Part 29: "Sleeping Beauty"

Chapter 1 "Sleeping Beauty"

"Hello...hello!?"
The phone had suddenly gone dead.
She tried to call back right away; however, the call would not go through.


"Perfect...I wonder what is going on."

Her co-worker Sally saw Cybil's flushed face, and could not
help making a joke.
"It's because you are so hostile.
I bet they just don't want to talk to you anymore."

"Hostile?
Perhaps, after all I do always say what's on my mind."
Saying this, Cybil smiled.

The peaceful town of Brahms.
The population is small, and perhaps for this reason there has not been an
incident worth calling an incident for several years.
As for the officers on the night shift, they generally pass the time
by staring at newspaper clippings or chatting with colleagues at
other departments.

Even now, with nothing notable appearing in the local news,
Cybil was just having a meaningless conversation about this and that
with a friend in the Silent Hill police department.

But then suddenly, the line had gone dead.

And they had not called back.

"...The call won't go through."

"Maybe this is happening because someone is trying to tell you not to waste
all your time chatting? How about settling down and taking your feet off
the desk?"

Cybil does not care for Sally's big sister-like attitude.


Cybil calls the Silent Hill police station one more time.
"Odd," Cybil thought.
It seems as if this might be the result of the telephone lines
having been severed or something.


Cybil leaps from her chair, causing it to spin, reaches for the helmet
on top of a locker, and with it in hand prepares to leave the room.

"Wait! Just where do you think you are going at this hour?"

Sally has a look of "you have got to be kidding" on her face, and then
she absentmindedly allows the coffee cup she was holding in her right hand
to fall to the floor.

"Ahhhh! Hot!"

"You can take care of that yourself."
Cybil mumbles this in her head, and in the next moment ran out of the room.

Cybil straddles the motorcycle in the garage, inserts the key, and revs the
engine.
The sound of the exhaust resonates in the small space.
She pulls out onto the road, and increases her speed as she is bathed
from head to toe in the uncomfortably warm wind.


Starlight falls upon her from the clear starlit sky.
It doesn't look like the weather could have caused the problem with the
phone lines.

Cybil tightly holds onto the handlebars and continues to increase her speed.
At this hour there should not be any other cars heading to Silent Hill.
The road has been lit in front and behind only by streetlamps since she
reached this mountain road, and there is no sign of anyone in the area.


However, after a while she was able to see the tail lights of a vehicle
swaying far off in the darkness in front of her.
There is a cliff on one side of the road.
Whether they realize that or not, the vehicle is heading toward the same
destination as Cybil at high speed.

"Normally I would pull this guy over."

Cybil mutters this, increases her speed, and catches up with the four-wheel
drive jeep in no time.

As she passes it, Cybil glances inside the jeep for a moment, quickly smiles,
and then blasts in front of it.
The jeep quickly becomes smaller and smaller in the side mirrors of her
motorcycle.


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

And then...
She started to notice that she could not keep her eyes focused.
"Sleepiness?
No, I have been on the night shift for a while, and should have gotten
plenty of sleep this afternoon."

Her body becomes one with the motorcycle, and it slices through the
darkness.
"Maybe it was foolish to wear short sleeves..."
Although it was rather warm when Cybil left the station, now
her skin feels so cold that it is like the cold is cutting into her.

Her eyelids are heavy. Her mouth has become dry.
"What's wrong with me," she lightly shakes her head left and right.
Against her will, her right hand turns the grip that will cause her to
accelerate. The needle is buried, and madly shakes back and forth.
Cybil then stared straight forward.


But it was already too late.
In the middle of the road a girl stood, with her arms raised to
shield her from the light.



Cybil slammed on the brakes.
The last thing she saw was the rapidly approaching rock wall on the side of
the road...

Hita...
Hita... (Onomatopoeia for the feeling of cold)

Something cold is touching Cybil's cheek.
Cybil slowly opened her eyes.

"Where am I..."
She is not yet able to stand up.
She does not seem to be hurt; however, her body will not do as she commands.
Nevertheless, she is fully conscious.

Large snowflakes are falling all over her body.
She is lying face down in the middle of a wide street.
"I wonder just how long I have been here like this?"

After waiting for the nerves throughout her body to return to normal Cybil
lumbered to her feet.
Her body was sluggish, like when she wakes up, and she was unable to think
straight.


"Silent Hill"
That is what is written on the sign on the sidewalk.
In addition to the out of season snow the area is enveloped in thick fog,
which generally makes her destination look differently than it normally would.
The motorcycle that she came here on was also nowhere to be found.


With nothing else to do, she decided to rest in the cafe facing the street.

The inside of the cafe is dead silent.
She does not see any customers or employees.
This destroys her hopes of getting something warm to drink, so she lets out a
sigh.

"First I must get in contact with the other officers back in Brahms."
Cybil picks up the receiver from the phone on the corner of the counter, but
not a single sound can be heard from the speaker.


It seems like somehow the heavy snowfall, which could be called abnormal
weather, has damaged the communication systems.

There is no doubt that this is the reason why the call got cut off at the
(Brahms) station.

Cybil looks around the inside of the cafe.

"Ah..."

She gasps without thinking about it.


She can see a man lying down on one of the long bench seats lined up along
the windows.
"A customer? No, this place isn't open."
She moves near him and looks down at his sleeping face.
His face is twisting in agony, as if he is having a frightening dream.

Cybil hesitates.

A ) She waits for the man to wake up.

B ) She wakes the man up.