~HOMETOWN~(Chapter 9)

~HOMETOWN~

(Chapter 9)


It was at that moment that...once again...the door to room S-4 creaked open again. I knew this time it would not be empty.


I slowly made my way down the radically altered hellish hallway, towards S-4. From the opened door, I could see a flickering electric light come from inside the patient room, which bounced off the hallway's opposite rusted wall. Muffled was the sound of The Andrew's Sisters 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Of Company B' which played eerily from the inside of patient room S-4. Although I wasn't close enough yet to see inside the room, I could feel both comfort and despair come from it at once - mixed in a blender of conflicting emotions. It was almost as if one of my legs wanted to press forward while the other one reeled back. A part of me wanted to rush into the open door, while another part of me wanted to run back to the corner of the hallway to curl back up into a little ball.

...They made him blow a bugle for his Uncle Sam!
It really brought him down because he couldn't jam!
The captain seemed to understand
Because the next day the cap' went out and drafted a band!
And now the company jumps when he plays reveille!
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B...

The 1941 song quietly haunted the hallway, the cracks and pops indicating that it was being played on an old gramophone player. The electric light continued to peer out from the open door. I reasoned it was one of the early florescent models invented sometime in the 1930's, as evidenced by the rapid flickering and the blueish tint that coated the hallway from the open door.
"Who...or what...the Hell is in there!?" I asked myself, as I forced myself to press on. As I got closer, I detected a strange smell coming from the open door; kinda like the way an attic smells in a large old house...the smell of musk, age, and old books. The smell of the past.

...He was some boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B
And when he plays the boogie woogie bugle he was busy as a "bzzz" bee!
And when he plays he makes the company jump eight-to-the-bar!
He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B...

The over-70-year-old song played on, so out of place in the hellish hospital. When I finally reached the open door, I squeezed my eyes tight to prepare myself. I took a deep breath, cleared my mind, and finally peeked inside.
The room didn't transform to the hellish metal and rust world that pervaded the rest of the hospital, but it was altered. What was just a generic patient room before, was something else entirely. The bed had a huge white curtain wrapped around it, attached to the ceiling. Protruding from the ceiling was a very old-style florescent tube which flickered lazily. There was (as I suspected) an old gramophone player sitting on a antique-looking desk on the far side of the room, still belting out it's tune, which somehow started over from the beginning, as if it was stuck in some loop. Next to the player was a small desk calender which had a picture of Betty Grable on it.

...the page on the calender read June 1941.

I thought back to what this room looked like before that damn siren heralded in...whatever happened here. It occurred to me, that while the desk wasn't here, there was shavings of wood where the desk now stands.

"Did I....travel to the past!?", I asked outloud.
"Not exactly, Cookie", came a pleasant female voice, just as the curtain surrounding the bed swung open.
I yelped outloud as I tried to register the sight in front of me. Sitting on the bed was a black-haired woman with a fair complexion. She was wearing an old-style nurse's uniform...a blue undershirt with a white mid-section and a red cross in the center of her chest. On top of her head, barely covering a hairstyle that was long out-of-date was a small little white cap with a black horizontal stripe. She slowly got up off the bed while looking at me with confusion and amusement.
"Are you.....human?", she asked me. "Or...."
"Yes! I'm real! I answered frantically. "What the hell is going on here!? Your the first person I seen in Silent Hill in days! Everyone just.."
"....Vanished?", she interrupted. "Yes, I know. That's how it started for me to. I thought I flipped my wig."
"Well what the Hell happened!?", I asked. All of Silent Hill is affected somehow."
"Don't ask me, kiddo. It's above my pay-grade, you dig? I ain't in the know...I'm just like you are or...I should say were. In fact, yours is the first mug I've seen in a dogs age"
Wonderful, I thought. I finally find someone else in this Hellhole, thinking that I could finally get some answers, and it turns out she's in her own Hell. "Well, how did it happen for you?", I asked, as I sat down on the bed. "I mean....was everything normal for you and then....?"
She looked deep in thought for a second, and then answered, "I was originally from California. My name is Rosalie, by the way. Rosalie Summers. See, I was keen to get into the 'biz. I had some friends who swore they could get me a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Think of it, Cookie! Working with Garland, Bergman, Turner? Maybe even Gable! Now I ain't Khaki-wacky, but I always wanted to get my kicks with Gable! I remember.."
"Can you PLEASE get to the point?", I interrupted.
"Oh, fine! Put the kibosh on me, why don'tcha? ANYway...my friend ended up getting hitched up with some head-honcho corporate tycoon who ended up date-raping me. My friend took his side. So...to make a long story short...I killed them both with a dash of hemlock in their champagne"
I was stunned at how matter-of-fact this woman told me all this! She shrugged her shoulders in such a way that said, 'shit happens'. I could only stand there silently, listening, as she continued; "So, I took what moolah I had left, and moved across the country, to lay low so the G-men wouldn't drag me off to the joint otherwise I'd be done for. Silent Hill seemed a good a place as any, so I put down roots and got a nursing job here at Brookhaven in '37. Everything was sharp for years! This place was a gas. It wasn't until '41 that I found out from the papers that my running away unknowingly passed the buck to some poor fool. Some innocent guy was found guilty of my murders and got 'the chamber for it."
I couldn't believe what Rosalie was telling me! Here I was, thinking I was the only one going through a dire situation here in Silent Hill, but in reality...this town seems like it's a repository of lost souls.
It was at this moment when I realized that nothing happened to the town, per se. Something happened to me. I wasn't dead, though. Neither was this Rosalie. We were....lost. All those disappearances throughout the years...like that Bertha woman who went into Borely Haunted Mansion and never came out...all those unexplained vanishings. Is THIS is where they end up? Does that mean, in the "real" world, I'm missing?


