Silent Hill (Remake)/Story

This page is related to the story of Silent Hill (Remake). ''' Be aware of unmarked spoilers! '''

Life of Harry Mason
Harry Mason was born in Silent Hill, Maine, roughly thirty-two years before the events of the game. He was born with a rare mental disorder that affects his memory, causing him difficulty in remembering minor events, such as people's names and faces. Due to his disability and perceived "nerdiness", he was often a subject of mockery and bullying by his fellow children. One day, when he was being tormented by his fellow children, he was saved and taken away by Dahlia Gillespie, a teenage girl who was the daughter of Christabella Gillespie, the leader of the town's underground drug trade. After receiving the permission of Harry's parents, who were addicted to the drugs being dealt by her mother, Dahlia took him to live with her. Whilst he lived under her, Dahlia constantly forced her occultist beliefs onto Harry, being a member of a secret doomsday cult stationed in the town that was ran by her mother Christobella and devoted to a mysterious "God" they were obsessed with birthing, whilst also physically and verbally abusing him in a passive-aggressive manner. Having an extremely twisted concept of love thanks to her abusive mother, Dahlia became intent of marrying Harry as soon as possible as her mother's cult began to believe that it would be possible for one of them to birth the God, who would bring paradise to the world. Dahlia began to believe that she and Harry were destined to be the parents of the God and attempted to convince the idea to Harry, who was beginning to write novels as a means to escape his depressed life. When Harry turned eighteen, Dahlia coerced him into having unprotected sex with her, which was enough to convince him to run away from Silent Hill after stealing a stash of Christabella's drugs and selling them to a minor drug dealer living on the outskirts of the town. He managed to hitch a ride from a sympathetic truck driver called Travis Grady, who agreed to help him start a new life.

Eight months later, Harry had three novels published under the fake name Kirk Graham after Travis sent a copy of the manuscripts to a friend who worked for a publishing company, and began writing novels full-time. During one of Travis's deliveries in Silent Hill, he briefly came across a heavily pregnant Dahlia, who asked him about Harry. After learning of Harry's activities, Dahlia asked Travis to give him a parcel, which he complied. Seven years later, Harry heard of Dahlia's home burning to the ground, but was reassured when Dahlia was confirmed to be unhurt. One year later, Harry's publishing company pressed him to write a thirtieth book, and Travis offered to give him inspiration based on a real event, in which he and a unnamed woman found and saved a severely burnt young girl from a burning home eight years ago. Theorising that this event was performed by Dahlia's cult, Harry travelled to Silent Hill to confront her, only to find that a strange event of a mass fire, a tsunami, a major earthquake, and a tornado in rapid succession had destroyed a large part of the town, and his parents, all of Christobella's cult, Christobella and presumably Dahlia herself were amongst the hundreds of reported casualties. While attempting to help the survivors, including his lone childhood friend Mary Shephard, and grieving for Dahlia's death, Harry happened upon a swaddled newborn, with a note attached to her blanket. The note confirmed her as Dahlia's child and stated that she could not raise her, asking for Harry to take care of the girl if possible. Harry accepted the girl as his own child, and named her Cheryl, giving her the unusual necklace he found in the parcel Travis gave him from Dahlia.

Arrival in Silent Hill
Nine years later, Harry and Cheryl are preparing to take a vacation to Silent Hill to help with their mental states. In addition to Harry's memory issues, Cheryl was also born with a medical condition that has resulted in her suffering severe nightmares and sleepwalking all her life. Unbeknownst to Harry, Cheryl also has a severe Electra complex, idolising her father and harbouring sexual attraction to him, viewing him as more of a husband than a father. As they drive to Silent Hill, being passed by a police car along the way, they find that an immense snowstorm is occurring to the town, and while following the mountain road they find that there appears to be no-one else in the town. The two enter a convenience store on the outskirts of Silent Hill to try and find assistance, as well as get supplies for their trip. Finding the store empty, they are soon attacked by a apparition of a teenage girl, forcing them to run back to their car and attempt to keep driving. However, the girl reappears in the car and grapples Cheryl. Harry, in his attempts to force her away from his daughter, loses control of the car, which drives around by itself before crashing into a river, knocking Harry unconscious as Cheryl and the girl vanish.

