Grace and Silver

Chapter 4

Smothering Rug and Dolls

Disclaimer: Konami owns Silent Hill. Takahashi owns the Nerima Wrecking Co. This is just for fun, please don’t sue.

Nabiki was never one for toy stores. Not anymore anyways, when she was little she would play with Princess Day dolls, have tea parties, and do all the other things that a young child influenced by Western media would do. That however ended when her mother died. Dolls and stuffed animals became photographs and a black debt book, as responsibilities mandated that toys be left behind with her childhood.

Regardless of her lost childhood, Nabiki felt a whistful joy being in Maxine’s Toys, savoring the pleasant memories that it brought up. Sadly, this happily nostalgic feeling was dramatically cast out from the tribe Nabiki’s psyche by the alliance of fear, paranoia, and anger.

It was far too dark too see far into the shop, making Nabiki yearn for a flashlight. It was a stupid mistake, not having her even a small one with her; of course one could forgive such a blunder. After all, she had just left the rotting remains of her town to investigate a letter that by all rights should not exist. Also, a traveler doesn’t expect to be experiencing snow in the middle of summer, even in such a temperate climate. So the error of forgetting to bring a flashlight, or a rather large sword, gun, or any weapon that would be effective against legions from hell, could be forgiven.

Pausing for a moment, she opened her duffel and took out her spare shirt. Having slightly preferred function before fashion, it allowed her to not feel bad about ripping it into strips. Besides, it was a cheap shirt anyway. She used a few of the pieces of cloth as a makeshift bandage around her neck to protect the cut. True she could use the first aid kit, but she much rather save it for something crucial like a broken arm, a deep cut or something decidedly life threatening.

On second thought maybe it would be best if she didn’t need to use it at all.

Although the building itself was of a modest size, Miss Maxine compensated by building in both directions vertically. Thanks to the small amount of outside light coming in through the window she could read the placard attached to a support beam that provided a map of the store. Grabbing some paper and a pen from the stationary display next to the front counter she copied it down. If she found any other human here, she would make sure to pay them for the supplies.

She studied the map thoroughly; even with it on her she thought it best to note the layout. The store was divided into four floors, the one she was on where general toys, Board Games, and other family friendly items were located. One floor above her was where the video game systems, computer games, sports equipment, and other loud noisy toys for the elder demographic were placed. The floor right below her was devoted to the Palmer Doll Series. The bottom most floor was a Puppet Show Theater.

Deciding to start at the top and work her way down, Nabiki ascended the spiral staircase into the upper recesses of the store. It was apparently the latest addition to the store, as the displays weren’t put together with the same level of creativity and care the rest of the store possessed. Video games displayed vertically along the walls, stacks of empty console boxes, and the purchased display for some fantasy game that apparently included a rather buxom woman in a chain mail bikini. Nabiki had to smirk at the meager selection of anime and manga in one corner, and at the Asian characters that Maxine had laboriously painted on the display sign being Chinese characters that probably didn’t make any sense, not Japanese kana. “Only in America,” Nabiki murmured, recalling a phrase she had heard in movies.

The other side of the floor was for the child that was more inclined to the outdoors, rather than sitting in the dark playing the latest Biohaz…pardon, Resident Evil. Punching bags, baseball gloves, American football shoulder pads, and the like were all displayed upon the walls. There didn’t really seem to be much here of interest, and the door to the supply closet wasn’t opening; the lock apparently jammed.
Thankfully, this was not a total waste, as she managed to locate a light. She attached the little clip-on flashlight she attached to her shirt that was in a little box along with several other promotional items for the amusement park apparently; presumed by the drawing of Robbie the Rabbit in all his purple glory on the white battery case. Nabiki added the cost of the flashlight to her tab, along with adding the damn rabbit to the ‘Reasons to Never Ever See this Town Ever Again’ list. It was already up to four pages.

HesanoldfooltakingeverythingnowonderHeslikethat

“Crap! Something’s here!” Nabiki moved to the middle of the room and scanned the room slowly. No shadow thing slipping across the wall, waiting for a chance to decapitate her. No water filled flesh lumps sloshing to her so it could boil or freeze her to death. Knowing that, and if the warning whisper was different then that meant: “A new mon-AAAAGH!!” She screamed as the floor under her feet writhed and jolted, startling her and making her lose her footing and, as if it wasn’t enough, causing her to drop her gun and have it skitter across the floor just a few inches and a thousand miles out of her reach. This was unfortunate as at the moment Nabiki could have REALLY used that gun, as she was under attack from a new monstrosity.

