Play@YSDC

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 5:26 am**

The hotel room feels quiet and still now that Travis has left it. There's a DVD player hooked up to a television that may or may not receive cable. There's a double bed with a rather flowery quilt spread across it. There's the couch and coffee table (with telephone) to one side. A writing desk and a couple more chairs on the other side. There's a bar fridge in the corner up against the wall. Then, of course, there's the bathroom with a naked and drugged Walter sitting in a bath tub. Emily sits down on the couch, her legs heavy after all that's happened. It's going to be a long night. Hopefully the voice on the telephone was joking.

Walter lays in a luke warm bath, struggling to keep the insidious images from flashing across his mind. Whenever his focus weakens, he sees the walls begin to split open, spewing forth a painfully bright light - sometimes golden, sometimes crimson. The stink of charred wood assaults his nostrils, sometimes replaced with the scented complimentary bath salts that he's added to the bath tub. Still, it's hard not to find the whole thing, imagery and all, quite exciting. His nerves are on fire with delicious energy and pulsating pleasure, a low-level hum of near bliss, that it's taken all of his admittedly low willpower to try to control and ignore. If he sat here, he could wait it out. Half an hour, tops, for the pleasurable sensations to fade and the hallucinations to become less ... overwhelming. Another few hours for his doped up brain to start working properly. He'd once been told that PVT was like weed mixed with a crazy batch of magic mushrooms with a hint of cocaine. It'd been so long he'd almost forgotten how great it felt.

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 5:43 am**

Emily hugs her knees to her chest, conscious of the sound of lightly splashing water. She glances around for a remote to turn the television on. If there isn't one, she'll get up and push the TV's power button.

She turns the volume down low either way, not wanting to disturb Walter, but wishing for something else to occupy her thoughts.

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 5:52 am**

The television switches on to reveal nothing but static and yet there seems to be something hidden within the static. Some strange combination of lines and lettering. Sometimes it almost seems as though there is a face flickering in and out of view. It's a flat-screen television so it shouldn't be capable of static and yet it so obviously is. There's something about that static that rings a bell. Principal Roseworthy always rambled about the wonders of modern technology but she'd always been somewhat afraid of it at the same time. Afraid to look at it. To see it. If only Emily had been paying more attention she might have understood what it meant.

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 6:47 am**

"Ring around the Rosie...

Pockets full of posie...

Ashes ashes...

We all fall down..."

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 6:51 am**

Emily finds herself drawn to the static, dropping out of her defensive posture and leaning closer. It's almost beautiful, like snow. When was the last time it snowed here...?

The soft crackling mixes with Walter's singing. It's such a lovely sound.

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 6:57 am**

The static sounds so strange to her as though it whispered enchanting messages into her ears. The voice, so soft, so sweet, so gentle. It's as if she were listening to a lullaby. "Emily ... Emily ... safe n ... n't wor ... fine now, silly bill ..."

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 6:59 am**

"Goosey Goosey Gander, whither shall I wander?

Upstairs and downstairs and in my Lady's chamber.

There I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers,

So I took him by his left leg and threw him down the stairs."

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 7:04 am**

It almost sounds like her father. Or maybe she just wants it to.

Silly, silly Emily... let me tell you a story...

When she closes her eyes, she swears she can feel warm arms reaching out to hold her. It's been so long since that winter, and now her room with the rocking chair belongs to someone else.

But she can remember just fine.

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 7:21 am**

"Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home,

Your house is on fire and your children are gone,

All except one and that’s little Anne,

For she crept under the frying pan."

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 11:12 am**

Time blurred for Emily as the static snaked through her ears and reflected in her gaze. As the imagery flickered with increased frequency, she felt her muscles grow heavy and lethargic. It was as though the lullaby were thrilling through her bones, swept along through the mumbling sing-song of Walter in the bathtub behind her. "...safe, y ... o tha ... sleep ... enever y ... nt ... ... ... fear nothing ... all will be ... oon ... she's com ... will come ... be bett ... issed her ... smile ... eep." The words call to her, drawing her down, down, down into the deepest depths of her subconscious as all of her muscles relax and her mind slips gently away.

Walter can hear the static coming from the other room and there seems to be something so familiar within it that calls to him, insinuating its way into his drug-addled mind, but whether it was hallucination or reality, who could tell? Slowly it coaxes him forward, ever so forward, even as the energy of the drugs start to wear away under the onslaught of waves and waves of calm and sleepiness.

Posted: **Wed Jan 11, 2012 1:01 pm**

The little brown rabbit looks at her with its chocolate eyes.

"What's this?"

"It's an Easter bunny."

"Mother says there's no such thing as bunnies in Easter."

"Well, your daddy says it's tasty and he always ate the ears first."

"Promise you won't tell--?"

"I promise, Emily."

She goes to bed with chocolate on her fingers and a smile on her face.

Somewhere in reality, Emily feels herself stretching out on the hotel couch, but then she's hiding behind a door...

"I brought her into this world, and I'm going to bring her up to live in it."

"You didn't even want to."

"But I did, okay? Look, you're the one who decided to stick around. If you don't like the way I'm raising Isabel, the door is right there."

"She wants to be called Emily."

"Look, is this because you want her for--?"

"No. No, absolutely not. How did you...?"

"You're not very careful. I know what you're doing to--"

"Shut up. Shut up!"

The sound of skin hitting skin. Somebody cried out - Mother or Daddy? It's hard to know...

She shivers in her haze. An unhappy memory. Most of them were bittersweet, at least. The reason she's forgotten them. But further down, there's a memory of tears calmed by the rocking chair, and a single word in her father's voice:

Paradise.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 2:57 am**

"Damn you all!" Walter screamed. He plunged his head into the water to keep himself awake. It didn't help, and he soon drew out, gasping.

Why are you all just standing here?

Walter hugged his knees. "Can't go to sleep. Can't go to sleep yet... Only an hour more... Come on..."

Be quiet, Walter. You're making a scene.

"I should have done more... I'm sorry..."

Argh! Oh god! Oh God! My hand...

"It hurt so much..." Walter said, looking down at his hands. A faint scar was still visible on his palms.

She's safe...

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 3:12 am**

As he erupts from the bathtub he glimpses the figures, shadowy and still, standing around his bathtub and for a moment he is her and she is him and he can feel his skin on fire and there are words flowing from them, harsh static-clipped words, and amongst it all he knows he'll be pulled in and pulled under and the rational part of him realises that he's in a bath tub and perhaps he'll drown but the floor beneath the bath is blood-scarred steel grilles like a slaughterhouse and the walls are ripping themselves away, flaying themselves with gay abandon, and the static is inside his head and it hurts, it hurts so much to resist it, but to give in would bring forth peace if only he didn't drown first.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 5:41 am**

Emily is slipping further down the rabbit hole, dredging up old memories, tumbling head first into the sheltered innocence of childhood.

