Silent Loud von Oogie-Boogie (Viel Loud in Silent Hill...) ================================================================================ Kapitel 3: The Cemetery ----------------------- The words `Royal Woods Cemetery´ greeted the teenager over the entrance on a stone arch held by two plain looking pillars. This was the entrance to the graveyard. Leni hadn’t visited this place very often in the past. Her family came here from time to time to visit the grave of Grand Grandma Harriet, though Lucy visited her frequently. Leni’s little sister said that she and Grand Grandma Harriet were friends and talked with each other often. Leni always wondered what they talked about but Lucy had said that only she was able to talk with her because of a deep connection to the darkness-thingy and the things and more stuff Leni hadn’t really understood. She didn’t really understand Lucy’s somber lifestyle choices or her penchant for dark stories and other even darker prose. //What is so great about the cemetery?//, she thought to herself. //Like I don’t get it. I should ask Lucy when I have found her.// She crossed the gate and beheld the somber and silent appearance of this place of the deceased. The tombstones were arranged in lines with some trees and bushes along the way. Most of the graves and their tombstones looked somewhat groomed but a few of them looked damaged. “Here lies no hope, only desperation”, Leni read on one of the gravestones. //Not very encouraging//, she thought. Others read “I was eaten by a monster”, “Nothing is real”, “The body in this grave is gone but nobody dug it up”, “I was killed by my loved ones” or “You should just kill yourself” . The epigraphs disturbed Leni and made her frown. She wondered who would write stuff like that down on a tombstone. Another inscription read “Behind you!” Leni turned around in shock but saw nothing behind her. “Hey! You tricked me! Bad tombstone.” She wiggled her finger at the lifeless thing and continued on her way. To her relief the cemetery of Royal Woods looked monster-free. No figures appeared in the fog and her radio was silent. “Lucy! Lucy! Are you here? Answer if you can hear me!” Calling out for her sister she wondered how her family may feel right now in this empty and eerie town, where they were and if they were safe. “Lucy, did you get attacked by a monster? They are weak to stabs in the face!” She wandered along the graves and past different trees and found from time to time some more on some off the resting places. She just took them with her. They were very light and easy to transport. Also they looked so collectible in her eyes. “Maybe they are energy drinks? Do you want one Lucy?”, the second-oldest called out. “I will save one for you!” She started to get used to this place. No monsters in sight and ways paved with flame-colored rectangular stones. //I never really observed this cemetery before. I bet Lucy knows this place like her own pocket.// Leni noticed a large black tombstone in circular form ahead in an area with more trees. The tombstone was surrounded on the both sides and back with hedges and the tombstone was overgrown with twiners. “Oh! Like looks mysterious. Or like the gardener is really bad at his job.” She approached the large tombstone with care and noticed something lying on top of it. “Hey isn’t that a…” Aghast the girl in the green dress took a few steps back. It was a pistol on top of the tombstone. “Why… Why did somebody leave a pistol on this grave?” Leni was nervous. Her parents didn’t have weapons because they hated them. Leni knew exactly what to do now: calling the police. She took her smartphone. “Oh… Why didn’t I try to contact the others first…?” Leni felt stupid, really stupid. She knew she wasn’t the smartest (that was without a doubt Lisa) but she didn’t think she would forget to call the others in a emergency situation like this one. //No time for self-pity//, she thought with determination. //I have to call them.// She started with Lori on her contacts but she was not able to get through to her. She only got the message that the phone number dialed was supposedly not in service. The same was true for the numbers of her other siblings and the numbers of her parents; she couldn’t contact any of them. Saddened she wanted to put her smartphone away until she remembered somebody. “I forgot Lucy!” The entire family forgot her regularly, not only Leni. Even Lynn who shared a room with the young goth-girl forgot her from time to time. How they could forget her presence again and again was a mystery to Leni. She selected her number and got a ringing tone. “Answer, please answer Lucy”, Leni begged. It stopped ringing. “Lucy?” No answer. “Lucy, it is me Leni, are you alright?” Still no answer. “Please answer!” Then an answer came with Lucy’s voice. “Responsible.” The call ended. Leni just stared at the screen which displayed that the call was over. “Lucy… What do you mean with this? Why did you say nothing else?”, she asked the smartphone. Her eyes wandered to the tombstone in search of advice