Alan Wake!
Chapter 2 – WELCOME TO BRIGHT FALLS
Disclaimer:...i don't own any of Alan Wake?
I woke with a cry of fear as the unspeakable creature reached me, but already all recollection of the nightmare was fading away, as though someone had flapped the metaphorical tablecloth in my mind and sent it flying with the dust. Alice was talking to me from the passenger seat, comforting me.
"Shhhh, baby, just another nightmare," she told me, in that wonderfully soothing voice I had come to know so well. "Everything's fine. You dozed off."
I was in no mood to look at the positives. The nightmare had left me feeling scared and confused - maybe even a little powerless. "Right," I sighed in reply. "Anything more than 'dozed off' would be news for everyone."
Alice was unfazed, and smiled back at me. "Cheer up, handsome," she laughed, nodding her head slightly to gesture through the car's windscreen. "We're here!"
As Alice exited the car, I took a moment to allow reality to properly reassert itself. I was sitting in my car. I was on a small ferry, along with a few other vehicles and their owners. And, as Alice had said, we had basically arrived at our destination – the town of Bright Falls, Washington state. The trip had been entirely Alice's idea – only she could have found such a seemingly remote little community – but I wasn't complaining. For the past two years I had been taking out my frustration – never physically, God no - at my current state both on myself and on Alice, and our relationship had suffered as a result. Time had only ensured that the wounds stayed open, not healed them. I felt that this holiday was a brilliant way to get away from New York, to put the past behind us and start a new chapter.
Mind cleared and feeling better already, I opened my door and stepped out of the car as well, next to the handrail separating me from the water. I took a moment to close my eyes and let my lungs fill with the fresh air, drifting down from the surrounding mountains which seemed to stretch on forever throughout the state. Definitely healthier than the air back home. As I eased my eyelids back open I couldn't help but smile at the landscape around me. On every side, the horizon was blocked by the almost never-ending hills and mountains which brought so many tourists to the state for their vacations, either to simply marvel at or, for the younger adventurers, to climb. I guessed that heading up the mountains off the beaten path was probably a bad idea though – almost all of them were steep and blanketed from head to toe in your usual coniferous trees: pines, spruces, and undoubtedly some redwoods as well. Who knows, I thought - by the time we're heading home, I'll have probably climbed some. The mountains, that is. My tree-climbing days are well and truly behind me.
The smell of sap was rich in my nostrils as above me I heard the tell-tale sound of a train rumbling its way along tracks. I looked up to see a railway bridge spanning the water as the ferry passed underneath it, entering the bay reaching out from Bright Falls. I just had time to catch WELCOME TO BRIGHT FALLS stamped on the side of the bridge in bold white iron lettering. Sure enough, up ahead I spotted the town easing into view. From what I could see, most of the larger buildings were lined up along the waterfront, and no doubt made up the heart of the community, while straining my eyes let me see houses stretching back further up the slopes of the hill Bright Falls was built on. I thought it didn't look like such a bad place to visit – and better still, how isolated it looked gave me hope that I could stay there in peace, without being recognised.
My thoughts were pleasantly interrupted when I heard Alice call my name, and I walked round to where she stood waiting for me by the back of the car, camera in hand. "Let's acts like we're on vacation," she quipped sarcastically – well aware that I didn't buy into the usual 'happy families' crap. I couldn't suppress a smirk.
"Go stand next to that old gentleman over there," she added, gesturing to an old man resting on the railings at the front of the ferry. "I want a shot of you with the town in the background."
I couldn't help but retort. "Sure," I grinned, "I'll even give you a title for the shot: 'A city boy, moments before he got eaten by a bear.'"
She smiled at me at that, and I loved it – loved her, more so every day. Alice and I had been married for years now, and she worked as a professional photographer – the camera she was using didn't come cheap. As a result, she worked closely with me in my own career as a bestselling crime writer. It had been her shots that I had used for my pictures in the Alex Casey novels, and her art skills that she used to design the books' artwork. Thinking about Alex Casey quickly brought on a wave of nostalgia for me – It seemed like an eternity since I had finally killed off the hard-boiled New York detective, ending a series which had brought me international fame and enough money to last a lifetime, but in reality it had only been two years. It had only been two years since the trouble started.