Mother says... been bad... girls being gi... get into Heaven... pretty, am I pre... Electra complex... ing ridiculous...

Daddy in the rocking chair, telling her a story. It's snowing outside. Emily cries because Mother told her she's going to Hell.

...no Hell, only Paradise, and when...

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 6:23 am**

No, it can't be her, it's just a fucked up hallucination.

I am burning. I can still see it... Still see the flames, even if I close my eyes.

I can still see her.

Can't give up... Can't give in now... Too soon... It wouldn't be fair... He came to put all of these things to bed. So that the flames wouldn't follow him around anymore. So that he wouldn't see her in every burning flames.

"Help!" He yelled. "Help me!

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 6:36 am**

He jerks up in the bathtub. Suddenly there's more feeling in his face. Suddenly he feels more alert, if not more awake, and he realises that the drugs have worn off somewhat and that hours must have passed. Did he fall asleep in the bathtub? The water is quite cold, actually. Not chilled. More like it's been awhile since any hot water had been added. There's water all across the floor. He must have splashed about in his sleep.

Emily awakens with a gentle toss of her head and finds herself looking out into a fog-shrouded day through the windows behind the television set. The television is still purring static at her but it lacks the hypnotic appeal of last night. Her mobile phone battery must've died over the night. There's no telling what time it is. Oh shit, it's a school day!

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 6:40 am**

Emily scrambles for the remote and turns the TV off. What happened last night? Where's Walter? Did Travis make it home okay?

And she has to get to work! She can't miss a day for this!

She jumps to her feet, tries to straighten out the wrinkles in her clothes, and sneaks a worried glance at the bathroom.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 6:54 am**

Was it over? Walter groaned. It didn't feel as if it was over.

He rose out of the bathtub and began to get dressed.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 6:56 am**

Emily can hear the water slosh, footsteps hitting tiles, and then the sound of fabric rustling.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 7:02 am**

Well, he seems to be okay. But maybe she should stick around to make sure... no, no time for that. She has to sign the children in, and handle the library, and...

Emily rushes around the hotel room, checking all over for things she might have left in odd places.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 8:35 am**

The first thing she notices are the heavy chains strapped to the wooden door.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 8:42 am**

Walter stepped out of the bathroom and froze once he saw the door.

"...That seems like overkill. Where did you get the chains?" Walter muttered.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:05 am**

"...I didn't."

Emily runs over to the door and pulls on the chains. Oh, God, what happened? Walter was in the bath, and she was... dreaming, so how...?

She runs her hands over the links, searching for any kind of lock.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 4:34 pm**

"What? Shit!" Walter yelled.

As Emily ran towards the door, Walter ran towards the windows, trying to open them.

Posted: **Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:08 pm**

The windows didn't budge. It was if they were somehow sealed shut.

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:52 am**

"What's going on?! Who locked us in?" Emily gives the chains one last tug, and rushes over to Walter. "What about the windows? Are they blocked too?"

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:54 am**

"Yes! God!" Walter gave the window a good punch. "Wha... What happened? How did anyone manage too do this overnight?"

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:56 am**

The glass doesn't so much as crack and yet, surely the hotel wouldn't fit their windows with bullet-proof glass, and it doesn't look like perspex.

Still, it feels like glass and hurts like punching solid glass that doesn't break.

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:58 am**

"Nothing crazy happened while I was doped up, right? As far as you can remember?"

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:59 am**

"I don't know!" Emily throws her hands in the air, glancing about for any sign that someone might have broken in. "I... I fell asleep, I didn't see anything."

How long was I out?

"How are we going to get out of here? I need to get to work, and you need to... books... whatever!" She stamps on the ground ineffectually and flops backwards onto the bed, grumbling.

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:01 am**

"Work? Somebody broke in the room, replaced the windows and then put chains on the door without any of us noticing, and the first thing you can think about is WORK?!" Walter screamed.

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:08 am**

"Oh, well, I don't know what I'm SUPPOSED to think about when this kind of shit happens! Sorry!" Emily snaps, sitting bolt upright, clutching fistfuls of comforter.

"Why are you yelling at me? What the hell do you want me to do, Walter?!"

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:13 am**

"Wait, wait wait wait wait," Walter said, covering his face. "I get it now. I must have drowned in that bathtub and this must be my dying dream. This is just one big creepy hallucination. Sorry for yelling at you. Not that you would really care, being a hallucination. "

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:17 am**

"What."

Emily just stares at him, then shakes her head and jumps off the bed.

"No, you're alive. I'm real. And thinking otherwise won't help us." She sighs, touching him lightly on the arm. "I'm sorry, too. It's just... I don't know what's going on."

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:21 am**

"But think about it, Emily!" Walter said, pointing towards the door. "Does that even make sense to you? Do bulletproof windows in hotels make sense to you? What's a simpler explanation? That somebody took the care of somehow sneaking in through the doors, replacing the windows, chaining the doors (instead of, you know, just killing us), or that this is all a massive hallucination?"

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:30 am**

"I..."

Emily looks at him - he really believes what he's saying, doesn't he? And it doesn't make any sense...

Wait. The telephone. She can call somebody!

She grabs the receiver and calls the front desk.

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:31 am**

"It's not going to do any good," Walter said in a sing-song voice. "It's my hallucination, remember? That's not a real phone you are holding. You should know that, being a figment of my imagination."

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:32 am**

Ring ... ring ... ring ... ring ... ring ... ring ... ring ... ring ... beep. "Hello, this is the Lakeview Hotel. If you would like to leave a message, please do so after the tone." Beeeeep.

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:34 am**

"Wait, it works?!" Walter shouted once Emily didn't hang up the phone. "Hot damn!"

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:41 am**

"Hello? We're stuck in the hotel room - the door and all the windows are sealed shut. If you could send somebody to help us..."

She trails off, unsure of what else to say, and replaces the handset.

"It works, but the answering machine picked up." She sits back down on the bed with a sigh. "This can't be a hallucination... we'll be fine."

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:21 am**

"What else could it be, though? It all makes sense this way," Walter muttered. "Answering machine? That's... that's not much worse from nobody picking up. Or there being no ringtone at all..."

Walter groaned and sat on the bed next to Emily. "We are so dead. Even if this isn't my dying dream. I...I don't think.... whoever that locked us in here... he's....she's....it's...going to come back..."

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 6:22 am**

"We're not dead," Emily says, balling her hands into fists. "We'll get out somehow. I... maybe I'm not sure how, but we will."

Her eyes meet his for a second. Then she looks away, and traces a line in the bedspread with one finger.

