I see that town...

Lisa Garland had never meant for her life to unravel the way it did. She had always been driven, a woman with a sense of purpose, and Silent Hill—that cursed town—was never part of her plan. Born in the early hours of a cold December morning, she had been raised in the quiet suburbs of a neighboring town, where life moved predictably. She was the daughter of a stern but loving father, a small-town sheriff who’d taught her right from wrong, and a mother whose kind eyes masked a world of unspoken pain.

Growing up, Lisa had been the sort of child who believed in the inherent good of people, the kind of person who went out of her way to care for others. She had always been the empathetic one, the one who felt everything too deeply. But even as a child, she learned quickly that the world wasn’t always kind. Her father’s temper, often triggered by the weight of his job, would flare up on occasion, leaving her mother to pick up the pieces. The tension in the house never quite reached the boiling point, but it always simmered just beneath the surface, and Lisa could feel it.

Despite the pain she witnessed, Lisa always felt a pull toward helping people. As soon as she was old enough, she became a nurse, drawn to the idea of healing others, of making their lives better, even if just for a moment. But there were always darker elements of her job that stayed with her, things she could never quite shake. The lifeless bodies, the bruised and broken souls she helped patch together, the ones who never left the hospital—and the ones who did, only to return in worse condition. She grew accustomed to it, though, and the small victories of healing, of offering comfort, became her way of surviving the chaos that often lurked just beneath the surface of her world.

That was before Silent Hill.

It wasn’t a choice to be here—it was fate, she supposed. The job at the hospital had seemed like an opportunity for something new, a fresh start, when the vacancy for a new nurse had been posted. The job promised a steady paycheck, a chance to build a life for herself in a town that seemed peaceful on the surface. The problem was, Silent Hill wasn’t peaceful—not in the way she’d imagined.

Lisa’s first few weeks in Silent Hill had been uneventful. The town was quiet—too quiet. People rarely talked to each other, and when they did, it was always with a forced politeness, like they were all playing parts in a long, drawn-out performance. She spent her days at the hospital, a small, outdated building with faded walls and outdated equipment, but it was a job—one she was good at. She worked alongside a small staff of doctors and nurses who were strangely disconnected, almost like they were trapped in the same surreal dream that had consumed the town.

But then things began to change.

It started with the dreams. At night, when Lisa closed her eyes, she was no longer in her tiny apartment on the outskirts of town. Instead, she was standing in the middle of a dense fog, the world around her an eerie silence, broken only by the sound of her own heartbeat thundering in her ears. The streets of Silent Hill were always empty in her dreams, and there was always a sense that something—something dark—was lurking just beyond the veil of mist. It wasn’t terrifying, but there was an unsettling feeling that clung to her, like she wasn’t supposed to be there.

She began to see things that she couldn’t explain. Faces in the windows of the hospital when no one was there. People whose eyes followed her, not with curiosity, but with a kind of hollow recognition that unsettled her to her core. She thought she was imagining things, the stress of her work and the isolation getting to her, but deep down, Lisa knew there was more to it.

It wasn’t just the dreams or the strange occurrences at the hospital—it was the people. The residents of Silent Hill. They weren’t quite right. It was as if they were trapped in some sort of loop, their lives bound to the town in a way she couldn’t fathom. She saw the same faces every day: the quiet man who sat in the same corner of the diner, never speaking to anyone, his eyes vacant. The woman who never left the porch of her house, staring out at nothing. The children who played in the streets but never seemed to grow.

And then there were the visitors—the ones who wandered into the town from the outside, just like her, seeking something they couldn’t name. They would come, their faces always filled with a quiet desperation, their eyes wide with confusion, and then disappear without a trace. They would leave behind only the faintest traces of themselves: a letter forgotten in the hospital lobby, a set of footprints in the fog, a cry for help that seemed to echo from a place beyond the town’s borders.

At first, Lisa thought the town was simply haunted by its past. The strange occurrences, the people who never seemed to change, the overwhelming sense that something terrible had happened here long ago—all of it seemed to be part of some collective grief, some trauma that had left the town in a perpetual state of unrest. But as time went on, Lisa’s sense of dread deepened. Silent Hill was not just haunted by its past—it was alive with it, and that life was not something that would allow anyone to escape.

One day, things began to shift in the most subtle way possible. She found herself awake in the middle of the night, her body drenched in sweat, her heart racing, but not from a nightmare. This time, it was something real—a feeling in the air that was heavier, thicker than anything she had felt before. There was something in the streets. Something that hadn’t been there before, creeping through the fog.

She heard it—the sound of footsteps echoing down the hospital halls, but when she went to check, there was no one there. The once familiar scent of antiseptic in the air began to rot, replaced by something foul, like something long decayed. Shadows shifted in the corners of her vision. Her patients, once benign, began to change—distorting into grotesque forms, their eyes wide and hollow, mouths gaping open as if to scream, but no sound came.

And then came the monsters.

At first, Lisa thought they were just her imagination. But as the days stretched into weeks, she could no longer deny the truth. The hospital was no longer a safe place. The walls seemed to bleed, the floors shook beneath her feet, and the air became thick with the stench of death and decay. One night, she found herself face-to-face with a creature—something that was not human—its skin gray and mottled, its body twisted in unnatural shapes. It attacked her, clawing at her with terrible force, and in that moment, Lisa realized that Silent Hill was not just a town—it was a nightmare, a manifestation of pain, guilt, and suffering that had nowhere to go but into the souls of those trapped within it.

She fought back. Of course, she did. It was in her nature to help, to heal, to try and fix the broken pieces. But Lisa had never felt so helpless before. The monsters were born from the darkest corners of her own mind—the failures, the regrets, the secrets she had buried so deep. Silent Hill was a mirror, reflecting her every sin, every fear, every loss.

Her descent into madness wasn’t gradual. It was instantaneous. It hit her all at once, the crushing realization that the horrors in Silent Hill were not just external forces—they were a part of her. And as the fog closed in, she understood one thing: There would be no escape.

The darkness had already taken root.

Lisa Garland had always believed she could save others. But she was wrong. Silent Hill had taken everything from her, and now, it was time for it to take her soul.

She was just another lost soul, wandering the fog, waiting for the town to claim her completely.