It was a living rug, that’s why it had been able to surprise her; unwittingly walking on top of the faux black and white fur rug. It had pulled itself out from under Nabiki’s feet to fell her, like a magician failing to keep all the dishes on the table after pulling out the tablecloth. Lying on the floor dazed and confused, the crawling rug slid over her chest and face. The underside of the rug felt like human skin; if Nabiki could open her eyes, she would see the bulging veins crisscrossing all over the surface. Right now she was more concerned about breathing, rather than how the thing currently attempting to kill her looked.

She reached out her hand, trying to get a hold of something, anything, that she could use to get this thing off of her. Her hand closed around something that felt cold and metallic, just as her ribs were starting to hurt from being contracted, and her head was beginning to spin from the air loss.

Having something in her hand she came up with a plan; a stupid, oxygen-deprived, panicked, last minute desperation, plan. She raised the object, and brought it down as hard as she could onto her head. The theory was that it would distract the thing long enough so she, barring a concussion or a blade or spike that went through the thing into her own skull, could pull it off, grab the gun, and send it back to the carpet store from hell. Of course, her plans have had a track record to not work anywhere near to what she wanted.

This time, it went SO much better than expected.

The minute the thing hit the creature it released itself and went limp, allowing Nabiki to roll herself out from under the creature, and got up. It was writhing on the floor in pain and agony, a large red welt spreading from the ‘head’ of the rug where she had hit it. A hard stomp with her shoe and the rug’s suffering was put to an abrupt halt. She gently touched her head, surprised to note that she was fine, discounting the gasps as her lungs grabbed back all the air she had used up fighting that thing, and the lump Mercy had given her head.

It was about damn time she had a little luck. Her attention went to the object that had saved her life, finding an aluminum baseball bat in hand; one that had apparently fallen from their display. Nabiki narrowed her eyes, realizing two odd things. Firstly, it had been taken out of the plastic case that held a complimentary baseball, and secondly someone had taken one of those scented markers, a red one that smelled of cherry and drew something on the tip of the bat, a design of a circle in a circle with a triangle within that

Nabiki decided to concern herself with the mystery at a more opportune time, picked up her gun, and descended two stories down into the home of the signature Palmer Dolls.

There were no whispers on the doll floor, causing Nabiki breath a deep sigh of relief. The Palmer series was divided by five rows of shelves; the first held stuffed animals, all hand sewn and made with care. Soft and cuddly bears and tigers stared back at her, a reflective sheen on it from the plastic wrapping that covered every one. Apparently, Palmer didn’t mind the ecological ramifications of her judicious use of plastic.

The next shelf held dioramas of religious events; Moses parting the Red Sea, a pastoral Garden of Eden, and other scenes. Nabiki was never one to look deep into spiritual matters, understanding that discussing religion was one of the big no-nos of the successful businesswoman. However, in this horrid town, she was able to draw a small comfort from them. Nabiki smiled as she looked at the Noah’s Ark set, along with the rag doll humans and wooden ark, were ten pairs of very cute plush animals. Each pair wrapped individually in plastic. A look to the shelf below revealed more smiling creatures to complete the set.

A shelf of dolls in cultural dress was in the next row. Again, each doll individually wrapped in a protective layer of plastic. Having all those black eyes staring at her made Nabiki a little uneasy, but at this point she was savoring uneasy with a delectable overtone of paranoia. The Japanese dolls, white-faced geishas, were very nice but Palmer apparently didn’t do enough research. A cold shiver up her spine occurred when she registered that the kimonos were all cut the opposite way, that style was only used for burial dresses

The next aisle was dollhouses of all shapes and sizes. A Victorian ballroom, a spooky gothic castle, and another more friendly fairy tale castle, and a rather whimsical construction that looked like the brainchild of Frank Lloyd Wright. Next up were the exotic locales; a respectful, if stereotypical, depiction of an African hut, Chinese temple, Native American teepee, Eskimo igloo, and a Japanese dwelling.

The last aisle brought that fairly pleasant feeling Nabiki had been building up crumbling back down into the oh-so familiar realm of fear and uncertainty. It was a depiction of Hell. Divided into seven sections, one for each of the deadly sins, it depicted the eternal punishment that the vile sinner would suffer for all eternity. As she quickly walked through the aisle something felt wrong. Not the same feeling when the monsters were attacking her or staring down into the giant crevasses on Nathan Avenue. Something just felt…off.

In the far corner of the room was a closed door. The sign above, lit by a dim fluorescent light, advertised the fantastic, amazing, entertaining Marionette Show below. However the door was firmly locked, and refused to budge. On the door was a new odd design, a circle within a circle, and inside the inner circle where three smaller circles arranged in a triangle. There were also many runes and odd designs placed all around it. The blue paint that made it up still reeked of paint fumes. It looked like it was made with spray paint, so if it was dry but still smelled then that meant that it had been applied not too long ago. “Creepy, who could of put this here,” Nabiki wondered out loud.

