Epilogue: Leaving the Town

He is outside the hotel now. It has transformed back to its original, abandoned state and, if he had any inclination to look inside, he would find that it looks much as it did before he left room 312. He goes to one of the benches overlooking the lake and sits down. The mist is no longer grey, but white, indicating to him that somewhere overhead, the sun has broken through the clouds and, he hopes, will begin to burn off the gloom that has surrounded him since his arrival. It has already begun to thin somewhat and he can see the dock and the streetlight from where he is.

His wounds have healed, but he can feel soreness from all his physical activities begin to creep into his muscles, and the soles of his feet are raw. Though he did sit in the chair next to Mary's bed, his mind was on other things then, and only now does he have the opportunity to truly appreciate the rest he is given. He takes the envelope out and looks at it. Mary has written his name on it, and apart from missing the address and all marks left by the postal delivery service, it appears identical to the one he received from the town three days ago. He has a brief feeling of coming full circle. His trip to Silent Hill started with an envelope like this, and now it ends with another such envelope. He opens it and takes the letter out. It too, resembles the letter from the town, though this one is longer and obviously complete.

In my restless dreams,

I see that town.

Silent Hill.

You'd promised you'd take me

there again someday.

But you never did.

Well, I'm alone there now…

In our "special place"

Waiting for you…

Waiting for you to

come to see me.

But you never do.

And so I wait, wrapped in my

cocoon of pain and loneliness.

I know I've done a terrible

thing to you. Something you'll

never forgive me for.

I wish I could change

that, but I can't.

I feel so pathetic and ugly

laying here, waiting for you...

Every day I stare up at the cracks

in the ceiling and all I can think

about is how unfair it all is...

The doctor came today.

He told me I could go

home for a short stay.

It's not that I'm getting better.

It's just that this may be

my last chance...

I think you know what I mean...

Even so, I'm glad to be

coming home.

But I'm afraid James.

I'm afraid you don't really

want me to come home.

Whenever you come see me,

I can tell how hard it is on you...

I don't know if you

hate me or pity me...

Or maybe I just disgust you...

I'm sorry about that.

When I first learned that

I was going to die, I just

didn't want to accept it.

I was so angry all the time and I

struck out at everyone I loved most.

Especially you, James.

That's why I understand

if you do hate me.

But I want you to

know this, James.

I'll always love you.

Even though our life together had

to end like this, I still wouldn't

trade it for the world. We had

some wonderful years together.

Well, I don't want this letter to go

on too long so I'll say goodbye.

I told the nurse to give

this to you after I'm gone.

That means that as you read this,

I'm already dead.

I can't tell you to remember me,

but I can't bear for you to

forget me.

These last few years since I

became ill...I'm so sorry for

what I did to you, did to us...

You've given me so much and

I haven't been able to return

a single thing.

That's why I want you to live

for yourself now.

Do what's best for you, James.

James...

You made me happy.

Love forever,

Mary

The letter is a bittersweet comfort. Had Mary died of the disease, it might be of more solace, an apology and expression of gratitude from beyond the grave. But, being her murderer, only the latter holds true for James. It is some consolation to know that, apart from the one exception, all his efforts in their last years together did not go unappreciated. And the closing paragraphs will help him remember to look to the future. But the first part of the letter is a painful reminder of that one exception and it will stay with him until the end of his days. But that is as it should be. Silent Hill does not serve to be a fix-all for Their lives.

When his eyes touch the last word, both he and the mist begin to fade away. I have seen this many times before and I know what is happening. He himself is not disappearing, he still sits on the bench, probably enjoying the view the sun now offers. But he is no longer one of the Damned. He is an outsider now and, like Laura, under the protection of Metatron. I have no ability to detect his presence and he will witness the town as it stands now in the real world, untouched by me.

I do, however, see James Sunderland one last time. He has chosen to return to the rest stop the same way he came in, through the forest. Another Lost Soul answering the Call has made his way to the graveyard. The man hears voices approaching and as the fog begins to dissipate around the outsiders, he conceals himself behind one of the larger tombstones. He hears the gates opening and he peers cautiously around, keeping his head low to avoid discovery.

