a big, almost crazed smile to form over his reddened face. Oh what joy it was to be free of this burden! But Josh was stopped short, the wide grin crashing into a horrified look, face ghostly pale as he stopped himself and collapsed once again to his knees.
The main road before him, once cloaked thickly by fog, was gone, and seemingly fallen into a ravine below, the continent split into two, the other side hidden by gray. “No…” he breathed, staring down the cliff upon which he now sat trembling, “How is this… possible…” He looked up, beads of sweat forming on his forehead and stroking down his pale face, “I can… never leave…?”
“What am I… supposed to do now…?”
Sign up to rate and review this story