Silent Hill 4: The Room - The Beautiful People

- The Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson *
Henry Townshend is living in South Ashfield; a town that is a half a day's drive away from Silent Hill. One day he finds himself mysteriously locked in his own apartment. He cannot escape through either the windows or his front door, which has been chained shut from the inside. No one, not even people standing directly outside the door, can hear him when he pounds on the door and cries for help. After five days of entrapment Henry finds a hole that has opened up in his bathroom wall. Armed only with a steel pipe that broke loose when the wall opened, a carton of chocolate milk, and a bottle of wine, he proceeds to venture into the hellish madness of "Silent Hill".

The hole leads Henry to a variety of strange areas, inhabited by dangerous and sometimes immortal creatures. In the first four worlds, he witnesses the murders of four people who are stuck in corresponding realms like him. The murders then happen in the real world, too. As Henry ventures further, he learns more and more about Walter Sullivan, a serial killer that terrorized Ashfield several years ago and left certain numbers carved on his victims. Walter was arrested and committed suicide. However, new victims bear similar numbers, and different events suggest that Sullivan is not really dead.

Walter Sullivan was born in the same Room 302 (where Henry lives now). His parents fled the scene soon afterwards, as the baby's birth was considered unnatural. Superintendent Frank Sunderland handed the newborn to the medics, and so Walter found his way to the "Wish House" orphanage in Silent Hill, where he was taught occult rituals. Later, Sullivan began to believe that the Room itself was his mother. Therefore he decided to "wake" it up through the "21 Sacraments" ritual, which required, in particular, 21 murders. Walter killed 10 people in different ways, but he ended each murder by taking their hearts out. He then went through the ritual of Assumption, which allowed him to make himself the eleventh victim through suicide and yet still remain in the world. His goal is to kill another 10 people to complete the 21 Sacraments. Henry meets two Walters: one adult (real) and one child, an image conjured by real Walter's reminisces.

The four victims that Henry encounters in his wanderings are numbers 16 through 19. The twentieth murder, however, is interrupted, and the victim (Henry's neighbour Eileen Galvin) is taken to the hospital. Henry rescues Eileen and together they try to stop Walter, while Henry's apartment becomes increasingly haunted and dangerous.