Silent Hill 2 : Prologue
The beginning of my Silent Hill 2 novelization, written in class. I did a lot of double-checking and research on the town itself, so yeah.




Silent Hill was a typical, quiet New England town situated in southern Maine. However, as an artist painting the oceans across the land had left small splatters behind such as the Great Salt Lake or the many lakes of Michigan, so did Silent Hill have its own -- a small, freshwater lake they had named Lake Toluca.

With a rich indeginous history, the small town hadn't always been such -- instead, Native Americans in the area had treated the land that had now become a thriving tourist attraction as a sacred place, rarely tread upon. They named the area "The Place of Sacred Spirits", a resting place not only for their dead ancestors, but also for the spirits they believed lived in the scenery around them. However, it was not the residents of Silent Hill that took the land from the natives, rather there was a group of settlers that came before them. There are no records of those that lived in the area before, and the name they gave the town is also unknown. The only thing that is certain is that there was a group before, and that they, for reasons unknown, abandoned the town.

Later, Silent Hill became a prison town, holding many Civil War captives in an extensive prison built underground, beside the lake. Mercy was a foreign word to the infamous executioners known for their cruel tactics, and criminals were hung for every slight crime. However, prisoners were granted one final freedom -- the freedom to choose their method of execution.The choices? Skewering or strangulation.

Years later, immigrants adopted the town, and the diseases they brought with them swept through it, affecting both the new residents, and the few who had remained since the days that the prison had been abandoned. Two hospitals were built to handle the overflow of patients. First Alchemilla, then Brookhaven. While Alchemilla was built in Old Silent Hill, where the town had first begun to grow, Brookhaven, a bit more advanced and much larger hospital, was located across the vast lake in the newer section of town. Under the murky waters of the lake that separated the two hospitals, those that fell victim of the diseases' terrible curse were dumped, in an effort to keep the virus from spreading to the living. No longer needed as the disease began to break off, Brookhaven became a mental hospital, keeping the unstable from the outside world.

After such horrific events, the town's citizens began to seek ways to deal with the tragedy, and turned to faith for their reason to continue the struggle for life. The people found God, though their beliefs were slightly skewed, and began to move farther and farther away from the Christian base they had been birthed from. They soon discovered another advantage to the lake -- small, white flowers that grew in hordes around the banks. The blossoms produced seeds from which a powerfully addictive hallucinogen could be manufactured -- a drug the cult named White Claudia. Tightly tied in to the religion, the small group began to use the drug in their ceremonies, and the members of the town became hooked.

Then, as a sudden new group of people came to settle within the town, the old citizens hushed up about the religion, in fear of being murderously persecuted by the Christians, as one such member was, a woman named Jennifer, who later became a patron saint. A small chapel was even built for the newcomers, and many of the old began to attend in a fantastic attempt to cover-up. Soon the numbers of the cult were lessening and lessening, and the remaining had no where to turn.

This dark side of Silent Hill was further and further ignored, especially as tourism began to rise. A large, fancy hotel was built on the shore, named the Lakeview Hotel, as well as many smaller inns and motels to cater to the tourists' needs. The violent past of the prison was also covered up, and pamplets and travel brochures strived to paint a beautiful picture of Silent Hill -- a gorgeous, quaint, quiet little town, the perfect vacation spot, the perfect place to live, the perfect place to stay -- forever.

Silent Hill was paradise.

* * * *

James and Mary Sunderland were the ideal couple: happily married, old high school sweethearts who had stayed faithful with each other since the day they had met. Mary had seen the town in pictures and brochures, and had begged her husband to take her there. They had gone, staying in room 312 of the Lakeview Hotel. However, Mary began to get sick during their stay, and the trip had to be ended earlier than planned. Mary asked James to promise to take her again someday, and he agreed, comforting his wife in her illness.

But Mary was hospitalized, and her condition was not improving. When James recieved the news that his wife's condition was terminal and that she would not survive, the days began to feel like weeks, years, months all rolled into one. The guilt that James could not keep his promise consumed him, Mary's hospitalization angered him, and then her sudden death pulled him into a whirlpool of severe grief and loneliness.

Three long years had passed, alcohol bottles littered the floor, the house seemed to be falling apart, and the bills were piling up. The phone and doorbell would ring endlessly, anxiously, worriedly, but James would not answer.

Everything continued hopelessly, until one day, when James received a fateful letter that changed his life.

Received may not be the correct word. James was puzzled by the lack of postage on the envelope, as well as the fact that he couldn't remember the last time he had made that journey between the front door and the mailbox.

And yet there it was... urging him, begging him...

And so he showered. And shaved, and changed his clothes. The car keys almost seemed to be collecting dust as he picked them up off the hook by the door. Getting in the car, it felt to him as if he had nearly forgotten how to drive as he pulled away from the house, only carrying two things -- the mysterious letter, and the picture of Mary... taken in Silent Hill, days before she fell so uncontrollably ill.

He was on his way to Silent Hill.

The place he had promised to take her back to someday.