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Emerging from Silent Hill, James acknowledged the skid marks in the parking lot; the evidence of him slowing down the last second; being unable to go through with what he'd set out to do when driving here with her remains tucked in, in the backseat.
He got back into the car. The driver's seat was comfortable, and the key turned more easily than all the locks in Silent Hill, the motor growling like a gentle monster. James looked towards the dingy public bathroom, remembering the water on his murderous hands and his murderer's face, who let the memory drip down the drain. Her letter, the unreal ink like the black blood dripping of the unreal creatures and rot, before submerging him in the blackness of what he had tried to repress and now remembered.
He'd never learned to use the car mirrors and twisted around in the seat when he reversed the car back towards the road. He held onto the car seat with the hand that wasn't on the wheel, grip tightening. He saw the sheets covered in forget-me-nots of the curled-up form in the backseat, and he acknowledged what he had done.
"I'm sorry, Mary," he said, apologizing both for killing her and for not living with the guilt.
He hoped for a moment that she would get up behind him and touch his cheek. That Silent Hill would grant him this one last wish, and she'd say that she wanted him to live with what happened, instead of him driving into that watery grave with her.
The lake was so still. So, so still. But there was no shift of cloth behind him, no touch to his cheek, no magic as black as his bad act. He thought he saw ripples in the distance like the lake wished him to come where he'd planned to go.
He didn't stop reversing until his truck hit a tree on the other side of the parking lot. He made a noise of distress, his throat raw from similar noises. He'd been driving so slowly the car didn't become too damaged, although the trunk probably got a bit banged up. No matter. The time when it had mattered was over. It was all over.
The harshness of nature was behind him, the quietude of water, to be breached.
He put her seatbelt on first. For safety. Then he put his own on, pulling at it to make sure it would keep him fastened to his casket. He put his foot on the gas pedal all the way down the floor, the car going from a gentle monster to an angry one, angry at his abuse and subsequent murder of it, too. James' second apology (to his own care, no less) was lost in the roar of the car speeding straight forwards. It bumped on the sidewalk and smashed through the fence. There was a second as it floated in the air that he felt a moment of regret, and then relief as it hit the surface, welcoming death.
Death did not come as swiftly as he'd hoped.
The speed that he hit the water at gave it a feeling of hitting concrete, smashing up the car. The belt pulled at his chest and hips, preventing him from flying through the windshield. He felt something kick against the back of his seat and his breathing exploded when he saw that her legs had escaped from under the sheet, pale and thin and veiny, adorned with the old blue wool socks that she'd worn around their home.
The car floated, for a few moments, and then began to sink. He hoped it was deep enough. It had looked deep enough from when he'd stood regarding it earlier.
Water began to leak into the car from the air vents and the trunk. He had imagined a great quiet, not the constant dripping, his own heavy breathing. The car sank before the water had time to truly enter the car, the weight of the motor taking it downwards. Or maybe it was the air in the trunk? The car began to tilt, with the latter floating upwards, causing James to hang more and more in his seat and watch the black nothingness of the depths through the front window. The bottom of the lake rushed up towards him, and he barely caught sight of the mud before it danced outwards.
He was at the bottom of the whole world, but at least he was with her.
He still startled when he felt a heaviness on the seat behind him, the slow tilt allowed her seat belts to slowly extend and put her closer to him. He'd wrapped her tightly when he'd carried her from the apartment to his car at night, but her legs were visible.
Water dripped from her body onto him, like liquid secrets, and most of it was gathering beneath his feet. Feeling disoriented but ritualistic, he began to remove his dirty shoes. His jacket went next, and he had to peel them off due to the patches wetness and had to be a bit clever about it because of the challenge of the seatbelt. He felt better about dying in his shirt and socks, like going home, rather than going out. The car continued to tilt, slowly becoming vertical. The water was up to his knees. He wished it would rush in more quietly, because it made him think of derelict buildings, absent here at the bottom of the lake. There were a few weeds, but no fish, probably scared away by the car's size and movement. Too bad. He'd liked to see a few fish, shimmering like silver coins dropped down a well, wishes that went nowhere. He was surrounded by rotting vegetation, rotting nature, and it was better that way.