Shaking the memories out of my head before they could fully form, I walked over to where the old man stood. As I watched, a seaplane flew in low over the bay and landed by Bright Falls, taxiing towards a pier along the waterfront. Spotting movement out of the corner of my eye, I turned to see that my new friend had noticed me, so I extended a customary "hi" in greeting. On closer inspection, I could see that the guy was somewhere in his late sixties, and (unfortunately for him) balding. Regardless, he greeted me with what I felt was a genuinely heartfelt smile. Old people were better at 'heartfelt' than the rest of us.
"Hello there!" he beamed, adjusting his thick horn-rimmed glasses as he spoke. I was surprised by how clear his voice was, considering his age. "You've picked a good time to visit our town – Deerfest is only two weeks away!"
I managed to smother the smirk that time. To me, Deerfest sounded like the ultimate in stereotypical country festivals – awards for the biggest deer shot, guns fired into the air, and so on. Hell, maybe the townsfolk would even celebrate with some moonshine.
I couldn't stop from speaking, though. "Deerfest, huh?" I replied, trying to sound amazed. I turned to Alice, already snapping away at us with her camera. "Did you hear that, honey?" Alice didn't reply – photography was seemingly ingrained in her, and as such she had on her usual expression of deep concentration as she took the photos.
The old man seemed to believe my attempt at sincerity, as after following my line of sight to Alice he continued on. "You have a beautiful wife, if you don't mind me saying so," he said conversationally. "I'm Pat Maine, by the way. Nice to meet you." He extended a hand, which I promptly shook.
"Yeah," I replied, adding somewhat reluctantly "...I'm Alan Wake."
At this point a smile came across Maine's face that I recognised with an inward sigh – the smile of a fan.
"I won't pretend I don't know a famous writer such as yourself, Mr. Wake," he said, still smiling – and putting a slight emphasis on the famous. "A pleasure. I'm an avid reader myself." Please God, I thought, don't let him be one of those fans. He's an old man.
"I hope this isn't too...presumptuous of me," Maine continued, "but I'm the night host at the local radio station. Any chance I could get an interview?"
I took this opportunity to sigh aloud, which I thought sounded quite apologetic. Don't get the wrong idea – I was actually somewhat apologetic, but some of what I was feeling was anger as well. Anger that there was seemingly nowhere I could go on the planet without being asked for an autograph or an interview.
"Look, Mr. Maine," I replied, "I'm on vacation. In fact, I'd appreciate it if we could keep my being here just between the two of us. I'm sure you understand," I added, as an afterthought.
Maine seemed to accept my explanation. "Fair enough," he answered, with another good-natured smile to show that there were no hard feelings. "You can trust me to be discreet. I'm not a hard man to track down if you change your mind, though. I hope you two have a lovely holiday."
Seeing that Alice had finished taking pictures, I smiled back at Maine in genuine gratitude before heading back over to my wife, who was examining the photos she had taken on her camera on its viewscreen.
"Very nice," she said. "I got a couple of really good ones. And I see you made a friend. That's cute," she added, teasing me.
"Riiight," I replied. Before I could come up with a witty retort, my cell phone rang. I took it out of my pocket and flipped it open.
"Hey bestseller!" the loud voice on the other side of the line cried – a voice I instantly recognised. Barry Wheeler had been my friend since we were both kids, and he had become my agent for my entire career. Some would call him a loudmouth, and others would probably call him neurotic. I'd say he was a bit of both. Despite his faults, Barry had proven time and time again that he was a great agent, and had helped me out of trouble with the media and others on more than one occasion. However, he could be a bit over-protective.
"How's my favourite writer?" he continued. "Are you there yet?"
