Henry shouldered the spade as the doors shut him inside the elevator. "Now," he said, turning to approach the button panel on the other side, "let's be on our way."

He was about to press the button when he felt something tug on his pant leg. When he looked, he saw the diaper-wearing green duck he'd seen in the prison.

"I push the button," the duck said. "No you push the button, I push the button."

"Knock yourself out, kid," Henry said as he stepped aside and let the strange kid approach. "Bottom floor, please."

The duck stood on his tiptoes, reached up and pressed the button for the bottom floor. "Elelator go down the hooole!" he said as the elevator began its descent.

Henry saw many strange things through the grated door on the way down. A large, fleshy creature from a dream that not even a kid could believe in, a shadowy figure walking on the wall behind a large industrial ventilation fan, you know…the usual stuff. Then Henry saw something he didn't expect, something unbecomingly ordinary: he saw Dick Crabtree confronting the kid.

"Are you that kid he was ramblin' on about?" Dick asked the kid. "You live in that nut-house apartment too, huh?" The kid didn't say anything; just stood there and stared up at the ruffian looming over him.

Dick seemed to have a sudden realization. "Say…" he said, his tone growing harsher, "you look a lot like that little vandal I once caught fingerpaintin' around there…" Then, in what would surely turn out to be a grievous blunder, Dick drew his revolver and trained it on the kid's forehead. "Do you know somethin' about what's goin' on!" Then, for added effect, he reached up and turned on an especially bright overhead light, directing its unforgiving glare down on the kid. "Start talkin', kid! Where were you at thirteen o'clock yesterday! Where were you on the night of the forty-third! Where does your lap go when you stand up! I want answers!" The kid immediately caved under the pressure of the interrogation and ran off. "Hey! Hey, you! Stop!" Dick commanded, almost as if he actually expected the kid to do so as he took off after him in hot pursuit. "Stop in the name of the law of gravity!"

"Law of gravity," Henry echoed as he exchanged a bemused glance with the duck. "Something tells me that fall he took earlier has psychologically scarred him for life." The duck didn't respond, just continued to suck on his thumb. "Of course," Henry went on, "that probably won't be long, now." The rest of the unusually long elevator ride passed in silence.

After a moment, the elevator finally reached its destination. "Thanks, kid!" Henry said, tousling the feathers atop the little duck's head as he stepped out into what appeared to be a small alcove in a back alley.

"Elelator go up!" the duck said, departing with the elevator as Henry got his bearings. He was in a small alcove leading just off of what looked to be an alleyway. In fact, it was the same fenced-in area he'd seen when looking over the edge from above. Either that elevator had been moving much slower than it appeared to have gone, or something was wrong with the dimensions in that world. Of course, given the layout of the building, the latter wouldn't be so surprising.

The chain-link fence prevented him from proceeding into the other part of the alley, but this turned out to be a good thing, considering there were a total of three of those vicious-looking pink Whiffies faces sniffing about on the other side. Henry figured that, since there was the fence separating them, it would be fun to harass them a little. "Hey!" he shouted, drawing their attention. "Hey! Lookit this!" he continued as he turned his back to them and initiated the taunting by leaning over a little and swatting himself on the backside. "You can't get me!" he jeered as the Whiffies snarled in absolute fury at his antics, and the fact that they couldn't reach him only made them that much angrier. "Nyah, nyah, nyah!" Henry continued as he turned back to face them. He started jumping from side to side right in front of the fence, now taunting them with his rapid movements and close proximity. He then backed up, laughing evilly as he proceeded with a simple taunt that requires an explanation too complex to justify, but will be given anyway. He leaned forward and held his arms outstretched before him while lifting his right foot off of the ground behind him, and proceeded to skip along like a Cactuar at a 45º angle. In case that wasn't enough, he switched feet after three skips and took three more in the other direction. Then, he stood before them with a wide stance and started pumping his arms downward like he was some sort of sumo wrestler. Finally, just for good measure, he placed his thumbs against his temples with fingers fanned out while flexing his wrists in the classic "flapping moose antlers" taunt; all this while the Whiffies on the other side continued to snarl loudly in impotent rage.