and read the epitaph. Take the gun. You will need it. I don’t have use for it anymore. Leni tried to call the police but she heard only sirens on the other end which turned into a staccato of distortion after a few seconds. She took the gun and looked at it intensely. It was a strange feeling for the older girl, holding a gun. She never had anything more dangerous in her hands than a knife or a frying-pan up until this point in her young life. Now she had something with the explicit function to kill somebody or something. “Why is everybody so insane for these things? I hope I don’t have to use it.” At second glance there was more text on the tombstone. Try the crypts. They contain interesting things. P.S.: Behind you. Leni smirked. She wouldn’t fall for this a second time and didn’t move. The tiniest deep sounding voice croaked behind her while her radio suddenly emitted the noise again. Leni turned around in terror and behold a new… Thing. It was a tiny pelvic-high monster with something that looked like a black lampshade instead of a head, at least it seemed to be a black in color. The rest of the little humanoid body was plain white but at a second glance it looked more pale than white. Its little hands and fingers made a small and harmless appearance but the same was not so true for the nasty looking fingernails sprouting from the delicate looking fingers. It was just standing there while Leni fumbled around with the handgun she had just acquired and targeted the new Monster with it. “Stay back! Like I never used a handgun before but…” The creature made a very sudden step and Leni started to fire at it out of surprise and fear. The recoil of the weapon made her tumble backwards against the tombstone which felt cold against her bare arms and the loud bang ringed in her ears. The unfamiliarity with real guns and the difference of how they are used in action-movies just taught her a lesson in gun handling. She clasped both her hands around the grip and continued to fire. Some of the bullets missed their mark but more than enough hit the little creepy pale creature to make it fall down to the ground to struggle and moan. Leni ran up to it and gave it a kick to the head and its struggles vanished like the noise from her radio. Leni hold her chest and breathed heavily. Her legs were shaking and she looked around with a nervous glance. She couldn’t fathom how this thing had managed to sneak up on her and she feared that there could be more of his ilk nearby. //I have to find Lucy fast before one of this monsters scares me to death.// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The crypts of the graveyard were located at different places. While she looked for one of them she looked behind herself every few steps in fear that another monster could turn up and scare her like before. She was afraid of another surprise attack and only her wish to find Lucy kept her from running back home like frightened puppy. She found a crypt behind a wall, surrounded by trees like a suspicious welcoming committee. She checked the iron door and it was locked up but that was nothing her trusty bobby pins couldn’t solve. The smell of old air and something putrid filled meet her nose and Leni grimaced. “It smells a little like you Lucy… Lucy, are you in there?” No answer. Leni turned her flashlight on and descended the few steps into the crypt. It wasn’t a very large crypt and not-half bad in Leni’s opinion. The walls had drawings of flowers around the alcoves in which the stone coffins were placed in and the arches on the ceiling looked byzantine. //Like not the best work but it could have been a commission with exact orders//, Lucy criticized the designs in her head. She explored the crypt and found that all the graves in it were properly sealed except one which had a suspicious hole in it. Way too suspicious for Leni, too suspicious for somebody who loved to watch horror media. She took her handgun out of her bag belt and put the barrel on the edge of the hole. She fired a single shot and jumped back immediately afterwards. Nothing happened. //Like better safe than sorry//, she thought to herself and put her hand into the hole. She rummaged around and didn’t try to think that she probably was touching a dead person at the Moment. Her hand finally found something and pulled it out. It was a metallic coin, double in size of a one dollar coin and had on one of the sides a giraffe imprinted on it. //Why was this in there//, Leni thought to herself. She expanded her search in the crypt but aside from a single clip for her handgun and another of those energy drinks she found nothing. She sighed because it felt like this place was just screwing with her. She didn’t really notice the croak behind her and turned only as her radio came to life. One of the little pale creatures had appeared behind her again. She tried to draw her gun but the little thing was faster this time. It ran up to her legs and scratched it with its surprisingly sharp nails. Leni Squealed in pain and kicked the thing to the ground. She screamed “You nasty little Lampshade”, took out her knife instead and drove it into head of the little “Lampshade” until its movements halted and the noise stopped. Leni sighed in relief and annoyance as she heard another croak concurrent with her radio springing again to life. She whirled around with her knife, ready to stab the next little creature in the face but she only saw the lampshade leaving the crypt. “Like odd….”, she said to herself and put the knife back. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- She was still unnerved being at a graveyard and surrounded by fog but she started to get used to it in some way. The reason for this was probably the fact that she feared to be surprised and attacked by another of those little Lampshade creatures more than the general atmosphere but it wasn’t really helping. From here on they started to appear from time to time behind her. Regardless how observant Leni was they always managed to appear behind her back without any chance of noticing them beforehand. The second-oldest Loud child started to sweat and her nerves pumped her full with adrenaline. The frying pan was in one hand and a long knife in the other. She tried to save ammunition in case something even worse could show up. “Stay calm Leni nothing here can hurt you”, she stated, trying to soothe herself. “Like there are the monsters and they can really hurt me but… Like not all that badly?” The attacks so far hurt but none had managed to draw blood. But she felt weaker despite this. She thought that it had to be the stress. She soon reached another crypt west from the entrance and in the open on a crossroad. This one had gargoyles on the top of the corners and a domed ceiling. She didn’t really care for the architecture so she didn’t spend much time looking at the crypt. She only wanted to find Lucy and get out of her. She unlocked the crypt with her lock picking skills, finding another magazine in it and also another coin in one of the stone coffins, this time the coffin was open and the coin wore the image of a Bear. //Like why another animal-coin? Am I supposed to buy something with this?// It wasn’t different in a third crypt which was east to the first crypt she found and was constructed in a more modern style with tubular lamps in it. She was lucky this time because the light switch worked and illuminated the entire crypt quite nicely. She found two more energy drinks and another handgun clip but she didn’t spot another coin. //Like is this a dead end?// Leni looked around for something which could lead her the way. Something caught her eye, an upstanding coffin on the other end of the room. She crept slowly closer to the coffin which was larger than any of the other coffins so far and it looked more expensive with a gilded message on the lid. Open with care. The key is inside where my words were. “Another puzzle?”, Leni asked herself while she pushed the lid of the coffin. It was very heavy and she had to push several times until it finally swung open. She was greeted by a very fresh looking human male corpse in a fine suit. The lifeless body was so well preserved that it seemed to be alive. Leni stabbed the corpse with a knife in the heart just to be sure. “Where the words were… Could it be… In a notebook!” She searched the corpse for a notebook with some hesitance because she still really didn’t want to touch a dead person. She looked in the pockets, in the shoes and the trousers and the jacket of the suit the corpse wear but found nothing. Frustrated and angry that she had to search a corpse for nothing she grabbed the deceased by his suit and shook the body. “Where are your words?” Thanks to the shaking the mouth of the dead person sprang open like a cap on a jack-in-a-box and spit out something that was wrapped around in a large piece of paper. She took the present and unwrapped it to be greeted by another coin this time with a Dingo punched on one side. But the piece of paper was interesting too. “This looks familiar…”, Leni wondered. “Like isn’t that a page out of Lucy’s poem book?” Invisible by Lucy Loud They don’t see me They don’t notice thee I am like the air It is a curse to bear “Lucy…” Leni touched the words. She never wanted to ignore her but she almost always had to speak up to be acknowledged. She felt sad for her younger Goth sister and the corners of her mouth sunk down a little before she continued to read the poem. Is it my fault Is around me a shroud Dislike or like this case I will find my place “A place?” Monsters and Darkness Occult and Sadness They fascinate me a lot Being near them is my spot I like the spot I shouldn’t be I wish a Deacon could see me But I am invisible to all And that way nobody’s thrall “Yes Lucy, you aren’t a… A… Whatever a thrall is”, acknowledged Leni loudly. “You are what you are.” She thought about the content of the dark poem. Something said to her that this poem of her might reveal her little sisters current location. While she was in thought she didn’t register for the first few moments that the lights were out now but as she noticed it she whirled around. “What? Who? Lights?” She turned her flashlight on and looked at a lampshade. Then she heard several Lampshade voices all around her. Cold sweat ran along her spine as she took a knife and her frying pan into the hands while turning in all directions. She was surrounded by the pale little monsters. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood dripped to the ground and soaked it outside of the modern crypt into a darker shade. Leni had won the fight but the Lampshades had gotten several good hits on her. They had scratched her skin open and were able to draw her blood before she had been able to hit and stab them to the ground and keeping them there. She felt dizzy, breathless, the adrenaline was still pumping through her system and she looked around for more danger. //I could have died…// She shook her head in defiance. Now wasn’t the time to think about death, she had to care for her wounds. She also noticed how thirsty she was. “I forgot to take something to drink with me!” She had even thought about taking a snack with her before leaving the house but nothing to quench the thirst coming from her dry throat. “The energy drinks!”, she proclaimed. “Like they may taste bitter but I’m totally thirsty right now”. She popped one of the drinks open and swallowed it down. She felt instantly better, even her wounds had stopped to hurt. She looked at them and to her surprise they had vanished, not even a scar was left behind. “This energy drink is like really good”, Leni said in a delighted tone. “Like a wondrous elixir!” This was how Lisa had explained one of her mixtures to Leni once. It wasn’t that wondrous, it only gave Leni the tail of a cat. Luckily she had the right outfit to go with it. //Now think: The Poem said she is at a place she can’t be with a Deacon. Who is Deacon? Wait… Lucy knew somebody named Deacon once and she said he worked in a church!// She went on her way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The church of the Royal Springwood Graveyard was on the northern end of the place, far away from the sidewalk- and street-entrance of the cemetery. It was a small but pretty little old church made out of stone and granite with a little bell tower over the entrance and large oval-shaped doors. Leni entered the church and beheld some beautiful stained-glass windows showing pictures of different saints doing holy things or depicting important events. She adored the craftsmanship and artistic achievement of whoever put those beautiful colored pieces of glass together and made her forget her situation for a few moments. “Lucy! Deacon! Is one of you two here?” The church was empty, the pews abandoned. She searched around for more hints and found a little bit more ammunition for her handgun and another drink. “Who left all that stuff here?”, she asked herself. “I hope I’m not stealing it from somebody.” She found a bible on the podium where a priest would read out of it for the churchgoers. She chose a part which was bookmarked and read: “Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it.” On the page she was on there also more pieces of paper which were maps of the graveyard and the church. //There is a cellar according to this map.// The entrance to the cellar was in a room right and a little behind the podium. As the fashion-loving sister tried to open it she heard another croaking behind her accompanied by the radio static. She sighed, took her frying-pan and beat the “Lampshade” on the head until it struggled on the ground. “Like good that I expected that”, she informed the creature before she kicked against its head to stop the thing for good. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Down a ladder, behind a trapdoor she activated her flashlight in the dark entrance area of the cellar. The walls around here were made out of cobblestone and they looked old. But more interesting was the door in this room. It was a mechanical looking door with cogwheels, hydraulics and mechanical linkages on the sides of the door. The most interesting part was the picture on the door. It was a world map with 9 round gaps in them, 6 filled with the coins of different animals. //Is this a puzzle? I like puzzles but I am bad at solving them. I always need Lisa’s help with the more difficult ones.// The animals on the 6 coins in the notches were a sea leopard, a sloth, a tiger, a moose, a hammerhead, a conger eel and a lionfish. Leni recognized a few of the animals but not all. She rubbed her chin to figure out what this puzzle wanted from her to do. “The notches are on different continents and oceans and… Yes you can remove the coins.” She continued to think until the solution struck her. “I know! I use the coins to remove the screws from this door until I get it open!!” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Several hours of improvising later the door fell out of its doorframe. Leni wished the sweat from her forehead and took a few deep breaths. “Pretty hard puzzle.” She stepped through the puzzle door and found a room similar to the one before but this one had burning a torch on the west wall, illuminating the room with light but also filling it with wavering shadows like an ominous warning. “Here goes nothing”, she told herself as she grabbed the doorknob and turned it around. Behind the door was the largest crypt yet with several stone coffins standing in line and a several alcoves in the walls, all illuminated thanks to strategically placed torches on said walls. In the middle of the room on a platform were two especially large stone coffins with several carved stone ornaments on them. On one of the coffins was somebody with black hair which surrounded her head, a black dress and pale skin with the back turned towards Leni who approached the figure. “Lucy?” The being on the coffin turned around. This wasn’t a lampshade realized Leni, this was the real deal. “Leni?”, responded Lucy in her deep and somber voice. “Is that you?” Silence filled the air between the two. They weren’t sure I what to do now. But the mind of Leni found the quicker solution. In seconds she pulled her little sister into a heartfelt hug. “Lucy! You are really here!”, cried Leni out in Joy. The subtle fear in her heart that Lucy may be hurt or worse vanished in an instant. “Yes, I am”, replied Lucy in a calm tone. “But what are you doing here Leni?” “I was searching for you”, Leni explained. “I thought I may find you here.” Then Leni’s head started to hurt again and something flashed before her eyes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leni talked with Lucy. “I can’t say if what you have is legit or not.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Leni? Are you alright?”, Lucy asked with concern in her voice. The second-oldest opened her eyes again and nodded. “Yes, but we should get back to our house. This place isn’t safe. Royal Woods is overrun with monsters!” Lucy’s expression was stoic. “Really? I didn’t see any here. What happened Leni? First I fall asleep and when I wake up again I’m in the crypt of the graveyard church but the place looks somewhat different.” Lucy sighed. “I hoped the forces of the ether and the darkness would have summoned me to a place I could truly call home.” Lucy looked at Leni. “But I couldn’t tell why you would be here. What about the others?” “I don’t know”, Leni admitted. “They could be here, Mom and Dad too. I’m very worried.” Lucy’s stoic facade didn’t change as she listened to Leni’s words. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore, Leni.” Lucy wasn’t the greatest on showing feelings but she tried. Leni smiled in return and said: “We have to go.” “Not now”, responded Lucy in a serious tone. “After I awoke I looked into the coffins to find something that could me help to escape. I found some old manuscripts in some of them, pointing at something important in one of the main coffins. I was almost finished with this puzzle to open one of them as you entered.” “What puzzle?”, Leni asked. “I solved one!” She showed Lucy proudly the door behind the first door she destroyed. “It took a long time to loosen the door.” “Leni, you weren’t suppo… Whatever.” The two returned to the largest coffins. “I have to lay the right word into the stone lid of the coffin with those stone letters. And I think it is the word…” She used the stone letters she had with her to form the word “HERETIC” into a rectangular field. The lid started to move and Lucy jumped down from it and stepped back from the coffin with her sister. The lid slid to the side before falling to the ground with a heavy thud. The two sisters carefully peaked over the edge of the coffin, wary of anything which could spring fourth from this large coffin. The inside smelled and tasted like old air and had no corpse but a book as its content. “Who would bury a book?”, Leni wondered. “Maybe it was written in a dead language?” Lucy just stared at Leni who responded the stare with: “I have the joke from Luan.” Lucy sighed. Leni took the book out of its grave. The title was “Die Okkulte Weise” written by a guy called Ernst S. Schneider. “German”, commented Lucy and opened the book. “But the text in the inside is in English and about the occult.” Leni took Lucy’s hand. “You can read it at home Lucy. Now we…” Suddenly a new noise sounded all around the two. Leni whirled around, shoved Lucy behind her and drew the pistol out of her bag but no enemy was in sight. “This sounds like a siren”, Lucy commented. “But I don’t see any sirens here.” It didn’t sound like any siren they had ever heard. The noise was long and drawn out and it instilled the feeling that a horrible fate would hit them soon. Leni didn’t want to risk anything and ran towards the exit with her sister but as she tried to open the door, the door didn’t budge. Leni pulled at the knob and kicked against the door but it still didn’t budge. “I don’t understand, I was able to open it a few minutes ago!” Leni looked around in panic and tried to figure a way out of this trap. She only saw coffins over coffins. “One