Escape
I hope my luck changes before the party.
I don't know what I did, but I must've done something wrong, and I...I'm scared, I'm really scared.
I wonder what you see...if you still see me as the girl who lived next to you, if you see me as Eileen Galvin and not...20/21.
Henry, thank you. I could've never have done for you what you've done for me.
Nothing's okay—Henry, nothing's okay, but...
A kiss.
The sweetness of her delicate, trembling hand within his. The hurt pride that rose to unbelievable determination. The darkness that clouded her mind that was sure to haunt her for eternity; her blunt confrontation of the darkness even though she knew she was destined to lose. The way she had curled away from him in fear, how he silently witnessed her unfold and trust him though he gave her no real reason to.
The idea that though he had cared for her before meeting her in the hospital, his cares were superfluous, superficial; back then it had nothing to do with her. All he was looking for was an anchor to reality and he wouldn't have cared what package it came in, as long as he could place his ideals in one place, one mortal body, and admire and yearn for it from afar. When she was attacked he didn't cry. But here now as she was walking towards her true death, Henry was sobbing.
There was something so much deeper here, now. Every time he tried to come back around from the beginning and play it out in his head it became even deeper—so deep that he soon gave up hope that he'd ever be able to understand.
He didn't dare to call it love before.
But when her life hung in the balance in front of him he wanted to scream that he was hopelessly in love with her—the real her, not some stupid idealistic projection of his. He was stupidly in love with Eileen Galvin—so stupidly in love that he didn't expect nor did he wish for her to reciprocate his feelings. Despite the kiss she had given him, he wasn't expecting her love in return, and he was perfectly okay with that.
He just knew that if he didn't break free and save her life he'd never forgive himself.
I want to get out of here but I don't remember what the real world is like anymore.
He just knew that if she didn't get to see the real world again he'd never forgive himself.
Walter's hold on him seemed to tighten and Henry gasped for breath, pawing at his neck and squirming feebly.
Henry...you're the bravest man I know.
Stifling a cough and trying to be discreet, Henry reached down to his waistband and ever so gently eased Richard's revolver out and away. Thankful that Walter was too distracted in watching Eileen walk towards her death, Henry pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.
He had shot Walter in the leg. The suddenness of the sound and pain caused Walter to drop the pole from Henry's neck and stagger backwards. Gasping for air, Henry rose and turned around, pointing the gun at the madman threatening their lives.
Walter snarled and drew his own gun. Henry could see the rage in his eyes and ducked to the ground, rolling out of the way as gunshots tore through the space he was just standing in. Praying none of the bullets would hit Eileen, Henry scrambled to his knees as the barrel of Walter's gun followed him to where he was. Fear etched itself onto Henry's face and he squeezed the trigger of the revolver until it ran empty. Flinching and shutting his eyes tight, he whimpered in the silence that followed, expecting Walter to fire his gun again.
When nothing happened, Henry slowly opened his eyes and turned his head to see Walter standing in front of him. Five holes peppered his coat, and from them blood began to seep and flow. The expression on his face was confused, pained, and angry, but those emotions soon melted away as he stumbled back with a grunt and fell to the ground.
Henry got back up on his feet as blood pooled underneath the man that was once so terrifying and haunting. Reduced to a mortal husk, Walter Sullivan raised his arm in the air, and if Henry peered over he could see a wistful sort of childish hope in his eyes.
"Mom...?" Walter gurgled. His hand dropped to his side with a shaken groan and everything fell silent.
He was dead.
Before Henry could relax, the ground beneath him began to rumble and shake. Staggering on his weak feet, his heart began to pound. The creature wailed and withered, and with it the stone floor began to crack and fall. With Walter Sullivan no longer keeping his world alive, it was crumbling and shattering from the very core.
A shocked, scared cry brought focus to Henry's panic and his eyes shot over to the staircase. Eileen had collapsed at the edge of the pool of blood, mere steps away from the machine that was still spinning and whirring.
"Eileen!" he cried, scrambling over the uneven and undulating stone. He heard her scream again as he clambered over fallen debris. Boulders rained down from the ceiling and Henry ducked his head as if it would help protect him as he reached the staircase.
She had attempted to pull herself up and out of the pool. Her legs all the way up to her knees were stained red, and she was gripping one of the columns around the staircase frantically.
