The following events take place after Alan Wake and the two DLCs The Signal and The Writer. However, some details may not be in line with the plot
When Alan looked from the cabin's porch, all he could see was endless darkness. A sinister whisper floated in his ear akin to tinnitus and throbbed like a needle trying to enter his mind. He turned his flashlight on and pointed it towards the solid blackness like a jousting lance. The whisper quieted when he did that, but the darkness remained firm as ever.
"Turn off the light, moron," the man beside Alan barked. "Stop wasting the battery."
Alan looked at his companion at his side. Himself. He was leaning on the cracked wall of the cabin, arms crossed and a revolver protruding from his right hand.
"Sorry, Wake," Alan said and turned off his flashlight. It felt strange to him to call his doppelganger 'Alan', so he had settled for the last name, but even calling him 'Wake' left him with an absurdity. "Can't we ask him for more batteries?"
Wake pushed off the wooden wall of the cabin, and it creaked as if it would turn to sawdust immediately. He followed Alan's pointing finger to the upper floor's window. Light poured from it. A safe room with no darkness. A safe room with no taunting whispers. A safe room where Alan Wake was finishing the story.
Wake sighed and counted the batteries in his pocket. One... two... three... four... five... six... seven... at least give me a better torch. "No, the story needs to be not in our favor, remember?"
"The underdog victory," Alan said. Sarcasm and fear were in his voice. "I get that. But this is too much. At least give us some flares, maybe a spotlight. A shotgun or rifle would work wonders too. The revolver takes ages to reload." He gave a sigh. " I get the story needs to make sense. Pushing the odds so high against us is unbelievable."
"Not to the Dark Presence," Wake said. "It's perfectly fine for it."
"Well, why not just write 'the Dark Presence won' then?" Alan asked, exasperated.
"Oh, for God's sake, Alan, you know the answers to these questions already. You are me, we are him up there writing this story. The Dark Presence wants to win. It wants to take over the world. But even it must play by the rules of the game it selected. Of fiction. We must also play by the rules of the game. But just playing by the rules isn't enough."
Alan nodded with a rueful expression. "It's not enough to follow the rules of fiction, you must also satisfy the reader. And our reader is the Dark Presence."
"Yes, Alan Wake must write the story which the Dark Presence will accept. A story in which we win." Wake said, calming down. The whispering in his ear started to increase in volume, and the darkness around him was molding into infernal shapes.
"And if it rejects the story, it's game over," Alan said and readied his torch and revolver. "He better write a damn fine story then."
"And a damn good ending," Wake finished.
There was a flutter of a paper above them. They looked up and saw a page floating down towards them. Alan caught it and read:
The absurdity of the situation was only won over his palpating fear. The writer Alan Wake who was writing the ending to his novel 'Return' had made a downright impossible gambit. An epic conclusion. Alan Wake's Last Stand, he named the chapter. In it, Alan Wake would finish the last chapter inside the Cabin at Diver's Isle while the Dark Presence would come and try to stop it. But it seemed already too hopeless for him. His constant struggle with the Dark Presence had weakened him and the words came slow. His light was running out.
And the Dark Presence would not wait.
To buy some time, Alan incorporated two constructs of him and hoped against hope that they would give him enough time to finish before the Dark Presence came into the skin of Barbara and self-impose her power over him.
Alan and Wake waited for the horde to come knocking at the cabin's entrance like two knights protecting a castle. Both knew from the start they were not the real Alan Wake but they felt real. They also felt the equipment they were provided with was not enough. But they couldn't complain much.
The Dark Presence had arrived. It moved and howled and threw three blobs in front of the cabin.
"Trespassers shall be dealt with!"
The garbled, inhuman voice came from the blobs which had taken the shape of one of the citizens of Bright Falls. The Darkness steamed from him like smoke, hiding his features. But Alan and Wake made out the shape of the grinning sickle in his hand.
The other two turned into two lumberjacks, judging from the woodcutting axes in their hands. The man of the sickle vanished in a dark trail and appeared at the left of the cabin.
"It's one of the fast ones," Wake said. "Alan, go take care of it. I will handle these two."
Alan focused his attention and tried to focus his flashlight upon the elusive enemy. He had encountered them many times on his search for his wife, Alice, and they came close many times in slicing it short.
The sickle man advanced upon him like a striking snake. But Alan was ready with his flashlight and pierced the entity. It jerked back, shielding itself from the illumination and suddenly the darkness around it exploded and was gone. Without missing a beat, Alan shot the man three times in the head, and he was gone in a wisp of light and black smoke.
Meanwhile, Wake was finishing off the last lumberjack. He put the last bullet in his cranium, and the enemy vanished in light and smoke.
"Duck!" Wake heard Alan called down. He kissed the ground. A knife spun past where his head had been, cutting the tips of his hair. He quickly found the perpetrator who was about to take a second swing. He focused his light and so did Alan. The assailant cringed in their light's glare and the darkness gave way. Their revolvers roared, and he disappeared.
