Part 15: "Lisa"

Harry knowing his shooting wasn't the best approached carefully...

Chapter 12 "Lisa"




Once the woman realized that I was a human she ran towards me and threw
her arms around me like a child would.


"Finally. Someone else who's OK......."

After mumbling those words in a tearful voice she held me more tightly.

"Who are you?"

"My name's Lisa Garland. What's yours?"

"Harry Mason."

After we exchanged our simple introductions, I sat in a chair and she sat
on the bed so that we were facing each other.
The woman that called herself Lisa had blond hair and an intelligent
look to her.

Maybe she might know something.

At the moment I was about to speak the woman began talking.

"Harry, tell me what's happening here.
Where is everybody?
I must have gotten knocked out.
When I came to, everyone was gone."
Her voice did not feel like it was coming from her body, and was
accompanied by a strange reverberation.

"It's awful..."

"So you don't know anything either. Great. I just don't get it.
It's like this is all some kind of bad dream."

As I select my words, I have a feeling that even my own words are
not coming from my body.

"Yeah. A living nightmare."

"Let me ask you, have you seen a little girl around here?
Short, black hair. Seven years old."

I mutter "Cheryl" in a voice that Lisa would not hear.

"A seven-year-old girl?
What, she's your daughter?"

"Yes."

"A seven-year-old girl... I can't say that I have. I was unconscious
all this time. I'm sorry."

"Ah, that's alright."

That was just as I expected, but I continue asking questions without showing
my disappointment.

"Do you know anything about all that weird stuff in the basement?"

"No. Why?
Is there something down there?"

"You don't know?"

"Don't you work here?"

"We're under strict orders never to enter the basement storeroom."

After changing the subject to the hospital basement I began to notice that
my thoughts were becoming muddy...

"So I really don't know.
What did you say was down there?"

"Well, it's..." I try as hard as I can to remember the pitiful sight
of that room in the basement.
However, in trying to trace my memory back to then that ringing, which had
been gone for a while, returned to my ears. A sound like the bells of that
church runs throughout my head.

"Nmmh... Damn! My head..."

"What's wrong? Harry...?"
"Harry, let me help you. Harry..."

..................


After a while I notice that my body is freezing cold.
It is as if I am dead.
But I am clearly conscious.
Where is Lisa? I was definitely talking to her in this examination room.

I no longer feel the evil presence that I felt in this room, no in this entire
hospital up until just before.
From the window soft light is pouring into the room.

"Was I dreaming?"
As I slowly get up I hear the sound of a door opening.
I instantly look toward the source of the sound.
The creepy woman I met at the church was standing there with an
expressionless look on her face.


"You were too late."
"It's you..."

"Yes. Dahlia Gillespie"

"Tell me everything you know.
What's going on?"

"Darkness."
She responded before I was even done speaking.

"The town is being devoured by darkness."
The woman continues while maintaining a devout look.

"Strength must overcome petty desire.
Childish sleep talk.
I knew this day would come."

"What are you talking about?
I don't understand a word of this."

"Believe the evidence of your eyes."
So I should believe the evidence of my eyes...
I understand.
I am in a situation in which I can only believe what I have seen with my
own eyes.

"The other church in this town.
That is your destination.
This is beyond my abilities.
Only you can stop it now.
Have you not seen the crest marked on the ground all over town?"

"So that's what I saw in the schoolyard.
What does it mean?"

"It is the mark of Samael...
Don't let it be completed."

"Hey! wait!"

Dahlia Gillespie...
She places an oddly shaped key on an examination table with a tap,
spins around, heads to the door, and then opens it.
I open the door that she closed and roll out into the hospital corridor.
But she is nowhere to be seen.

The other church.
But if I exclude the church I already visited I do not see anything that looks
like a church on the map.
I slowly open the phone book attached to the payphone in the corridor.

In there a mark is present to guide me.

It is next to the phone number for an antique shop in the northeast area
of the shopping district.


The door to the antique shop is ominously open.

The open door connects to a staircase leading down to the basement. At the
end of the stairs there is another door.
I insert the key I was carrying and slowly turn it.


The inside of the shop is small.
I take a look around using my flashlight and find that the place is
such a mess that it looks almost as if it has been ransacked by a thief.
Is something here? At first glance I don't think that there is anything here
that concerns me.

However, I did not miss that which was hidden behind a shelf.
I move the shelf step by step and an eerie passage leading into darkness
appears.

"What's this?"

"Harry!"

I look back toward the familiar voice.


"Cybil?"
Cybil, who should have left for the next town over to call for backup, was
there.

"I'm glad you're OK.
I shouldn't have left you.
Things are worse than I thought.
It's nuts!"

"What are you doing here?
I thought you left town."

"I saw you go in here, so I followed you.
I couldn't get out.
All the roads out of town are blocked.
Cars have completely stopped running.
The phones and radios are still out, too."

"What about my daughter?
Did you see her?"

"I did see a girl."

My heart began to beat faster.

"Was it Cheryl?"

"I only caught a glimpse of her through the fog.
I went after her, but she vanished.
I don't know about your daughter, but..."

"And you just let her go!?
Where was it?"

"On Bachman Road.
She was heading towards the lake.
Now don't get excited. It wasn't like she ran off exactly.
There was no place for her to go.
The road has been obliterated."

"What!?
So then Cheryl..."

"It was like she was walking on thin air."

An uncomfortable silence occurs between the two of us.

"What about you? Anything?"

"Yeah...
I met this bizarre woman.
Her name's Dahlia Gillespie.
Do you know her?"

"Dahlia Gillespie. No.
And?"

"She said something about the town being devoured by darkness.
Gibberish like that.
Any idea what it means?"

"Darkness devouring the town?
Must be on drugs.
They sell 'em to tourists.
The force still can't figure out who's behind it.
None of our leads have panned out, and the investigation is stalled."

Drugs?
Cybil's response was far from what I had imagined, so I shake my head back
and forth.

"What could drug trafficking have to do with all this?"

"I really don't know.
But maybe that's the darkness she was talking about. That's all I
can think of."

Cybil looked slightly irritated and took a long breath. Then she shifted her
gaze to the passage behind the shelf.


"What's this?"

"Just discovered it."

"Maybe there's something back there.
Let's have a look."

"Cybil..."

A ) I will go first.


B ) I will let Cybil go first.