Silvery clouds loomed overhead as Harry stood in the seemingly abandoned park with his daughter, Cheryl. Heather, his other, teenaged daughter, was there too, watching Cheryl. The little girl seemed anxious and a little sad, as if she were looking for something.

Cheryl turned to face him and said, "Sometimes... sometimes, you have to let go, Dad."

Then that thing swooped down and carried her away. The goat-faced thing with tattered wings and an exposed spine. They were gone before Harry or Heather could even protest.

He was aware that he was dreaming, but he couldn't wake up fast enough. He finally forced himself awake and sat in his bed as the adrenaline beating the walls of his veins washed away.

Perhaps he was paranoid, but he couldn't risk it. Tossing his blanket aside, he ran out of his bedroom and over to Heather's room.

He knocked gently on the door and asked, "Heather? Heather, are you all right?" as quietly as he could.

The teenaged girl rolled over in her bed and asked back, "Dad? Dad, what's wrong?"

"Oh, no, no, nothing's wrong," her father blurted out in relief. "Go back to sleep, honey."

Heather shook her head and lied back down on her bed.

Harry turned away from the door and briefly cradled his head in his hand before he decided to check out the rest of the apartment just in case. He opened the dresser and unlocked the metal box where he kept his handgun. Then, he went from room to room to see if anything was awry.

Everything was normal. He checked the locks on the doors and windows before sitting down on his chair in front of the television in an attempt to relax.

He heaved a sigh and rested his elbows on his lap. Lately, he had been having some bad nightmares. They were mostly about his primal fear: losing his daughter, especially to that place. The nightmares were not without some of the symbols of his time spent there, specifically, the monsters. They left him shaken.

He would also dream about that girl who sacrificed her life to bring Heather into being. She was so sad and distraught in the dreams; she seemed to stare hungrily at him from behind a barb wire fence in a rusty, metallic room. There was also something threatening about her gaze, like she was judging him and how he was raising Heather from a world beyond.

He blankly sat in the chair for a while, before realizing that he still had his handgun resting on his lap. He returned to his bedroom and put it back in its place, hoping that he wouldn't have to use it anytime soon.

As he laid in his bed, he wondered if he shouldn't tell Heather about his nightmares. But he was determined to protect her from Silent Hill no matter what. He suspected that the cursed town would try to get its hooks into her in any way that it possibly could, and drag her away from him. He just couldn't let that happen. Even if the nightmares bothered him more than anything else, and she could sense his discontent.

After all, he'd told her he was the strongest man in the world.

AN: I'm back! Well, at least for this fic.

Wow, this site has changed a lot since the last time I've visited. That's kind of cool.

This story came about from a dream. I myself have been having nightmares lately, and for some reason, I thought that a good Harry Mason Silent Hill fic could be written from that kind of experience. Harry's nightmare here is taken from a nightmare I had years ago about my cat.

Trivia: The original title for this fic was Harry's Nightmare. I decided upon Silent Inquisition when I was trying to describe Harry's other dreams. :)