Alan Wake

circles. He took a left, kept walking, then took the next right.

He didn’t remember how long he had been searching for a way out of the maze, when he noticed something odd. His footsteps on the gravel path were… echoing, which was crazy.

Wake walked on. Stopped. Started walking again. The sound was definitely doubled. It wasn’t until he heard the low guttural voice that he realized what was really happening. He wasn’t alone in the maze. Someone was tracking him. You don’t sleep for a few days, you miss the clues, Wake, he told himself. He switched the flashlight on, took out the pistol, and ran.

Beep beep beep! It sounded like Barry was just a few rows over.

Wake took a right, a right, tripped over a broken ceramic birdbath, and sprawled face-down in the gravel, the flashlight going out as it skidded away from him.

“You can have the TV on, if you don’t fight about the channels!” The voice came from the other side of the hedge, a manic voice, the words oddly inflected.

Wake quietly fumbled around for the flashlight, the gravel was noisy under his fingers.

“You get two pills in the morning and then you’ll be nice and calm all day long.” The voice was moving the same direction that Wake was going, but the Taken had made a mistake. That row led to a dead end. Wake had time to get out.

Eager now, Wake scuttled forward on his hands and knees, sweeping around for the flashlight.

“What are you doing out of bed? Doctor Hartman will be so disappointed!”

That voice… it shouldn’t be where it was. Wake’s hand closed over the flashlight, and he shined it upwards, saw a man covered in shadows scuttling atop the hedges.

The man launched himself off the hedges, landed heavily in front of Wake. “Three pills in the evening, and you’ll sleep like a baby.”

There was something in his hand.

Wake turned the flashlight on the man, saw the shadows smolder before the light went out. Time enough for him to see that it was Birch, had been Birch, anyway, and he was holding a pair of hedge clippers. Wake beat the flashlight against the palm of his hand, as the Taken advanced, the clippers going snip, snip, snip.

“Stop struggling!” Snip, snip, snip. “We’re all friends here. This is just part of the therapy.” Snip, snip, snip.

Wake smacked the flashlight against his hand harder and harder, trying to get it to work.

Snip, snip, snip, closer now, as Birch crunched across the gravel.

Wake whacked the flashlight and the light blazed. Blinking, he shined it directly in Birch’s face, the Taken close enough to touch.

It winced, the shadows sliding away, falling away, shimmering in the light. Wake kept the flashlight on the Taken as he shot it in the face. Shot it again and again, until it dissolved like dust motes sparkling, and Wake remembered the dust he had seen this morning, waking up with Hartman standing over him. He wondered where Hartman was now. Wondered if he was a Taken now too.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeep!

The sound shook Wake out of his reverie, started him moving again. He heard someone behind him again. No… more than one. He skidded around a turn, digging in, sprinted down the right-hand path.

Beep beep beep.

Wake could hear voices of the other Taken behind him, others lost in the maze, hopping hedges. He burst out of the row, saw the exit and Barry in the parking lot, waving to him from the car.

Beeeeeeeeep.

Wake almost tore off the door on the passenger’s side in his haste to get inside.

He sat there panting, unable to catch his breath as Barry drove away. Feeling an itch at the back of his neck, Wake suddenly turned around.

A Taken stood just inside the maze, watching the car, watching Wake, the creature covered so thickly with darkness that whoever he had been was unrecognizable now.

Wake glanced in the rearview mirror as Barry drove out of the parking lot. The Taken still stood there, as though he had all the time in the world.

When Thomas Zane fell for Barbara Jagger, it happened fast. She was young, vibrant and beautiful, full of life. He had never been a very happy man, and without any seeming effort she had changed all that. Zane felt good for the first time in his life. Everything she did was another piece of a jigsaw puzzle he hadn’t even known he’d been missing. And best of all, she made the words flow, strong and sharp. She was his muse.

CHAPTER 18

THE STORM BEAT against the windshield, the wipers of Barry’s rental car barely able to keep up with the pelting rain. Trees loomed on both sides of the narrow road, the headlights boring a tunnel of light through the darkness.

“Al, you sure you don’t want me to drive toward the nearest Leaving Bright Falls, Come Back Soon! sign?”

“You really want to leave?” said Wake.

Barry shook his head. He looked tiny in the red parka that he had put back on. “Not a chance,” he admitted. “Ever since I got here, I’ve spent half my time so scared I want to piss myself, and the rest of the time I’ve never felt more alive.”

“Welcome to my nightmare,” said Wake, listening to one of Hartman’s tapes through an earpiece. He held up the microcassette player, switched it to speaker.

Now, Mrs. Wake, can you tell me about Alan’s problems? It was Hartman’s voice, dripping with false concern.

He’s more and more out of control, doctor, said Alice. The parties, the late nights, and he’s so angry all the time—

Wake switched off the speaker. “This is how Mott fooled me in the sheriff’s station. I wasn’t listening to Alice on the phone; Hartman cut up her conversation with him and Mott played it back to me. They never had her.”

The storm whipped the trees around them, sent leaves across the road, dancing in the headlights. Barry cursed softly, wiped condensation off the inside of the windshield.

Wake waved the manuscript at him. “These new pages, they connect a lot of the dots, the random details. Listen to this,” he said, holding up a page.

In spite of its human mask, to describe the Dark Presence as intelligent would have implied human qualities on something decidedly inhuman. Nonetheless, it found the one spot in the diner that was dark enough. Some light spilled into the corridor, ravaging it, but it took the pain, horrible as it was. The writer would soon fix that. He would be coming to the one place where it still had power.

“Get it?” said Wake. “Alice and I were supposed to rent the cabin from Stucky, but the woman in black met me at the diner instead. She gave me the key to the Bird Leg Cabin instead. A cabin that doesn’t even exist anymore. That’s the one place the darkness still has power. It’s like I said, Hartman and Mott never had Alice, but the darkness… the darkness does.”

“Sure, I get it.” Barry watched Wake out of the corner of his eyes. “Tell me again, who’s the woman in black? I thought that was the woman who betrayed John Dillinger to the cops.”

“That was the lady in red,” said Wake. “Are you messing with me? Because I’m not in the mood, Barry.”

“Relax, Al, I’m just trying to take the edge off. This hasn’t been a stroll in Central Park for me either.”