After Henry was done laughing, he approached the elevator again just as it returned to the bottom floor. He cast a brief glance upward as the doors opened, and noticed the ledge where he had boarded the elevator just above, and it wasn't nearly as high as the length of the elevator's descent. He decided he probably shouldn't get too worked up about time/space paradoxes and other such petty details and decided to just continue on his way.

When he entered the elevator, he noticed that the door on the other side was open, revealing a small recess with a ladder leading down. "I wonder what's down there?" he said as he approached. He looked down and noticed it wasn't too far to the bottom, so he did what anyone would do and descended without giving any thought as to the danger that might be waiting below.

Fortunately for him, there was none; it was just a room covered in tile, kind of like a locker room, sans lockers. The only thing that stood out in the otherwise nondescript room was a row of three narrow columns that were starting to crumble in places in the middle of the room. He assessed that there was no immediate threat, but he could, however hear yucky wet noises like those made by Mushroom Heads coming from somewhere. He headed for the corridor leading out of the room to the left when something he noticed out of the corner of his eye drew his attention. He looked, and at first he couldn't believe it, but even when he approached and examined it close up, he realized his eyes were not deceiving him. There, sitting at the base of the furthest column in all its bottled-up glory, was a Nutra-Health Drink. "Yoink!" he said as he snatched up the liquid health and proceeded drain it and toss the empty bottle away.

Now that all those bruises inflicted by that Rubber Head and Assface tag-team were little more than a mildly uncomfortable memory, he headed down the corridor, where he found the source of the wet noise to be a number of large, white stalks that looked like congealed strings of snot growing out of the floor in a manner uncannily similar to Mushroom Heads. "What the hell are these?" he wondered as he poked one with the tip of his spade. At the slightest touch, the top popped off like one of those Roman-type candles as the rest of the stalk disintegrated into a fine dust. "Awesome!" he said in response to the spectacle. He decided to call them Snot Rockets and immediately set to work clearing the path of their presence. Once that was done, he proceeded on his way down the remaining length of the corridor, at the end of which he found a ladder leading up. "I suppose I'm supposed to climb this," he said, once again showing that very little got by him as he made the short ascent.

He found himself in a winding alleyway, and he could hear the hooting of more ape-thingies just around the left-turn corner just ahead. "Time to wage some 'gorilla' warfare," he muttered under his breath, grinning at his incredibly lame pun as he tiptoed up to the corner while preparing a charge attack with his entrenching tool. When he was ready, he let out a loud war cry and dashed out from around the corner.

At least, he tried to dash, but for some reason, he was incapable of going at any speed greater than his somewhat-sneaky tiptoe while in the ready position, thus throwing away the element of surprise as the two Assfaces' attention was drawn to him by his screaming. This realization immediately killed his eagerness and saw that his obnoxious vocalizations slowly faded to awkward silence. "Dammit," he grumbled in annoyance as he continued his slow advance. One of the Assfaces came rambling in his direction on all fours like the quasi-primate it was, and once it was within range, Henry let loose his charge attack with a mighty forward thrust. The blow made contact with the designated target's head, which not only knocked the creature back, but also reduced its overall height by a good couple of inches in a most amusing manner.

The creature, apparently unaware of what had just happened to it, stood back on its legs and started feeling around atop its shoulders for its head, which wasn't there. It turned out that the force of the attack shoved its head into its thoracic cavity. "What the hell just happened!" Henry roared with laughter at the spectacle as the other Assface walked up to its decapitated partner and gave it a swift kick in the ass. The force of the blow to its hindquarters was sufficient to cause its head to pop free of its body, and by the time it had recovered its stature, the abomination was suitably pissed off enough to want to add Henry's blood to the red stains already on its body. Both immediately launched into a joint attack on Henry, but it ultimately proved useless. Henry was still laughing, and being that laughter is a natural endorphin, he was able to outlast them in the ensuing slugfest. Once the Assfaces had been dealt with, Henry had calmed down enough to proceed without laughing too much. It was a good thing nobody had been there to witness the encounter, for someone might think he was completely out of his mind in the way he was laughing himself silly while proceeding to smash two bloodied humanoids with a shovel.

