Wake walked around the crashed car. The cliff back to the road was too steep to climb up. It might be hours before another car came along, and no guarantee that the driver would notice the broken guardrail.
The car’s trunk had sprung from the impact, their suitcases popped open from the impact of the crash. Wake bent down on one knee, touched Alice’s clothing, her sweater, her favorite pink silk blouse. He held the blouse for a few moments, fingering the delicate fabric, then folded her clothes as best he could before replacing them in the bag.
Wake picked up a hardback book from the suitcase. The Creator’s Dilemma, by a Dr. Emil Hartman. He had never seen it before, but the blurb on back cover said Hartman specialized in helping artists with creative problems at his clinic. Sure you do, doc. He remembered the fight with Alice in the cabin after she told him about making an appointment for him to meet with Hartman. His cheeks flushed with the memory, seeing the concern in her face, Alice worrying about his insomnia, his sudden rages. He shouldn’t have jumped all over her for trying to help. He was an idiot, a thin-skinned idiot. If he had just nodded, said thanks but no thanks, he wouldn’t have stormed out, and Alice might still be with him. Instead he was here, stuck on the side of a mountain, the car wrecked and Alice missing.
Wake pawed through the rest of their things, smelling Alice’s perfume on her clothes. He slowly picked up a small framed photo of the two of them on vacation three years ago. They were lying on a white sand beach in Malta, holding up umbrella drinks for the camera, both of them tanned and happy in the sun. Wake hadn’t wanted to go, but Alice had ignored his excuses and made the arrangements. He was glad she had. It had been a good time, his books doing well, the writing coming easily. No fights. No arguments. Just the two of them, happy and together. He carefully tucked the photo into his jacket, slung the suitcase into the trunk. It made his chest hurt thinking about those days in the sun.
Get moving, Wake. Impossible to climb back up to the road. The narrow path down the mountain led into the dark forest, but there was no other way to reach Stucky’s gas station, and that was his best bet for finding help. It would be a long hike, but they’d have a phone he could use at least. Wake tore off a nearly blank page from Hartman’s book, scrawled a note in case someone came by: “Wife missing. Gone through the woods to gas station for help. Alan Wake.”
He tucked the note under one of the windshield wipers, jumped back as the tree supporting the car groaned, cracked, and gave way. The tree and then the car fell down the cliff.
Wake jumped back and watched the car tumbling end over end in a shower of sparks as it bounced off the rocks. He felt oddly detached somehow, as though viewing a movie of a car crash rather than seeing one, hearing one. He shook his head. He wished that he could wake up alongside Alice and have everything be fine, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet. Not until he found her. He started down the rugged path, almost slipped, and barely caught himself. As he entered the forest, he got one last glimpse of the gas station, and then it was lost to the darkness.
A raven cawed somewhere up ahead, and its cry was answered by others, an unkindness of ravens on all sides. Wake kept moving, sticking to the main trail, hoping that would lead him to the gas station. He could barely see at first, but after a few minutes his eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering through the trees. The woods smelled of pine and cedar, and the damp smell of rotting vegetation. The trail dipped and twisted, split into three forks, and he stopped, heart pounding so loudly he couldn’t separate it from the sound of crickets, which started up again, louder now, rising and falling. He couldn’t tell if the sound was outside or inside his own head.
He looked around as though the sound came from someplace other than his own thoughts. He rubbed the spot on his forehead where he had banged his head in the crash, the wound still leaking. That must be a good sign. Probably right there in the First Aid section of the Boy Scout manual: when experiencing a traumatic head injury, take comfort if it keeps oozing blood, because that means you’re not losing your mind after misplacing your wife. No merit badge for you, Wake.
The woods whispered around him, leaves brushing against each other, and the sound was like insects rising from the earth, sheets of beetles shiny and hard. He checked his watch. It felt like he had only just entered the forest, but over an hour had passed since he left the crash site. He wondered how long he had been standing here, unsure of how to proceed.
Wake took the right-hand path, afraid that if he didn’t start moving he would still be in this exact same spot when the sun came up. He started trotting, but quickly faded as the path started uphill. Better to save his strength and keep up a brisk walk. No telling how long it would take to get there.
A raven shrieked, startling him. Wake slipped on loose gravel, banged his knee. Cursing, he limped forward.
A bright light flared from behind a rocky outcropping up ahead. Wake called out, rubbing his knee as he approached. The light seemed to flicker.
“Anybody there?” Wake approached cautiously. “Hello?”
The light died.
Wake stepped past the outcropping of rock. Two sheets of white paper fluttered to the ground, gleaming, and Wake thought of angels’ wings. He rubbed his head again, disoriented, the papers’ glow fading as they settled into the weeds. Paper didn’t fall from the sky… except when the air force wanted to alert the civilian population to an imminent bombing attack. EVACUATE THE CITY. YOUR LIVES ARE IN DANGER. HEAD FOR THE HILLS.
Wake stumbled, caught up in an avalanche of thoughts, struggled to turn his mind off. He forced himself to calm down, to focus. He picked up the typewritten pages and tried to read them. He moved away from the surrounding trees, using the moonlight to see better, frowning at what he saw.
The pages were from a manuscript. A work in progress. Departure, the title of the book he intended to write, a book he had been unable to write even a page of. Just the title was all he had, but somebody… somebody had already started work on it. Wake squinted at one of the pages and checked again to make sure. It was just too weird. There it was, though. At the bottom right corner: Wake//page 2.