He reached behind himself, finding a bony shoulder among the humid cloth.
"I'll be with you soon," he said.
As the car became fully vertical, he truly was hanging, staring down at the dark brown mud of the floor. He had to hold her still, so she didn't droop forward. He caught the scent of her skin on the sheets, a flowery old perfume that she'd used to mask the changes in body odor after the chemo and the disinfectant smell of the hospital, which lingered under the cheese-like smell of somebody who'd recently died. Blood filled his head, making him even more disoriented, and his neck ached dully.
Water covered the dashboard now and the ripples and bubbles hid the buttons. The pressure against the windows were probably intense by now, killing all the remaining opportunities to open the car windows and swim out, and he'd left his trusty metal pipe back in town just so he wouldn't be tempted to smash through the glass the last minute. He felt no such need though. No needs at all but ending all needs permanently.
He had an absurd thought: what if this was Silent Hill's drinking water? He'd reached the town by a secluded road that he'd found with Mary, the first time that they were here, because they kept reading the map wrong, before they decided to just seek it out by foot and discovering the forest trail and old church in the process, which had been beautiful in the sun. If this was drinking water, he was contaminating it.
"I'm sorry," he said a third and final time, perhaps to the town itself, and to speak properly he had to splutter out water as it reached his face. The splutter was instinctual, and though he tried to breathe it in willingly, his body fought him.
The body didn't want to die even if the soul in it wanted it more than anything. He had discovered that in the hospital, with how her sickened body clung on to life even as her lovely mind withered, something that she'd talked about frequently in the hospice, back before her mouth got too covered with open sores for her to speak much at all. She'd always been the one who spoke the most in their relationship, while he was the quiet type. It had been a good match before cancer entered the relationship. They were both so scared. It had been so wrong, how she'd needed to comfort him because of her diagnosis, and he didn't blame her for the bitterness. She'd said she wanted to die, but also that she didn't want to. She was so scared, and him, too, even as he killed her. He couldn't be certain that she'd wanted it and couldn't live with the uncertainty.
The water burned like hellfire on its way in, running into his nose and mouth and ears, zinging his sinuses. He made a scared little exhale just like she'd done, and it wasn't enough to expel much of his incoming death, like it hadn't been for her. Again, he was surprised, this time by what a long time drowning took and how painful it was. Might be seconds, might be minutes, he couldn't tell except that it was too long. He shook and fought and made no move to loosen the seatbelt. All his senses were stuffed with cotton, and he had a deep pressure inside his head. The water burned his mind away.
And yet he clung on to the wheel, unable to let go. His body began to stiffen like he was already dead, and it felt as though it attempted to straighten itself out like a pole but couldn't do so due to the seat and belt. The processes felt new and strange, although he'd thought about it a lot, very unlike the movies that he'd seen with their quickness and silence. He had heard about the bodies of Pompeii curling up underneath the volcanic heat and hadn't known drowning bodies did the opposite.
His own blonde hair danced around him. And then: her brown hair, too.
A swarm of bubbles escaped his mouth, butchering her name as the bubbles floated away – towards the trunk, or the surface? – and revealed her face. It was covered in sores, and the skin was ever so slightly degloved, with the whites of the eyes visible. Horrible and beautiful, because that was the face his lover had occupied, before he killed her. The blankets had been washed away, following the line between the water and the air, like darkening shrouds on top of them. Giving them privacy. Tucking them in.
With his last strength, he willed his arm to move, reaching for her and drawing her nearer. His cheek became pressed towards his own, cold where he was warm. If he sobbed, he did so in silence, grimacing and shaking under the pressure of death.
He couldn't use his arm for long and had to let go of her, the wheel, of everything. His neck tipped upwards, chest out, arms going down by his sides. His eyes stung but keeping them open was worth it, because she floated down towards him, upside down. Was it his disorientation or did she press her temple against his one last time, like they were together in mind, once more?
He smiled despite the agony of drowning.