He proceeded down the alleyway, noting the storefronts to what appeared to be, judging from all the signs with the kanji and stuff, restaurants specializing in foods from the Far East. As if being in a back alley wasn't a bad enough choice of location to put a damper on business, all the signs were all dingy and direly lacking in color, or anything else that would catch the eye. That and the mildew would certainly dissuade any potential patrons from partaking of the exotic cuisine. "That architect is really dingbatting a thousand," Henry noted as he rounded another corner…

…And stopped dead in his tracks. Not five yards down the alley, he could see the fenced-off portion where he had put on his little show, and what's more, he could see three all-too-familiar-looking pink Whiffies waiting right before it. They took notice of him and he could see from the way they snarled at him and hunkered down into an offensive stance that they were still, for the most part, pissed the hell off. "Oh boy…" he muttered, dread filling his tone as the three Whiffies charged at him. "This will undoubtedly be painful…"

And he was right. Immense discomfort would be a grossly euphemistic description of the sensation in his leg as the foremost Whiffy clamped its jaws down on it. And it didn't just bite, oh no. It kept its jaws clamped and started trying to shake him all about like a rag doll while its partners proceeded to exploit his immobility by performing their own bloodletting procedures on his free leg. Henry, in a desperate attempt to dislodge the Whiffy that was holding him in place, lifted his spade and thrust it downward, right into the Whiffie's neck. The shock from the attack caused the dog to lose its grip on him, and it fell writhing to the ground. This, of course, left him open to get bitten by the other two, which also had a tendency to not let go upon biting, so the cycle repeated itself, and by the time Henry had dispatched them, they had reduced his health gauge by about a third.

All that just because he decided to have a little fun at their expense. "Payback's a bitch," Henry said. "Literally!" He then looked down to examine the damage done, but much to his surprise, his legs had no wounds, even though he was standing in a puddle of his own blood large enough to have made him anemic in so losing. There weren't even any holes in his pants! "Hm! Must be the physical limitations of the pixilated environment!" he observed. "God bless them and their annoying powers." And with that, he followed the alley around the bend to the right and walked the remainder of its length.

He exited in a sizeable open area, and the first thing he noticed were about three Rubber Heads and an Assface running around. That is to say, they were running around until Henry entered the area, at which point they all stood up and directed their attention straight at him. "Aww, hell…" Henry griped as all the pseudo-simians converged on him and began to spam him with their fists.

The ape-things were really enjoying the beating they were giving him until they were all forced to jump back as their designated target began swinging the spade all around him, twirling it like he was some sort of martial arts master with a staff as a weapon. "HA!" Henry shouted triumphantly as he proceeded to keep them at bay with his swinging. "Little did you realize that I am a master of hedge-clip chito: the secret, Oriental fighting art of a Japanese gardener!" He followed through with a downward overhead swing, which struck the ground before him. This caused the shovelhead to bounce off the concrete surface and hit him right in the face. This stunned him, providing the assailants with the opening they needed to all leap on him at once. A classic cartoon brawl ensued, complete with a cloud of dust obscuring the action while allowing the occasional fist and foot to pop out for a brief instant. Then, a bobble-head and an executioner came by and tossed in a few spider monkeys just for good measure.

After a moment, the brawl stopped, and when the dust cleared, there was a writhing pile of ape-creatures trying desperately to stand. While they were prone, Henry ran up from his hiding place behind a water tower on the far corner of the roof (don't ask how he pulled off that maneuver, he just did) and proceeded to kick up some more dust as he beat the pile of simians to death. Once again, the dust cleared to reveal Henry the victor, standing atop the pile of corpses as he set the shovelhead on one of the apes and drove it in with his foot. "Whew!" he said as he wiped his brow with the back of his forearm. "That was a close one!"

With that, he jumped down from the pile and proceeded on his way…all of about two yards before he was forced to stop again, for there was another Assface impeding his path to a nearby door. This wouldn't have been a problem, were it not for the fact that this particular Assface seemed to be standing guard, and it held a golf club in its left hand to use as a crowd control implement. He could see it looking at him, waiting for him to approach so it might be able to give him a good whack. Faced with this obstacle, Henry decided there was only one thing to do: he would challenge it to a duel.

He took his 5-iron out of his pocket and got into the ready position, holding the club in his left hand while holding his right behind his back. Once again, he employed his linguistic skills to issue the challenge, for not only had he mastered Dyslexic and Pig-Latin, he also had a decent grasp on Monkey as well. "Enguarde!" he hooted, and the duel was on.

