This room symbolized everything you had been striving for throughout the entire room; it was closure, it was victory, it was the finishing line and it was salvation. You knew Mary shouldn't be there, every part of your logical thinking brain knew it but you couldn't shake the feeling that Perhaps you're wrong-- exactly like James was feeling. So you had a hefty portion of reason in one hand to stamp out such foolish hopes against hopes of a happy ending but on the other hand you had vague little mind***s like faintly hearing her voice from inside the room calling your name if you went for the staircase...
Then upon reaching the room, when you learn the truth, the cold, cruel truth I ended up sitting through it with my mouth wide open. The truth, James? There is no Mary here, never was. Why? Because she's dead, James. You killed her yourself, smothered her with a pillow. Did not see that one coming at all. And then when you think things can't possibly get any worse, in walks Laura, all happy and hopeful looking to get you going on the hunt for Mary again. ... what do you say to her in a situation like that? So somehow James finds the strength to tell her the truth, tell a Child why they won't find her best friend here after all. Because she's dead... she Didn't die from sickness and James tells her what he did. Laura's quiet for a long time and then the emotions come. She pushes him, punches his shoulders, calls him a killer and says every hurtful thing she can think of and in the end when she calms down and asks him "Why?" the only thing he could get out was "... I'm sorry. The Mary you know isn't here". She left without a word and I honestly thought the game would end with James sitting there, all alone and absolutely destroyed, head hanging with all of Silent Hill laughing at his fate. There was no way it could get any worse...
Yeah, how wrong was I?
Suddenly the radio sparks to life again and through the static you hear that voice again, her voice; Mary's voice. She's calling for you, as alive as ever, waiting for you and wondering why you haven't come for her yet. She calls for him and somehow and I DO NOT KNOW where he finds the strength to-- James gets out of the chair and stumbles out the room to find her.
Heh, and then as the final thing you realize just how screwed up James is in the head when you exit into the corridor. All of Silent Hill had been pretty much run down, ruins and not always easy to tell which Silent Hill you were in but when you first entered the hotel it was just as he left it. Spotless, electricity working, nothing like the rest of town. But now, exiting out into the corridor you find that the whole place is ruined. Water seeps in through the ceiling, stains everywhere, fire damage, debris and crumbling walls... Question is, did it just now become like that or was it like that all along, and James was just seeing things through a fractured psyche?
I have yet to experience a Whoa-moment in a game to rival Room 312.