"So... are you feeling any better?"

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 6:41 am**

"Yes...I think I am," Walter muttered. "As much as a person who finds himself trapped inside a room by chains can feel, I guess."

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 6:46 am**

Emily shrugs, and pulls her knees up to her chest. The silence grates on her ears.

What now?

"Maybe we could break them with something heavy, or... or file holes in some of the links, if there's anything here..."

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 6:56 am**

"Sure. I am getting tired of waiting anyways," Walter muttered. He walked around the room in order to look for anything that could be used to either break the windows or the chains.

Posted: **Fri Jan 13, 2012 9:08 am**

There's a wooden chair standing at the writing desk that could be used to break the windows but there's nothing that could be used to snap through those solid metal chains.

Watch this if you want to see the room in motion. The only difference is there is a DVD player, a telephone, and a bar fridge (and the chains).

Posted: **Sun Jan 15, 2012 9:13 am**

Emily idly kicks at the air, her eyes following Walter as he moves. She could almost forget that he thinks she's a hallucination.

It must be the White Claudia, really. God, it lasts long.

Posted: **Sun Jan 15, 2012 5:00 pm**

"Quick, give me a hand, if you have one," Walter muttered. He took the wooden chair and began to hit the windows with it.

Posted: **Sun Jan 15, 2012 10:52 pm**

The window glass shakes vaguely in its frame but doesn't so much as crack, leaving Walter with sore, jarred upper arms.

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 1:33 am**

Emily jumps up and starts pacing, occasionally scuffing at the carpet with her shoes - she hasn't taken her shoes off all night...

"Housekeeping will try to come in, right? Or the management when you don't check out?"

With a slight whimper, she rushes to one of the windows and presses her palms to the glass. What's out there?

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 1:37 am**

She can vaguely make out hedge rows beneath the window but not a whole lot else.

She can't even make out the lake that she knows should be out there somewhere.

She does notice a videogame has fallen down the back of the television cabinet and when she looks down at the player she sees it plays both DVDs and Videos.

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:58 am**

"Die," Walter muttered as he dropped the chair and collapsed on the bed face first. "We are gonna die in here," he let out a sad little chuckle. "Nobody's going to come around to save us. In fact, I think I remember thinking of a storyline like this for my horror novel."

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:35 am**

Emily picks up the video game and looks at the cover.

When Walter flops onto the bed, she turns around and sits next to him. "We're not going to die," she says again, though with a loss of conviction.

She sighs. "Tell me about your novel."

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:42 am**

The videogame is Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:54 am**

"Basically a person gets trapped inside a haunted hotel room then burns the room down along with himself so that none would ever face the same hardship that he went through," Walter said matter-of-factly. "Not that it really matters anymore."

Beat.

"Hey, what's that videogame doing here?"

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:04 am**

A... burning hotel? Does that sound familiar...?

She passes the game to him. "I don't know. It fell on the floor."

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:42 am**

Lakeview Hotel burned down over a decade ago before being rebuilt very recently.

The Fire Investigation Team thought it had something to do with an old radiator that was left near some very flammable curtains.

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:52 am**

Walter opened the videogame box. "This doesn't make any sense. Does DVD player accept game discs now?"

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:55 am**

The box contains an unmarked DVD-R.

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:58 am**

"I don't know." Emily leans over to get a closer look. "Try putting it in the player."

She gets up to grab the remote off the couch and turn the TV on.

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:02 am**

"You know," Walter said, putting the CD in. "Deus Ex Human Revolution the game was all about the ethics of mankind trying to steal the fires from the gods by endulging in cybernetics and bioengineering sciences. In the end, it's left for the player to choose whether or not the goal was just."

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:12 am**

The screen flickers blue and then flickers to static but somewhere, through all the static, comes a voice and the vague outlines of strange symbolism.

A girl's voice rises from the crackling static. So familiar yet so hard to recognise. "...can't ... if you c ... ear this ... it's t ... and I ... eed you ... alter ... ease ... n't go ... ease ... n't be ... aired ... oo lay ... want ... ee ... gain ... iss ... ever ... sorr ... n't le ... go ... ay the ... coming. I ... um f ... oo ... ate jus ... for m ... ease. I jus ... eed m ... ime. Nee ... me. Sh ... ost ... er ... ter ... an be ... ver ag ... ooon."

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:22 am**

"That... that's not a game," Emily whispers, barely audible over the girl's voice.

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:27 am**

Walter frowned. "Okay, where the FREAK did this DVD come from?"

He threw up his arms. "Bulletproof windows, chained doors, and creepy DVDs! What's next? Would a monster emerge from the TV, waving two large swords in place of its arms?"

Posted: **Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:31 am**

It's really not a possibility, but Emily slams her finger on the power button anyway.

Posted: **Wed Jan 18, 2012 12:13 am**

The television flicks off.

Posted: **Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:01 am**

Walter, frustrated, kick the chained. Was there truly nothing inside the room which he could use to escape? Perhaps there were something in the cupboards or the closets or something.

Posted: **Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:14 am**

The bedside cabinet contained a box of Ansell extra-lubricated condoms, a pair of fluffy, black handcuffs and an old, dusty bible. The writing desk contained a ream of fresh paper and a box of blue Bic pens. The refridgerator contained a Health Drink, two Mothers, a dozen small sample-sized alcohol bottles, and five small cereal + yoghurt combination plastic bowls. The closet contains two of his suitcases that he knows contains little more than clothing. As much as he might've liked to carry a gun in Silent Hill, they generally don't give them to tourists. There was a bag of cheet-os in one of them, though. There's nothing else in the room, though at least they won't starve for at least a couple days. More, in fact, if the running water from the bathroom holds out for them.

Posted: **Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:21 am**

"Seriously?" Walter said, waving the box of condoms and the handcuffs. "Who put these junk in here?"

He threw them away into some corner of the room and picked up the bible. A condom, a handcuff, and a bible. An odd assortment of items indeed. He picked open a page.

Posted: **Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:23 am**

Emily blushes heavily at the condoms (and the handcuffs, once she realizes what they are) and flops down on the couch, face in her hands.

Posted: **Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:30 am**

The bible is as ordinary as they come judging by the various printed words.

The Kauffman family tree on the inner leaf is a bit interesting, though. It dates back to the first Kauffman settlers in 1823.

Posted: **Thu Jan 19, 2012 6:34 am**

"Is this...my family bible or something?" Walter muttered. He began to read the family tree in as much detail as possible.

Posted: **Fri Jan 20, 2012 7:36 am**

Emily peeks between her fingers, then hops off the couch and goes over to Walter. "Something interesting?"

She looks over his shoulder at the Bible.