The voices belong to James and Laura. They walk together, though Laura occasionally skips ahead when she finds something of interest on one of the gravestones. She says something to James that makes him smile and he says something back that makes her giggle. I do not know what brought about their reconciliation, but I suspect Laura and James are destined for greater things and Mary must have given Laura some insight into this. They now make for a familiar pairing and indeed, the man assumes that they are father and daughter.

The soul pulls his head back behind the tombstone as they pass near him. He sits in silence and listens to their conversation.

"…think I really can?" Laura is in the middle of a question.

"Well, that's up to the adoption agency. But I think Mary would've liked that, and I would too." James answers.

"How long will it take?"

"I don't know. I don't think I can do much about it until after the funeral."

The man can tell from the sound of their footsteps in the grass that they have passed him, and he edges his head around the stone to look at them again. Their backs are to him and, unknown to all, they are near the spot where James first saw Angela appear in the mist.

Laura is once again walking alongside James. "It's okay James." She takes his hand. "You can take as much time as you need." She gives it a reassuring squeeze with a serious expression on her face. But it only lasts for a second and then she smiles impishly and skips ahead to the exit gate.

"Hmm." He says, with a trace of a smile.

"What?" She asks, turning to face him.

"Nothing," he answers as he opens the gate.

"What?" She says again, not believing him.

"It's nothing, I swear." But he still cannot quite remove a smirk from his face and she eyes him suspiciously as he steps through the open gates. "So," He starts again, trying to playfully change the subject, "are you sure that's what Mary actually said about the acacias?"

Laura decides to play along. "Yep, that's what she said." She giggles and follows him through the gate.

He is still smirking when he pulls the gates shut behind him, "Well look, here's what really happened. I was in the car and…" but his voice is lost as the two of them travel up the dirt path into the forest. The man in the cemetery creeps over to the gate and cautiously watches them as they make their trek back to the rest stop.

This is the last I will see of James. Of his future, I know little, though Metatron is very good at tying up loose ends and speculation is not too difficult. In the immediate future he will drive to the nearest law enforcement agency with Laura. He could take her straight back home, but he wants to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Laura will likely have to stay there while he drives back to his own house. There he will stow the letter away someplace safe. Then a shower followed by sleep. By this time tomorrow, the horrors of this town will seem like just another bad dream. He will suffer no legal repercussions for his actions. Laura will never say anything and, now that her body has been embalmed, no coroner will be able to determine with any certainty that it was not the disease that had killed Mary. His time in Silent Hill is considered punishment enough for the murder.

As I have said before however, the town is not a fix-all, and while he will not have the murder weighing on his conscience, he still must deal with the death of his wife. There is a funeral to attend, and friends and family to talk to. Such a dramatic change in one's life is not easy to deal with. The funeral will not recall the sickly, temperamental Mary he knew from the last three years, but rather the Mary he knew before then. The serene, yet passionate woman he met and fell in love with. It will remind him one last time that she is gone forever. And that will be hard to take, even now. I can see him choking up at the eulogy, and one of Mary's friends taking over for him. There will be more paperwork too. Mary had amended her will before she started treatments and he had avoided talking with the lawyers about that, in part because he had been busy enough with the insurance companies and in part because, at the time, it represented a possibility he was not ready to acknowledge. And finally, once all of Mary's affairs have been taken care of and his bereavement leave ends, he will come home from his first day of work, sit down on the couch in the living room, look down at the floor and ask himself, "Now what?" Perhaps then, he will pursue adopting Laura. A recent widower is not an ideal adoptive parent, however as children grow older they become more difficult to place and it is possible, given Laura's new amiability with James, that an exception might be made. Regardless of what he chooses however, he will find some meaning in his life because the one thing I do know about his future is that, whatever else he may do, nothing will be so horrendous that the town will see fit to Call him again.

In truth, I do not care what happens to James and Laura outside of the town just as I did not care what happened to Cybil or Harry or anyone else that has escaped Silent Hill because this story has never been about Harry or Cybil or James or Eddie or Angela or any other of Them. It is about Me.

