Rick Burroughs - Alan Wake

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 doppelgänger, 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 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.