Play@YSDC

The man behind the bar had seen better days to be sure, though his blue pin stripped suit and matching hat seemed well pressed and looked after. It was his overall appearance that showed the signs. Pale complection and a thin, clean shaven face with faint bags under the eyes showed how little sleep he'd been getting, and his slight frame, deliacte hands and way of holding himself revealed him to be none to strong. His soft hazel eyes held the strongest part of his character. Looking at them it seemed not quite like a light had gone out in them but rather had dimmed, waiting to shine bright again. The strangest thing was how he seemed, like her, to belong and not belong here.

Turning frantically to face the door Alex's eyes were shocked to find another pale and slightly dishevaled woman standing at the door.
Was that Declan's voice? I'm sure I...
Realising he was staring he briskly pulled himself together.
"No no, no appologies necessary. It's nice to know that we're not the only one's here after all."
Feeling the over-arching questions loom up again he pulled out his ciggarette carton and proceeded to light one up, calming his nerves.

"Well. We'll, ah, just be on our way, then." Lily steps a little further into the room and glances over her shoulder at her gentleman companion.

There's no one there. Simply the mist-shrouded edge of the boat.

Slightly confused Alex walked round the bar to take a look out the yawning door frame into the grey world outside the ballroom.

"You did say 'we' right? Was there someone here with you?" His voice accented with genuine concern.

"Why ask?" asks the woman in the wet dress. "It's likely just another ghost."

"This town is full of ghosts here."

Alex eyed the drenched woman with a raised eyebrow.

"Really now, that kind of talk is for backwards folk and grandmother's spinning tales." The incredulity in his voice not wholely convincing.
"Though I will admit Silent Hill seems rather abandoned, the perverbial 'Ghost Town' if you will. I do wonder what happened here..."

"The townsmen forgot their way," the woman in the wet dress says rather mournfully. Abruptly the tears begin to slide down her cheeks and she hurriedly tries to brush them away, giving a little nervous chuckle. "Oh, look at me! I must appear such a wreck, I just ... I just ... do you ever get that feeling that you're ... on the verge of finding something or ... or...." She subsides into little sobs, narrow shoulders shaking as she draws in little shuddering breaths.

Lily simply stares in the direction where her friend had been a moment ago, a little dumbfounded at his sudden disappearance and the woman's burst of emotion.

"Or on the verge of finding someone...I know that feeling..." Alex sighed almost with his whole body, "All I wanted to find here was Declan or who ever sent that blasted letter, yet so far all I've seen is fog, dust and blood. Excluding you ladies of course."
It seems we may be in the same boat after all, so to speak.

Stubbing his ciggarette in a dust filled ashtray he lay what he hoped was a reasuring hand on the shoulder of the sobbing woman.

She gives him an awkward feeling as he pats her shoulder as though it weren't the right thing to do or, perhaps, as though he was talking to himself in a room full of people. It just felt off, though he couldn't be sure why. "Are you ... from around here? Why don't I know who you are?"

The dissconcerting feeling took him by surprise, something in his gut twisted in disorrientation and uncertainty as his hand felt the slim damp shoulder beneath it. Out of instinct he pulled it away, looking jerkingly over his shoulder as if expecting many faces to be looking at him through the gloom and dust. The impression was gone in an instant, spiriting away the blank mannequin like faces into nothing via the corners of his eyes.

It must have only been a second or too Alex stood there before he realised he'd been spoken too.
"Ah..err..not at all. I'm from Phillidelphia, all my life. It was Declan's family who lived here...or here abouts. I just came here to...well to find him." He knew as he said it that it sounded rediculous. That no sane man would hope to find a dead friend, since buried, waiting for them in a sunny resort town. He could not, however, deny to himself that it was the truth. One he'd been avoiding since he got here.

Lily speaks, "Oh Declan? I was just talking to him outside. I don't know where he went, though. He didn't mention you. Does he know you were looking for him?"

The boat is moving through the water. Water can be heard lapping against the sides of the boat. There'd be no way off the boat except to dive over the side.

Fistfulls of words tried to make it out of Alex's mouth, the weight of them paralysing his ability to speak. The look of shock, frustration, joy and fear painted on the canvas of his pale face spoke volumes however. His eyes seemed to stare through Lily and into the miasmal fog that had begun creeping through the door as if it were an uninvited guest.

If he is here what then? What does one say to a dead man? Questions? Reminisce? Or is it forgiveness you want?

His right hand balled into a fist so hard his arm was shaking. The other hand snatched up the blackout torch as he walked purposfully towards the door.

He spoke with tremulous voice, "Did you see which way he went Miss? It's...very important that I find him."

Lily seems a little taken aback by the intensity in his gaze though she doesn't tear her naturally wide eyes away from his face. "He opened the door for me and when I looked back at him he was gone."

As her eyes gazed back at him, a touch of shock pooling in the depths, he knew they weren't judging him. That felt good. Too many eyes had looked on him with dissapointment and pity, where they used to smile with respect and admiration.

"I...I know I have no right to ask this of you but would you help me find him? The fog is so thick I thought I'd have a better chance of...of catching up to him with your help."

Lily pauses, regarding him with huge soulful eyes that seem both infinitely meaningful yet at the same time inscrutable and difficult to read. "If he's somewhere on this boat then it shouldn't be too difficult. It's just that this town is so ... strange. Have you noticed it?"

The other woman turns and walks toward the edge of the room, slowly settling down into a crouch, arms wrapped around her knees. "And then it comes ... da-dum da-dum ... and then he comes ... da-dum da-dum...." She repeats those words over and over in a hollow and unsettling voice.

"Is she okay?" asks Lily. "What do you suppose happened to her?"