After sinking, the car inexplicably resurfaces, with Harry unharmed but still unconscious, and floats to the other side of the river. Hours later, Harry wakes up, and realizes that Cheryl is missing. After frantically checking his surroundings for her, Harry, after taking a flashlight and a box of matches from the car's glove department, sets out to find her. Heading through a nearby junkyard and car repair shop, he soon finds himself on the streets of Silent Hill. After briefly checking a clothes store, he hears a girl's scream coming from a nearby alleyway and heads there to investigate, hearing sirens coming from the alley. There, it suddenly becomes pitch dark, and when he lights a match, he finds that the environment has completely changed - the pavement has been replaced by rusted metal grating and platforms, the walls are a dark and grimy series of mesh and chain link fences, everything is covered in rust and blood, and through the fences there seems to be nothing at all. Scared out of his mind but determined to find Cheryl, Harry proceeds further into the alley, coming across a series of seemingly connected objects in the middle of nowhere - a IV drip stand, a overturned wheelchair with its wheels still spinning, a burning can, and a painting of a house with the word "DADDY" written on it in blood. At the end of the alleyway, Harry comes across a disturbing sight - the heavily burnt and mutilated body of the teenage girl who abducted Cheryl, crucified on the fence and covered in bandages. Moments after this, he is attacked by humanoid creatures with sharp claws and no faces, and attempts to escape from them only to find that the entrance to the alley he took is suddenly boarded up. The creatures proceed to beat and scratch at him, badly injuring him before he sees Cheryl and the girl whose body he found, now alive, standing before him and offering their hands out to him, which he takes. The girls then disappear, and Harry gains the strength to get back up and beats the monsters to death with his bare hands before collapsing from his wounds and exhaustion and falling unconscious.

The Search Begins
Harry regains consciousness to find himself in a café, unharmed. He is soon confronted by a police officer who identifies herself as Cybil Bennet, and learns that Silent Hill has been isolated from the rest of the world, with massive boulders covering the roads. After Harry explains his situation to her, Cybil suggests they travel to the police station and acquire better weaponry. After a brief encounter with several pterodactyl-like creatures, they get into Cybil's police car and begin to drive to the police station, but are stopped by the snow storm. Cybil leaves Harry in the car to investigate their location, but never returns, leading to Harry leaving the car to look for her armed with a handgun he found in the glove compartment of her car. After briefly exploring the woods, he finds himself back in Silent Hill, where he decides to begin searching all the buildings for Cheryl and Cybil. Finding clues left around the town, Harry is forced to return to the same alleyway he was attacked in, where he finds a note written in Cheryl's handwriting telling him to go to a house on Levin Street and find "the way to her". After engaging a gigantic multi-headed dog-like creature he nicknames the Cerberus, he finds a key to a house with a locked back door and locates four keys that open its four locks. Harry then finds himself in an isolated street, where reality once more begins to collapse. Gigantic glaciers appear as the environment becomes covered with ice and snow, objects breaking and twisting around them. After fending off various humanoid creatures, he arrives at a small pharmacy untouched by the ice, where he comes across another human being - a heavily pregnant teenage girl who he notes has some physical similarity to Cheryl. This girl, introducing herself as Heather, is amnesiac and cannot recall where she came from, but believes she is on some type of mission to find something or someone. Believing their paths to be connected, Harry and Heather agree to accompany each other.

Following directions left behind in blood on three walls, Harry and Heather arrive at a gas station where they find a note left behind by Cheryl, stating that she is at the Orion Hunting Lodge. Harry and Heather make their way to the lodge, where they find a trail of blood from a freshly killed corpse. Tracing the blood, Heather finds that she is able to detect conversations that happened in the past on her mobile phone, and uses this to try to help Harry find Cheryl. Following the conversations picked up by the phone around the lodge and surrounding woods, Heather learns that a party was hosted at the lodge by a group of college students, who invited everyone from their college to the celebration. A girl named Claudia Wolf attempted to raise a toast to a deceased girl named Alessa, but everyone rejected this idea, obviously having some hatred of Alessa. As the party continued, one girl named Jackie became intoxicated on the same drugs Harry's parents used and wandered out into the woods naked, where she drowned in the lake. Another attendee at the party frantically hid her body in a sleeping bag and hid it to avoid the group being caught and prosecuted for possessing drugs, as well as to keep the party from being disrupted. Harry and Heather begin investigating the lodge further, and eventually find another note from Cheryl, mentioning a fast food restaurant known as Happy Burger. After getting better weapons from the lodge, the duo head back into the snowy darkness to locate the restaurant in hopes of finding Cheryl.

