106 Whitebeard

Inside the world of darkness blanketing Silent Hill, a boy, a girl, and a woman broke through the barricades of monsters. The boy had the little girl on his back while he carried the woman under his armpit.

"Yay! Faster! Faster!" yelled Eve excitedly, oblivious of the threat around us.

"Don't open your mouth Eve, or you gonna swallow a fly," I said, smiling at her innocence.

"Yes! Let's fly!" replied Eve even louder, not knowing the fly that I was talking about was the insect, not the verb.

I helplessly chuckled and increased our speed knowing that Eve was having fun. Meanwhile, our new damsel in distress was not having it. How could see? I was not only moving on the road, but also the walls, the railings, the fences, and sometimes jumped between one electric pole to another with the help of the Air Treck. I must admit, it was really fun.

Thankfully, for her, I decided it was enough and to just find a safe place, planning our next course of action. We can't just run about forever without any clear destination. Especially when the town itself was trapping you.

Tring! Tring!

Sounded the entrance's bell to the diner.

As we entered an abandoned diner, the darkness was lifted off and the unsettling foggy atmosphere returned. The withered wallpapers on the diner's wall were replaced with the originals, dusty but still in a good state.

The howling from both nearby monsters we encountered and those that were hiding vanished as if it was just our imagination. The ashes that came along, falling like snow, intensified the depressing and melancholic atmosphere that had been haunting Silent Hill since God know when.

Looking around everything inside this diner was untouched. There were leftovers on the table as if someone was there a moment ago drinking coffee or having light-hearted lunch. The gas stove was still on with a pot of dried soup on it. Everything was left just like that as if everyone inside this diner suddenly apparated into nothingness.

"Hueekh..." a certain delicate and colorful rainbow liquid was dripping from the lady's mouth who was leaning by the wall. She seemed to be aging 10 years faster after we stopped here.

"Uh... sorry..." I apologized, knowing that I was too overboard earlier.

The lady couldn't retort to my apology. She just held her palm in front of my face as if saying she couldn't talk at the moment and continue spitting rainbows on the floor.

While waiting for the lady's soul to return, I took out the Scribbled Paleville Map while watching Eve playing around the diner. It oddly felt like we were hiking or camping on the mountain.

On the map, there were several notes written under a bunch of red circles on the town's landmark. The writing style was delicate and so ladylike, allowing me to guess that it was written by a woman. All of the circles were marked with a huge ×, except for one. It was a certain room in the town's hospital. The owner of this map must have been looking for something.

"What are you looking at?" asked the lady from before, waking me up from my stupor.

I let the lady took a peek at the map, but somehow she seemed to be unaware of the existence of the red circles and the notes underneath them.

"Is it the map of this town?" asked the lady, comparing the buildings she saw earlier with the one on the map. I tested her by pointing at the note under the red circles, but she just shook her head sideways, thinking that I was just guessing the place we were currently at.

'She really can't see it.' I thought inside my mind, confirming my suspicion.

The note and the red circles were exclusive to me, Eve also didn't seem to see anything in it. She didn't even know how to read a map. I reminded myself to teach her at least some common sense later.

"By the way, who are you guys? Are you two the resident of this town?" asked the lady, she kept glancing at my equipment, particularly the two handguns peeking on my waist. In the background, I saw Eve stumbled and fell on the floor.

While picking her up and cleaning her dusty raincoat, I answered the lady's question, "We're not this town's resident, we just accidentally stumbled upon this town."

For a second, the lady seemed to be disappointed to hear my answer. Before continuing our conversation, I started introducing myself and Eve, it was weird to converse without knowing each other's identity.

"I'm Edward, and this is my little sister, Eve. We're just passing by, but we got lost because of that weird fog." I said, half lying. It was enough, there was no need to explain that I almost died earlier and somehow we were thrown into this cursed land.

"My name is Rose Da Silva. I came here with my daughter, but something happened and I lost her on the way. Have you seen her?" Rose then described her daughter's appearance, what she wore, her facial features, the color of her hair. I could see the desperation on her face.

'As expected, I'm in Silent Hill.' I deeply thought as I observed the woman before me.

I already had my suspicion on where we currently were the moment the darkness descended after that ominous siren, though I didn't know which iteration I was currently on, the movie or the game. And my encounter with Ms. Rose before me finally revealed that it was the movie. Secretly, I was relieved that it was the movie.

The game was, not only much more difficult to solve, but also too scary for my heart. I didn't know how many times I gave up playing the game and drop it only to play it at a later date and drop it once again. It was an endless cycle of determination and cowardice. In the end, I gave up playing and just watched other people play it on YouTube.

However, even though the movie was much milder in terms of difficulty and gore, the ending was a bit complicated. In the end, Ms. Rose couldn't return to the real world.

'Will I be trapped in this dimension as well?'

Ms. Rose saw that I was spacing out. She walked in front of me and show her locket necklace, waking me from my stupor, one more time. It was a picture of a girl, her missing adoptive daughter, Sharon.

"Have you seen her?" she asked, her voice was shaking.

I shook my head, crushing Ms. Rose's only hope. Before she got even more depressed though, I added, "But I can help you find her. Though Eve and I, are strangers to this town, there's no one better suited for this job except us."