Posted: **Fri Jan 20, 2012 7:45 am**

The family tree is conspicuously slender and, judging by some of the way the branches intermingle, not only did few children survive to maturity but those that did had a tendency to inter-marry siblings or, at best, nieces/nephews and cousins.

John Kauffman (born 07/19/1803; died 04/13/1843) --- Mary Kauffman (born 03/21/1801; died 02/15/1856) are the first pair recorded here.

One other name is recorded who seems to have actually married outside of the family line:
Who Had Three children: Doris Jennerman (born 02/06/1833; died 03/04/1888) ------ James Jennerman (born 03/04/1813; died 03/06/1881)

Even Walter's own mother and father seem to have been cousins. Dianne and Dr. Michael Kauffman.

Posted: **Fri Jan 20, 2012 7:58 am**

"No..." Walter muttered. "Just another senseless junk. Although I guess someone clever could have hidden something more in the book. Don't see anything that can be a page number though."

Posted: **Sun Jan 22, 2012 3:34 am**

The family tree disturbs Emily a bit, but she shakes it off. If it's junk, it's junk...

She's certainly strayed from her mother's faith since she left home, but she still feels some desire to read through its pages. The verses are lovely, at least in intention...

"Could I take a look at that when you're done?"

Posted: **Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:18 am**

"Sure, why not?" Walter said, tossing her the book.

Posted: **Mon Jan 23, 2012 8:11 am**

Emily sits down on the couch and puts the Bible in her lap, opening to a random page.

Posted: **Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:46 pm**

The Bible looks to be the regular Bible, despite the junk written on the inner cover. All of the psalms and proverbs are where they should be. It hasn't even been highlighted at all.

There's the sound of a wheeled cart out in the hall. Emilyhears it and so does Walter.

Posted: **Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:50 pm**

"The housekeeper!" Walter yelled. He ran towards the door and started to beat it as hard as he could. "Hey! It someone out there?!"

Posted: **Tue Jan 24, 2012 12:24 am**

Jeremiah 8:9 - The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what kind of wisdom do they have?

Emily jumps up, throwing the Bible to the floor, and rushes to Walter's side, also pounding at the door. "We're trapped in here! Can you let us out?"

Posted: **Tue Jan 24, 2012 2:31 am**

There's no response to their frantic shouts or the sound of their fists hammering against the wooden door.

They can't even hear anyone on the outside of the door and there's no peep hole in a hotel room door for them to see through.

Posted: **Sat Jan 28, 2012 7:07 pm**

"Shh!" Walter said to Emily. "Quiet!"

He pressed his head against the door, desperately trying to hear the cart once more.

Posted: **Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:17 am**

Emily promptly shuts up and does the same. Did they really hear someone out there? Or was it just their imaginations?

Posted: **Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:37 pm**

They can bothhearthe squeak of the cart outside of the door and the sound of someone rattling the lock.

"That's funny," muttered a woman's voice on the other side of the door. "It's locked." A pause. "Huh? What's this?" There's the sound of bones creaking as though someone were moving or bending over. "Do not disturb? Hmph." There's the rattle of the knob again. "Hmph."

Posted: **Sun Jan 29, 2012 3:56 pm**

"Fuck," Walter cried out. "We're in here! Why can't you hear us!"

Posted: **Thu Feb 02, 2012 5:35 am**

There is no response that they can hear. Nothing but silence. No one re-tries the door knob. No key magically appears in the lock.

Not that it would help with all those chains.

Posted: **Thu Feb 02, 2012 5:44 am**

"Okay," Walter said. "This officially can't possibly be real."

He walked over to the phone and began to dial Andy's phone number. Didn't the phone work before? Maybe, in case that this was, somehow, real, he could be reached.

Posted: **Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:08 am**

The telephone rings six times before finally being picked up. "Andy's book store?" slurred Andy's voice. Well, he was obviously still a bit drunk and hung over.

Posted: **Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:14 am**

"Andy?!" Walter shouted. "HELP! Emily and I am trapped inside a room in the hotel... Travis apparently chose to leave for some reason, and the people who work here can't seem to hear us. We are trapped! Somebody chained the door. Could you come by and help?"

Posted: **Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:17 am**

Emily jumps a bit when he shouts, but that means it worked! She wouldn't have expected the phone to be able to call outside the hotel - apparently, whoever trapped them here wasn't very thorough.

Posted: **Thu Feb 02, 2012 9:01 am**

"Walter, is that you? Hang on, I can barely make out what you're saying. Are you speaking on a mobile 'cause you're getting some real shitty reception." There's a moment's hesitation. "Nope, that looks like a landline. Look, Walter, don't know if you can hear me but Vincent's been around lookin' for you. I don't think it's real healthy for you to be here. Vincent agrees. He says you should get out if you're able, that I'm to tell you that, but he wouldn't say why."

Posted: **Thu Feb 02, 2012 1:25 pm**

"I am trying to get out of here!" Walter hissed through the phone. "Don't you dare hang up! Who's Vincent?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 03, 2012 12:17 am**

"I know you never trusted him but ... I don't know. He's a real pillar of the community now, whatever that means. I mean, he was never a fan of Claudia. You remember Claudia, don't you? That creepy little albino kid that used to follow her around? Well ... look, I can't hear you properly but just take care of yourself and try to get out of here. Oh wait, is Emily still with you? Vincent was asking after her, as well."

Posted: **Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:24 am**

"Oh fuck you."

Posted: **Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:39 am**

"I heard that!" snapped Andy. "Look, what do you want me to do about it? I said you shouldn't have come here, didn't I? I told you to stay in New Zealand but you had to come and face your fears, didn't you? Look, I didn't tell him where you were. I tried to call but you weren't picking up.... I figured you and Emily.... Look, just get out of town, okay? Oh shit, I've got a visitor. I think it's...." He pauses. "Oh, Mayor! How g-" He hangs up the phone.

Posted: **Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:42 am**

"Wait, you heard that?! Shit!" Walter threw the phone down.

"I think the phone's broken," he said to Emily. "But you are free to try and call anyone to try and get some damn help in here..."

Posted: **Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:47 am**

Emily stares at Walter, then at the phone. "What? What did he say?"

It's too bad her cellphone's dead... she could have called Travis. He'd listen, right?

Posted: **Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:51 am**

"He couldn't hear me," Walter snapped. "He told me to get out of town ASAP. I can't even get out of this damn room! Said that Vincent was looking for us."

Posted: **Fri Feb 03, 2012 2:37 am**

Well, he obviously heard your 'fuck you.'

"What? How is anyone going to find us?" Emily walks back to the bed and sulks. "Housekeeping couldn't hear us, even though we're right here!"

Vincent. Do I know a Vincent?

Posted: **Fri Feb 03, 2012 3:54 am**

"Do you have anyone else that you could call? Do you know Travis's phone number?"

