Alan Wake American Nightmare Presents: Said the Spider…
Ch. 1 Spinning the Web
Serena Valdivia's hair was his favorite color.
Black, of course, and why shouldn't it be, since he was Darkness itself? He himself was wearing it from head to toe, with the exception of a crisp, white shirt. He took special pains to care for this shirt. The color white was his second favorite, after all…although the temptation to paint it with his third favorite color was often too great to resist.
Why white? Dear, precious white-the symbol of purity-was almost mesmerizing to him. How he wished he had a collection of white things, trophies one might say, and not just the bones and other various detritus he'd gathered over the years, polished clean by the lake. Teeth certainly no longer interested him much. What would he collect? A white rose was his first thought, to better charm the ladies. Maybe as a tribute he'd grab reams of white paper. White fluffy towels (he'd already stolen a few from the motel down the road) a bowl of powdered sugar, or maybe gallons of white milk and vanilla ice cream…well, those spoiled all too quickly. White was the closest he'd ever come to touching the one thing he feared and yet somehow couldn't stay away from: light.
Light. He hated it, because it could hurt him. It burned, but yet without it color couldn't exist. His third favorite color, blood red, looked just as black as everything else in the dark. Troubling, that he would be so compelled by something that meant nothing less than certain death, and he couldn't say quite why.
Darkness, or the Dark Presence, was not only him but the truth of him. And the truth was that his true form was impossible to perceive by the wonderful humans he reached for, chased after, and played with until he killed them. Humans were endlessly fascinating. So willfully ignorant, arrogant, and vulnerable, and yet, when he would dance around them, they proved…interesting. They tried, so hard did they try to rise and become more…well, some of them did. And some of them learned, for the Dark Presence can't be seen with the naked eye, although it can be felt. It was just as well, for he could mimic any form he chose. Still, he was often drawn to those who had that other kind of vision, who could glimpse, if just for a moment, what he really was and not just the face he wore.
His previous shape was one he wore for a long time, a woman he allowed to age so he could grasp the humans' sense of Time. Time meant nothing to him. It was, in fact, a bit of mystery, much to his frustration, although he could grasp the hated concept called Daytime. The Dark Presence was eternal, after all. It was there before a certain Someone said "Let there be light," changing the rules and ending his reign, something he has been trying to reclaim ever since.
The concept of rules, or rather, one's faith in them, was one of his rare parameters. He wasn't sure how, but he was hidebound by them, no matter how nonsensical they were. This was why he craved the innocence of human children but was often thwarted by their simple prayers and simple faith in teddy bears and nightlights.
He liked his current form much better. It gave him an advantage that he hadn't tried before. He wore the face of a famous, albeit burned out writer, Alan Wake. Alan was the kind of human the Darkness had been waiting for while trapped for decades in Bright Falls, Washington. How he had come to be trapped there was another story, written in fact, by another writer, Thomas Zane. Alan Wake had inadvertently freed the Darkness somewhat, and it was going to use him to capitalize on the foothold it now had. Using the stories Alan created in earlier years for a show called Night Springs, the Dark Presence stole him away to a spitwad of a town in Arizona. It was in one of the softer places in the world, where reality blurred. For tonight, and for however long the Dark Presence could sustain the rift, the spitwad became Night Springs. One might think the Dark Presence had a slight problem with warmer places-too much sunlight. Perhaps it could only go here since the idea was based on one of Alan's inventions. Perhaps it was tired of lakes, mountains and pine trees. In any case, the desert was very dark and cool at night, and night was the one thing it could control in this story.
Writers and other creative people had an extra something the Dark Presence needed most desperately. For all of his power, tricks and magic, there was one thing he just couldn't do, something he also feared and yet craved: the power to create, and the freedom of it.
Oh, he could deceive mankind to think that he could, and that was still quite fun. He would often copy or split himself into pieces, or form whatever shapes he desired. But to create; hell, even procreate-to make something, anything that stayed, that had a life of its own, that could grow and change and was free to choose to follow or break the rules-he couldn't do it. The Darkness couldn't do anything except corrupt that which already exists. And that's exactly what he did to the minions he twisted and shaped to carry out his desires. Alan called them The Taken, which might have been Thomas Zane's idea first. It suited them.
The Taken were easy to make. All it took was someone who was weak-willed, or weak-minded. With a great many that had everything they could ever need right at their fingertips, with a push of a button or a few clicks of a mouse, it had become almost too easy. And while that was quite efficient, it was not much fun.
If Alan had been born one hundred or even fifty years ago, the Dark Presence would have had a much harder time. This was all because of one small thing the majority of people seemed to be losing. If they only knew it was the greatest weapon in their arsenal against a force such as him…the weapon was faith, of course. Why was it that small children had it in spades but in adults it was nearly non-existent?
However, it was tied to that power of creation, and the Dark Presence wanted that power, and would use any means at his disposal to get it. He would lust after it, tempt it, twist and tease, but he needed that shining, creative soul, to give him the freedom he wanted so badly. If he could have that power himself, the world would be his once more. He would use it to grow bigger and more powerful, perhaps even using the humans like the girl he was watching to brazenly spread his blackened stain until the triple-cursed light plagued him no more.
He licked his borrowed lips, suddenly anxious to continue his entertainment.
"Serena," he whispered, gazing at his intended victim through the tiny office window of the deserted, ghostlike drive-in. Her head snapped up, blinking hard, as though she heard. It was a soothing name, giving way to other words such as peaceful, tranquil, calm and happy. It was a quiet name, but he didn't want to be quiet anymore, or to dwell in the silence of the lake. He wanted to make noise, to make a mess, and not just a mess of Alan's life. He wanted to make a mess of life itself.
Speaking of names, the Dark Presence, in fact, was just one of its many nicknames. Indeed, his true name, like his true face, was unperceivable. Not only was it unbearable to the ears, it was unpronounceable by the human tongue. This he knew, from tearing out so many. It was the inevitable result of a game he would sometimes play with his captives in which he would promise to set them free if they could just say it. The unintelligible, animalistic noises they would make always made him double over in laughter, even more than the screams and the gurgles.
Alan Wake's creative talent had given him a name that was strangely fitting. To hear it was to hear the sketchy white noise one finds on television or radio. A good attempt on the real name…good, that is, for a human tongue. And since in this world words have greater power than most humans understand, the Darkness accepted it as part of the gauntlet thrown by the beleaguered, tormented author. From the first time Alan uttered it, the Dark Presence became Mr. Scr*tch.
