Chapter Text
Taking proactive steps has always made Henry feel more in control of his life, after being forced to lead himself and Eileen out of the dark recesses of literal Hell. By opening the door himself and kicking out Murphy, he felt a sense of power over the situation. It was a small comfort, but it made him feel like an adult who could handle his own problems and not the scared, little boy who hid in closets and prayed eighteen came fast enough. Murphy leaving when all signs pointed towards wanting nothing more than to stay was… confusing. Nuanced. Opening the door himself allowed him to spin the situation into something he could understand, something he could control.
He would eventually get over it. He always did. Henry had developed a pattern of blaming himself, not just for Murphy’s struggles but the wars of others too. Blaming himself for things outside of his control and then moving on from them, using the hatred and boredom he felt towards his own life as an aid in justifying why he shouldn’t care at all. What right did he have? This coping mechanism was what kept him alive, what eased the pain. But, it also prevented him from ever getting close to the people in his life- something his own social ineptness never helped. If only he could reach out, say what he meant. If only…
“I forget how beautiful it is this time of year…” Eileen’s voice cut through the echoes of Henry’s thoughts, silencing the static in his mind, as she pulled her rhinestone sandals off and set them aside. The water of Lake Toluca ripped around Eileen’s bare feet, as she walked the shoreline. There was water all around them, as far as the eye could see. It was a much needed break from the interior of Henry’s apartment complex- a different, and much needed, type of monotony. As much as it pained him to admit it… Maybe Murphy was right. “No tourists, no blazing temps. Just us and the wide, open lake.”
“Yeah… Yeah, it is nice, isn’t it?” Henry looked up from his camera, glancing at their surroundings. It had been a long time since he’d been back to Silent Hill. It was summer now, the place was operating as its usual tourist trap. It seemed almost impossible to think about the events that had him racing around both this town and its neighboring sisters. The water was so clean, despite the sheer amounts of blood he knew flowed through it. A grave. That’s what this was, for the town and everyone in it- past and present.
“So, what do you think? Here… No, maybe here. I think I’m starting to get the hand of this, maybe I could be a model. Wouldn’t that be cool?” Eileen pulled a crocheted robe from her shoulders, revealing the thin, black two-piece underneath it. Henry watched as she propped herself against a rock, using her elbows to push herself further up it. Her soft, milky white skin reflected the sun in a way that made every freckle only that more pronounced. He watched the highlights in her auburn hair glow a bright red whenever she tilted her head. Eileen was pretty in a way that made you know she didn’t believe it. “Now, this definitely screams vacation!”
“It screams alright, I can hear the souls of the damned shrieking under your elbows.” Henry didn’t usually joke, and at times doubted he even had the ability to, but he was comfortable around Eileen. When the two of them were truly alone, it was almost as if he were simply speaking to himself. A better, happier version of himself. He picked up his camera, peering through the viewfinder and searching for the perfect angle. Henry had been given the task of updating the town’s website, an attempt to draw in more vacationers- or at least convince the rest of the nearby towns that it wasn’t going to be pinned down by its terrifying ghost stories.
“Hey, don’t say that!” Eileen laughed and splashed water in his direction, changing up her poses in between snaps of the camera. She could have been a model, if she wanted to. Instead, she was dragged down a spiraling hellscape to her almost untimely demise. Henry wondered if she had meant what she told him. If she still had nightmares the way he had. “I can’t believe you can joke about things so easily, Henry. Aren’t you even the least bit scared? I mean, this rock could grow teeth and eat us both.”
A joke, this one was easily readable too. He smiled and shook his head, mousey brown hair falling from behind his ears and laying flat against his cheeks. He snapped another picture of Eileen and directed her towards a different spot in the lake. These things were easy to talk about, because they were the only source of substance in his life. As horrific and outlandish as they were, they were real. They happened to him. Something, somewhere, had noticed him and pulled him from the depths of his miserable life- taking a corpse and forcing it into becoming human once more. In a way… he was thankful, if not just traumatized past the point of showing fear.
“Geez, how far do you think this goes?” Eileen waded further into Lake Toluca, starting to tread water the moment her feet could no longer touch the ground. Henry watched as she floated in front of him, digging in his bag for a spare set of batteries. He opened the camera and replaced the old ones, tucking them away safely once he had finished. Henry took a step into the water, attempting to climb a rock formation, camera in hand, to get a better angle. He wasn’t sure how deep the lake went. Deep enough to hide a car. Deep enough to swallow James. Deep enough to…
The world had gone dark and Henry screamed.
Henry screamed like a wounded beast as dark, jagged tendrils of broken glass grasped his flesh and pulled it further and further from his bones. Blood pooled at his feet as fat, salty tears cascaded from his eyes. Chunks of hideously red meat and mounds of lumpy, yellow sludge fell from his gashes. His skin was ripped from his body at a painfully slow pace. It was as if he was being eaten alive, pulled apart and freshly peeled. He was to be consumed by whatever lay in wait behind his apartment door, the banging only increasing in volume as time went on.
Henry dropped to his knees, naked and bare as thick, knobby ropes slid out of his exposed abdomen. Their slippery, serpentine shapes lined the floor and spiraled around him, gripping his ankles and reaching towards his neck. The intestinal ropes mercilessly tightened and he gasped for air. However, all that entered his airways was deep, black blood that flooded his throat and stained his teeth. A number appeared before him, burned into the wall and glowing ominously as the sky flashed outside his window.