‘I don’t think those creatures could hold a spray can, let alone know how to use it to make such a complex design. Lets see, the only person I’ve seen so far has been Mercy, I don’t think she did this, but I don’t know if she was lying or not. Although she did say she saw someone in a tux around here.’ As the pain in her side flared up again she recalled one more person. ‘That girl in the bridal veil.’ She nodded, the last option seemed likely, as this symbol didn’t seem friendly and whoever that girl was, she was NOT her friend.

Below the blue symbol there was a message carved into the door. It definitely was a message for Nabiki as it was written in Hiragana.

‘When the audience of Sin is assembled, the show will begin.’

Nabiki stared at the words for a while, sucking on her lower lip, and trying to decipher the meaning of the message. After a few minutes she returned to the Hell aisle, for a better examination, and had her answer in a few seconds; there were no dolls in the sin sections. Yes, there were dolls of devils and faceless rag dolls writhing in pain, but no sinners being tormented. The next question was where the said sinners were. This answer came much quicker.

A trip to the dollhouse aisle next, she stopped in front of the Japanese house which was obviously her next location. The first clue was that it didn’t possess that plastic sheath everything else here had, while the second was that it was a recreation of Nabiki’s home. Opening the door revealed, just as she fearfully expected, seven figurines within. Grabbing all of them Nabiki returned to the Hell aisle, and set the dolls down so she could figure out what went where.

The first one was a small wooden doll that looked more like a malformed mushroom than a human. The eyes were bugged out and overly large, the legs and arms way too small, it looked like a failed experiment in shop class. It was as far from human as anything could be, Nabiki recognized him immediately. The wooden troll went in the Lust section.

The next one was a melting panda doll. Only this one had been overstuffed to the point of bursting. This one was also, not hard to identify and place. The panda was placed in the hell for Gluttons.

Next up was a rag doll that looked like a dog chewed on it a few times. The stitching was stretched and warped and in some places the stitching had had been pulled out revealing the stuffing inside the doll to be an assortment of coins. The dress that was painted on the poor torn doll was a deep green. If the coin weren’t enough then her own battle-scarred status determined its identity. Smiling, and with a kiss for good luck, Nabiki proudly placed the rag doll in Greed.

After that came a samurai figure in full armor. The armor however was covered in rust, and the face of the warrior was warped like a demon, or as if it had been underwater for an extended period of time. Again this one was easy to decide who it represented. “You aren’t gluttony…maybe pride? No, ah rusted armor, that must be it.” The noble warrior was doomed to Hell for the sin of Sloth.

The next two Nabiki identified immediately. One was a kung-fu action figure, and the other a Princess Doll with a smashed face. The fact that they were dressed in a tux and a wedding dress also helped Nabiki solve the mystery as to who these two possibly could be. Now the hard part, where in Hell would these two burn for all eternity? “Envy? No, no, so it’s Wrath and Pride, or Pride and Wrath. Well I guess it would be more accur-“ She stopped dead, silently cursing herself for talking to herself again. Taking a deep breath and regaining her thoughts, she damned the Kung-fu Groom to Pride, and the Smashed Bride to Wrath.

With only one sin and one doll left the last position was rather easy. She didn’t even think about it, as she placed a headless doll in an apron in Envy. Her eyes were focused on the door. As soon as the last doll received its infernal judgment, a loud CLICK echoed through the store. Nabiki, no stranger to the basics of breaking, entering, and espionage, recognized it as the sound of a lock sliding back.

The door opened easily now, displaying a long carpeted staircase leading downwards. Now Nabiki Tendou is not as dense as most Nerima residents. Every synapse in her brain demanded that she NOT go down those stairs; even the blind could see the trap coming, and any person with a lick of sense would turn around right now and leave. Nabiki took a deep breath and proceeded down the stairs.

She reached the bottom of the stairs without incident, and entered into the puppet theater. It appeared to be a rather large room, thanks to a trick using a slanted roof, as the staged seemed to be much further away and larger than it was. The rug was soft and thick, forming a five-foot wide border of green carpet that lined the edge of the room. The middle of the carpet was a dark red, and went all the way up to the stage curtain on the far wall. Presumably, the prepubescent audience would sit around the room on the green section, while the puppeteers would come out from the stage onto the red carpet, and allow children to see the puppets up close. The stage was unremarkable; a five-foot high backdrop surrounded in a simple wood carved border, guarded by a limp, thick, dark blue curtain.