After fending off various abominations, Harry and Heather arrive back in town, where they use a map on a billboard to help them locate Happy Burger, which is overtaken by the same bloodied rust Harry encountered in the alleyway. Outside the restaurant, Harry makes a phone call to Travis, who tells him that during his trip to Silent Hill seventeen years ago he encountered several monsters, including a large human-like brute he named the Butcher due to the gigantic cleaver it carried and the way it sadistically cut up bodies. Following this, Harry and Heather enter Happy Burger and find more writing in blood that mentions revenge before coming across the Butcher in the restaurant, slicing up the still-living body of one of the teenagers at the party before noticing the duo and attacking them. Harry and Heather are ultimately able to defeat the Butcher, who fades away after defeat, causing reality to return to normal. Harry finds another note from Cheryl, stating that she is hiding at Midwich Elementary School and begging Harry to hurry there. After they briefly travel through a nearby house to try and find a route to the school, they receive a phone call from Cybil, who is at Bryant Outlook, hiding in a abandoned car from the snow, and claims she can see a path to Midwich Elementary School, prompting Harry and Heather to begin making their way to Bryant Outlook. When they take a rest at a tourist information cabin there, Heather collapses in a wheelchair out of exhaustion, and a dark force pulls her in the wheelchair into the darkness as she screams for Harry to go to Midwich. Unable to find her, Harry resolves to head to Midwich to find her and Cheryl.

Nightmare at the School
Harry reunites with Cybil at Bryant Outlook, and after telling her what he has seen, she agrees to accompany him to Midwich Elementary School, which consists of six buildings close to one another. After travelling through a beauty spa known as the Oriental Lotus and several roads, they arrive at Midwich's parking lot, where Harry heads into one of the buildings, said to have a gym that has been used as a emergency shelter, in hopes of finding Cheryl or Heather while Cybil enters another building to investigate for any further survivors. Finding the school completely abandoned and populated by various child-like, knife-wielding creatures, Cybil continues her search, eventually finding a set of jade figurines that when placed on a specific statue open the school's clocktower. After travelling through the clocktower and emerging on the other side after seeing a familiar symbol inscribed inside the tower, Cybil is horrified to find that her environment has shifted into another alternate dimension, this one possessing a hellish fire and brimstone motif. She fights against various monsters as she runs to the school's planetarium, where she becomes trapped and after experimenting with the astrology map is able to open a window, where she sees Heather and makes a message in the frost to go to the school's gym.

At the gym, Harry and Heather reunite. After briefly searching for anyone else present at the school, they find a hanged body of a young teenager, and Heather uses her phone to track a series of events that led to a "Choking Game" amongst the youth of Silent Hill some years ago that lead to a handful of students dying from asphyxiation. They also learn that every year, the students of the school would come together to celebrate the anniversary of the death of Alessa, presumably the same girl Claudia attempted to raise a toast to. Harry asks Heather what happened to her after she was pulled into the darkness, and Heather states that she simply fainted and woke up in the gym. The duo then leave the gym and continue to investigate around the school, eventually coming across a unavoidable mirror room which Harry must transverse alone as Heather is afraid of mirrors. On the other side of the room, Harry finds himself outside one of the buildings, where he enters the clock tower. Inside, he finds a telephone - on the other end, Cheryl briefly begs him for help before the call is terminated and the world begins to change. The buildings and surroundings around Harry sink into the ground as giant tree roots cover and penetrate them. Finding that all the buildings have become connected, Harry begins navigating around them as he searches for his companions.

Reuniting with Heather and Cybil on the roof of one of the buildings, Harry deduces from a series of poems found around the school that the key to their escape lies in the boiler room of the central building. The trio are eventually able to clear the path to the boiler room, and Cybil offers to go in first, only for the door to lock itself behind her. Cybil finds that the boiler room has become a dark, almost temple-like ring, where the only light in the room is projected from a pyre in a recess in the centre of the room, where bandaged corpses are being burnt. Cybil is soon attacked by a monstrous lizard-like creature she nicknames the Splithead due to how its head is split in two, and recalls a old fairy tale she read as a child to defeat it. Following this, the light around her restores itself, revealing a ordinary boiler room. Cybil leaves the room and reunites with Harry and Heather, mumbling unconsciously about a church as the trio find that the school has been restored to normal.