Feeling that this call might last longer than simple hellos, I walked over towards the side of the ferry as we neared Bright Falls, to avoid holding a conversation in Alice's face. "Barry," I answered. "Yeah, we just got here."
As soon as I finished speaking, he was on me. "Are the locals giving you trouble? Just say the word, and I'll hop on a plane and come make sure that you're left alone, Al."
"No, Barry, we're fine," I replied, my voice sounding not unlike the monotone of a schoolkid and all but rolling my eyes.
"Great, greaaat," Barry said. "Just want to make sure that you can relax and recharge. So how is the place? Has it gotten your creative juices flowing?"
"Barry, we're just settling in." I sounded a bit more authoritative that time round.
"Okay Al," Barry replied casually. "I'll call back later to make sure you're doing okay. And you call me if there's a problem, okay? Okay! I'm just looking out for you, buddy. Talk to you later!"
I smiled. "I love you too, Barry," I replied sarcastically, and hung up.
"You know he's going to be calling you every five minutes?" Alice said from behind me. I turned to face her. For whatever reason, she and Barry had never been able to get along with each other.
"Barry is Barry," I shrugged. "I can always turn off the phone."
No sooner were the words out of my mouth that my phone beeped. Alice smiled. "What did I tell you?" she said. I flipped the phone back open.
"A text message from Barry," I explained to her. "He says hi to you too."
She smiled at this too – something I couldn't quite get enough of – just as the ferry arrived at the pier in Bright Falls. In the course of my conversations with Maine and Barry, I had completely missed our travel across the bay. Alice noticed our arrival as well, and told me so.
"Alan, we're here," she pointed out. "Come on, let's get back in the car." The excitement in her body language caused by our arrival was easy to see, and it made me fall in love with her all over again.
Alice headed for the car and climbed back inside. Before I followed, I turned to look back down the ferry, across the bay we had just crossed. I took in the rail bridge at the bay's mouth, and the forested mountains lining the sides, standing out against the cloud-specked sky. However as I moved to turn back something caught my eye – a man in his forties, resting along the handrail at the back of the ferry. He was quick to turn back to gazing nonchalantly out over the bay as I had done, but I could have sworn that he had been watching me and Alice. There was, of course, nothing wrong with looking at people, but for some reason something about the man made me feel uneasy.
Then I turned and entered the car, and moments later Alice and I were in Bright Falls.
XXXXXXXX
As Alice drove us down Bright Falls' main street, I looked out at our surroundings. The main street itself was perfectly straight, with the waterfront and various buildings on one side and the rest of the town on the other. A few people passed on the sidewalk, with most stopping to wave at others across the road. Here the smell of sap mingled with that of fresh flowers and faintly what I thought was trout and salmon coming from a nearby fishery. As I watched, a float built over the back of a flatbed truck passed down the street heading in the opposite direction, one I thought would take centre stage in the Deerfest celebration Maine had mentioned – a huge metal deer took up the entire float.
"We need to stop at the local diner to get the cabin key from the landlord," Alice said from beside me, "A Mr. Carl Stucky. He's waiting for us." This reminded me that we were renting a cabin somewhere south of the town, across the sound which Alice had told me cut the considerable landscape around Bright Falls in two. As I remembered this piece of information, a wave of content washed over me. The feeling of starting anew returned.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted large red lettering fixed atop the overhang of a building across the street, on the left, and turned to see it spell OH DEER DINER. We had arrived, then. As if to confirm this Alice drove across to the diner and parked up on the sidewalk outside, engine idling.
"I'll go fill her up while you get the key," Alice told me. "I'll pick you up here in...five minutes?"
"Sure," I answered, and climbed out of the car. Before I could move around to the kerb Alice called my name again and I bent down to hear her, careful to make sure I was off of the road as much as possible.
"Thank you for coming here with me," Alice said – in a quiet voice, truly grateful for my company. For a brief moment I felt pointedly sad at her having to treat such an act as a special occasion, and angry at myself for making things this way. My contentedness left me then, and my smile faltered. But I quickly regained face. This was no place for more sorrow.