He turned to face the window, eyes and teeth falling to the floor as he stared at his reflected corpse in horror. And all at once, the walls caved in, crashing in every direction and folding in on themselves with loud, violent shrieks of their own. They bled too. Bleeding, crying, and begging as if they were humans- as if they were desperate for someone to notice them. Or maybe Henry was projecting his own feelings onto the drywall, as dead and empty as the lives it once housed here. This was it, he was dying. It was real this time, it was...
It was...
It was just a dream.
Soft and gentle hands pulled Henry to his feet and out of bed, checking his pulse and speaking to him in soothing whispers. He couldn’t recall what he had been doing prior to this, memories of earlier events came and went in blurs of colors, shapes, and sounds. He opened his mouth to speak, only to double over in nausea. It had all felt so real… the hooks, the blades, the glass. Henry put a hand to his stomach, half expecting his organs to be falling out of place and sighing with relief to find they weren’t. He was alive.
“Hen? Henry, can you hear me?” Eileen pressed her soft, gentle hands on the sides of his face. She was doing her best to get his attention, but Henry’s subconscious was fighting it. His mind yearned for the place where it all began, ripping itself to pieces behind his skull, while he tried to fight it. Silent Hill… South Ashfield… whatever it all was. He wasn’t going back. It wouldn’t get him. It wouldn’t win, not then and not now. It… “Henry, please-”
“Eileen?” Henry blinked as he came to, breathing shallowly and sitting down on the edge of his bed. The blue, button down shirt he wore was covered in sweat and something that looked like blood. He swallowed deeply, bringing his shaky gaze upwards to meet Eileen’s worried green eyes. There was a time when he’d been afraid to see her face again, eyes so big and wide he could drown in them. They had haunted his doorways, the stairs, the corners of his apartment…but, now? All he wanted to do was live in them, to take comfort in their dark centers and hide from the rest of the world- this one and the next.
“We were at the lake, Henry. You were taking pictures for work, do you remember that?” Eileen looked worried, her small body was shaking more than she seemed to want to let on. The way she held him was for both of their benefit, stabilizing the two of them in the only way Eileen knew how to. She was always a touch-centered woman, something that contrasted greatly with Henry’s need to be alone, but he wasn’t complaining. Not now. Not when he needed it. The man wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her chest where he sat. She wet, the smell of Lake Toluca filled his nostrils as he deeply inhaled.
As the smell of fish and algae hit his nose, Henry found it easier to remember, as if the lake itself had wanted him to. The very notion was insane, but there had been crazier things that happened in this room- his thoughts weren’t one of them. Wiping wet, stringy hair from his face, Henry stared at the floor as he slowly brought himself to speak again. “Yes… Yes, I remember now. The camera. I… You were in the Lake, I was taking pictures..”
“I tried to get a better angle and I…” He had slipped trying to balance himself and his camera, falling beneath the water of Lake Toluca. The water that took James Sunderland’s life and extinguished the burning souls of many before him. The world kept changing; flickering back and forth between past and present, between apartment and lake water. Unable to reach the surface, Henry’s lungs had felt as if they were going to burst. And then it happened. The hands. Millions of skeletal hands skyrocketing from the depths and gripping him at the waist, and propelling him towards the surface. “I was drowning, wasn’t I? Eileen, how… Why am I back here? Where is the camera?”
“Easy, cupcake. You took a lot of water in. I’m surprised you haven't turned into a goddamn fish yet. Christ, Hen. What were you thinking?” Henry’s heart felt as if it were going to burst, as he flung himself into the arms of the familiar voice beside him. He hated himself for being so attached, for suddenly feeling as if he were going to explode on the spot, every time he heard Murphy’s voice. As much as he wanted to push this man away, he couldn’t. Like the waters of Lake Toluca, the man was pulling him in and Henry wanted to drown in him.
“I ran into Murphy, when I was looking for help in town. He carried you back to the car and we took you home together. Henry, you were screaming in bed… I… You said such…” Eileen couldn’t bear to bring herself near the words of their shared past, shaking her head and fighting back tears. She covered her mouth behind her hands and deeply inhaled, sighing and placing one on the bandages around Henry’s head. “Promise me. Promise me, you’ll be more careful. Please, Henry. I care so much about you. We both do.”
Henry remained cradled in the tender prison of Murphy’s embrace, closing his blue eyes and remaining silent. Although he couldn’t bring himself to say it, Henry knew. He knew somewhere in his heart that he couldn’t go on living like this. Living without a care in the world as to what would happen to the people he left behind, should he ever pull the trigger. Should he ever hang the noose. His eyes opened and slowly found the wet, dripping camera on the counter, focusing hard on the lens.
For as long as he could remember, he had equated life with pictures. Every moment was a snapshot, a portrait, a landscape. A moment frozen in time, always static, never changing. But, the more he thought about… the more he was certain that life wasn’t the picture, but the act of taking it. Sometimes, you just need the right lens, the right exposure, and even the darkest moments,the foggiest memories, become a little clearer. He sighed and allowed the realization to fully sink in, feeling as if somewhere, somehow… a wound had been healed. Not on his body, but within. The soul of a child that spent their life hiding could rest again now, guided to safety once more by the fog from within the lake. For the first time in Henry's life, these four walls felt like more than just a prison, more than just a place to hide.
“Thank you. For bringing me home.”