Path to the Church
After remembering the deranged church of the Gillespie family and their cult, Harry suggests that the three find and investigate it. After scouring the nearby streets and investigating the abandoned house of Kevin and Kim Gordon, two teachers at Midwich Elementary School who Harry read were concerned for the safety of a student whose name was blurred in the text he read, the trio locate the Balken, a night club, and begin scavenging for supplies, with each choosing to explore a different floor of the building. Cybil enters the top floor of the building, finding a series of notes in unfamiliar writing before opening a closet, from which a corpse falls out. Cybil, seemingly recognising the corpse, has a nervous breakdown and faints before reality begins warping again. Harry, hearing Cybil from the second floor, attempts to locate her but finds the highest floor of the Balken has disappeared as the world shifts into another alternate reality. Immense rainfall occurs, with the sky appearing to become a solid object that pulsates and buildings changing to resemble prisons. Harry, panicking, reunites with Heather on the ground floor and uses a tourist map she finds to plot a course to the church nearby. During their trip towards the church, defending themselves against hostile aquatic creatures, they briefly take shelter in a sports-themed bar known as Good Ol' Days, where they find a unnamed bar worker who is seemingly oblivious to what is occurring outside. While Harry goes to make a phone call to the outside world, the bar maid talks with Heather, who is beginning to question her own humanity, and gives her cryptic advice with one phrase repeated ad nauseum: "Remember Alessa."

Harry attempts to contact Travis for advice, only to be called by a man named Michael Kaufman, a doctor at Silent Hill's Alchemilla Hospital, who is trying to call for help from the outside world. Believing that the hospital may be a safe place for Heather to stay while he goes to the church, Harry begins planning to find a way to the Alchemilla Hospital. After Heather enters the room with Harry, they return to find that the Good Ol' Days bar has been affected by the shift to the water-logged prison world, the bar maid has vanished, and the various creatures they have encountered have broken in. The two fight their way upstairs and begin using a series of tunnels that have inexplicably appeared in the rain to navigate their way out, eventually falling down a chasm before finding themselves on a untouched street outside of the hospital. Despite Heather's protests and desire to come with Harry, Harry insists that she remains in the hospital, and Heather reluctantly agrees, deciding to try and locate any survivors within the building, but not before telling Harry of the bar maid's advice. Harry, faintly recalling the name being that of the main character of his first novel, takes a detour to a nearby bookstore and finds a copy of the book, Longing for the Moon, where he confirms the suspicion from his book and begins believing that Dahlia and her mother's cult was connected to the events occuring in the town. With new motivation, Harry makes his way to the church, guided by the ringing of the church's bell, a sound that he remembers from his nightmares.

Breaking through a barricade to the church with a fire axe, Harry enters the church and finds Dahlia, alive and unharmed, at the altar. Dahlia, overjoyed to see Harry again as he confronts her, begins explaining how she survived the near-destruction of Silent Hill nine years ago, but is confused when Harry mentions the infant Cheryl he found beneath her ruined home. Giving Harry a mysterious pyramid-like object she calls the "Present Piece", she gives a cryptic warning to head to the Dixon bridge control tower and then return to Alchemilla Hospital to "help the one who needs you the most" before fleeing, mumbling Alessa's name again in the process. Exiting the church and proceeding to the Dixon bridge control tower, Harry lowers the bridge before attempting to understand the Present Piece, causing him to have a vision of Heather in Alchemilla Hospital fleeing from a gigantic maggot-like creature. As the world is overtaken by the same icy alternate world he encountered earlier, he races to the hospital to try and help Heather.

Nightmare at the Hospital
While Harry is travelling to the Alchemilla Hospital, Heather explores the seemingly abandoned building until she arrives on the top floor and encounters Dr. Micheal Kaufmann, who was originally trying to call for help at the Good Ol' Days bar. While he appears to be bewildered by the events occuring in the town, Kaufmann agrees to assist Heather, first allowing her to engage in psychological counselling with him and then giving her a key to the elevator.