Alan Wake

and out onto the balcony. “Alice?” The railing was broken. “Alice?” He stood there, staring into the lake, looking for her. A single firefly made lazy circles over the water, dipping among the stars reflected in the lake, and it was the saddest and loneliest thing that Wake had ever seen.

Wake stood beside his past self as he looked closer. There… there was something in the water, a dark shape, sinking deeper and deeper. Wake dove into the lake, swimming down toward that dark shape that had to be Alice, but she sank faster than he could swim… and he lost her. Just as he had that first night. Wake felt himself floating slowly toward the surface.

Diving after Alice was the last memory Wake had of that night. After that, the next thing he could remember was waking up behind the wheel of the crashed car, his head throbbing and wondering how he had gotten there. He had set out across the woods toward the light of the gas station in the distance, Stucky’s gas station. It was on the way to the gas station that Wake had found the first manuscript page. Light-headed now, Wake struggled to reach the surface of the lake. He broke through, gasping, pulled himself onto the dock. He shivered under the stars. Even in his dream he couldn’t reach Alice, couldn’t save her. He couldn’t save anyone.

The dock trembled, then rocked back and forth as a rumbling started deep underwater, the surface of the lake vibrating. Wake staggered up, walked unsteadily on the bridge back to the island, the wooden planks groaning. Large bubbles rose from the depths of the lake, bubbles the size of beachballs, black and shiny in the moonlight. He collapsed as he reached the island, saw the woman in black on the balcony, Barbara Jagger watching him with eyes cold as the lake.

Jagger, or the darkness that wore her face, had been there every step of the way, at the diner, perhaps even earlier. She had orchestrated it from the beginning and she was here now, watching Wake relive it. Jagger walked down the steps to where Wake lay. For a moment her black veil slipped, the horror of her ravaged features on display before she covered herself again. She bent down beside him and Wake smelled toadstools and rotting meat. “Look at the cabin,” she whispered, pointing. “Is there someone in the window? Maybe it’s your wife. Maybe your lovely Alice didn’t drown after all. Maybe she’s inside, alone in the dark.”

Shadows flickered over Wake’s past self.

“Hurry, you fool!” hissed Jagger. “What are you waiting for?”

Wake got to his feet. “Alice?”

“Hurry!”

Wake felt Jagger digging its nails into his flesh, felt it using him, pulling his strings. He knew all this, but he also knew that Alice needed him. He ran up the stairs to the cabin.

Jagger smiled and followed him.

It was dark inside the cabin, streaks of moonlight through the windows the only illumination. Wake looked around, worried.

Jagger was right beside him. “Your lovely Alice must be here somewhere. Maybe she’s upstairs, in the study? Yes! That’s where she is. You can apologize to her for all the ugly things you said. You can tell her how sorry you are, how you’ll never do it again. You’ll laugh about it and put it all behind you.”

Wake saw shadows flickering on the walls, a deeper darkness that the moonlight couldn’t reach. He rushed upstairs to the bedroom. She wasn’t there. He walked slowly to the study, his footsteps heavy. If she wasn’t here… if she wasn’t here, then where was she? “Alice?”

Jagger followed him.

Wake looked around the study.

“She’s not here.” Jagger glared at him from the shadows. “Did you really think there was going to be a happy ending?” Her laugh was like the sound of a rusted bedspring. “Your lovely Alice is dead. She drowned because you walked out on her. She’s lying there in the filth at the bottom of the lake, making friends with the bloodworms and crabs, and it’s your fault. You’re responsible for her dull eyes and cold blue lips. All she wanted was to help you write, but you wouldn’t let her. You might as well have killed her yourself. It would have been kinder to the poor dear.”

Wake’s past self leaned against the desk, sobbing.

“Hush, now.” Jagger stroked his hair, and her touch was like seaweed. “There’s still hope. Cauldron Lake is a very special place. Here, you have the power to change things. Alice wanted you to write. That’s the only way you can bring her back.” Shadows were piling up in the room, slowly blocking out the moonlight. “I can give Alice back to you, just the way you remember her. Better, even. I’ll help you. I’ll tell you what to do. You can write her back. A creative fellow like you can do anything here. You’re so lucky to be here. The story you write will come true, and all will be well again. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Wake felt the darkness gathering around his past self, and it took all his strength to remind himself that it was a dream, a memory that he was recovering in bits and pieces. The Dark Presence had brought him back to this place to torture him, but the darkness had miscalculated. Wake felt the pain and the overwhelming loss of that first night, just as the Dark Presence wanted, but he was able to stand back from himself again and finally understand what had really happened that night. This was how it had happened. This was how he had written the manuscript. Jagger had Alice, and the manuscript was the ransom for her.

Wake saw his past self nod at Jagger. “Yes… yes, I’ll write what you want. I’ll fix it. I’ll do anything you ask, as long as you bring her back.” Wake saw himself sit down at the typewriter and start writing, fingers pounding the keys, the sound like thunder in the study. Wake remembered that sound, he had been hearing it for days now, the sound so constant that after a while he almost forgot it was there. Wake stared at himself banging away at the typewriter while Jagger hovered over him and he remembered…

In the dark, Wake had written for days—a week—written almost a complete manuscript of a novel entitled Departure. Touched by the Dark Presence, trapped in a nightmare, he’d thought he was saving Alice, convinced it was the only way to bring her back. Jagger had stoked his fear, whispering to him as he worked, making sure that the unfolding story would make the Dark Presence more and more powerful.

Wake watched as his past self worked in the darkness, barely sleeping, manuscript pages piling up on the desk. His past self slumped over the typewriter and Jagger prodded him with her bony fingers, urging him to write faster.

Jagger cocked her head.

Wake stopped breathing as Jagger scanned the room, as though she was aware that someone was watching. The lake rumbled, the darkness stirring, stretching, and then Jagger was gone, attending to other business. Wake’s past self kept typing, oblivious.

Through the window, Wake saw a light bloom in the night. He watched it slowly enter the cabin through the balcony. Yes, he remembered the light too. The Diver, Thomas Zane, who had saved him after Wake hit the hitchhiker. He was aware now of the light moving upstairs toward the study, sensed it beside him now.

“I brought the light to set you free,” said the Diver from inside the light. “That’s what you wanted.”

“That’s what I wrote,” said Wake, putting more pieces of the puzzle together. Wake’s past self had been compliant and desperate, but in spite of the cobwebs Jagger had put into his head, Wake had sensed the Dark Presence’s plan. Even under Jagger’s watchful eye, Wake had managed to write an escape hatch into the story, a light that had entered the cabin before he finished, a light that had freed him. Zane was weak and far away. But the light had interrupted the horror story, the terrible ending where darkness consumed everything and everyone.

“You have to go, Alan,” said Zane. “It will know that I’m here.”

The Dark Presence roared outside, beating against the windows.

Wake awoke from behind the typewriter, and it wasn’t his former self, the dreamer. Wake was there now, still groggy, still weak, but he knew.

Zane reached out from the light and lifted the manuscript from the desk. “It stole the skin of my Barbara a long time ago,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t her, but I wanted so much to believe…”

The windows of the study went dark, turned to dust that floated onto the floor. Barbara Jagger stood there.

“You!” Jagger shrieked at him She strode toward Wake in a billow of black,