Posted: **Sat Feb 04, 2012 8:12 am**

"He gave it to me last night before he left, but my phone died." She gets up and retrieves her purse, pressing buttons to try and turn her phone on.

Posted: **Sun Feb 05, 2012 11:01 pm**

Her mobile phone turns on with a beep.

Posted: **Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:18 am**

"Really."

Posted: **Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:21 am**

"Yes, really," Emily sighs, looking at her phone. "It was dead when I woke up, I swear."

She thumbs through her contacts, looking for Travis's number.

Posted: **Mon Feb 06, 2012 10:27 pm**

She finds Travis' number not far below Principal Ross' number. Man, this is meant to be a work day.

Posted: **Tue Feb 07, 2012 1:23 am**

Emily presses the call button and puts the phone to her ear, tapping her foot as she waits.

Posted: **Tue Feb 07, 2012 2:22 am**

The phone picks up on the other end. "Hello?" Travis' voice.

Posted: **Tue Feb 07, 2012 2:23 am**

"Travis? Hello? Can you hear me?" She says this with a wary glance at the hotel phone, biting her lip.

Posted: **Wed Feb 08, 2012 4:36 am**

"Emily!" exclaims Travis. "Are you okay? The children have been worried about you..I'm glad to hear your voice."

Posted: **Wed Feb 08, 2012 5:07 am**

"Quick!" Walter said. "Tell him to come get us. I bet a fire axe can cut right through these doors."

Posted: **Wed Feb 08, 2012 5:29 am**

"We're locked in the hotel room," she explains, "but we're okay in the sense that we're not hurt. Can you come back? With something that can break through a chained-up door." Emily nods at Walter.

Posted: **Wed Feb 08, 2012 6:01 am**

You can hear Travis's attempts to stay calm while replying.

"Emily, I tried to come by earlier.....I'll be there again as soon as I can."

Posted: **Wed Feb 08, 2012 6:09 am**

"Thank you so much." Emily is blissfully unaware of any interference that may have happened on his end. "We're not going anywhere. Goodbye."

Posted: **Thu Feb 09, 2012 5:03 am**

The mobile phone disconnects. He must've hung up.

Posted: **Thu Feb 09, 2012 5:05 am**

"Well, now what?" Walter asked.

"Screw it. I'm going to see what's on the TV."

Posted: **Thu Feb 09, 2012 7:56 am**

"We wait, I guess." Emily frowns, shuffling her feet.

She's locked in a hotel room with Walter Desmond. Walter Desmond. There's an ample supply of both alcohol and condoms. Nobody outside can hear them. It's like every teenage schoolgirl's fantasy coupled with a dose of harsh reality. Really, she'd rather be just about anywhere else.

"Uh..." Emily wrinkles her brow, trying to remember what happened last night. Something about her father, right? "I don't think it works. All I got last night was static."

Posted: **Thu Feb 09, 2012 4:35 pm**

"Really," Walter said, raising an eyebrow. "Service really is terrible here. Who the hell owns this place anyways?"

He threw himself on the bed and, upon finding something hard on the back, shifted aside to reveal the box of condoms that he found earlier. He threw that away onto the floor.

"Ah hell," he mumbled. "News is probably filled with stories of sexually frustrated adults being narrated by equally sexually frustrated anchors anyways."

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:03 am**

Something thumps rhythmically against the wall behind the bed frame. For a moment, it almost sounds like the next door neighbours are just punctuating his words with erotic movements, but then the thumps seem to draw apart and the sounds are as heavy each time, calculated rather than frenzied and passionate. As though someone were purposefully banging something against the wall. The sound then transfers down the side of the wall, a few easy paces at a time, until it rounds the corner and sounds out against the wall by the window, rattling the glass in its frame. Then nothing. Silence. The television turns on ... but it shows only static. Funny, it should be more modern than that. It should show merely a blue screen.

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:20 am**

"Speaking of sexually frustrated..." Walter muttered, jumping off the bed and then taking cover from the window behind it.

"So it seems that we are chained to our room. The windows are made of bulletproof material. And finally our neighbors are fucking a freaking building. Oh, and the TV turns on by itself freaking Ring style. You didn't happen to watch a creepy video 7 days ago, right?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:33 am**

"Walter, I don't think they're, uh, fucking." Emily blinks - wow, what a sentence that would be, taken out of context. She backs up against the wall, away from the window. "Maybe they're stuck like us, and heard us talking."

"Don't look at it." She has a feeling about that television. There's something wrong. "And don't listen either." She looks around for the remote to see if she can turn it off.

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:39 am**

The remote is right where they left it. It's easy enough to grab it and turn off the television set.

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:42 am**

"I was being sarcastic" Walter said as Emily turned off the TV. "Sooo... Why are there noises outside the window again?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:47 am**

"I wasn't talking about the Ring," Emily says, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "I know this might sound crazy, but... there was something in the static. It made me remember things, but now I can't recall... almost like a dream."

"I don't know. Are you volunteering to go look?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:51 am**

"Nope." .avi

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:56 am**

"Okay, well, fine." Emily crosses her arms and stares down at her feet.

None of this is what she expected.

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 1:21 am**

It seems there is very little to do but wait.

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 2:27 am**

Walter sighed. "You know what? I'll go take a look."

He came out from behind the bed and walked to the window.

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 2:37 am**

Pulling back the curtains, he can see the swirling mists and not much more. Angling his head just so, he can vaguely make out the brickwork across the walls and a window further along. He can't see much else.

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 2:41 am**

"Nothing." Walter muttered, turning towards Emily. "Nothing but creepy mists and such. Must have all been my imagination. No giant monsters hanging on the wall. Nobody jumped off the roof of the building with a rope around his neck. Nope. Nothing at all."

"We are goig crazy, aren't we?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 2:43 am**

Emily laughs nervously. "Maybe this is a dream after all, huh?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 2:48 am**

"Yeah," Walter said nervously. "In cheap horror movies, this is about the time when a monster leaps through a window and grabs a guy and rips him apart too."

He took a few steps away from the window.

"Just making sure."

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:05 am**

"It'd have to be a pretty strong monster to get through these windows." Emily relaxes a little. Talking about horror stories is, bizarre as it may seem, a small comfort. "Besides, the minority always dies first. I'm pretty sure that's me."

