Alan Wake jolted awake with a gasp. He was still a tad out of it when he felt a hand on his arm and looked over quickly.

His wife, Alice, was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. She stared at him with a loving look.
"Alan, relax..." She said in a soothing voice. "You just had another nightmare."

"... How long was I out?" He asked her.

"A few hours. We're almost at Bright Falls."

Alan sighed. Again he'd had the nightmare about darkness and someone trying to murder him in it, but he wasn't about to tell his wife that, lest she worry too much. Instead, he undid his seatbelt and opened the car door. "I need to stretch my legs."

Alan Wake was a writer, but he hated people. He wrote the Alex Casey books, and wanted to start a new series, but he was getting immensely frustrated by his recurring writer's block. He looked to his left after stepping out of his car. Everyone who was out of their cars was to his right, except for one man who leaned against his car door, staring vacantly at the bottom of the railing across from him.

Alan could have sworn he knew him from somewhere... and that's when it hit him.

'He's that FBI agent who covered that killer's case in Philadelphia, isn't he? Hah, and to think I was going to write a book on that until I realized I didn't have anyone to research off of...' While he thought this, Alan turned his head away from the FBI agent and scoffed. For a brief moment he tried to remember the agent's name, but he reckoned that it didn't matter either way.

The anti-social writer, despite said characteristic, followed his wife into the crowd of people formed around the part of the ferry closest to Bright Falls. She pulled out a camera and took a picture of him with Bright Falls as the backdrop, which he didn't mind. This was where his wife had insisted they have a vacation, to 'give him a break and a chance for his writer's block to pass.'

Alan already knew his writer's block probably wouldn't go away. However, he supposed he had to give Alice a bit of credit - the vacation removed Alan from the immediate vicinity of the alcohol he so often turned to on rough days...

After driving off of the ferry and ignoring a phone call from his literary agent, Alan briefly made a pit-stop at the Oh Deer Diner, where the waitress, who called herself Rose Marigold, just happened to be 'his number one fan.'

'Yeah, that's what they all say... I wish they'd just leave me alone. Now where is Carl Stucky? I need to get the keys to the cabin Alice and I are staying in from him...'

Heading toward the bathroom to look there, Alan suddenly got a strange vibe. It was as if... someone... or something... was watching him, from within the shadows...

Slowly, he turned...

... and he gasped when he realized that there was a woman behind him. She was shorter than he was, naturally, and she had a dark veil draped over her eyes. She was dressed in a black funeral dress, which didn't sit well in the back of Alan's mind.

Slowly, the woman extended her hand. She dropped a pair of keys. She then spouted directions at him.

Alan blinked hard, and next thing he knew, she was gone. "Where...?"

It didn't matter. He just wanted to get to the cabin on Cauldron Lake so he could spend some peace and quiet with Alice.

So he picked up the strange keys, left the diner (which he now realized had an inconvenient cardboard cutout of him near the door, which he assumed belonged to Rose), got back into his car, and started to drive toward the Bird Leg Cabin, where he and his wife were going to stay.

Once they arrived, Alan and Alice were stunned by the beauty of Cauldron Lake. Heading up to the cabin, Alan found that the keys he was given by the mysterious woman were, strangely, the keys to the cabin's front door, the keys he was supposed to get from Stucky. However, he let it slide.

He and his wife had not spent much time inside the cabin when they finally settled down in it. It was so beautiful, and Alan was for once, actually enjoying himself.

'It's so serene here... Everything feels so right. A nice, long break without doing any work should really-'

"Alan! Alan, come upstairs, into the study! I have a surprise for you!" Alice called down.

Alan figured, 'What the hell, why not?' and walked upstairs. However, when he saw Alice's 'surprise,' he froze.

Alice had a typewriter set up for him. "I thought maybe the change of scenery would help your writer's block... If not that, then I was hoping you could go see this doctor, a psychiatrist named Emil Hartman. He specializes in this sort of treatment."

Alan's fury rose to an unhealthy level. "Goddammit, Alice! Why do you think I even agreed to come here?! To get away from writing!"

"Alan, I just want to h-"

"Well, don't bother trying! I'm done with writing! So, what - this whole trip was just a damned ploy to get me to start writing again, is that it?!"

"No, I just-"

"Just nothing! Goddammit!" Alan stormed out of the cabin, but came back in for just a moment to grab a flashlight; it had suddenly become very dark outside...

Alan was walking over the footbridge off of Diver's Isle, the little island Bird Leg Cabin resided on, when suddenly he heard the nearby generator for power in the cabin go off, and Alice started screaming due to her phobia of the dark.

"Oh, for fuck's sake..."

However, she soon began screaming a lot louder. A lot... well, differently. Something was wrong.

"Alice?!" Alan quickly turned back and began running. A flock of crows came seemingly out of nowhere and started picking at him, and when he shone his flashlight on them, they... dissolved?

'No time, Alice, Alice, where's Alice, what's happening to Alice?!' Thoughts and worries flashed through Alan's mind as he ran into the dark cabin. "ALICE?! ALICE!"

He heard one last scream, followed by a loud splash, and he ran for the back porch. The railing on the edge of the porch had broken. Looking down into the water, Alan could just barely see Alice sinking into the dark depths of Cauldron Lake.

"ALICE!" With not a second's hesitation, Alan dived into the water after the love of his life, and just like that, everything went black.

When Alan awoke, he was in pain, and he heard the noises of his car...? Opening his eyes slowly, he found he actually was sitting in his car. It looked like he'd been smashed into on the passenger side of his car, but he couldn't remember how he got there.

It took a moment for his dulled hearing to return, but he finally heard someone beckoning for him to his left. Slowly turning his head, he saw someone standing there, looking frantic and shaken.

"Sah? Sah, a'e ya alright? God, I'm so sahrry! Yer cah just came outta nowhe'e! Please answah me!" pleaded the FBI agent Alan had seen on the ferry into Bright Falls. Somehow, Alan's mind clicked, and he finally remembered the name of this man he'd read about a few times online.

'Norman Jayden.'