"Eileen!" Henry plucked his way through rocks and broken pieces of floor before he stumbled forward and grabbed her hand. She looked at him, an intense gaze of fear and finality. Henry gulped, and squeezed Eileen's hand as if that would reassure either of them. There was an odd sort of relaxation that fell over both of them as the Other World toppled apart. They were going to die, but now it was okay. Everything was okay.
It was done.
The world went black.
–
Lights passed over her head with a deadening sort of rhythm, one after the other. She was groggy and dazed, and it took all of her strength to merely count the lights that were passing by above her. Pain throbbed in the back of her mind, keeping itself at bay as she slowly regained consciousness. Odd blurred faces appeared and disappeared in front of her, and muffled voices shuffled around her as the lights occasionally changed their regular pattern.
Eileen gurgled quietly. Slowly the pain came back to her, starting in her toes and fingers and gradually moving to her head and heart. Then the memories came back to her, and everything came into focus as though she had just taken a shot of adrenaline.
The blurred faces turned out to be people she didn't recognize. They looked like doctors, but hell if she knew. Even if she was in a hospital, there was no way she couldn't tell it wasn't the hospital, and if she was about to be sent back there again without Henry—
Was Henry here?
Was Henry here?
What had happened to him?
More memories flooded back. Memories of screaming and crying like a child, memories of mercilessly beating him, memories of leaving him for the call of Walter's ultimate fantasy, memories of walking towards her death as Henry was slowly choked in front of her.
Eileen screamed so loud her lungs threatened to burst, fighting against the men and women that attempted to strap her to the gurney she was on. Tears of fear rolled down her cheeks as she continued to scream protests and call for Henry to come to her side if he could hear her.
But he didn't hear her, and he didn't appear to be at her side.
One of the doctors forced a mask over her face and though she continued to strain and struggle, she soon fell back into an insecure darkness.
–
The wind caressed his exhausted cheeks, coaxing him to wake up. Henry groaned and weakly swatted at his face, expecting it to be a fly that had somehow managed to squeeze into his room despite the fact that every window was closed and sealed.
Henry opened his eyes when the wind touched his face again.
The window was open.
He lifted his head and stared at it in blank shock. The wheels began to churn in his head and his heart began to race—this time with a sense of hope and yearning. Moving too quickly for his injured body, Henry scrambled off the bed and to his feet. Limping, but fighting back the pain, he stumbled into the front room of his apartment and stared at his door.
The chains—even the bloody words—were gone.
Henry pressed himself against the door, too eager for his own good. Breathing heavily and expecting the worst, he turned the knob and eased the door open with no trouble. The hallway outside his door was the same gray hallway he had gotten used to seeing for the past two years. There wasn't even a trace of the 19 bloody handprints across from his peephole.
Leaving the door open in his scramble into the hallway, he grunted in pain as he hit the far wall. Sliding against it for support, he didn't even notice the smear of blood he left behind as he made his way down the hallway to the stairwell. He leaned against the railing as he skipped stairs to balance out his hurry and his pain. There was nothing that said he wasn't still trapped in the building, even though everything looked normal. None of the other tenants were out and about, not even Frank. Who's to say he wasn't stranded in limbo?
Failing to muffle a cry of pain as he hit the final landing, he ignored the fact that his small mailbox was overflowing with letters—bills, no doubt—as he approached the door to the outside world in a trance. Placing his hands and body against the door, he was about to open it before he paused.
What would he do, how would he feel if the door didn't open?
Steeling himself and furrowing his brow, he forced himself to believe he had broken free as he put all of his weight against the door and pushed.
Brilliant sunlight poured onto his face, greeting him with warmth and vitality he had long forgotten. Crisp autumn winds billowed leaves about him as he limped out into the parking lot in a daze. Birds fluttered in the dry branches above him, the sounds of the clacking wood and the fluttering of wings making more music to his ears than the birds' voices themselves. Clouds moved lazily above him in intricate shapes and designs that would never be created again.
This was it. This was freedom.
Henry Townshend was free.
He took in a deep breath—as deep as his broken body would allow—and exhaled slowly. Turning about until he could see his window, he breathed a sigh of wonder and triumph until his eyes wandered over to the room next to his.
"Eileen...," he muttered quietly. Mustering whatever speed he had left, he rushed back to his apartment to find his keys and then to his car, finding that underneath a pile of dried leaves. Henry grunted with pain as he attempted to brush them all off before clambering inside. Once inside the radio crackled to life. The newscaster mentioned a severely injured woman being taken to St. Jerome's from the forest outside of Silent Hill. Panic steadily rose to his head and Henry suddenly became aware of the spots dancing in front of his vision, as well as all of the footprints circled in drops of blood he had made coming back and forth from the apartment and parking lot. The damn morphine was starting to wear off. He was getting dizzy. Gritting his teeth, Henry put the car in gear and drove as well as he could to the hospital.
