Silent Hill: Carnality / Chapter One

"take them..."

the words fell from his mouth like many pebbles from an empty basket. he took a series of sharp breaths, barely aware of the blood soaking the collar of his robes. he could hear urgent yet muffled voices all around him as reality started to slip from him, leaving behind a landslide of unreasonable and fleeting thoughts.  Harry's eyes ( her eyes)  were the last thing he saw.



When he finally became aware of himself again he felt the damp of morning on his cheeks, and the cold ground below him. he didn't immediately move. Severus instead lay there with his eyes closed, knowing that when he opened them he would be laying there where Nagini had left him. he wasn't surprised. in fact, he preferred it this way. It wasn't in his nature to rely upon the pity of others. that part of him had died out long ago. he lay there several moments longer simply enjoying the defining silence. he had done his part, and that quiet must have meant that the war was well over now. he wan't needed. he took in a deep breath, bracing himself for the pain that was surly about to come, but, to his surprise, the air came in smoothly, and left the same way. tenderly he turned his head and brought a hand to his neck to investigate. the bite was gone. all at once his eyes shot open and his body came to life. he sat up, looking around wildly. this wasn't in the shrieking shack at all! in fact, he had been laying on his back in the middle of a cross section, while a street lamp stuck on yellow blinked on and off just overhead.

Severus shakily got to his feet and peered around to get a better idea of where he was at, but unfortunately it was too foggy to see much of anything. he staggered in a circle, as he was still too shaky to hold himself up proper, and looked for anything or any one, but the road just seemed to go on forever in all four directions. he stood there a moment, dumbfounded, his fingers twitching at his side when suddenly something brushed against his forehead. slowly he looked up at the sky which was white and thick with low hanging clouds.


it was... snowing...

he blinked watching it fall and land on the tip of his nose.

it was hot...

puzzled, he reached up to brush it off with his fingertips and examined his hand which was now smudged with a dark grey powder.

this wasn't snow at all.

it was ash.

ash was falling from the sky.

what was this place?

slowly he reached into his pocket, wrapped cold fingers around his wand, and began to walk forward. what once had be a pleasant lack of sound was now an unnerving engulfing ambient that seemed to swallow even the tapping of his footsteps from beneath him.

finally, after walking for what had seemed to be hours in the mist, a silver multi-slotted apartment mailbox with a children's bicycle left leaning against it came into view.

" about time I saw something." he breathed.

as he came up on it he started to feel a pit forming at the bottom of his ribs, and twisting his intestines into knots. he knew this bike. he had seen it before. many times. eyes wide he let his hands fall wandless from his pocket to touch the dirty robin egg blue frame. he trailed clammy fingers all the way from the seat to the handlebars where a pink basket sat nestled between two decaying white pompoms, and gingerly cupped the old white-yellow handle in his palm.  

" do you like it?"

Lily was looking right at him her jade eyes glittering with anticipation.

"it's a bicycle, right?"

"oh, don't tell me that you've never ridden a bike before, Sev."

Severus shook that thought away and flipped the lid on the basket. he wasn't really expecting to find anything, so he was surprised to see a small bit of folded parchment sitting comfortably at the bottom. feeling as though air was being sucked out of his chest he reached for the note and delicately proceeded to unfold it.


Sev,

Do you remember how much fun we use to have?
It felt like our entire lives could be summer until September
came and I had to go off to school again. do you remember that one day that you walked me to school and waited all day for me?
It feels like it's been an eternity since then.
hopefully class will let out soon.

Always and forever,

Lily


he flipped the note over front to back, and read it several times even mouthing the words, before re-folding it and placing it neatly into the pocket opposite his wand.

" it's Lily's handwriting... it's really her's..."

stumbling backwards over his boots a bit he ran his fingers through his hair, temporarily slicking it back before gravity got the best of it.

" ... but... how...?"

He looked around wildly, as though trying to physically take grasp of the scene around him.

" she can't have... she can't be... which must mean... "

he came to a halt, and reached up to feel his neck. his shirt was still damp with the blood that had been spilled during the snake bite.

" she's still dead... I'm..."

suddenly there was a clatter and clang to his left, and the bike was completely tossed over. pieces of wood flew past his face in large shards as he scrambled to get out of the way. Severus whipped out his wand and pointed it in the direction of destruction, but he was nearly knocked to the ground by a, underfoot piece of mailbox. hurriedly, he shuffled back into position just in time to catch a glimpse of his offender.
scurrying across the ground toward him was something that could have escaped from one of his worst nightmares. it tapped the ground as its eight rotted legs fallowed one after another matching his movements. it's face, turned wrong ways up, wore an expression of absolute agony and hatred as it tracked him, it's eyes lidless and blank. it's body was that of a man's emaciated torso, a hard curved spine jutting out of his pelvis like a scorpion's tail where his genitals might have been. Severus had never seen anything like it.

wetting his lips he pointed his wand at the creature, just avaiding it's hooked tail as it came down splitting the pavement infront of him.

"Avada Kedavra." He said, his voice firm and evan, but nothing happend.

"Avada Kedavra!" He tried again, but the result was the same.

the creature, seemingly aware of his attempts to thwart it, swung again, this time catching Severus off gaurd and slicing the side of his leg clean open.

"Fuck!" Severus howled, "What the fuck?! Why won't it work?"

he tried again, this time running in the opposite direction, but the creature was fast, making scraping and clicking sounds in it's pursuit to hunt him down.

Finally Severus shoved his wand into his pocket, picked up the nearest thing to him ( a garden hoe) and brought it down repeatedly over the monster's abdomen until he saw red, and the beast stopped thrashing. painting he threw the hoe down at his feet, and ripped his wand from his pocket.

"what the HELL was that?! What the FUCK?!"

gingerly he sunk to the ground to inspect his leg, which was flayed open like a piece of prime steak, a steady stream of blood soaking his pant leg.

"fuck... "

slowly he pointed his wand at his leg, and doubtfully tried a healing spell. when his wand, again, failed to produce any magic he sighed out loud and tore his pants to make a makeshift bandage.

everything was silent as he sat there, listening for any other movement. when he was sure that he was once again alone he hoisted himself to his feet, stepping lightly at first, and then picked the hoe back up. he wasn't sure where he was, or how in the world he had gotten there, but he wasn't about to let the bastard responsible get away with it. again, he looked around for any clue to his location, and this time he found it. sticking out of one of the slots of the now half mutilated mailbox was a long folded piece of paper. with a less than graceful motion he bent down with one hand and extracted it, long fingers trembling.

less then delicately, this time, he unwrapped it and scoured over it's continence.
it was a map. a map of a place that he had never heard of before. a town called Silent Hill.

the paper it's self was more or less rather grubby and a bit damp, but the writing was still legible. walking around in a large square ( more or less) he was able to determine that he was on Acadia road which turned in to Koontz street. over in the far corner a building labeled Midwitch Elementary School was circled in red with the note "meet you there" scrawled next to it in Lily's unmistakable handwriting.

he sighed out loud.

in order to get there from where he was at he would have to walk all the way up to Crichton street, hang a left at the bridge, walk all the way down Blotch, and take another left on Midwitch street... but he would do anything for Lily...