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:08 am**

"No, I'm sure that horror movies need a chick to survive to the very end. That leaves me," Walter shrugged. "Why are we talking about this again? We aren't in some third rate horror story, are we?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:14 am**

Emily cocks her head. "Better than sitting around, twiddling our thumbs, right?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:22 am**

"I suppose. Don't you hate how in most horror movies, having sex is also a big taboo thing that happens right before the couple dies? It's like the authors are saying 'herp derp you've done your thing with the fanservice and all, now you gotta die for advancing the nonexistent plot.'"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:27 am**

"Well, I... how does that advance the plot at all?" She folds her arms, vaguely flustered. "But yeah... a lot of people have moral issues with sex. I guess the writers think it's karmic?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:31 am**

"Half the time, I think it's just the writers taking out their frustration on a sexually active couple," Walter shrugged.

"But yeah, I think Karma is the most widely accepted reason."

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 3:38 am**

"Oh, you can't say writers don't have sex lives. I mean..." Emily bites her lip, twirling a strand of hair around one finger. Did she really just say that? "...yeah."

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 4:01 am**

"Oh you have no idea," Walter chuckled. "Hell, one time at Sidney, this crazy lady just went under my table and..."

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 4:18 am**

"Oh?" Emily takes a seat on the couch, resting her elbows on her knees. She resists the temptation to giggle. "How crazy?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 5:29 am**

"Crazier than a bat out of hell!" Walter muttered. "We all had to leave the table. It's not as if she was the most subtle being in the world, you know. Security dragged her out moments afterwards."

"Fun times, fun times. Kind of disturbing though."

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 7:46 am**

"Oh, I'll bet. It can't be easy being you." Emily smiles coyly, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other. "Are your book signings usually like the one yesterday?"

Without the PTV, that is...

Posted: **Fri Feb 10, 2012 8:14 am**

"Usually. Except perhaps less homicidally insane woman and perhaps 100% less getting smashed in the face with a bottle of milky white liquid. I don't know about Silent Hill, but in Australia, it's generally considered rude to give someone else a facial without asking for permission first. I think. I wouldn't know much about that subject."

He let out a giggle as he sat in the bed next to Emily. "But yeah, life of a writer is horrible!" Walter said complainingly. "All these deadlines to keep. One day I was pretending to explore the continent of Africa and my editor suddenly appears out of nowhere, hits me over the head with a baton, drags my unconscious body to the hotel, and then locks herself in with me until I got the damn book finished for her! And she wouldn't stop staring at me, yah know, with that hawk-like predatory eyes of hers? I exaggerate, of course. That's what we writers do. But the gist of that is right."

Posted: **Mon Feb 13, 2012 1:52 am**

"She what?" Emily straightens up, her curious eyes growing wider with every phrase. "God, and you're exaggerating how much of this? And, uh, what do you mean by 'pretending' to explore Africa?"

Posted: **Wed Feb 15, 2012 5:43 am**

"Well, you know, one of those safari tours in Tanzania. Kinda has the same "wildness" to it, but then again hundreds of thousands of people drove to there before I did," Walter shrugged.

"Apparently my editor somehow got wind of my flight and tour plans and was waiting for me in the bloody tour group that I was assigned to. I thought I got a heart attack. Well, we went on the tour and then she dragged me back to the hotel room and locked me in until I actually got some work done."

Walter suddenly yawned. "Oh, and by the way, I wouldn't recommend sleeping in a bathtub. You can't sleep well," he lied down on the bed and started to drift off.

Posted: **Wed Feb 15, 2012 6:41 pm**

"Oh, uh, okay. I'll keep that in mind." Emily's smile fades as Walter starts to fall asleep. Damn it! She thought that conversation was going somewhere...

This really isn't the time to think about that, though. Travis could break in at any moment. And that's if they're lucky.

Posted: **Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:04 pm**

Walter's head suddenly shot up. "What's your phone number, by the way?"

Spoiler:

Posted: **Wed Feb 15, 2012 10:36 pm**

For a moment, she's excited, until she knocks those silly thoughts out of her head. He didn't say it like that. Get ahold of yourself, Emily.

She gives him her number in a rather flat, dismissive tone, then looks at the door, suppressing a pout.

Posted: **Wed Feb 15, 2012 10:57 pm**

"I'm sorry..." he mumbled in his half-sleep. "the doorknob... It hurt too much. Everyone else just fucking watched... Alessa... I'm... I'm back. Where are you?"

Posted: **Thu Feb 16, 2012 6:43 am**

"Walter?" Emily whispers, reaching out to brush some hair away from his eyes.

Mother talked in her sleep all the time. She should be used to this.

But he's talking about Alessa again...

Posted: **Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:10 pm**

"Alessa?" Walter mumbled, eyes half open. "That you? What happened? You are up... You are better now..."

Posted: **Thu Feb 16, 2012 6:33 pm**

"No, no," Emily says, pulling her hand away. "Just Emily. Just me."

Posted: **Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:03 pm**

"What?" Walter cried out, standing up. "I'm sorry... I thought you were somebody else..."

Posted: **Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:22 pm**

"Right. I know." Emily reaches out and takes his hand, trying to provide some small piece of comfort. "Walter, what... what was Alessa like? I didn't know her..."

But I know what the others said about her. Especially Roseworthy...

Posted: **Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:45 pm**

"She was my half-sister," Walter mumbled. "They set her on fire and just watched as the house burnt down."

Posted: **Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:25 am**

Have you seen what she does?

She's a witch.

Burn her.

"Oh... oh, God." Emily's arm drops to her side. It's suddenly cold. "I thought the things they said... it was just an accident..."

Posted: **Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:22 am**

"They always picked on her in school. All of the other kids. Called her a witch."

Walter stared wearily at Emily. "You weren't one of them, were you?"

Posted: **Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:52 am**

"No. But I wasn't much better."

She's the Devil's child, Isabel. You don't say a word to her. You don't go near her.

"I was always afraid of her. My mother told me terrible things."

She can see your sins, you know. She'll make you like her.

"I... think my dad liked her, though. I can't remember much about him."

paradise

Posted: **Fri Feb 17, 2012 7:26 am**

"Why?" Walter shook his head. "Why were they so afraid of her? She didn't do anything... They just..."

He glared at her. "The teachers didn't do anything to stop the other children from hurting her," he said. There's a surprising amount of bitterness in the voice.

Posted: **Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:12 am**

"When I was a little girl, I thought children who were bullied deserved it. I know it's stupid, but I thought that they must have done something bad, and the others were punishing them..." Emily pauses. There's no way to make that sound anything but cruel.

"I couldn't imagine somebody hurting someone else for no reason."

Posted: **Tue Feb 28, 2012 6:39 am**

"There was no reason to hurt her," Walter sulked. "Everybody was afraid of her. I don't know why."

He sighed. "There was an incident. A boy who picked on her particularly harshly just fell down and stopped breathing one day."