Getting out of the car would've been easier if he had been drunk, Henry was pretty sure of that. Still, nothing seemed to matter. The newscaster had given no details about whether or not the woman—whom had remained unidentified for her safety though Henry was positive it was her—had survived or had...well, passed away from her injuries.
No. She had to be alive. He had done everything he could and more to save her—to save just one person from that abhorrent hell. If she was dead...he couldn't bear the thought.
His vision narrowed to a tunnel, saving him from seeing all of the frightened looks he got as a bloody, wounded, dirty, crazed man stumbled through the automatic doors of the hospital. His limp had become a terrible lope, and his burned arm had become all but useless. Had he really been in this condition for so long, or was the morphine so powerful he had forgotten what it was like to have all this pain at once?
"Is—," he sputtered to the terrified woman at the front desk. It had been a while since he had talked to someone that hadn't been Eileen. Choking and coughing on blood, Henry continued, "Is Eileen Galvin here?"
"I-I don't know. Do you need medical attention, s-sir?"
Henry's brow furrowed, which made him look much more menacing than he was aware of as the blood surrounding his eyes made them stand out like angry stars in the night, "No. Eileen Galvin, is she here? Please, I have to know!"
That's what he meant to say, but the constant battering and bruises, the blood in his mouth, and the sheer exhaustion slurred all his words until they were nothing but a mucked up mess. The woman behind the desk looked at him in sheer terror and pressed a hidden button.
"We don't give out patient information. Who are you to her?"
A next-door neighbor? A concerned citizen? None of those would work—especially if the hospital knew she had been attacked by a serial killer. Henry stuttered—but the stutter came out more like a throaty growl that had summoned up a glob of blood and saliva. He choked, coughing up the fluids straight onto her desk.
The combination of the growl and the bloody spit caused the woman to stand straight up.
"Sir, stand back! The hospital is on high alert and you will be apprehended!" the woman commanded.
Henry's desperate frustration turned to anger and he opened his mouth to argue with the woman, his fists curling tightly on the desk.
The distant sound of a scream—real or hallucinated—from within the hospital interrupted him before he could speak and his head perked in the direction of the scream. If the woman wouldn't help him, then he would have to find her himself. He had done it before, he could do it again, whatever monsters would spring from the dark to stop him.
"Sir, where are you going? Stop!" the woman yelled as security appeared. One of the guards grabbed Henry's burned elbow. Screeching in pain, Henry wrenched his arm away and gave the guard an unforgiving blow. Turning, Henry took a step forward as if he was trying to run, but the overwhelming pain coupled with the sheer amount of blood on his shoes on the polished hospital floor stopped him as he slipped and collapsed on the ground. Wailing in agony, Henry writhed on the floor as the screaming disappeared. The guards wasted no time in ensuring Henry stayed on the ground, but they couldn't do much that Henry's body wasn't already doing to him without sending him into a blinding world of pain.
There were two patients in the conjoined waiting room—a mother and her daughter. The daughter's eyes were fixed on the front counter ever since the man had stumbled in, broken, hurt, and frustrated. She was morbidly curious as she watched the scene unfold before her, much to her mother's dismay. At one point it seemed as if the bloodied man had looked at her and her heart stopped in terror, expecting to see hate in his eyes.
When she saw sorrow and desperation instead she refused to tear her eyes off of him until a gurney had been rolled out and he was taken to an emergency room. A janitor soon followed to clean up the mess he had left. The girl kept quiet about it for the rest of the day. Secretly she hoped the man would be safe.
–
"You've got a broken coccyx, a cracked rib on one side due to god knows what, and some broken ribs on the other side from an apparent gunshot wound that obviously never got any real medical attention. Your ligaments in your legs are screwed up—sprained doesn't even begin to describe what's wrong with them—and in your arms, you should thank your lucky stars that none of those were dislocated! Oh, and then we have all the blood loss we had to treat you for, and the burn wounds on your palm and arm, and the apparent animal bites everywhere else...This is the same caliber of the stories my grandfather used to tell about World War I! Tell me, what the hell happened to you?!"