Wake stood up and was sweating like a dog. It didn't make sense much, him or Alan sweating but he didn't give it further thought.
"Well, we are good for now," Alan said. "You okay?"
"I am still stuck in his place so of course no," Wake said, standing up.
He looked at his flashlight and saw the aura had grown dim. He changed the battery. It was better to be fully prepared than the light failing him during the fight. He knew about it firsthand.
But their respite was short-lived. In less than a second, a deafening cacophony of cawing and flapping came from the black sky above.
"Crows!" Wake said. They had barely brought up their flashlight when the murder was upon them, pecking and clawing all over them. Even with the light, they were overwhelmed the two with sheer numbers.
Alan implemented a strategy of covering his left with his shoulder and the right ear with the palm. With his remaining hand, he flashed the light on his face and the crows left his face alone and went for all places else. Meanwhile, Wake had taken off his jacket and wore it like a surgical gown. Masking his face with the hoodie, he decided to go on the offensive, a light here, a punch there.
They felt the torrent would never end when it did. They stood there confused. The crows never did leave until they were thinned to a minuscule.
"Wake, look, another page," Alan said.
Wake felt a page land upon his head. He grabbed it with a tired sigh and read:
When the crows stopped biting the behind of their ears and flew away, Alan and Wake were dumbfounded instead of relieved. It couldn't be this easy. And it wasn't. Alan saw something shining other than their flashlight. A page fluttered down and landed on Wake's head. As Wake read, his eyes widened. He dug his hand into his pocket, and his fingers didn't find even one battery. The crows had made off—
Wake scrambled for his pockets and cursed. "They took my batteries!"
Alan's pocket was turned inside out. "Mine are gone too."
Wake looked up to the lighted window above him like he was about to shake his fist at it. "Hey, pal, aren't you going a little overboard?"
Alan took the page from Wake's hand and read the rest:
—with them. Alan, too, found his pockets empty. And the night was still young. They heard the sound of several chainsaws in the dark growing higher and higher and a voice called out—
"Be careful of falling wood. They will give you a pain in the head!"
Alan and Wake found themselves surrounded by five gleeful giant men brandishing their rotating tree-fellers. They were back to back, trying to burn away the darkness and keeping them at bay. Suddenly, one of them had enough of the delay and charged at them like a quarterback. Alan dodged, but Wake was too slow. He got checked on his shoulder, fell, and felt like a train had smashed into him. But the pain came with a blessing. The dumb hunk charged right into the other three like a bowling ball and knocked them down.
Alan pulled up Wake while focusing his light on the fifth one who was getting dangerously close to swinging distance. With the addition of Wake's flashlight, they made short work of him.
"You okay?" Alan asked.
"No. Not until those four are gone."
There was a lot of dodging, a lot of close-calls, the serrated blades licking centimeters away from their face and limbs, the monsters charging like crazed bulls, the growing fatigue in Alan and Wake, but they finally culled the numbers to a single one.
Then Wake's revolver jammed, and he was nearly split into two when the chainsaw swung down on him like an ax on a log if not for Alan who tackled him out of harm's way. Alan flashed his light on him, but the light never came. The flashlight had struck the ground and was dead.
"My light's out," Alan said.
"And my gun's jammed," Wake replied.
"Remember our bout with Mott?" Alan asked.
"Don't wanna hear the name of that guy," Wake said. "But yes. I point, you shoot."
Wake fell into the new strategy as easy as a monkey climbed a tree. He had done this before with Mott, the kidnapper, and survived. He did a similar thing with Sheriff Sarah Baker and his best friend, Barry Wheeler, to better results. And this time, he was coordinating with himself.
And so they fought. They eliminated the hulking lumberjack, but more enemies kept coming. They were growing tired, the light was growing dim, and the close encounters were getting too close for comfort. Alan started to have a terrible feeling in his heart.
"Don't," Wake said, panting.
"What?" Alan asked.
"Don't think that way. It's all part of the story."
Alan clicked his tongue and shot four enemies. "Is it so? It's too much. It's looking like a tragedy than a comedy."
"It is a comedy. We must believe in us. Believe in him."
"Then why is your voice not matching your words?"
Wake didn't answer and focused on the upcoming enemies. But inside of him, the seed of doubt was growing. The odds had turned from a hill into a mountain with boulders rolling down and them in a wheelchair. What if Alan Wake had given up? What if he was writing a horror story? Didn't he want to see Alice again? Or because he had saved Alice, now he didn't want to fight anymore? Wake then had a strange thought. Did he want to fight through this and escape?
"Am I dooming myself?" Wake whispered under his breath but it was unnecessary. Alan was having similar thoughts.