"I love you too," I smiled back at her. "Go on – I promise to behave," I added, helpless to stop a mischievous grin from accompanying it. Alice smiled back, undoubtedly happy at seeing me in such a good mood for the first time in...it had been too long. I sighed openly as Alice drove away down the street and my subconscious battled with these memories. Taking a deep breath, I entered the diner.
XXXXXXXX
I'd forgotten there were places like this – towns where everybody knew everybody. Looking around, a 'city boy' such as myself could see the difference purely in the way people sat. Whereas back in New York (and, I'm betting, every major city in America) customers at a Starbucks or any kind of coffee bar would guard their privacy desperately, almost jealously, here everyone talked to each other without a second thought.
As the door bell tinkled above my head, I looked around. The diner was considerably spacious compared to the hundreds of tiny businesses in New York. Booths lined the walls, their seats clad in red leather. A huge Deerfest poster, showing an expressionless young deer against an elysian Washington countryside background, took up most of the left wall, while the right was all windows looking onto a road leading up further into Bright Falls. A counter in the rear of the diner on the left showed through into the kitchen, while the main counter (in that shape I can never name, I thought for a moment through metaphysically gritted teeth – the rectangle with curved corners) took up the centre of the room.
Standing by the door, I looked around for Carl Stucky. From what I could tell, it must have been a slow day, because there were only three customers. A Park Ranger, judging from the green jacket he wore and wide-brimmed hat resting on the stool beside him, sat by the bar near the door, talking with the sole uniformed waitress, who looked in her early twenties and wore a red dress and a small waitress hat. Close to the kitchen service window in the back, what looked like two old leather-clad bikers sat talking with each other in a booth. None of these people seemed to cry out 'landlord' to me, so I started for the waitress to ask about him – and stopped.
Standing by the door, on my left – so close that I was surprised I hadn't seen it – was a cardboard cut-out of me. Unlike the normal me, this cut-out was sharply-suited and looked mysterious in an attractive kind of way, with a hint of something sinister hiding in his eyes. In his right hand he clutched a book to his chest, where on the cover, a hand reached out for a fallen gun in a growing pool of blood. At his feet, descending outwards towards the floor, were the words ALAN WAKE – THE SUDDEN STOP – THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER. Great, I thought, just great. So much for a quiet holiday.
Reluctantly gathering myself, I turned to the waitress, who had moved away from the Ranger to greet me. "Welcome to the Oh Deer Diner!" she said cheerfully, the innocent curiosity on her face stemming purely from seeing someone new in town. I hoped.
"Hi, I...was wondering if you could help me," I replied good-naturedly. "I'm looking for -" but the words died on my lips. As I'd spoken a strange look had come over the waitress' face, an all-too-familiar look – one with panic, ecstasy and shock all rolled into one. I cursed inwardly.
She was a serious fan.
"Mr. Wake? Alan Wake?" she asked in amazement, not looking for an answer but speaking purely out of disbelief. I looked around nervously, anticipating what was to come.
"Oh God!" she cried, throwing her hands up to her mouth as if attempting to prevent her tumultuous emotions from blasting out of her. "I am your biggest fan! I know people say that all the time but I really am!"
I quickly decided to stop the waitress before she went on. God knows I'm something of an expert with these people by now. "I'm...glad to hear that...?" I told her, leaving my reply open-ended to learn her name – hey, I still show some respect.
The waitress looked at me for a moment, mouth agape and face seemingly frozen in joy, before realising my intentions and hurriedly replying "Rose," delivered with a beaming smile.
"Rose," I affirmed. "I'm looking for Mr. Stucky. Carl Stucky?"
Fortunately by this time Rose had calmed herself somewhat. "Carl?" she asked in genuine surprise, before deeming that answering me was of the utmost importance. "Of course, Mr. Wake. He must have gone to visit the restroom. He'll be back in a moment."
As she spoke, Rose gestured towards a corridor leading further into the building behind her, to the right of the kitchen/main room window. However before I could even think of heading over there, she went on.