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:44 am**

There's a soft, muffled sound, coming from the walls, like someone were whimpering so very far away. Someone beats on the walls, the sounds aren't frightening, more pathetic handslaps, as though someone were desperate to get their attention. Plaster flakes off the wall, nonetheless, like the walls were made of plywood, and some of the wall's wooden planks even comes loose, bulging out through the wallpaper. There's a sense of tense anticipation in the air that sets their hair on edge. If they remain, they could doubtless survive for a few days and wait for help but they'd be safe. In here, at least, they'd be safe. Or they could try to do something but they know, in the pits of their bellies, that to act, or try to act, to try to leave early, would be a gamble with their very lives.

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:15 am**

Walter looked at the broken wall.

"I'm going," he said calmly. "You can help if you want."

He looked around the room to see if there was anything that he could use to pry the wooden planks open further.

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:22 am**

"Oh, my God." Emily straightens up, but doesn't leave the bed. Could that be Travis? But how in the world could he do that to the wall? "I... are you sure that's a good idea?"

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:44 am**

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 6:08 am**

"Not really no. I don't think Travis has the guts to pull this kind of thing off," Jack said. He shrugged. "Of course I'm not sure that it's going to be safe. It's a fucking hole in the wall that something made on the other side of the room."

He took a nearby chair and bashed it against the broken planks on the wall, hoping to both weaken the planks and tear the chair into pieces that he could use as a prybar.

"Strange things did happen around Alessa, you know," Walter muttered. "But only to those who wronged her. Nightmares of monsters. Horrible worlds that not even HP Lovecraft could have dreamed of. It never happened to me... but... I think she's punishing me. For leaving her behind such a long time ago. She keeps a lot of grudges."

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 6:17 am**

The chair batters against the wall and soon falls apart, leaving him with a hefty chair leg that runs all the way up to where the back of the chair would've been. It's easy enough to shove that between the edges of the wood and lever the planks out, one after another. He can hear a girlish gasp and a muttered word, incomprehensible, but in a pleading tone, and as he gives a final wrench a chunk of the wall falls back to reveal a hole into a hotel room identical but for the cracked and pulsing plaster-work that creeps across the rear wall and the thick dust that covers everything, leaving finger, hand and footprints of a child-like size distinguished on the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Then, for a moment, as he takes all of this in, and the smell - aged and moulding - he glimpses a translucent figure of a young blonde girl waving her arms at him, gesturing for him to step back, there and then gone again. She looks familiar....

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:52 am**

"Wait," Walter said, peering into the next room over. "Please, come back! Claudia? Alessa? Jane? Is that you?"

"What happened to you? What is this place?"

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:14 am**

"Walter?" Emily scrambles off the bed, gaping at the hole in the wall. "Walter, what's going on?"

She looks into the room. Maybe she'll be able to see what he's seeing? If it's real, that is...

Posted: **Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:33 am**

There's no one in that cracked, and dusty, room, though the cracks which crawl along the walls, moving and writhing before their very eyes, certainly capture both of their attention.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 3:11 am**

"Shit...shit....shit..." Walter moaned. "Cracks... cracks don't move... don't look at it..."

Walter shook his head. "Who was in this room? There was a small blond girl... she gestured me to step back but... I can't... She's here. I'm sure."

He walked through the hole.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 3:25 am**

The air is thick and sluggish in the other room and there's a smell like burnt hair and old smoke that suffuses this room. The floorboards blacken around his feet as he walks, his steps turning dust to soot. He can hear a sound in the air, distant but vaguely there, of some steel machinery clanking and some voices chanting dimly in the background. The doors in this room are charred and warped within their frames. It won't be easy to open them, though he could still try the handle.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 3:39 am**

The cracks in the walls are like threads of a spider's web, or burn scars creeping up your skin... Emily thinks of Alessa as they twist themselves across the room. It smells so much like smoke.

"No, come back, Walter, come back." One of her hands reaches out to him, but he's already moved forward - the other is pressed to her breast, as though she could shield her heart from the fire on the walls. "Walter, Alessa's dead, you know she's dead, she can't..."

But Roseworthy said...

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 4:13 am**

"SHE'S NOT DEAD!" Walter screamed, pushing Emily away. "They tried to burn her, she didn't die! She's here!"

He reached out for the door handles but stopped, remembering something. He took off his shirt and wrapped it around the doorhandle before even beginning to try to turn it.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 4:37 am**

Walter can feel the heat emanating off the metal and it flashes him back for a moment to that door, to his father rushing up behind him, grabbing him, pulling him away and back into the bushes moments before someone (who was it? a truck driver?) broke in to rescue her. Alessa had called out. She'd called for salvation and that man had responded. Who was it again? Travis?

The knob turns beneath his hand and he pulls open the door into a hallway that looks much like they'd left it but for the charring, dust, and twisting scars that crawl across the walls. There's a vague ambient light out there but no sign of its cause. There's scratches, long lines of scratches, across the walls, and for a moment he hears footsteps rush past him toward the end of the hall.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 4:38 am**

"Get back here!" Walter demanded, chasing after the footsteps around the corner. He stopped momentarily to glance back at Emily.

"What are you doing? Help me!"

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 4:44 am**

Emily breaks into a run, blindly following Walter through the dust. They said so many things about Alessa... they were supposed to only be stories...

Stay away, Isabel. Don't look her in the eye.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 4:50 am**

As Emily runs, she notices that the floorboards don't blacken under her feet as they do under Walter's. As he stands there, the charring spreads out at inches per second and the wood begins to glow with flaring embers, just a few here and there. Perhaps if he stands there for too long, the wood might even give way beneath his feet. The shadows seem to clot around him and in the eerie, dim light, he almost seems positively demonic, his gaze almost seeming to gleam red. He was always Alessa's friend.... He'd shared so much with her. Claudia had been Alessa's friend, or so the rumors went, her with the rigid back and the strange way of talking, and everyone said that Alessa had drained the colour out of her ... but Claudia spent most of her time alone. There'd been whispers about Walter, but not many, because his father was so popular around town.

The corridor that branches off of this one seems much the same though one of the rooms seems to be lit from within by a fiery light though there is no sign of smoke dribbling out from under the door or any other indication of fire. A flashlight would help, it would illuminate the corners, chase away those shadows.

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 7:08 am**

"Alessa?" Walter gasped. He ran into the room illuminated by the firery red light. "Are you there?"

Posted: **Thu Mar 01, 2012 4:32 pm**

"Basically, a person gets trapped inside a haunted hotel room, then burns the room down along with himself so that none would ever face the same hardship that he went through."

"Walter! You don't have to do this!" Emily chases him across the burning (are they burning? it all smells like charred wood) floorboards, but his desire to find this memory of a dead girl is stronger than her desire to stop him.

"I know people say things about Silent Hill, but they're not true!"

That should be harder to say when it's all confirming itself right in front of her.