I tell the story of James because it was with him that I first truly acknowledged my punishment. Until he came to the town, I had been deluding myself. I had believed that I was content with my place in Silent Hill. I thought of myself as the unwillingly appointed jailer for the Damned. But James was the first time I was forced to admit that it was not so. Others have found Redemption before, but it was James who frustrated me. Here was a man so blinded by grief and guilt that he went into total denial over his role in his wife's death. He should have been so easy. I threw monsters at him. Spitters, mannequins, nurses, hangers, Pyramid Head, and even things that had never been intended for him, such as Angela's father, yet he defeated them all, though I suppose one could expect that from a killer. Then there were the less tangible threats, designed to drive him mad. The hospital, the Labyrinth, the videotape, and, of course, Maria. Maria. I had put so much effort into her. It was not easy crafting a near duplicate of Mary, but I considered her my crowning achievement. After all, she managed to get him to fall in love with her in the span of less than twelve hours and that was no small accomplishment. Her death nearly killed him in the hospital. Somehow though, James always maintained a shred of rationality throughout his stay in the town and that was his ultimate savior. To be sure, Laura's presence played no small part in his survival. Her interventions saved him in the hospital and in the hotel, but if it was only of her doing and nothing of his, then the Labyrinth would surely have claimed him. But it did not. He survived and moved on. He was teetering on the brink of madness for so long and, though I tried so very hard, I could not push him over. To have been bested by one such as him has led me to this awful realization.

I share a kinship with the Damned. It is because I am one of Them, the very first One to be precise. Their corpses litter this town and I realize now that I am just another one, lying in the gutters. I do not mean this in the literal sense of course. Corpses are, by definition, dead, and I am not dead because there is no bitterness in death. Only silence and rest. A corpse, however, is also the refuse left behind by a soul that has departed into the next world. While they could once move, speak, and live, they are now nothing more than lumps of flesh and bone that can do nothing but lie there and rot. They are hollow shells, mere shadows of their former selves. And that is what I am. A mere shadow of the mighty god that walked the earth in Silent Hill. He was the first One to come to Silent Hill in search of something more than what he had. But even with all his power, he could not survive in the town. And now I am his corpse. Beaten, bloody and broken, residing here for eternity, just like those rotting husks in the streets and buildings. And it is that thought that hurts more than anything else that could have been done to me.

I could ruminate more on the significance of James's escape and this twisted "mercy" that was given to me, but he and Laura are now out of sight of the man in the cemetery and I feel Metatron slowly drawing my thoughts away from the outsiders. Besides, it does me no good to dwell on such morose things. I have other duties, which I do my best to enjoy. Angela still wanders the town and it is almost time for her to find another knife. And of course, here in the cemetery is this new soul, I have such hopes for him. At my bidding, the woods are again enshrouded by fog. The man is puzzled; the outsiders are an incongruity to him. But I use it to my advantage. If father and daughter can come away from the town smiling and unscathed, the thought fills his head, then there must be little to fear from a venture into the town.

And so it begins again...

Many Lost Souls enter Silent Hill, seeking answers to Their troubles. Some of Them find the Path to Redemption, but when finally faced with the truth, They choose to deny it and instead embrace Their crimes. To Them, the town becomes a place of fantasies fulfilled. But They quickly forget that violence begets violence and it is not long before one of Their fantasies fights back and claims Their miserable life. Such a one was Eddie Dombrowski. And such a one am I.

Other Lost Souls come to Silent Hill and roam the town, hoping to solve the questions that the Call brings with it. Sometimes They find them, sometimes not. What They all have in common is a refusal to pay the price Redemption demands. So They are left to wander the town until time, rather than the town, grays Their hair, wrinkles Their skin, and withers Them away into dust and bone. Such a one was Angela Orosco. And such a one am I.

Finally, there are a few of Them who come to Silent Hill to find answers to what haunts Their dreams at night. They manage to fight through the horrors, find the answers, and, while facing Their own fears, offer the Sacrifice, resist the Temptation and make amends for Their misdeeds. To Them, the town grants Redemption and They are once again free to roam the earth and eat, shit, and die.

Such a one was James Sunderland.

And I am bitter.

END