The Assface leapt forward and the two locked clubs, parrying back and forth as each tried to land a jab. It seemed that Henry had the upper hand and was slowly forcing his opponent back towards the door. "You're pretty good!" the Assface hooted.

"Thanks;" Henry replied. "I've had a lot of time to practice since finding myself trapped in my room five days ago."

"Looks like you're better than I am," the Assface stated.

"Then why are you…" Henry hesitated, looking as closely as he could at the thing's distorted face while at the same time maintaining his offensive. "You are smiling, right?"

"Yes, I am." the Assface replied, seemingly undaunted.

"Why's that?" Henry inquired.

"Because I have a secret!" came the answer. Henry raised his eyebrows.

"Oh really?" he said. "And what's that?"

"It's something I know that you don't!" the ape-thing stated. Henry rolled his eyes.

"No," he groaned, "I mean, what's the secret?"

"I'm not left-handed!" With that, the Assface switched hands on Henry, and immediately began to ward him off. Needles to say, Henry was surprised at the abrupt shift of the proverbial tides in the Assface's.

"You're pretty good, too!" Henry acknowledged.

"I should be," the Assface stated. "I'm not about to lose this job after having just landed it twenty minutes ago!"

"Oh, there's something I should tell you," Henry announced.

"Okay, shoot!" replied the Assface.

"I would," Henry said, "but all I have is a water pistol, and I left that back in my room." The Assface's rubbery visage contorted like an empty mask to show an expression of mild exasperation.

"No," it hooted, "I mean, tell me!" Henry's grin deepened.

"I'm not left-handed either!" And with that, he switched hands on the Assface, and immediately began to regain his lost ground. All was going well for him until the Assface thrust its club and made contact with Henry right on his shirt's left breast pocket. "What the hell!" he shouted in English.

"Touché!" the Assface announced. A split second later, it was knocked to the ground as a heavy metal object came crashing down on the top of its head, and Henry stepped up to it with the 5-iron in his right hand and the baseball bat in his left.

"One more thing I should tell you," he said. "I can rip off Musashi's two-swords technique!" And with that, he put the Assface out of its misery with a boot-stomp, then knelt down and proceeded to search the body of the fallen sentinel. "War trophy!" he announced as he pried the golf club out of its cold, dead fingers. Examination revealed it to be a Pitching Wedge. He didn't have one of those, so he deposited it in his pocket with the rest of his arsenal before lifting the heavy carcass he got it from. "Thanks buddy!" he grunted as he tossed the corpse onto a toppled vending machine to the side, which resulted in said machine's glass window shattering under the sheer weight of the thing's bulk. Henry immediately dashed through the door before anyone from Buffalo Rock could come out and yell at him.

He appeared to be in a large room, yet the floor he was on occupied only about half the total space. There was a series of stairs just ahead, so he used his "superior" intelligence to deduce that he was on the upper level. Of course, he wasted no time in making his descent to the bottom level, where he saw a large, multi-bladed shadow spinning around and around on the floor. When he looked up, he saw a ceiling fan hanging from support beams a couple meters above. That solved the mystery of what was casting the shadow, which led to the mystery of just how it was casting the shadow in spite of a lack of an apparent light source above it. "Well, that's odd…" he said.

"Yeah," another voice said. "They're usually bigger; especially the one in the school." Henry, having abruptly been made aware that he wasn't alone, immediately looked behind him and noticed another man in the room. He looked about thirty-two years old, sporting a slicked back brown hairstyle and wearing a brown leather jacket over a black shirt.

"Who the hell are you!" Henry demanded.

"I'm Harry Mason," the man replied flatly. Henry furrowed a brow.

"Harry Mason?" he echoed. "The novelist?"

"Yeah," Harry replied.

"But the news said you were killed!" Henry practically shouted. Henry just shrugged.

"Well, they were wrong then, weren't they?" he replied.

"And, uh, what're you doing here?" Henry asked.

"I'm looking for my daughter," Harry answered. A moment passed in silence. "Have you seen a little girl?" Harry finally continued after a moment. "Short? Black hair? Just turned seven last month?"

"Can't say that I have, 'cause I haven't," Henry answered. "Can't say I'm surprised she got lost, though, what with the way this place is laid out. I don't even know where the hell I am exactly! It's all disjointed and stuff, with various locations of the town haphazardly placed behind random doors."