A piercing laugh of a woman echoed in the night. It was Barbara Jagger, the lover of Thomas Zane, and now whose body was being used by the Dark Presence as a disguise. The laugh was sinister, arrogant, victorious, and malevolent. It shook the ground they stood on and made the shadows writhe around them as if in ecstasy.
"This—" Alan started but shut himself up. Wake said not a word and readied himself for the onslaught. But it didn't. The night became silent. Then, they felt somebody behind them.
"Hello, boys."
Wake turned with the light but it was wrenched from his hand and crushed. Alan shot on instinct. His gun jammed. Alan and Wake suddenly found two hands upon their throats lifting them from the ground like gutted geese.
"Enough trouble you have given me. But I am glad you could see reason."
Alan and Wake didn't understand what she meant, but they were too busy trying to pry her iron fingers from crushing their windpipes.
"Oh, don't act confused, boys. The story is finished. You have given up."
"No, this can't be," Wake said. "You are trying to trick me again, just like you did before when you said Alice didn't love me."
Barbara smiled and squeezed. Alan let out a yelp and there was a soft crack. He stopped struggling and his head hung lifeless.
"Alan, no!" Wake screamed as Alan's body disintegrated before him. He started to choke and darkness swam behind his eyes.
"Boy, are you winning?" Barbara asked.
Wake cursed her. Barbara squeezed his neck and threw his corpse away. It vanished before it hit the ground. Satisfied, Barbara looked towards the cabin. The door creaked upon itself as if welcoming her. She moved slowly like a conqueror through a defeated city. Up the stairs, she went and opened the door to the writer's room. Alan Wake was sitting at his desk, facing away from her at his typewriter.
"Wonderful novel, Mr. Wake. As an editor, I accept your manuscript along with your condition."
The writer didn't turn towards her. He took out the final page from the typewriter and held it out for her. Barbara snatched it like it was a crown. She read:
It was done. Alan and Wake were gone. The writer had given up. The Dark Presence was too strong for him. And he was tired. He had gone through one nightmare after another trying to save his wife, risking his life and limb, mind and soul. He had nearly gone insane. But of course, he had to trap himself inside the Dark Place or else everything he had done was for nothing. Another nightmare began. And this time, he did go insane, but Zane had helped him. But now Zane was gone unable to help him anymore, and he could see no way out of that place no matter how much he wrote.
He was tired.
He made a deal.
He would give himself up to the darkness on the condition that the Dark Presence never went after his friends, never went after his wife. And the Dark Presence seemed satisfied. It agreed to accept the manuscript. And it did.
And that's how Alan Wake won.
"What?"
When the writer had confronted the Dark Presence for the first time, it boasted how ancient it was. It was true. It could be very well older that the foundations of the world. But it didn't mean it was completely wise. Evil, itself, was imperfect.
The writer didn't kill Alan and Wake to give himself up but to lure the Dark Presence into a false sense of victory. It worked. The Dark Presence, in its arrogance and maybe in relief after being trapped for countless years under the lake, accepted the manuscript without properly reading it through. It accepted whatever was written on the page. When a sentence can change the whole story, the Dark Presence had omitted out an entire page.
Alan Wake had escaped the Dark Place and the Dark Presence was trapped there.
Forever.
Barbara screamed and the darkness thrashed around her. But she could not create a single splinter nor destroy any furniture in the room. When she saw this, she ran for the door. The door slammed itself on her face. The windows shut themselves down. She pulled at the page, but not a wrinkle or tear she could make upon it. Finally, she looked at the man, now facing her with a smirk on his face.
"You... you are still here. I will kill you here!" Barbara said with madness in her eyes, her face was no longer like a human. It was grotesque and ugly, enough to make a sane man go mad.
But the writer laughed and said, "I am not Alan Wake."
"What?"
"I am a decoy, a mental construct like Alan and Wake. Alan Wake is gone. And this is goodbye. The End."
The man vanished. The woman wailed.
##
Alan coughed and sneezed. Water was inside his nose and he was drenched to the bone. He had nearly suffocated trying to come to the surface of the lake. He had swum across to the broken mainland and collapsed.
He had escaped. The nightmare was finally over. The sun was coming up on Cauldron Lake. The light hurt his eyes, but he didn't look away. He would be blinded by the sun before he shunned it. He sat down and looked at the lake. It looked calm, and the murky depths were no longer there. The light reflected off it in a warm red. Then, Alan blinked.
He sat up and looked. Far away upon a lake, a spherical object rose out of the bubbling waters. It was a diving helmet. It was Zane!
"Zane!" Alan shouted and waved.
He saw the bulky arm of the suit wave back. Alan smiled and laughed and soon found himself crying. Zane turned bright as the sun, and he disappeared. Alan thought he heard the words 'Goodbye, Alan.'
Alan fell upon his knees and cried. "It's over," he said and repeated it.
It was morning.
Thank you for reading. If there are any errors, please point them out in the review.