mistressofmuses' fic

Summary: "In memory of the sixty seven who died of illness and now sleep beneath the lake." -The Rosewater Memorial in Silent Hill
The town of Silent Hill has long been known for strange events. In 2016, a virulent illness tears through the town, progressing rapidly through an array of horrific symptoms before the patients die. Worse, it has no identifiable cause. Epidemiologist Anna Garcia is sent to record everything she can about the sickness, in the hopes of tracing it to some point of origin, or discover something to combat it. She finds far more to the history of the town and its strange past.

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Illness, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death

Notes: First shared work for the Silent Hill fandom!
I actually wrote the first version of this fic way back in 2017-early 2018. At the time I held off on posting it, because my sibling was doing some betaing for me. Then their schedule got too busy, but we held out hope for it working out. Finally it was clear the timing just wasn't going to work out, so it was probably better for me to edit myself...
Then 2020 happened. And suddenly sharing a story about a horrific illness (even one with vague, evil supernatural components) seemed like it would be in extremely poor taste. Now it feels like maybe there's enough distance from it that it's not quite so ghoulish, even as we remain in the middle of a pandemic that we may never be free of. But I DO want it to be clear - the illness in this fic is not Covid, nor was it ever intended to resemble Covid.

For chapter one: this is the chapter that is the heaviest on "found footage" style narration; the future chapters will alternate between prose and sections of the "epidemiological report", though those future report sections are heavier on text and less so on descriptions of image and video.