"So...I'm guessing thats when you....lost yourself?", I asked Rosalie.
"No fooling! Went through a deep depression, hit the sauce more than once a week, and lost my will to live. Well, one day shortly after, I finished my shift, taking care of the crazies that were locked up in this place, and decided to lay down in this here room for a nap. When I woke up, everyone flew the coop. There wasn't hide or hair of anyone. It was also snowin like the dickins, foggy as all get-out, and all ways outta town were blocked. I could hardly believe my peepers."
I looked around at the out-of-date surroundings of S-4 and nervously asked, "Just how long have you been stuck here?"
"Oh I lost track after 40 years or so. Don't go flippin your wig, Cookie...you didn't travel back in time. You just entered my Hell. Don't you see? For me, its ALWAYS like this. Time is frozen for me...that's MY Hell", she lamented as she glanced around the room. "Just like that rusted nightmare is yours", she said as she pointed out into the hallway. "You must have some wacked-out inner demons, Cookie. I ain't gunna make no bones about the fact that I'm one of the punished ones here. I'm getting what I deserve. But you, my lost little friend? I can tell your one of the tortured ones. The town placed me in my prison. You put YOURSELF in yours, I think. You best forgive yourself for whatever you think you did before its curtains for you"
"Look, I appreciate you wanting to help me, but your mistaken, I'm not...not tortured about anything. I...I don't know why I'm here!", I insisted. Knowing how hollow it sounded. Yet again...a felt a truth I couldn't face.
Rosalie just shrugged her shoulders. "Whatever you say, Dollface. Just callin 'em as I see 'em. You'd do best to be on your way now. You have your own path to follow...plus all that metal and rust your bringin around with you is cramping up my style, you dig?"
"Oh...okay. Um...take care. Maybe one day you'll be free from...all this"
Rosalie shrugged her shoulders again. "Perhaps. I hope you find what your lookin for, Cookie". Rosalie then turned away from me, and gazed out of the back window...undoubtedly seeing a very different Silent Hill than I see, and longing for a past that she could never change, and a future that will never come. In spite of what she did, my heart ached for her. She was right about one thing, though...I had my own problems and the answer wasn't here. As 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Of Company B' started over again, I slowly stepped out of the time-trapped room and the door shut by itself, leaving me alone back in the horrific hallway.

I made my way slowly to the elevator and and it opened with a rusty creek. As I descended back down to the lobby, a single tear slowly fell out of my eye as I cried for myself and for poor Rosalie. Also, for the first time since my world turned upside down, I wondered if I ever would find my Andrew again.


[72 Years ago]


"Doctor, I don't know! She was JUST in there! I was on this wing all day and no one left any of the rooms. It's like Nurse Summers just vanished! It's the queerest thing!"
"Get Brookhaven security. Tell them the situation and have them search the whole hospital. I hate to think one of these mental freaks took her and hurt her. In fact, get the Director on the phone and ask if he will authorize a Lockdown. Rosalie Summers is one of our best nurses, and I'll be dad-blamed if she was taken hostage by one of these nut-cases."
"Doctor...I was patrolling up and down this hallway all morning. Nurse Summers NEVER left S-4! Theres not a chance in Hell that anyone TOOK her. She VANISHED! It's 'The Little Baroness' incident all over again! This town is looney!"
"Just do as I say, Nurse Sunderland. We'll consider those possibilities AFTER we eliminate the rational ones. We're doctors...not WITCH doctors. Now get a hold of yourself"
"....yes Doctor."