"I just can't believe it!" she cried. "I've got all your books. I got the cut-out from the bookstore when they took it out of the window."
I raised my eyebrows instinctively. Despite being somewhat of an expert on crazed fans, they still surprised me from time to time. Passing through Virginia on a book tour for The Sudden Stop, I had encountered a sweaty, overweight, bespectacled little girl in a library where I was signing copies of my books. Having determinedly pushed her way to the front of the gathered crowd of fans to meet me, the girl – Annie, I think she had said – undaunted and salivating ever so slightly, asked me if she could have more of my facial hair, to go with the little she had somehow managed to collect in a tiny air-tight plastic sheath. Needless to say, I politely refused. I don't think I ever want to know how she came by what she already had.
"And you keep it here?" I asked Rose quizzically, glancing back at my double by the door. "Well...okay, good for you."
Rose seemed content with this, subsiding into silence but still beaming at me as if her dreams had suddenly come to life right in front of her. Which, I'm sorry to say for her sake, they probably had. Conversation over, I moved to navigate around the Ranger sitting nearby, who was now examining the local paper with one hand while delivering coffee into his mouth with the other. However doing so caught his attention, and he lowered his coffee to speak.
"Try the coffee," he told me with a cheerful smile. "Just don't blame me when you fall in love, 'cause it'll break your heart when you have to leave."
This statement was evidently some kind of running joke between the Ranger and Rose, as the latter laughed at her customer's words, a grin spreading on her face.
"Rusty here is no longer human," Rose told me, eyes straying from me momentarily to look at Rusty, who smiled back at her as he raised his coffee mug for another drink. "Nothing but black coffee under a thin layer of skin."
This struck me as a strangely macabre choice of metaphor, and I frowned and smiled slightly in surprise. Furthermore, the look in Rusty's eyes when he spoke to Rose told me something that the waitress either didn't know or chose not to. Her attentions were fixed elsewhere.
"Yeah? That makes two of us," I replied politely, and quickly continued on my way before either could start another conversation. All I wanted was to return to Alice and enjoy our time here, anonymity or no anonymity.
However my hopes of bringing a sharp end to my experience in the Oh Deer Diner were dashed as I neared the back of the main room. As I turned towards the corridor Rose had pointed out, another voice, this one much older than the others, spoke up from behind me.
"Do me a favour, sonny," it said, in such a way that I knew the speaker had been a heavy smoker in his earlier years. Maybe he still was. "I could really use a tune right now. 'Coconut' – number six on the jukebox."
Gritting my teeth where no one could see me, I put on a smile and turned to see that the speaker was one of the two old men I had noticed earlier. The one talking to me was definitely the older of the two, with a prominent beer gut, little hair left on his head and an eyepatch over his right eye. His friend, seated across the table on my left, was noticeably younger but still qualified as old in my opinion – he was thinner and retained much of his hair, most notably in the form of a short greying beard, and wore a black bandana. Both were dressed entirely in black – while they wore seemingly identical black t-shirts and jeans, the older one had on a thick leather jacket, while his friend wore what looked like a leather cut-off.
"I'd do it myself, but both of my legs have gone to sleep," The older man said, grinning somewhat shamefacedly. "Bad circulation, yeah."
"Are you serious!" the other man exclaimed, his voice stronger and gnarled. "'Coconut', again! You disgust me. Call yourself a rocker? Unbelievable. Hah!"
Eager to leave the two 'rockers' to their own devices and continue on my way, I decided to oblige the old man of his request and approached the jukebox where it sat in the corner of the main room behind their booth. As instructed, I selected number six on the sparkling blue machine, which I was willing to bet was an original model from the 50s. Inside, the little mechanical arm rose up and grabbed hold of one of the black discs in the back of the jukebox as they stopped rotating into place, and began to pull it back – and then stopped. I froze momentarily, wondering if I had broken this old machine.
The old man was on me quickly. "It does that," he told me casually, "gets stuck, yeah. You need to give it a good, solid whack!"