"Hm…then maybe this is still Nowhere, after all…" Harry said. Henry was completely nonplussed by what was to him a generic term.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"The last notepad I looked at said this place was called Nowhere," Harry answered, "but I'm not so sure anymore. Sure, the layout's random and shows absolutely no logic on the architect's part, but…" He paused and looked around. "It doesn't look like the corridors of the Alternate hospital anymore."

"Hospital?" Henry mused. "You mean St. Germaine's?" Harry shook his head.

"No, Alchemilla," he replied. "In fact, none of the places here look like any I've seen in Silent Hill." Henry looked at him strangely.

"Silent Hill?" he echoed. "Is that anything like Quiet Hill? If so, you're in the wrong place. This place looks like it's been loosely based more on South Sootfield."

"Well, that explains it," Henry said. "I was wondering why this place wasn't all blood-rusted and crawling with nurses under the influence of mind-controlling parasites that hide in throbbing lumps of flesh on their upper backs."

"Eww…" Henry quailed.

"Or those little ankle-biting shadows…" Harry added. Henry gave a strange look.

"Ankle-biting shadows?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "They're kind of like those kid-looking creeps that were running around the school with butcher knives…" He gave an incredulous look. "Seriously," he continued, "you think an elementary school would have rules against kids running around with sharp objects like that! I liked the smaller shadows, the ones that went 'squeak' when you got close to them. They didn't have knives, and you could push 'em over." Henry thought about that. He had to admit, annoying kids was a lot of fun. Too bad the only kid around that he knew of had a tendency to kill the people who encountered him, a discovery that led Henry to resolve that he wasn't going to give that particular one a hard time. Now that he thought about it, he felt it would probably be best if he moved on.

"Well, I've gotta get going," he said as he headed for the door.

"Wait," Harry called out, stopping Henry in his tracks and drawing his attention once more. "Have you seen a little girl?" Henry furrowed an eyebrow.

"No," he said. "We've already had this discussion."

"Oh, well…" Harry shrugged. "Have you seen a little girl?"

"Short? Black hair? Just turned seven last month?" Henry filled in the rest of the blanks in the routine.

"You've seen her!" Harry asked, his voice filled with renewed hope and eagerness. Henry, becoming quite annoyed with this OCD chowderhead, decided the only way to get rid of him was to give him a false lead.

"Yes, actually," he said. "I saw her and a diaper-wearing green duck playing with the elevator."

"Oh, all right. Thanks."

Henry breathed a sigh of relief and turned to be on his way. But, the moment he opened the door… "Hey!" Harry called out. "Have you seen a little girl?" Henry decided there was nothing for it, and just hurriedly shut the door behind him as he made his exit, leaving the perpetually clueless Harry Mason alone in the room.

"I guess he didn't know," Harry said to himself after a moment in silent solitude. "Nice guy, though."

--------------------

Henry heaved an exasperated sigh as he leaned on the door. "Hope I never see him again…" he muttered. Anyway, he found himself atop yet another indoor fire escape, this one in a tall, narrow room and hemmed in by a chain-link fence. Being that the only way to go was down, he descended the numerous flights of stairs until he had set foot back on good ol' aged concrete. Once again, the going was straight forward from there: the only exit in the narrow chamber was on the far end. "I think I'll go thisaway," he said as he started off in that direction.

He had just about reached the door when he suddenly noticed a trashcan and numerous trash bags stuffed with refuse in the corner. Salvage came to mind again, so he immediately began rummaging through the contents of the waste receptacles. Unfortunately, he only found two things of interest one was a silver coin with the profile of an old fogey on it. "It looks like a Rubber Head…" he observed. Since he couldn't imagine any currency being minted with the likeness of a Rubber Head on it, he figured it was just a cheap novelty item and tossed it back into the trash before continuing his search. The only other thing of interest he found was a gossip magazine with an article about a guy who killed a couple of 8-year-old kids. Unfortunately, the article didn't interest him in the least, so he didn't bother to read it. Schmuck; might've found a critical lead if he'd taken the time to exercise his literacy.

Having deemed all that he'd found as being useless, Henry stashed the trash in the proper manner and decided to be on his way. Long story short, he passed through the door at the end of the chamber.