of the coffins had hole with a ladder in it”, Lucy mentioned. “We could escape that way.” She showed her sister the aforementioned coffin and it was how her sister described it. She couldn’t see the bottom, even with her flashlight on and this worried her for a Moment until the siren became even louder. “On my back”, Leni ordered. “This way we will be faster.” “I can climb mywuah!” Leni swung the younger sister on her back and forced her to wrap her small arms around the neck and her legs around the waist. She started to descend he ladder as fast as she could with Lucy on her back, the booming noise of the sirens sounding in their ears. It pushed the fashionista to climb down faster into the unknown. “It is driving us down there”, Lucy sinisterly whispered. “Into the darkness, into another world.” Leni would have asked for Lucy what she meant by that but her radio started slowly to build up noise. She looked around and her eyes widened in horror. Monsters, Squallers and Lampshades were stuck in cages as big as they were. They screamed and squelched like they were in endless agony caused by an unknown terror. “What are those?”, asked Lucy, gazing at the Monsters in surprise. “They are monster who attacked me”, told Leni. “Stay behind me when you see them, your big sister will take them out.” After another minute of climbing down they finally reached the end of the ladder and firm ground. Lucy jumped to the ground. “Looks like one of the crypts on the graveyard.” The sister in the light-green dress took a look around. It looked like one of the crypts she had entered before but different. This one was also made in a byzantine style but different. Leni struggled to find the right word. “Corrupted”, Lucy finally said. “This place is corrupted. It isn’t simply another world, this one is a special place.” Leni didn’t understand. She noticed another note on one of the coffins. She took it and read out lout the following: June 24 The Unbelievers, they come to this place not to hear the words of god but to mock him. They care for their fake believes, for their fake gods, their fake prayers, their fake rituals and their fake ideas. Why are they coming to this cemetery, to this church for their purposes? The dead are disturbed by their presence. “I don’t disturb the dead”, Lucy expressed in a more stern tone than usual for her. “If they don’t want to talk I let them be.” “That is the right mind-set”, Leni lauded her sister. “You are a good girl.“ They spotted the exit not long after. The door was rusty, brown and looked horrific. “I have no good feeling about this door”, Lucy feared. Leni put her hand onto the doorknob and in her other was the handgun. “We have no choice. Stay behind me.” Leni opened the door with care and minded her Radio. Her grip around the pistol hardened and she stepped into the outside. Before her was a place complete unknown to the Loud. Many of the shapes were the same but their look was… Leni didn’t know what exactly. Corrupted, distorted, strange, twisted, those words appeared in her mind but one word came before all others: “It looks so… Otherworldly.” Lucy stepped into her outside and peaked over the sides of her sister. “I agree.” The ground of the graveyard, the earth and the paved ways were now more in a grisly orange or a rusty red respectively. The trees were now even darker and more foreboding than before. Now they had grimaces and the branches looked like long thin gnarly arms with hands which in turn had long spiky fingers. The sky was darker than before, but they couldn’t see any stars in the sky. The lampposts Leni didn’t gave much attention before produced an eerie orange light, illuminating this dark place. The tombstones had changed too in the most horrific way. Some were now black like onyx and very smooth, others transformed into a array of bones, some others had transformed into rough black coal and one especially bad case what made out of bones rotten flesh. Inscriptions in different ghoulish colors were present on the tombstones but Leni wasn’t interested. The tombstones in the other place already had some scary stuff written on them, she wasn’t interested to know what they had to say in this hellish location. Lucy wasn’t that scared and walked up to one of them, one of the onyx-black markers of death and read the inscription. “Lucy no!”, Leni cried out perplexed how relaxed her sister was in this situation. “Don’t go up to creepy tombstones without me. You don’t know where they have been before.” Lucy ignored her and read on the tombstone: “You know what this place is? It is not hell; hell gives you a fair chance. This is a place of people who would never grant you mercy. They want you to stop the life you are living, shame yourself what you are, what you think is right, how you dress, how you look and what you think the cosmic explanation is.” “We are not in Royal Woods anymore”, Leni expressed in a worried tone. “Even less so than before.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hosted by Animexx e.V. (http://www.animexx.de)