Alan Wake

“Al… next time, can I use the shotgun? I want to blast them.”

“Sure, Barry, you can use the shotgun.”

“You’re a hero, Al. I wish we had video of you onstage blasting away…”

“I’m… I’m no hero,” mumbled Wake. “I’m a writer.”

Barry yawned. “I’m going to take a little nap. Is that okay?”

“No such thing as writer’s block,” said Wake, nodding to himself. “I bet… I bet I could write ten novels in a year. At least ten. And they… they’d all be bestsellers.”

Barry closed his eyes.”You do that, Bestseller. And keep watch while you’re at it.”

Wake’s chin dropped onto his chest. He opened his eyes. The record still went round and round on the turntable, the room safe and bright, very bright and very safe.

Barry snored next to him.

“I’ll keep watch… no problem,” sighed Wake, closing his eyes again.

Rose didn’t know how the strange old lady got in her trailer. And she looked… wrong, somehow. The woman showed her teeth in an approximation of a smile and traced a finger down Rose’s cheek. “Pretty girl,” she said. Rose felt as if she was falling asleep, but her knees didn’t buckle. The crone spoke in a whisper, her words ice-cold and dark in Rose’s ear.

Rose was lost in a dreamland where everything was drawn in black and gray crayons. The old lady had promised her that all her wishes would come true. She would be Alan Wake’s muse. She was smiling so hard it hurt her face. She crushed a bottleful of sleeping pills into the coffee. Deep down inside, she was screaming in terror.

CHAPTER 21

WAKE COULDN’T SEE a thing. Blind drunk, that’s what he was. That was just part of it, though. He had been drunk before, plenty of times, too many times, but it wasn’t like this. Never… never drink moonshine made by crazy people. That was the lesson here.

But where was here?

All he knew was that he was standing up and that he was so angry that his ears ached. He was always angry, seemed like it anyway. He reached out into the smoky-gray haze that surrounded him and felt nothing. The last thing he remembered was sitting on the couch with Barry, the two of them guzzling moonshine as a record skipped and skipped and skipped. Caught in the groove of an old LP was the Andersons’ message to him, a song they had written years earlier, a song that pointed the way to get Alice back. The song had been a message from the Anderson brothers, but their homebrew had been a bonus, a ticket that took Wake back to a place he needed to go.

Light flickered beyond the veil and Wake could hear something now. A voice, faint but still… it was a woman’s voice. Alice’s voice.

“Alice!” His voice sounded like a snarl, revealing not a trace of the relief and eagerness that he felt. In fact, his voice sounded exactly the opposite. “Dammit, Alice, mind your own business!” No, Wake hadn’t said that. He couldn’t have said that… but he had.

The haze was thinning out. He could make out someone standing in front of him. “Just leave me alone!” It was his voice, but it wasn’t what Wake wanted to say, and again he was aware of the rage boiling inside him, ready to explode.

Alice looked up at him. “I… I was just trying to help.”

Wake wanted to embrace her, hold her close, kiss her, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t control his arms. Or his words. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

Tears ran down Alice’s cheeks, but she raised her face at him, defiant. “That’s your problem, not mine, Alan.”

Wake looked around. It was night and they were upstairs in the study of the Bird Leg Cabin. It was their first night in Bright Falls. Over there under the window was the desk, Thomas Zane’s desk, although Wake hadn’t known it at the time. Wake’s typewriter was on the desk, his old manual typewriter that Alice had secretly brought with her from New York. A surprise for him. Something to please him. The typewriter meant to encourage him to work in this new setting, this new place, away from the pressures and temptations of the city. A fresh start. Not just for the work, a fresh start for them.

Instead of pleasing him, the sight of the typewriter had enraged him. Wake’s selfishness and arrogance had ruined everything, made him lash out at her, accusing her of trying to manipulate him. He remembered the sound of Alice crying out in the dark, remembered running toward the cabin, trying to save her. He had failed that first night, but now… now he had a second chance, a chance to make things right, a chance to stop fighting with Alice and take her off the island.

“I’m tired of fighting with you, Alan.”

“You have no idea what I have to deal with,” barked Wake. “You haven’t got a goddamned clue.”

“Then tell me,” said Alice.

Wake understood now. That wasn’t him yelling at Alice, it was another Wake, the Alan Wake he had been before she disappeared. He was dreaming. He was a ghost in this world, a doppelganger, unable to speak or to stop his former self, unable to warn him. Wake was trapped in the dream, forced to relive all his mistakes, but maybe, just maybe he could follow the dream to its conclusion and find out what had really happened that night.

Alice took his hands. “Tell me, Alan,” she said gently. “I want to know what’s bothering you. I want to help.”

For an instant Wake actually felt her, felt the warmth of her skin, and he squeezed her hands back, started to speak, to beg her forgiveness, but then the connection was gone, broken.

Wake was condemned to watch as his former self stormed down the stairs and into the darkness. He was carried along with his former self as though on a tether, carried along out the front door and down the long wooden bridge connecting the cabin to the mainland. He stopped at the moonlit footbridge and laughed at his own folly.

Alice screamed, the sound shimmering like moonbeams on the lake.

Wake’s past self turned around just as the lights in the cabin went out, then ran back toward the cabin, running so hard that his feet cracked the worn planks. He ran faster, but it seemed as if the bridge was elongating in the moonlight, slats being added with every step, the cabin receding farther and farther into the lake. Too late, Wake wanted to tell his past self, it was too late when you took the key from the woman in black, a key to a cabin that no longer existed.

“Alan, where are you?”

“Wait!” cried Wake’s past self, and it was his own voice, the words and passion his. “I’m on my way! Stay inside!”

Fireflies flitted across the bridge, flashing a secret semaphore, distracting him as he raced for the cabin. Easy to lose his footing, and once he did… the lake was deep.

“Please… please don’t,” said Alice.

“Alice, I’m coming! Don’t go… don’t go out onto the balcony!”

Too late. Too late. Too late.

“Stop!” shrieked Alice. “Don’t come any closer!”

Wake’s past self stumbled, but kept running. He jumped off the bridge and onto the island, Diver’s Island, the ground strangely yielding underfoot. The feel of the place made Wake queasy, but he hurtled up the steps onto the porch, threw the front door open.

“Alannnnnnn!”

Wake heard the sound of rotting wood breaking. Alice’s scream echoed, then a splash. He ran up the stairs