The way in which he slightly shouted his words made me wonder if perhaps the old man wasn't quite in the right state of mind, but I was committed now. Raising my left hand and praying that I didn't damage an already-broken machine further, I brought my open palm down on the side of the jukebox, hard. Fortunately, the little arm continued on its way, and a moment later the sound of Harry Nilsson plucking away at his guitar and telling us that "she put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em bot' up" crept out of the little jukebox's speakers.
"That's what I'm talking about! Yes!" the old man exclaimed, beginning to dance vigorously in his seat and sing along to the music.
"This is it," his friend lamented, head bowed, "I've died and gone to hell."
With their attention diverted, I made a beeline for my objective. I was in no mood for any more interruptions, and as such barely noticed the old woman cowering by the doorway leading into the corridor, hurriedly walking past her to avoid any gems of wisdom she might want to share with me, like the others.
Once in the corridor, I found myself in near-total darkness. All of the overhead lights had died save for one at the end, which flickered on and off like the lights you would expect to find in a serial killer's basement in some cheap horror flick. It later struck me as odd that the darkness was so complete – the light from the diner's main room should have illuminated most of the corridor, but as it was, visibility was reduced to almost zero. But the darkness meant nothing to me at the time. I didn't want to wait - I wanted to find Stucky and get the key, to get out as soon as possible. Rose had given me a headache. Overeager fans always did.
As I proceeded, somewhat hesitantly, further into the darkness, another voice behind me called out a warning: "Don't go in there, young man. You can hurt yourself in the dark."
I turned to see the old woman still standing by the doorway. As our eyes met I realised with a frown that she was scared of the darkness in the corridor. But why?
Looking closer, I found my answer. Beneath her worried expression, the woman cradled a large lantern in her arms. Either she was afraid of the dark, or she was just plain mad.
"I think I can handle it, ma'am," I replied, feeling safe enough to smirk at my momentary confusion, knowing that the darkness prevented her from seeing it.
Pushing an old woman's fears aside, I turned and headed back into the dark. With only the flickering light to guide me, I almost walked straight into the wall at the end of the corridor, barely seeing it in time. Looking around, I saw that the corridor continued off to the left and abruptly ended, with the entrances to the different restrooms on the right wall. Just managing to spot the female stick figure on the first door, I continued on to the second, and hesitated. The door was ajar. Were the restrooms for one person or more than one? Uncertain, I decided to knock first, drumming my knuckles lightly on the wooden door three times.
"Hello?" I called out in the gloom. Typical of a small-town diner not to have any working lights. I leaned close to the door, trying to listen out for the sound of movement.
No answer. "Mr. Stucky?" I tried, rapping the door again. After a few more seconds without a reply, I stepped away from the door, and decided to try my luck and enter.
"Carl couldn't make it," a dry and withered voice said suddenly from my right, and I instinctively jumped backwards in fright away from it. I had a moment to wonder what new obstacle the Oh Deer Diner had thrown in my path before my eyes began to adjust, and I saw what looked like a small woman standing in front of me. Strangely, I could barely make her out even as I began to see the corridor in greater detail. The woman, wearing some kind of long black dress and her face masked with what looked like a veil, was almost shrouded in the darkness, and I could barely see her. Her face might as well have been invisible – all I could see of it was her lips moving as she talked.
"Unfortunately, he was taken ill," the voice continued – sounding not unlike, in my author's mind, a pile of dead leaves in the wind. And awfully familiar from somewhere. "But I have the key for you, and instructions on how to get to the lake."
At this, the woman reached somewhere into the shadows of her dress, and a gnarled hand produced an old iron key and a small folded piece of paper, and held them out towards me.
"O-kay..." I replied, at a loss for words brought on by this eerie and frankly weird woman standing before me. But apparently she knew Stucky, and she was here to fill in for him. I quickly took the key and paper from her hand, careful not to touch her. Pocketing the key in my jacket, I tried to examine the directions she had given me in the near non-existent light.