He suddenly found himself in what looked like a bar, as indicated by the counter with numerous bottles on shelves behind it. To the right of the door, there was a pool table with numerous billiard balls scattered about on its green felt surface. Beyond that, there was a Hole in the wall. There was also a soda vending machine set against the wall right next to the door. As for the walls themselves…well, the walls were completely smeared with a red substance that looked a lot like strawberry syrup, and it was crawling with numerous pink Graboidites, which explained the wet swooching noises that filled the otherwise silent atmosphere of the bar. "And me without salt…" Henry muttered. "Oh well! I have a shovel, and that'll smoosh 'em well enough!" And with that, he went about splattering the Graboidites' red innards all over the already-stained wall. Oh, how easily it is to keep a simple mind occupied…

Once he was done with the ones on that wall, he decided go about his business. He was about to start off when something on a nearby table grabbed his attention. There, in all its iron-oxidizing glory, was an axe! "Now we're talkin'!" he excitedly declared as he took it up in his hand and examined it. The cutting edge of the axe head was looking a mite dull. "Should be able to make up for the dull edge with brute force," he rationalized. "Not only will that make it hurt more, but the rust will likely insure that anything surviving a blow from it will at least get tetanus!" With a nod, he decided the weapon was a keeper. "Not exactly a Type-3 heat hawk," he said as he gave it a few practice swings, "but I think this'll do just fine!"

He immediately decided to test out his new weapon and went over to the wall with the Hole in it, where there were more Graboidites feeding on strawberry syrup. Unfortunately, Henry had terrible aim when it came to hitting Graboidites with anything that didn't have a broad surface like his spade, so all he was able to accomplish was knock them all onto the floor. "Uuuurrrgh! Screw you all to hell!" he cursed as he stomped them flat. Now that there was nothing left to kill, he decided to be on his way.

He approached the door just to the left of where the Graboidites had been feeding and tried to open it, but found it was locked. Closer examination revealed a keypad above the lock. "Hm," he said. "This particular lock conforms to the uniform numerical arrangement for numerical keypads; not like that piece-o' in the prison." Of course, if there was a keypad, there had to be a clue to the combo somewhere. But where? "Hmm…where would I hide a lock combination?" After about five minutes of thought, he finally remembered exactly where he would leave it: out in the open where anyone could find it.

He went over to the bar, and what should he find but a slip of paper with a message on it. It read thusly:

The boss said that the so-called "secret" number this time is the last 4 digits of the bar's phone number. I question the wisdom in this plan, considering the number is written right there on the sign on the roof, where any idiot can see it from South Sootfield Street! He might as well have a combination of 1-2-3-4-5 on his luggage!

"South Sootfield Street!" Henry exclaimed. "My room's window faces South Sootfield Street!" So without a moment's hesitation, he stuffed the memo into his pocket, got a running start and made a flying leap into the Hole.

--------------------

Henry woke up, jumped out of bed and dashed over to the window. Upon looking out, he saw a billboard advertising Bar Northfield on the roof of a building just across the street. The number was 555-3750. "Got it!" Henry said.

No sooner had he said that than what looked like a disembodied human head slowly fell past his window. "I ain't got no body, ya know what I'm sayin?" it said, then proceeded to laugh at its own dull, wise-ass comment as it continued its slow plummet towards the ground, leaving a very confused Henry to look down after it.

"What the hell…?" he said. After a moment, he just shrugged it off.

After stuffing the memo from the bar into his scrapbook, he went over to the telephone on his nightstand. "I think I'll call that number just for the hell of it," he said as he picked up the receiver and dialed in the number. No sooner had he done so than his ear was bombarded by some of the most ear-tweaking white noise he'd ever heard. "Ugh, damn!" he winced, pressing his hand against the offended ear as he put the receiver back down. "What the hell was that all about?" He stood up and shook the effects of the noise from his head as he exited his bedroom.

As soon as he stepped out into the hallway, Henry heard someone knocking at the door. "Okay, let's see who it is this time," he said as he made his way out to his living room. From there…aww, forget it! You know where he went from there!

He looked through the peephole, almost expecting to find yet another curious tenant who was blissfully oblivious to his plight, but instead was greeted by the unobstructed sight of the far wall with a message scrawled out over all the handprints.