Ms. Rose, of course, thought that we were just joking. Imagine a boy not much older than your own daughter, spouting some nonsense about finding your lost daughter inside this horrible world. However, she recalled the experience she went through up until now. The only reason she could escape whatever abomination those monsters came from, was with the help of the little boy before her. Even if it was just a strand of spider web, she couldn't be picky and needed to get ahold of it as fast as possible.

"Then, please... Please help me find her," she replied, regaining her hopes.

Ms. Rose saw the smile formed on my face as a black-colored butterfly fluttered between us. Eve's eyes glowed as she found the black butterfly she saw back then.

"It's Mr. Butterfly! But, why there's two of you?" questioned Eve, looking between me and the butterfly.

Eve still mistook me as the Limbo butterfly, I couldn't help but laugh at her cute confusion. I pat her head while watching the butterfly flew onto the locket, waiting for my order.

"Find her."

The butterfly soon fluttered away, going out of the diner. I gave Mrs. Rose a sign to follow while I watched the surroundings. There was no harm to be vigilant.

We kept walking and walking. Though it could find anything anywhere the eye could see, even bypassing the fog that couldn't be pierced by my S-Rank Radar Sense, it was lacking in terms of speed. We were forced to walk in order to follow the butterfly. We passed certain buildings like the school ground, a park, a hotel, the hospital until we stopped in front of an apartment building.

It was an old building, mostly covered by moss on the dull walls. As we walked inside, I noticed that there was no fog lingering inside, allowing me to freely use my Radar Sense again. I could feel the presence of humans, each in their own room, snuggling in fear. They were the cursed civilians of this town. Each and every one of them was doomed to be trapped in this endless circle of misery.

My vision moved up, scanning for a certain little girl, locked inside room 302. Although she wasn't bounded with rope or anything, she couldn't get out of the room. No emergency stairs, no balcony, even the window was nailed by woods.

"She's upstairs."

My voice gained Ms. Rose's attention as she looked at me and then the stairs leading up in the middle of the lobby. She was about to storm toward the stairs before I hold her arm, stopping her.

"We're not alone," I warned Ms. Rose while telling her to open her ears.

Just as I told her that, we could hear several footsteps walking above us, on the second floor. It was heavy and downtrodden, they were wearing some kind of worn-out hazmat suits. One of them was holding a bird in a cage to warn them when the next transition into the Dark Dimension was going to start.

I turned to Eve and Ms. Rose and told them, "You two wait here. When I gave you the signal, that's when you started climbing the stairs."

While I know that they were just a normal human, I didn't want any mishaps to happen, because of my neglect. Even if it was just a needle in a mountain of hay, ridding it early on when I could, was the top priority.

"Do you know who they are?" asked Ms. Rose.

"I'm not a fortune teller, but at least I know that they're not here for a welfare check," I replied, implying that they were not on our sides.

I vanished into a cloud of dark smoke, startling both Eve and Ms. Rose. I didn't have any time to clear their confusion, the faster we got our hands on Rose's daughter, the better my chance to complete the instruction written on the Scribbled Paleville Map.

When I got that item, I thought it was about how to get out of this world alive. However, after reading the very last notes, placed under the only circle that wasn't marked with an ×, I finally understood what the map was about. It was the direction to a secret Oni Shrine.

As if reading my thought, my sleeping Oni Gauntlet that was in a form of a bracelet, shone. Yes, the map was leading to the next weapon for my Gauntlet.

There was one name written in that note.

Whitebeard.

===°°°°===

Dahlia Gillespie, the only woman that was wandering this foggy world without being affected or targeted by the creature of the Dark Dimension, was walking aimlessly.

She was the mother of Alessa Gillespie, the poor child who, accused as a witch and sacrificed by the town's cult in the name of restoring their innocents and purities, was burned alive like a livestock on a fryer.

Alessa was the center of this endless loop of darkness and emptiness. She became the very thing that the townspeople were afraid of, the demon.

Thwaang!!

Suddenly, a man wearing a hazmat suit was thrown off the second-floor window of the apartment building where she lived.

"No!" she gasped in fear.

She knew the identity of the man. He was the devoted follower of a cult called The Brethren, led by a woman named, Christabella, the people who burned her daughter. There could be only one reason why this man was here. It was to take the girl.

Dahlia sprinted into the building, she could hear things being smashed on the 3rd floor, where her apartment was. Her heart was beating very fast. She increased her pace, ignoring her ragged breath and the wound she got from stumbling a few times on the way.

However, when he reached the 2nd floor, she was met with silence. There were signs of fighting around her, windows smashed, crack that wasn't there before decorated the walls, bodies piled on top of each other. They weren't dead, only unconscious, but it was enough to sentence their life when the next darkness hit. There were 5 people on this floor, and when she climbed up, she found 4 more laid here and there. A cage with a bird was put down in the middle of the lobby. It was the only thing that was undamaged in this place.

She didn't know what happened here, but that was not the most important right now. The door to her room was blasted open, she could hear the gratitude voice of a woman inside and a weeping girl.

Just as she was about to approach the door, her vision was covered by a thick dark cloud. From within the dark cloud, a hand grasped her neck as she heard a chilling voice.

"You know, from all the people I have met, you're the one I hate the most."

Just as he finished his words, Edward slammed her onto the wall without waiting for his body to appear fully.

Click.

I pointed my handgun on her head before saying, "I wonder, what will your daughter do when I blast your head open."