There were no whispers, no feelings of unease, nothing. This was just a room apparently. Nabiki walked up to the curtain, and carefully used the baseball bat to part it so she could see what was within. A cute, pastel backdrop that looked as if it came from either ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ or ‘Babes In Toyland’, and a glance to each side revealed the entrances to the backstage.

Nabiki cautiously went deeper into the world of strings, her baseball bat held ready. Again, her caution appeared to be unwarranted, as there was nothing there. A few empty boxes that may have once held puppets were littered around, but she didn’t see any occupied boxes; they must have been valuable enough to be taken home, or locked up each night. Along the back wall there was a soundboard and lighting controls for the stage, all of them non-functional. Then some good luck, a security station with monitors for the cameras in store. They weren’t working but that wasn’t what was important, what was important was the blinking red button that had a label Nabiki was able to translate, ‘Emergency Power’.

As soon as she hit the button, a set of soft fluorescent lights lit up the backstage and the security cameras came to life. Nabiki took a quick look at all of the monitors, then stopped suddenly and stared at the one monitoring the front door.

The Girl in the Bloody Bridal Veil was there, and she was looking directly at the camera. Nabiki stood frozen as she saw the girl place a white paper bag on the floor and walk out of view of the camera. Nabiki was really starting to hate that girl, who was she? Why was she stalking her? Why was she wearing that veil? Whoever she was, she had obviously left that bag, and whatever was in it, for Nabiki.

Exiting the backstage of the theater she started to head for the stairs when she saw something in the middle of the floor. It was a cover to a book, from the pictures of unicorns and fairies on the front she assumed it was a children’s fantasy tale. When she picked it up to look she noticed that apart from the few beginning pages someone had torn the pages out of the book. That was bad, this book was Important. She had no idea how she knew this but she just knew, before she had realized it she had started to read the story aloud.

“There once was a little town

Happy and so full of life and love

Then one day The Mother left the town

And everyone was very sad

But the people tried to be happy,

because they knew The Mother would want that

But they weren’t REALLY happy

Chaos came to the little town, drawn by the lies and sadness

And now God is very sad.

Because all the people there are full of Sin.

Oki no doku desu.

“’Pity the Town’,” Nabiki read; the final line of the story written in a nearly archaic version of her native language. As soon as she said the last part of the story, the sound of a siren pierced the air. It kept on getting louder and louder, forcing Nabiki to clamp her hands over her ears, but it only seemed to make the sound worse. It was piercing into her brain, and digging into her skull like a maggot through a dead carcass. She dropped to her knees and laid on the floor sobbing as the sound burned through her entire body. She would have felt elation, when she thankfully passed out from the pain.

She awoke a few moments later. She jumped up and checked herself over. Other than her current wounds, she appeared to be fine. She turned to the stairs to get out of the theater, and realized that something was VERY wrong.

A mass of wheelchairs blocked the stairs, looking as if they had been tossed down the stairs one after another it would be impossible to climb over those without severely injuring herself. The walls were Wrong, they were no longer the flat black walls, but rusted pieces of sheet metal bolted together haphazardly, and in the gaps she saw something behind the wall…twitching. The carpet was gone, replaced now by a steel metal grate above a black abyss. The Puppet Stage was now a towering monstrosity as the optical illusion had now been reversed. The curtain had been replaced by a sheet of white lace and chiffon, the same material in a wedding dress, spattered with blood and she didn’t what to know what. The frame for the theater was truly disturbing, it looked like someone had stitched together countless hands, arms, legs, and feet into a hideous barrier.

She wasn’t alone. Something was moving behind the curtain. Something that was large and decidedly not human.

Ihatethemwhycanttheyleavemealone

The whispers were back and getting louder.

WhycantkilltheyjustkillgobackkilltoChina

The curtain was starting to part, and the sound of the thing’s movement was getting closer, and Nabiki could make out some…thing, coming closer and closer.

KillThemStupidBimboKillThemBlindFoolKillThenOldhagKillThem

She checked her gun to see if it was fully loaded, and tightened her grip on the baseball bat. A smell of burning flesh reached her nose almost making her gag.

HatethemKillThemHatethemKillthem

A sound grew louder and louder, like a trash disposal someone had jammed a fork into. Nabiki slid her feet into a ready position. Out of the corner of her eye she could see someone sitting on the steps.

KILLTHEMKILLTHEMKILLTHEM

As the thing came into view, the Girl in the Bloody Bridal Veil smiled as the puppet show began. She was very impressed with the production, the puppets were so lifelike and real. One wonderful piece from China and one fantastic puppet directly from Japan.

This was going to be a wonderful show.

Author’s Notes: Points to anyone who sees the Twin Peaks reference. Again thanks to WFROSE for proofing this and a special thanks to Rin for the translation assistance.