BETTER CHECK ON YOUR
NEIGHBOR SOON!

"Uh…okay," Henry shrugged as he made his way over to the hole in the wall. When he peered through, he saw Irene blathering away like ladies tend to do on the telephone.

"Really? That many people? You think you can handle a mob like that?" she said. "…Oh ya don't say? – Huh? Oh, sure, no sweat. I'd better start making myself presentable soon. – I told you some 2.3 skillion times, I'll be there. – What? Oh, that. – Boy, I'll say… I'd better blow this joint soon. There's just – gee, idunno, something about this place that doesn't set right with me, and it's not just the loony neighbors…"

"Seems to be doing just fine," Henry said as he stood back up and started back across the living room. He'd just made it as far as the hallway when the knocking on his door returned, only now it was loud and more impatient. "What now?" he griped as he made his way back over to the door and looked through the peephole. Strangely enough, the writing had changed.

WRONG NEIGHBOR,
DUMB-ASS!

"Wrong neighbor?" Henry read aloud before backing away from the door. He gave it some thought, but ultimately drew a blank, so he just dismissed it with a shrug and returned to his bathroom, where he – yup, you guessed it – went back through the Hole.

--------------------

Henry was back in the bar, and he immediately entered the numbers into the keypad. "That was easy," he said as he opened the door and stepped out and shut the door behind him.

He found himself on a walkway hugging the walls of a large, square shaft. It was like a stairwell, with the stairwell alternating between steps and landings at each directional change. As it was, he was on one of the landings, and the stairs leading down seemed to have collapsed, so up was the only way to go. "It would be that way…" he muttered under his breath as he started off.

"UWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The loud, obnoxious vocalization echoed off the walls of the shaft, drawing Henry's attention upward towards its source.

"What the hell was that!" he said, but he couldn't see what it was. All he could see was the shaft extending ever upward. "Aww, dammit," he griped. "I'm gonna have to climb all the way up there?"

"Sucks to be you!" a familiar voice said, drawing Henry's attention to a familiar so-and-so.

"You again!" Henry shouted.

"Yep, me!" the ghost in the green shirt said from the other side of the shaft. "You know, it's at times like these that the ability to defy gravity has its pros. For instance: I don't have to climb all these tiresome stairs to get to the top. I can just levitate!"

"Good for you," Henry replied tersely. "So why don't you go on ahead?"

"Because then I wouldn't be able to pester you the entire way!" the ghost said with malicious glee as it floated over to its intended target.

"Dammit!" Henry cursed as he started off at a run. All while making the tiresome ascent, the ghost just wouldn't stop annoying him with his mindless chatter and inane questions.

"Are we there yet?"

"No!"

"How far is it?"

"Shuddap!"

"Are you getting tired yet?"

"Go away!"

"You know what this reminds me of?"

"I don't really give a crap!"

"It reminds me of a story about a small rebel group trying to save the world. There was this one point where they had to infiltrate the headquarters of the corrupt, multinational conglomerate that was oppressing everyone and…"

And so it went for the duration of the journey upward. By the time Henry made it to the final landing, he was more than out of breath. "Whew!" he said between breaths. "I think…that should be…enough exercise…for one year…" He then looked over and saw his traveling companion clutching his head. "What's the matter?" he said. "Altitude gettin' to ya?"

"My head hurts…" he said. "Man, this sucks! Aaaaaaghhh…" The ghost finally succumbed to the pressure in his head and lost the ability to levitate, and since he was levitating in the middle of the shaft, he had nothing underneath him except the very bottom.

"Looks like you got 'shafted'!" Henry shouted to him.

"Screw yoooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!" the ghost shouted back from the depths as he continued his rapid descent.

"Well," Henry said, patting his shirt pocket, "thank God for countermeasures!" With that, he proceeded along the remaining length of the landing until he reached the end, where he found a door with brass numbers fixed on it. "Room 207?" he read aloud. "But that's Dick's room number; what's it doing…here…?" He trailed off as he noticed a placard hanging on the door beneath the numbers. "Uh-oh," he said, "either this is an ultra-compact map to the Valley of the Jedi, or Dick just got proverbially F'ed in the A'." Not wasting any time, Henry took the placard, deposited it in his pocket, and opened the door.

