In a hidden little town, a spot so out of the way that hardly any outsiders ever stumble upon it.
This was a coal mining outpost in West Virginia.
On top of that, a thriving town called Silent Hill had once stood here—until that massive fire hit thirty years ago.
The blaze came out of nowhere, torching the town's bustling vibe and claiming lives left and right, guilty folks and innocents alike.
It spread from the surface down into the underground mines, igniting the coal seams too, and those embers are still smoldering to this day. The coal smoke it kicked up lingers over the town, turning the place into somewhere no living soul should hang around.
Some folks call it a curse; others say it's hell's payback. Either way, a dark, evil force started creeping in, making Silent Hill weirder by the day.
The survivors trickled out over time, and now the town's a ghost of itself—totally abandoned.
A place no one's set foot in for ages.
Until today, when a newcomer showed up.
Inside a classic-colored car sat a young guy with a worn-out face that couldn't quite hide his good looks. He slowly cracked his eyes open.
Hiss!
His head throbbed like it was gonna explode!
Barry clutched his skull, hit with a foggy, dizzy haze way worse than the mother of all hangovers.
"Where the hell am I? Who... who am I?"
Before he could even get his bearings, a flood of unfamiliar memories bubbled up in his mind.
It was the life story of an average American dude from the States.
Who knows how much time passed, but Barry soaked it all in, like binge-watching a movie, piece by piece.
Weirdly enough, this other Barry—the one whose life he'd just inherited—looked almost exactly like him, down to like 99% identical. It was like staring at another version of himself from across the world.
Only their experiences were worlds apart, which shaped totally different personalities.
Last night, American Barry had gone to a buddy's birthday bash at college—y'know, one of those rowdy frat-style parties with cheap beer and bad decisions—and finally mustered the guts to confess to the girl he'd been crushing on forever.
She shot him down hard. Crushed, he snatched a few bottles of champagne, bolted out the door, and tore off north in his beloved AE86 through a pouring rainstorm, leaving behind the season that had her in it.
He was pretty buzzed that night.
In a hazy blur, he gunned it across a massive bridge, then—bam—one hell of a crash, and everything went black.
When he came to, he was Barry in another world.
Lucky for him, aside from the lingering headache, his body felt fine—no broken bones or anything.
But he had zero clue where he'd ended up.
Barry popped the door, stepped out, and craned his neck to take in this totally alien world for the first time.
The sky wasn't its usual crisp blue—it was a flat, murky gray, like the whole thing was washed out in one dull tone.
A thick fog blanketed everything, cutting his visibility short; he couldn't make out much beyond a few feet. And weirdly, there was no real dampness in the air, no misty humidity clinging to his skin. It felt like the fog was just some fake illusion, not the real deal.
Even stranger—or maybe it was his imagination—he sensed this invisible weight pressing down all around him.
They were out in the countryside, near some wild hills, but there wasn't a lick of life stirring. Just dead, eerie silence.
Gray skies kept dumping what looked like snowflakes, a frosty white creeping from the rocky hillside right down to the ground, like a full-on winter dump.
"Weird... it's months away from actual winter. This ain't even close to the white season yet."
Barry tilted his face up to catch the falling flakes, but surprisingly, they didn't feel cold at all.
He held out his hand, palm up, snagging one of those fluffy, willow-like specks. He rubbed it between his fingers and realized it wasn't snow—it was ash, the burned-up kind.
"Where the hell is this place?"
The whole setup was seriously off, and it was starting to freak him out.
To play it safe, Barry hopped back in his car and locked the doors tight.
He slid the key in, ready to fire it up.
Five minutes later.
Still nothing. The engine wouldn't turn over. Gut twisting, Barry fished his phone from his pocket and tried dialing 911.
No dice.
Zero signal.
Out of options, he grabbed his backpack, gave the car a quick once-over, and set out on foot, hoping to flag down some help.
He trudged a short way down the road until he spotted a massive sign on the shoulder.
It read: "Welcome to Silent Hill."
"Welcome to Silent Hill?"
Barry's heart skipped. Just saying it out loud rang a bell, like he'd heard it somewhere before.
A second later, it hit him like a freight train.
Silent Hill!
Wasn't that the name from those creepy horror flicks? The ones with the fog, the ash, and all the nightmare fuel?
It all lined up—the mist, the fallout, this damn sign.
What were the odds of something this freaky?
The thrill of getting a do-over at life? Yeah, that just soured real quick.
The more Barry thought about it...
No way. Couldn't be!
Clinging to that last shred of hope, he whipped around and sprinted back the way he'd come, desperate to check one final thing.
He blew past where he'd parked the car, glancing over his shoulder the whole way.
Until—
He hit the end of the road. A sheer drop-off.
No path forward, just an endless, bottomless chasm stretching out below.
It was like hitting an invisible wall in a video game, where the map ends and the rest is just empty air or a flat texture slapped on.
Barry stared out at the void, dead silent.
If this were a game, he'd half-joke there was some hidden path out there, or maybe his ride had a secret flight mode he'd forgotten to unlock.
But the memories in his head? They were screaming otherwise—this wasn't some glitch.
Without some wild supernatural BS, he couldn't wrap his brain around how he'd gotten here.
Since no logical explanation was cutting it, he had to roll with his gut.
If he'd really crossed over into a horror movie world, then priority one was using whatever scraps of plot he remembered to stay alive as long as possible!
Right now, no phone, no wheels, total stranger in a strange land.
Rule number one: Find other people, team up, and survive.
Coming to terms with it, Barry shouldered his pack and started trudging deeper into the town.
But in a spot he couldn't see...
Up on the ridge overlooking the hills...
A little girl with jet-black hair, dark eyes, and a blue dress watched from the shadows, tracking his every move.
From the moment he woke up confused in the car, fumbling around, to heading off toward town—she'd caught it all.
After all, in this twisted pocket of reality, Alessa was the queen of dark powers.
Without her say-so, slipping from the real world into Silent Hill's surface layer? Pretty much impossible.
But this nobody Barry pulled it off, and even Dark Alessa couldn't figure out how the heck he'd bypassed her lockdown and snuck into the surface world.
Outside, the town had been sealed off after that freak fire thirty years back, once everyone bailed.
Silent Hill hadn't seen a fresh face in forever.
Alessa watched him fade into the distance, made no move to interfere, and just muttered to herself:
"Interesting soul."