Henry stared quietly as the doctor threw up his dismal x-rays. He was a man in his sixties, with a loud character and impeccable eye for injuries, it seemed. The doctor continued, pacing around the foot of the bed Henry was resting on. There were restraints put on the bed that had, for the past two days, been holding his wrists to the frame in case he tried to make another scene. Fortunately he didn't—not after plenty of good rest and painkillers while the doctors worked to help his body heal the unbelievable amount of injuries he had acquired. Though, while he didn't make a violent scene, he still kept asking for Eileen Galvin and if she was alive and well despite the fact that every single time he was met with the curt, cold answer of Patient information is classified.
"Your superintendent dropped by as the only one who would identify you—did you know you drove here without your license?—and he told me that you had locked yourself in your room for the past six days. Looking at these," the doctor smacked the x-rays with the pencil he was holding, "I say that's a load of bullshit. Sort of. What happened to you, kid?"
A hard lump formed in his throat and Henry dropped his gaze. A story formed in his head, close to the truth but not quite, and as he began to speak in his quiet, feeble voice hot tears began to leak from his eyes.
"I...There was a man in a coat,"
The doctor rested against the corner of his bed as he listened intently to Henry's story.
"He...broke in. Locked me in my room. And he...he made me see—I saw," Henry bit his lower lip as the tears trickled down his cheeks, "He killed people, in front of me. I couldn't—I tried to stop him but I couldn't—the subway, the woods, the orphanage,"
"Kid," the doctor interrupted before Henry became hysterical. His older eyes were soft though his words were tough, his voice matching his eyes as he continued, "Save it for the cops. They want to have a word with you anyways."
The doctor got up and sighed.
"Dr. Jacob?" a nurse poked his head in, "Can we talk quick?"
Dr. Jacob nodded and stepped out of the room, leaving Henry in silence. The faces of the people he witnessed die—Cynthia, Jasper, Andrew, and Richard—floated just beyond his vision as he wiped the tears from his cheeks. He figured that they would haunt him even when he wasn't thinking of them. Such was the curse of his failures. Such was the curse of being a spectator. Such was the apparent curse of the Receiver of Wisdom.
"Well kid," Dr. Jacob said as he re-entered the room, "You'll be happy to hear this. Eileen Galvin is alright."
Henry's dark thoughts were pushed away at the mention of her name and he sat up straighter in bed. The doctor pretended not to notice.
"Apparently she gave the nurse quite a scene when she had found out that you were asking for her well-being. That is—when she found out that we were withholding it from you. No hard feelings, kid. Hospital policy and all that—especially with...well, I'm sure you know very well what's running about the streets of Ashfield right now. She won't be released for a while—and neither will you, so don't try—but either way,"
Dr. Jacob gave Henry a light touch on the shoulder.
"She's lucky to be alive—and so are you."
–
Henry stood outside the door to her hospital room, a bouquet of flowers in his sweaty hand. He had not seen her since they were last in the Other World, and he wasn't well-informed of her condition. Was there any permanent damage to what she had suffered? Was she mentally stable enough to see him again, the living, breathing reminder of hell? The flowers shook in his hand.
Reality was such a surreal feeling to him. Days and nights passed by, birds sang in the open windows, people gossiped in the hallways and went about their work without incident. It was all so exuberantly normal that it made him feel dizzy to stand there in the hallway, just tucked away from all of the commotion. Both of them were being released today, being sent home with notes on remarkable recoveries.
Henry knew, though, that he wasn't going back "home", as it were. If he would never have to set foot in room 302 ever again, he'd be the happiest man alive. On top of that, there was nothing remarkable about their recovery. Even if it had happened faster than the doctors were expecting, nothing about it felt right. Henry still had a weighing pain in his chest that intensified whenever he let his thoughts drift to nightmares, and he suspected that was only the tip of the iceberg to a multitude of unfathomable paranoia, problems, and trauma that he was going to shakily learn the existence of in the days to come.
But he couldn't think about that now. Sunlight filtered in through the curtains as Henry gripped the bouquet of flowers. Uneasily he mimed giving them to her in the hallway.
Here, I got you some flowers, he'd say as he would hand them to her. Oh, and a smile. Curl up the side of your lips. She's so used to seeing you dreary that it'd be a nice gesture on top of the bouquet.
There.
Easy.
A nurse passed by him, flipping through a clipboard. Henry recoiled immediately as his face reddened, the flowers going back down to his sides as if he was trying to hide them. Waiting until the heat left his face, he crept into her room, fully aware that he was trembling.
