Play@YSDC

His shoes echo against the wood in the stifling silence that presses down around him. The sounds he makes feels alien, wrong, like randomly singing in a funeral. How could everything be so quiet? Silent Hill is normally a bustling town filled with the sounds of people and animals. As he reaches the upper desk, he can make out the canvas shrouds that provide protection from sun and rain, and the several chairs arranged around round tables bolted to the deck boards. There's glasses up here and half empty bottles of alcohol and even cards still laid out in an unfinished poker game.

The feeling of isolation and apprihention grew as his eyes took in what should be a jovial and merry scene, turned upside down by the hushed silence and complete lack of people. For a moment postulated that the tables were left in the hurry of an emergancy but cut his train of thought grimly short, as he realised how neatly the cards were laided and how all the chairs were still upright.

When people panic they're sure to leave dissorder behind, people are sadly that predictable. The War prooved that much. Only differance is that in war it's people that are often the debris and detritus left behind.

He took a brief look at the poker game to see who was winning before scanning the other tables and chairs for any discarded items, anything that might tell him what happened and why.

Each chair has a name carved lightly into it in jagged lines. Sgt. Williamson. Pt. Donovan. Pt. Harper. Lt. Richards. Lt. Carey. Pt. Hauptmann. Pt. Winchester. It seems that most of the men who had been here had been to war. Either that or someone passed through here and noted down random names. Either is as likely as the other. There aren't too many young men in Silent Hill who didn't go off to war. This wasn't much of a farming community although it had been meant to be once upon a time.

There's a hand of cards laying face down on the table. Turning it right way up reveals five aces. Two are aces of spades.

The air is heavy and still. The only sound the glugging of gentle lake waves bumping up against the boat. Slowly the paddles come to life. He can hear the blades cut through the water and the boat begins to steadily yet so quietly move on.

Clicking his tongue in dissapointment he placed the cheating hand back on the table. Such base underhandedness anoyed him to no end, especialy considering he like a good game of Texas Hold'em.

Observing the names crudely carved in the seats sent his brain reaching for any recolection of them. He'd known a Pt. Williamson but he was too young and soft to have made it to Sgt in the intervening time. He recalled treating a Pt. Dean Winchester and a Lt. Robert Carey before they were sent home but neither of them lived anywhere near here.

You could be here all night trying to remember the names of all the men you met and treated in the last few years, most of the those names might end up as dead ends anyway...so to speak.

With one last look at vacant chairs he made his way to the stairs....and then he heard it. The steathy sound of turning paddles pushing through still water, he felt the faint motion of the boat slowly pushing off towards the centre of the dark and forboding lake! By the time he made it down the stairs he was just in time to see the coffin lid fall with a muted splash between the boat and the jetty.

Assuming no one else had come aboard it seemed Alex was a sad party of one, on the silent and grim steamer La Bella Sinclair...

The paddle steamer glided out across the still grey waters, leaving the docks receding gloomily in the distance.

Everything was so quiet.

So still.

It seemed so peaceful.

Within the depths of the paddle steamer came a sudden sharp cry.

The first human noise since he'd got here sent a shock through his spine, spinning round in the direction of the scream. There was no doubt about it, he was going to have to search the bowels of the ship.
Alex drew his Colt and checked all the chambers were loaded. He'd used this before but he never relished it, he'd seen the damage a stray bullet can inflict.

Whatever's going on here it doesn't look good, I can't let myself be caught off-guard.

Gathering his nerve he moved to the side of the door leading to the interior of the ship and opened it slowly, peering carefully inside with gun at the ready.

The door opens to reveal the gloomy interior of a compartment decked out with sofas and tables around the edges with a dance floor in the middle. A bar stands on the end closer to him. A band stand still containing dusty instruments stands on the other side. In fact, the whole gloomy interior is covered in dust with the etched out foot prints of dancers across the dance floor. There are bundles of cloth here and there, like rags, especially amongst the bags and cocktails of the booths.

The feel of this room was almost sepulchral, the dust and rags making it seem more like the interior of a tomb than a dance room.

"Why does everything in this town remind me of graves?"

Stepping further into the room he made a point of ignoring the empty bar and moved to examine the foot prints left in the room. Perhaps if they were recent then they might give him a clue as to how many people he should be looking for.

It looks like the footprints were left behind by male and female dancers. One set of footprints heads out toward a door beside where the short stage sits.

The dust in the room made is nose itch as his eyes followed the trail of prints towards the stage side door.

"How long would the ship need to be abandoned to look like this? The empty tables, these foot prints and the fact the paddles started with no warning at all, nothing seems to add up."
Feeling the weight of questions that seemed unanswerable he took a brief glimpse back at the bar...before thinking better of it. Now was the time for a clear head, especialy when everything else wasn't clear at all.
He posistioned himself between the stage and the door jamb and carefully opened the door.