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:58 am**

The door knob is hot to the touch though the heat is mostly absorbed by the cloth wrapped around his hand. The knob jiggles, then sticks. Locked. Yet he can hear a little girl's whimpering from behind the warped and blackened door. The heat is insufferable here and it batters against his face. The lock looks to be intact. If he could find some sort of a key, he could get in here. The hotel kept their keys behind the counter on the ground floor. Perhaps the keys are still down there?

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2012 4:11 am**

"Somebody's in here!" Walter hissed at Emily. "Go! Go! There's probably a key to this room at the counter. I'll see if there's anything around that I can bust this door open with."

Spoiler:

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2012 4:25 am**

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2012 4:33 am**

Walter rushed out of the halls again. Didn't this hotel nearly burn down years ago or something? Surely they had to have stockpiled some firefighting equipment...

He would have given everything that he owned right now for a bloody fire axe or a sledge hammer.

Spoiler:

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:43 am**

Unsure of what to do, Emily just nods and runs out into the hallway, quickly scanning the corridor for any way to the front desk.

Posted: **Fri Mar 02, 2012 8:35 am**

Spoiler:

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:20 am**

Emily rushes down the corridor and heads down the first stairs she finds, wincing at every creak of the damaged and failing wooden steps as she goes, ending up in one of the rear corridors. It's warm down here. Very warm. It's darker, too. There's no ambient light from any of the wall cracks and all she can see are little motes of darkness. She could try to feel her way along to the reception desk office or staff rooms that she's sure are down here or she could head back upstairs and look for some light source.

Walter searches through the corridors on this floor, rushing from one to the other, but there doesn't seem to be any firefighting equipment up here, at least not in any of the corridors. On this, the 2nd floor, there is a Reading Room, Lounge, Cloak Room, Hall Store Room, Hall, and another Store Room, he remembers seeing but hasn't had the time to visit yet. Perhaps there might be some firefighting equipment within one of those rooms.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:23 am**

Walter made his way to the Hall Store Room. It had to be in one of the store rooms, right? Or maybe they put it in the Hall? It had to be in one of those three places.

He hoped that his particularly bad luck would hold out. Damn it, he couldn't be so unlucky all the damn time.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:28 am**

The door opened part of the way and then stuck. There was no heat nor wisps of smoke escaping from it, and the handle wasn't warm to the touch, so there likely was no active fire behind it. A good shouldering would whack it open but if the floorboards were unstable, he might fall through them into the floor beneath. Still, it was one of his best shots.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:29 am**

Walter took a deep breath, backed up a few steps, and then charged the door.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:30 am**

Emily pulls out her phone and presses a button to light the screen. Maybe she'll be able to see her hand, at least.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:35 am**

The door slams open beneath Walter's shoulder and he stumbles into the Hall (the Hall Storeroom door is within it). The ambient light is weaker here due to the soot and ash particulate stirred up by his charge. The twin chandeleirs that normally decked out this room were gone, replaced by two spasmodic, burning men, a hook protruding from their ankles as they dangled upside down from a chair, twisting their torsos around, their arms fused to their rib cages by char, the heat of their flames slapping his face, the stench of it near roiling his stomach, but from the light of their bodies, he can see a fireaxe stuck into the back of the head of a charred man that lays face down on the floor. Note paper has been scattered around the corpse.

----------

Amelia carefully turns on her mobile phone and, as she does so, it chirrups at her, as though about to call her, then falls silent, then chirrups again. The wan light barely reveals her hand and the small space in front of her but at least it vaguely reveals the walls and doors that she passes. It chirrups again, then again, the chirrups coming closer together with each step, the spaces in between dying away.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:17 am**

"Ssh!" Emily hisses at her phone, more out of irritation than anything else. What's going on? Is somebody calling her? Travis isn't even on her mind at this point.

She looks at the screen, just to check.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:37 am**

"...what..." Walter muttered out as he recoiled away from the sight, stumbling onto the floor. He was about to leave when he caught sight of the fireaxe.

That's what he had been looking for, right? Except that it was used as a...murder weapon...

He cautiously stepped towards the face-down man... as if he could do anything with an axe stuck to his head, and then reached out towards the fireaxe.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:04 am**

The chirps are coming together closely now but she can hear over the chirps the sound of something cracking, similar to wood yet somehow more organic sounding. Perhaps cracking bone? It seems to be coming from right in front of her though [url=tp://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3406455]she can hardly[/url] make out anything at all in the darkness, especially since she's spoiled her growing night vision by trying to make out the details on her phone screen.

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Walter reaches forward and grasps the shaft of the axe, but it's lodged in tightly and the body moves when he tries to pull the axe, its head tilting back with a horrible cracking sound as charred flesh flakes from its neck. He'll need to get some leverage on the body to keep it from lifting up with him when he tries to pull the axe free. Perhaps if he put his foot on the dead man's neck?

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:25 am**

Emily slowly turns around, still keeping her phone in front of her, and tries to make a run up the stairs. Screw this - she's not wandering around in the dark with no protection.

She should get back to Walter. He's all she's got.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 4:24 am**

There. He bleeding touched it. He touched a bleeding axe stuck on the back of a bloody dead guy's head.

WOULD THE GUY'S HEAD COME OFF IF HE PULLED AT THE AXE?!?!?!

Maybe.

Well, he kind of looked like a murderer right now. Shirtless. Sweaty. Tugging at an axe stuck in a dead guy's cranium. He put his foot on the chest of the dead man.

All he needed was a few blood splatter. He pulled at the axe again.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 5:34 am**

Emily can hear a cough and then the ragged, panting of someone's breath as a heavy figure lumbers after her. She easily makes the stairs, running up, grabbing hold of the sooty walls for stability as she goes.

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The axe pulls loose with a jerk, spattering char against his pants, and he nearly overbalances and falls on his ass. The two burning man-chandeleirs let loose an agonising shriek that shakes the very room, reverberating up and down his spine.

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The stairs shake beneath her feet as a terrible, keening shriek tears through the air, stinging her ears, and it's all she can do is try to hold her balance as the stairs almost seem to buck under her feet like a living thing. She senses, rather than sees, the man reach for her, and it's all she can do to try and dodge away (roll and hope for the best).

------

The charred figure's fingers flex, and it shakes its cracked skull this way and that in a spasmodic twitch that makes his guts roil and threaten to heave. The muscles in its arms bunch up as it tries to struggle up onto all fours.

Posted: **Thu Mar 08, 2012 5:50 am**

Walter gasped and swung the axe in the zombie's... that's what he was, right? The zombie's general direction to no avail.

"Oh fuck this," Walter cried out, running out of the Hall. He didn't have time to deal with those things right now.

Play@YSDC

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