Eileen looked tranquil. She was gazing out of the window at the sunny autumn day. Henry had entered so quietly that she didn't seem to notice him. He attempted to clear his throat, but when it came out more as a croak he grimaced. She jumped, so slight he almost, almost didn't notice, and turned to him.
She was wearing new clothes, a comfortable green shirt that had a long torso and sleeves that came to her elbows along with denim capris, things her family must have brought in for her. Henry's wardrobe was not much different other than the fact it wasn't stained with blood, pocked with holes, burned to a crisp, or shredded. The cement cast on her arm was replaced with a much more comfortable one, smaller, lighter, and allowed all of her fingers freedom. Any other sign of injury was hard to see, other than two small pieces of tape keeping a scab closed on her brow.
Her face was still, taking in the details of the man standing in front of her. It had been so long since she had seen him clean and fresh that she almost didn't recognize him for a moment. But she couldn't mistake his slouched, unsure shoulders and his perpetually stubbled face for anyone else, and her expression warmed to a genuine smile.
Their silence said more than words ever could. Neither one seemed eager to break it, and both were entranced with the presence of the other. They were alive. Not well. But they were alive.
And in that moment, that was all that mattered.
Henry lifted the bouquet up and handed it to her, wordlessly. Her smile widened as she took it in both hands. Henry withdrew his hand rather quickly, aware of the sweat and aware that not only had he not said anything but he had failed to smile as well.
"Thanks," she said with a small laugh. Eileen only briefly smelled the tip of the petals before looking back up at him.
Why are you looking at me? Henry shifted on his feet and forced himself to smile. Sure, it wasn't hard to do if he didn't think about it, but he was thinking about it.
"Aww," she commented, wrinkling her nose cutely as she again laughed quietly.
Look at the flowers, don't look at me.
"Guess I'll have to find a new place to live, huh?" Eileen said after her laughter ended, her voice low and serious though her lips were still pulled (perhaps forcibly) into a smile. Henry nodded in agreement, happy that she was able to find it in herself to laugh even if she didn't really feel like it.
The longer she gazed at him the smaller her smile became, and the small fear that was dwelling in his chest began to bloom. Soon her gaze dropped down to the flowers in the bouquet and he could see her lips tremble as her pale face became blotchy and red, accenting the faint freckles on her nose. Eileen's eyes shone in the sunlight, and then the tears began to fall.
Henry hesitated for a moment, but it did not take long to get over it and seat himself beside her on the bed. Eileen, still holding the flowers in one hand, threw his arms around him and held him tightly, sobbing into the space between his collarbone and neck. He let her cry, wrapping an arm around her waist to hold her steady as she did. Tears leaked from his eyes, and he soon buried his face in her hair, warmed by the sunshine from the open window.
Both of them were vaguely aware of the various curious and critical heads poking in and out of the room. Eileen was, after all, known at this time to be a survivor of a murder attempt, and though Henry was gradually gaining reputation of being in a similar boat many of the nurses and guards that patrolled the hallways were suspicious of any abnormal noise from Eileen's room. The police were still on alert for the "copycat" behind Walter Sullivan round three, and were taking no chances.
One such part of their alertness directed both Henry and Eileen to the hotel conjoined with the hospital. They had been assigned separate rooms at first, but Eileen had requested only one—with two beds—for the both of them. She did not explain why to the receptionist, but Henry knew it was because she had felt much safer with him than with or without anyone else. He could say the same for her; her presence was such a comfort to him, to know she was there and all right and breathing quietly brought him such peace of mind he felt as though she wrapped him in warmth.
Eileen had waited until Henry had chosen his bed before taking the other, quietly setting a duffel bag her parents had brought her in the hospital down at the foot of the bed.
She turned to him then, pulling him into a sudden and unexpected hug. Her shoulders shook like dry branches in a cold wind, but before he could ask what was wrong she lifted her head and kissed him, once, twice, many times. Henry froze, but soon melted in her arms and placed his gentle hands on her back.
"Oh god," she whispered into his chest, shuddering with each breath, "Oh my god...it's over. It's finally over."
Henry gently pressed the bridge of his nose against the edge of her brow and kissed her cheek.
It was over.
Trauma and nightmares would continue to haunt them for the rest of their life. Nothing would ever be the same about them ever again, and no one would ever believe the truth.
But it was finally over.
And that was the single greatest emotion he had ever held in his heart as he laid enveloped in her loving arms, the moon shining on their scarred, warm skin.