"Break yo'se'f, foo'!" a voice said from behind just as Henry was about to enter. He wheeled around and found yet another familiar figure.

"Not you too…!" he whined and buried his face in his palm.

"I got yo' ass!" the imitation-gangsta's ghost hovered over to his position.

"Is there something you want?" Henry demanded with strained patience.

"Yo, who be dat mutha laid out at the bottom dere like a prison bitch?" Henry gave a start.

"You mean, you just got here from the bottom?" he asked.

"Damn straight!" was the answer. Henry couldn't believe it.

"You got up here that fast? And you don't even feel lightheaded or otherwise uncomfortable?"

"Fuck dat shit!" the ghost said. "I likes to get high!" He nudged Henry with his elbow. "Know what I'm sayin'?"

"Well, you're high enough," Henry answered, looking down the shaft. "Damn, that was fast!" It suddenly occurred to him. "Oh, I get it," he said. "Let me guess. Speed?"

"Nope! Weed!" The ghost emphasized by holding an imaginary joint up to his mouth and taking two audible tokes in rapid succession. "Dat be some damn good shit right dere!"

"So, are your senses suitably dulled?" Henry asked as he shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the baseball bat. "Because I'm gonna give you a red-ass beatdown!" He then swung and struck the hood right in the face.

"Damn, yo, don't be gettin' all GTA on me!" the ghost protested, and Henry responded by hitting him again. "Bitch, I'll kick yo ass!" Henry hit him again and continued to beat him senseless until the hoodlum was laid out flat on the platform, at which point he finished the job with his feet.

Once Henry had finished doing the L.A. Shuffle on the ghost's head, he suddenly remembered. "Oh, that's right!" Without further delay, he dashed through the door.

Inside, he found Dick, but instead of finding him murdered in some cruel manner, he found him very much alive and enjoying himself in one of those vibro-massage recliners.

"Th-i-i-i-s-s-s f-f-e-e-e-e-e-l-l-l-s-s g-o-o-o-o-o-d!" he said, his voice affected by the vibrations as they soothed away the aches and pains he'd sustained while fighting off Rubber Heads.

"Dick!" Henry shouted. "Get out of the chair! Quick!" He dashed over and grabbed his neighbor by the wrist in an attempt to forcibly pull him out of the chair. However, he failed to realize that he'd built up quite a static charge from the gangsta ghost's ski cap, and since the door was already open, he didn't need to touch the doorknob, thus bypassing the shock until he grabbed Dick by the wrist. There was an audible pop as the two sustained a massive shock of static, at which both reflexively recoiled their hands. Dick reacted by drawing his gun.

"W-w-w-w-…" he started, then paused just long enough to shut off the chair. Then he began to shout. "What the hell are you doing!" he yelled, his revolver trained on Henry.

"Dick, you gotta get outta here!" Henry shouted. "He's gonna kill you!"

"Oh yeah! Well, let him try!" Dick retorted, waving his revolver. "He'll regret having come anywhere near me!" He then set the gun in his lap and reached over to pick up a gun magazine from the floor beside the chair. "Like they say, a man's home is his fortress!" he added as he turned the chair back on and opened the magazine. As soon as he started reading, the magazine cover fell off to reveal that it wasn't really a gun magazine, but a porno magazine. Dick, caught off-guard by the eyeful he received, immediately suffered a terminal nosebleed that gushed forth in torrents, draining him in roughly three seconds. The only reason Henry's clothes weren't permanently stained with Dick's hemoglobin was the physical limitations of the pixilated environment.

Henry then noticed that the kid was in the room, standing just off the recliner's left flank with arm outstretched as he pointed at something out the window. He didn't have time to contemplate what the whole thing meant before Dick spoke again.

"A…a…a…a…a…k…k…k…'kid'…?" he stuttered from the vibrations, the last drops of blood oozing into his mouth from his nostrils. Henry looked back at him, and noticed the number 19121 had suddenly appeared on his forehead. "Th…th…th…th…that's n…n…no kid… It's…th…the ZIP code m…m…man…" The last thing Henry saw was Dick's head rolling back, falling lifeless onto the chair's backrest.
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Hell Count: 11
Total Hell Count: 71

A/N: Wow, twelve pages! Once again, the obsessive-compulsive Harry Mason is property of Hometown.