Wan light weaks through a pair of round windows into a narrow room about eight feet across but only four feet deep, containing a cushioned bench, side table, little sink covered with make up items, a potted plant standing under the window, and a companionway heading down to the lower deck. This must be where the performers would get ready before going out on stage.

Finding more empty rooms only succeeded in hightening Alex's sense of dread. The conflicting signs of life and simulatanious dissuse made the steamer feel almost unreal in aspect, almost dream like.

Realising the lower levels of the ship could be even more poorly lit than the one he was on, Alex made a quick search of the green room for any flash lights.
I surpose I've always got my lighters but given the...interesting circumstance I'd rather no rely on their poor illumination.

There was a black-out flashlight of the kind frequently used in Great Britain during the war that sits on a shelf beside the sink, flanked by a few books on Shakespeare and a make up bag. There's also a half empty bottle of whiskey laying at an angle within the porcelain sink.

Alex's pale, slim hand came to a shuddering halt as he reached for the flashlight, the whiskey in the sink almost demanding attention. The familiar black lable held his gaze in a vice grip.

"What are the odds....a half of Johnnie Walker, sitting in a sink. It would be shame to...let this fine brand go to waste..."
All of a sudden his mouth was dry, his lips parting in antisipation of the golden water of life to pass between them. The flashlight all but forgoten his quivering hand wrapped round the neck of the bottle, eyes helping his mouth taste it already. It did look so good...
His hand was half way to putting down his gun when he saw his dim reflection in the mirror above the sink. A pale shade of a man who's eyes used to always burn with a mental acuity and sharpness of mind, now hazel spots full of desperation and melancholy.

"When did this happen? The funeral? The War? The....
Wedding. His head finishing what his mouth could not. She left you for him...Declan and Lizzy. The wedding was stunning, everyone was there. Her salon staff, the Philidelphia Eagles, all the friends and family they could muster. Everyone was so happy....except you. You didn't shout, didn't sulk, didn't cry. Just balled it all up in a pit in your gut. Happy....they were happy....so....
"Freaking HAPPY!"
The bottle shattered into whiskey soaked pieces as it hit the wall by the door. The sound snapped Alex to the boat to find himself tense, his left arm shaking and bottleless. It took a few seconds to register what had happened, forced deep breaths calming his pulse, free hand leaning on the sink.
The temptation gone, he tried to clear his mind an remembered why he was here.

"The letter, the boat, the cry from bellow deck. Someone could be hurt, or worse. Time could be a factor. Better move."
Focused again he snatched the flashlight and switched it on, readied his colt and headed down the companionway.

OOC,Damn, was wondering what would set him off first! That was fun.

The flashlight wobbles down the companionway as he starts down it into a cabin filled with bunks set into tight wooden frames with narrow steps that go up from one to the other. They are stacked in groups of three. Did people actually want to sleep on this thing? If so, why pack themselves in like that? Still, the room isn't very large. There's one set of bunks against each bulkhead (wall) and one down the middle. Beneath the bottom bunk are some cupboards. There's a door set on either side of it. A trail of clotted blood shines in the light as it flashes across it. The blood leads into one of the long drawers beneath the bunk in the central aisle.

The tight packing and spacing of the bunks surprised him, they looked similar to the bunks he slept in when being shipped off to great offensive. In those closed quarters it was comraderie that kept them sane and laughing.
Looking at the state of the blood trail he could tell it's been there for at least 2-5 mins, mabye long enough to be related to the scream he heard.

If the blood belongs to the screamer then there may me someone else here.

Tracking his torch across the deeper shadows of the room he followed the blood to the small floor cupboard, crouching down Alex holstered his colt so he could pull open the suspicious drawer.

The wood groans as the drawer slides out, revealing several folded shirts in three different piles with a small bloody bundle wrapped in another shirt.

Not someone easily repulsed by blood he lifted the soaking red bundle out of the draw and onto the bottom bed. With a doctors steady hands he carefully unwrapped it.

He unwraps the bundle to reveal a soggy dead kitten, quite possibly drowned, without a cut or injury upon it. The blood must have come from somewhere else. The kitten's body is so loose, the limbs so yielding, so different in death. It seems to be a pale cream-and-brown tabby kitten ... or so it was.

As he turned the kitten's lifeless body over to make certain the cause of death he found himself wondering aloud,
"Who would do this to a helpless kitten? Move over why place it in a draw, and what connection does the blood trail have?"

More questions, no answers. Seems to be the order of the day.
After checking over late tabbies corpse Alex looked again to the draw, moving the shirts aside incase there was something he missed.