Rick Burroughs - Alan Wake

Lightning flashed, and the thunder rumbled right behind it, seeming to shake the very foundations of the lodge. The overhead lights flickered and went out. This time they stayed out.

A roaring came off the lake now, louder than the thunder, beating against the windows of the office. Wake saw the glass dripping with shadows, darkening, the Dark Presence working its way inside now.

Wake pushed Barry toward the door, followed him into the hallway, and slammed the door behind them, leaning against it with his full weight.

Hartman beat against the door, screaming, trapped inside as the roaring in the office grew louder and louder. Wake recognized the sound Hartman was making, the high-pitched keening, that mix of absolute pain and absolute terror… he had heard the exact same cry from Mott at Mirror Peak as he was carried away by the Dark Presence.

Just as suddenly the roaring stopped, and there was only silence on the other side of the door.

Barry dragged Wake down the darkened hall. The sunset through the windows was the only light in the lodge now, turning the hallways and rooms red, as though the whole place was bleeding. Every few seconds the generator kicked in, the interior lights flickering before going dark again. Glass shattered downstairs. It sounded like furniture was being hurled against the walls. Voices cried out, some cursing, some praying, some… grunting, the sounds no longer human. Thunder rocked the lodge, rumbling the windows.

“Next year… next year you got to go someplace else for vacation,” said Barry.

“Watch out for that stuff,” said Wake, pointing at the black goo puddling on the landing, slowly trickling down the stairs, its surface slick and shiny in the sunset.

“What is it?” said Barry.

“I don’t want to find out,” said Wake, carefully going down the stairs, keeping to the edges. He tried the flashlight, then switched it off as they started down the stairs. Barry didn’t argue; he knew why Wake was saving the batteries.

The Lodge Hall was a raucous carnival in the dying light, shadows rippling across the ceiling, patients milling around while furniture floated in the air, heavy sofas and armoires drifting past as though made of cotton candy.

“Al…” said Barry, gawking as a table rose into the air. “Al, tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

The Anderson brothers capered in the middle of the room, long, white hair flying in the darkness. They were singing something with great gusto, but Wake couldn’t make out the words.

Wake saw Birch, the beefy male nurse, howling as he stood in a pool of the black goo. Caught. He fell to his knees, blood leaking from his ears. Wake couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that the goo rose slowly, creeping up the man’s legs.

Barry tried to open the double doors to the veranda, but a love seat slithered across the room, knocking him aside and blocking the way.

Wake scampered away as a marble-topped end table hurtled toward him, crashing to chunks where he had stood.

“This way,” Wake said, nodding at a door on the other side of the room.

Barry crossed toward him, then stood frozen as a file cabinet tumbled down the stairs and flew right at him.

Wake turned on the flashlight, the beam hitting the file cabinet, slowing it until it stopped a few inches from Barry’s nose.

“Al?” Barry stared at the file cabinet, rotating slowly in the faint red light. “Al?”

Wake kept the flashlight on the file cabinet until it flared and disintegrated.

Barry sagged, breathing deeply as he walked toward him.

“I don’t like it here, Al. I didn’t like it when I was locked up… I like it even less now.”

The television was on, the picture flickering. It was the man in the cabin again, still typing, the same one Wake had seen at Stucky’s gas station. Wake recognized him clearly now. It was himself.

“Al, what are you staring at?”

Wake reached out, turned the sound up so he could hear over the noise in the room.

“There’s a shadow inside my head. I can only focus on writing, everything else is a blur,” the man on TV said, his back toward Wake. “I’m trapped in this cabin… always dark outside.”

“Al, we got to move!”

“I think I’ve made a horrible mistake,” said the man, his frantic typing half-drowning out his words. “It’s been lying to me, using me to get the story it wants.”

“Hey!” Barry jerked Wake aside as a heavy ceramic umbrella stand flew past the spot where Wake had been standing.

The TV fizzled to black.

“Thanks… thanks, Barry,” said Wake, shaking off a strange lethargy. He was himself again. Right here, right now.

The furniture moved more rapidly now, as though the Dark Presence had been stirred into awareness of them. Couches and armchairs, tables and bookcases, swirling around the room, tumbling end over end, a vortex of shadows.

Wake used his flashlight twice more on their way to the other side of the room, disintegrating a cast-iron plant stand and a floor lamp that threatened to pierce him like a cocktail weenie. Barry had just slipped out the door when a huge china cabinet crashed in front of the doorway, blocking it. The roaring in the room was louder now. Wake turned the flashlight on the china cabinet, but a sofa dropped onto it, making the barrier even more impassible.

“Al!” shouted Barry, the Hawaiian shirt rippling in the wind like a flag.

“Keep going!” called Wake over the sound of the storm. “I’ll find another way out!”

Shadows slowly filled the room, a deeper darkness flowing down the stairs like a tide of diesel oil. Wake raced across the room, dodging furniture and a shadowy carpet that tried to wrap itself around his legs. Once he accidentally stepped into a small puddle of black goo that had oozed up through the hardwood floor. He felt the strength drain from him as though his bones had turned to water, felt a searing headache twist through his skull. The worst part wasn’t the pain or the nausea, though, it was the voice in his head, the voice pleading with him not to go, to stay. Alice’s voice.

Wake tore himself away, staggered free of the goo, almost collapsing. He kept going. He didn’t believe the voice anymore, not when it told him to stay with the darkness.

The twilight was feeble now, cut through with lightning flashes, but it was enough illumination for Wake to find his way across the room, enough to reach a small side door out of Cauldron Lake Lodge and onto the grounds.

Wake ran down the stone steps. He could hear the windows of the lodge blowing out behind him.

“Over here, Al! I found my car!”

Wake saw Barry pressed against the other side of the locked security fence that surrounded the lodge property.

“Al, go through the maze,” called Barry. “The parking lot is on the other side. My car is still there!”

Wake stood outside the formal entrance to the hedge maze, hedges at least eight feet tall. Great thing for Hartman to install at his little mental institution. A little R and R for the patients. Nothing like frustration, fear, and an overwhelming sense of helplessness to make a person with psychological problems cling to their doctor. He wobbled on his feet, thought twice about entering the maze.

“It’s not that hard,” shouted Barry. “You can do it!”

“Like I have a choice,” Wake muttered. He looked back at the lodge, saw it covered in shadows, the darkness flaring as it crawled over the roof, the balconies, dripping down the walls. Wake turned away and hurried into the maze.

It was dark in the maze, darker than the twilight, and Wake needed his flashlight. The batteries were weaker now. He took the first right-hand turn, then a left, trying to maintain a sense of direction.