"I wish you a good stay in my cabin," the woman continued, in her horrible decaying voice. "I'll come by later to check how you've settled in. And to meet your wife."
I looked up at this. Her cabin? Something about her tone of voice was all wrong.
"I insist," she added icily. My mouth opened, but no words came out.
"...thanks," I managed to say, looking back at the paper in my hand. Alice had never mentioned anything to me about staying by a lake. Did she know? Despite my questions, I had an intense desire not to speak to Stucky's stand-in any more than I had to, and so with one last look at her ghostly features I placed the directions she had given me with the key in my pocket, and hurried on my way past her and down the corridor.
Calmed by no longer facing the strange acquaintance of Stucky, I eagerly hurried out of the corridor, emerging into the glorious afternoon sunlight streaming in through the diner's windows. The old woman with the lantern was still by the doorway, and looked genuinely relieved to see me return unharmed.
"You got lucky this time, young man! You can hurt yourself in the dark," she told me, echoing what she had said before. Coupled with the fact that she quickly descended into mumbling about lights needing changed to no one in particular, this didn't really surprise me.
Leaving the corridor had imbued with a sudden sense of freedom. Invigorated, I walked back down the diner towards the front door. As I passed the two old 'rockers', I saw that the older one had fallen asleep where he sat, slumped in his seat and head fallen on his chest, snoring loudly. "Even that sounds better than your singing," his friend commented grimly, making me grin widely.
With his hat back on, Rusty looked ready to leave as well, but noticed me smiling at the old men as he was finishing his coffee.
"The Andersons," he told me, presumably referring to the pair, "they're, uh, local musicians. We're waiting for Doctor Hartman to come pick them up. They wandered off from his clinic at the Cauldron Lake Lodge."
I had no idea who Doctor Hartman was or where I could find Cauldron Lake Lodge, and I didn't care in the slightest. With the darkness behind me, the mere possibility of peace and quiet filled me with joy. As if on cue, Alice pulled up on the kerb outside as I headed for the door. Pulling it open, the bell jingled once more above my head as I stepped outside.
"Bye Mr. Wake!" Rose called out from behind me, but the door was already swinging shut. Heading around to the other side of the car with the sun shining down and a smile refusing to leave, I pulled open the passenger door and climbed in, slamming the door shut behind me. Alice sat waiting, still smiling.
"Mission accomplished," I told her, feeling absurdly proud of my achievements. Considering what I had been through, maybe it wasn't so absurd. "The key, and the directions."
"My hero," Alice replied, taunting me. I loved it.
"I got some flashlights just in case," she added. As she spoke she handed me one, a simple silver metal model which I dropped into my lap. The mountainous Washington landscape stretched out before us. A fresh start. Thank you, Bright Falls, I thought, grinning, you and all of your weird townspeople.
XXXXXXXX
As Alan drove off with Alice down main street, all thoughts of the shadowy woman in the diner forgotten, neither he nor his wife spotted Carl Stucky, dressed in his baby blue mechanic's overalls, rush out of the diner's front door behind them and stagger to a halt in the middle of the road, barely managing to hold the Wake's keys aloft in an outstretched hand.
"Hey, wait!" Stucky yelled after his departing clients. "Mrs. Wake! Your – your keys!" But it was no use. The two tourists weren't looking back.
As the Wakes drove away, Stucky put his free hand to his head, where a powerful headache was beginning to run rampant. What had happened to him? He had been sitting in the diner, enjoying a mug of coffee and admiring Rose's perfect ass when she wasn't looking. Then he had headed to the restrooms and...what? Blacked out? Maybe he'd been drinking – but then he'd been sober for four years, and that didn't explain where he could have gotten any alcohol from. Had he been drugged?
Feeling increasingly confused, Stucky staggered back towards the diner. In their car, Alan and Alice left Bright Falls behind them and headed off along a route through the mountains that would eventually see them curving south towards their cabin on Cauldron Lake. Both parties were unaware of each other's experiences.
But their trouble had only just begun.