CHAPTER 45: DOUGLAS'S QUESTIONS
The request came through official channels.
"Private meeting." Douglas's message was brief and professional. "Police station sanctuary, 1400 hours. Matters to discuss that require discretion."
The phrasing raised flags immediately. Douglas had been their intelligence coordinator for months—casual conversations were common, formal requests rare. Whatever he wanted to discuss, it wasn't routine.
He found the private investigator in the station's back office, surrounded by files that had nothing to do with cult activity. Personnel records. Background checks. Documentation that looked older than Silent Hill's crisis.
"Close the door." Douglas didn't look up from the papers spread across his desk. "Have a seat."
He sat. Waited. The silence stretched until Douglas finally met his eyes.
"How long have you lived in Maine, Harry?"
The question was casual. The tone was not.
"What do you mean?"
"Simple question." Douglas tapped a folder labeled MASON, HARRY J. "Your driver's license says you've been a Maine resident for twelve years. Your employment records say you've worked as a writer in the Portland area for most of that time. Your daughter's birth certificate lists a hospital in Bangor."
"That's all accurate."
"Is it?" Douglas opened the folder. "Because I've been making some calls. Checking some records. And the things I'm finding don't quite add up."
Breathe. This was always a possibility. Douglas is a professional investigator. Of course he'd notice inconsistencies.
"What kind of things?"
"Your employment history shows gaps. Periods where you should have been working but no one remembers you. Your landlord from three years ago says you were quiet, kept to yourself—but he also says you seemed different afterward. 'More confident,' he said. 'Like he'd figured something out.'" Douglas's eyes were steady. "Your friends describe personality changes. Your writing style shifted. Small things that most people wouldn't notice."
"The crash affected me. The town changed me."
"Maybe." Douglas pulled out another document. "But there's one thing the crash can't explain. Your driving records—the ones I pulled from the DMV, not the ones in local files—show you've never been to Maine before the night you crashed."
The silence that followed was deafening.
"The records must be incomplete—"
"They're not." Douglas's voice was patient. "I've been doing this for thirty years, Harry. I know how to read a paper trail. And yours has holes that don't make sense unless..." He paused. "Unless something happened that changed more than your personality."
"What are you suggesting?"
"I don't know." Douglas lit a cigarette, the motion automatic and grounding. "But I know you're not the same Harry Mason who left Portland that night. You look the same. You sound the same. You have his memories, or at least enough of them to fool his daughter. But something's different at a level I can't quite pin down."
He said nothing. There was nothing to say that wouldn't make things worse.
"The cult calls you a demon wearing stolen skin." Douglas exhaled smoke. "I don't believe in demons. But I do believe in questions, and right now, you're the biggest question I've got."
The cigarette burned down in silence.
Douglas watched him with the steady patience of someone who had conducted a thousand interviews and knew that silence was often more revealing than words. The office felt smaller than before, the walls pressing in, the air thick with implications neither of them wanted to voice.
"Something happened in the crash." He chose his words carefully. "Something I can't fully explain. The town—Silent Hill—it changes people. You've seen it. Lisa, Kaufmann, the manifestations that take shapes from human guilt and fear. The boundaries between what's real and what's possible are different here."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I can give you."
"Because you don't trust me?"
"Because some truths are too complicated for simple explanations." He met Douglas's eyes directly. "I'm Harry Mason. I'm Cheryl's father. I've spent six months building something worth protecting and fighting threats that would destroy everything if I let them. Whatever else you think you know, whatever questions your investigation has raised—those facts remain."
"You didn't answer my original question." Douglas stubbed out the cigarette. "Have you always been Harry Mason?"
"I've been Harry Mason since I woke up in that crashed Jeep." Not a lie. Not the whole truth. But close enough to satisfy a conscience that had learned to stretch over months of necessary deception.
Douglas studied him for a long moment. Then he nodded—a cop's acceptance of an answer that wasn't quite satisfactory but was enough to proceed.
"Alright." He gathered his files, organizing them with practiced efficiency. "I'll accept that. For now."
"For now?"
"I'm a private investigator, Harry. Questions are what I do. You've given me enough to work with, but I haven't stopped looking." Douglas stood, tucking the folders under his arm. "Just wanted you to know where we stand."
"I appreciate the honesty."
"It's the only currency that matters in a place like this." Douglas moved toward the door, then paused. "One more thing."
The words carried weight. A setup. Something Douglas had been saving for the right moment.
"Kaufmann's files." Douglas didn't turn around. "The ones he left behind when he... departed. I've been going through them, looking for anything that might help against Valtiel."
"And?"
"Most of it's medical records. Patient files. Nothing relevant." A pause. "But there's one note that caught my attention. A memo from years ago, before the corruption went public. It mentions a name."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
"What name?"
"Dominic." Douglas turned, watching his reaction with professional attention. "The memo says someone named Dominic contacted Kaufmann about alternative treatments for a patient. There's no last name, no contact information. Just a first name and a date that doesn't match anything else in the records."
He kept his expression neutral. Years of practice—first in his old life, then in this one—had taught him how to control the tells that gave away internal panic.
"I don't know anyone named Dominic."
"Neither did Kaufmann, apparently. The memo ends with a note saying he couldn't identify the person who contacted him and suspected it might have been a prank." Douglas's eyes never left his face. "But it's interesting, isn't it? A name that shows up once, without context, in the files of a dead man who knew more about Silent Hill than almost anyone."
"Interesting." He forced the word out. "But probably coincidence. Kaufmann dealt with hundreds of people over the years."
"Probably." Douglas walked out, leaving the door open behind him. "Like I said—just wanted you to know where we stand."
He stayed in the office for an hour after Douglas left.
The revelation sat heavy in his chest—a name from his past life, somehow appearing in documents that should have no connection to the person he'd been before transmigration. Coincidence, maybe. Or something worse. Something that suggested the barriers between who he had been and who he had become weren't as solid as he'd believed.
Dominic contacted Kaufmann about alternative treatments.
When? How? The memo was years old, Douglas had said. Before the corruption went public. Which meant either the name was genuinely coincidental—there were other Dominics in the world, after all—or something much stranger was at work.
The town changes people. Changes reality. Changes the boundaries between what's possible and what's not.
Could it have reached backward? Found his old identity somehow, woven it into local records as part of its eternal hunger for souls and stories? Or was this something else entirely—a mystery that had nothing to do with him specifically and everything to do with the chaos that had always lurked beneath Silent Hill's surface?
He had no answers. Only questions that multiplied every time he tried to pin them down.
The radio crackled.
"Harry?" Lisa's voice, urgent. "You need to get back to the hospital. There's something you should see."
"What is it?"
"More symbols. But this time, they're not painted." A pause. "They're carved. Into the basement walls. Near the Flauros."
He was moving before she finished speaking, the conversation with Douglas already receding behind the immediate emergency.
But the name followed him through the fog, whispering from corners of his memory he thought he'd left behind.
Dominic.
Who were you? Who am I? And what connects them?
No answers came. Only the endless grey, and the war that waited beyond it.
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