Wake’s legs wobbled so badly that he had to hold on to a tree for support, his fingernails clawing at the bark, as though assuring himself that this tree, this one thing was real. He must have really banged his head, because none of this made sense. He took a deep breath, straightening up, and pushed his hair back with one hand. He started reading. His hands were shaking by the time he was finished, but he read every word. The manuscript page described a man walking through the woods at night… a man attacked on that walk by an ax murderer. “Blood dripped from the blade of the ax, blood black as night.” It even sounded like Wake’s style.
Wake looked around. He was alone except for the wind and the surrounding trees swaying in the darkness, branches rattling against each other like fingerbones in a graveyard. Turn off your imagination, Wake. Nothing and nobody here but you. Definitely no man with an ax lurking in the brush, no maniac escaped from the local asylum seeking payback. That was another dream, another nightmare, another book someday maybe, but nothing more.
Wake started walking again. He glanced behind him, moving faster now. He promised himself that he would keep up a steady pace, that he wouldn’t give in to panic, but he had broken so many promises to himself. Wake ran, ran faster now, legs pumping as he listened for footsteps behind him.
Worst vacation ever. Two weeks off a year and Blaine had to spend it driving around in an RV with his in-laws from Tokyo. People acted like they had never seen a redwood tree, and his mother-in-law found every jerkwater town “cute.” Nothing cute about Bright Falls, just redneck dopes asking him what kind of mileage he got in the Winnebago. Didn’t help that his wife Asako’s spastic colon was kicking up with all the fast food, making her totally useless. It all fell on Blaine.
He wanted to barrel on to Reno or Ashland, someplace with a Sizzler or some nightlife, but his in-laws had seen the mountain turnout and wan
ted to watch the sunset. Like the sun never set in Japan. Fine, Blaine stayed in the RV while the three of them stood against the railing taking pictures.
Geez, it got dark fast up here in Nowheresville. One minute it was twilight, and the next—
CHAPTER 5
WAKE CROUCHED OVER, hands resting on his knees, his chest on fire as he tried to catch his breath. Got to hit the gym, Wake. Do some cardio. Maybe take a spinning class. He started to smile, then remembered why he was here in the middle of the woods. Alone. He thought of Alice and her terror of the darkness, hoped that wherever she was there was light.
He started walking in the direction of the gas station. Walking fast was smarter than running, allowing him to keep a steady pace. Keep moving, a mantra to get him through the long night until he was reunited with Alice. No doubts, no fears, just the certainty that he would find her. Anything else, any other thought was a whirlpool of madness that threatened to pull him under.
The sound of crickets rose around him, a tidal wave of sound, rising and falling, male crickets sawing away, looking for a mate. Pick me… me… me! Just as suddenly the sound changed, shifted, and Wake thought he heard someone typing away in the distance, someone just as insistent as the crickets, tappity tap tapping away. He patted the pages he had found, the pages of a manuscript he didn’t remember writing, pages tucked into a pocket of his jacket.
The wind rose, blowing across him, turning his sweat cold. He looked around in the darkness, the trees so close, blotting out the stars, hiding a deeper darkness. There was not even a question of stepping off the path that wound through them. No shortcuts. Don’t stray from the path, Wake, the awareness of that truth as sudden and definite as if someone had spoken the words.
Something scurried in the underbrush and Wake had to remind himself to breathe. His head throbbed where he had hit the steering wheel in the crash. He didn’t remember driving… he touched his forehead, winced. That much was real. Keep moving.
A damp mist hung over the ground, thickening as he walked. Wake staggered as pain shot through his head, his eyes unfocused for a moment, his vision speckled with tiny flares of light. There was a buzzing in his ears, like being caught inside a hornet’s nest. He tried walking but the ground shook, a tremor that sent him to his knees. The buzzing in his head became a roar as the ground rolled under him. Alice had talked about a volcano under Cauldron Lake, but it was supposed to be dormant. Wake got to his feet. Keep going. No matter what, keep going.
He glimpsed a man up ahead, then he was gone, lost in the mist.
“Hey!” shouted Wake. “I need help!” He ran forward, the mist swirling around him. “Anybody there? Please, I’ve been in an accident!”
The mist thinned out. Wake was still alone. Up ahead though, there were lights. A good sign, he thought, moving faster now, half stumbling in his haste. Maybe he wouldn’t have to hike all the way to the gas station to find a phone.
The trail opened up, leaving the thick forest behind, the trees spread out now. In the distance Wake could see a logging camp, surrounded by a high chain-link fence. He was running now, eager. There had to be people there, a phone. Huge machines stood between stacks of cut logs, battered loaders and claw-armed backhoes and gigantic bulldozers, their treads crusted with rust and dirt. A crane towered above them all, a sentinel in the darkness. The camp office was off to the side, a converted trailer at the edge of a deep ravine.
Wake was closer now, close enough to see that the massive stacks of logs were at least twelve feet high, flanked by neat piles of cut lumber. Fifty-gallon drums lay scattered across the yard, as though tossed aside by an angry giant. The yard was dark, but the modular office was lit. The door was only open a crack, but the light was a relief after traveling through the dark for hours.
Now he knew how Alice felt when the lights went out.
There was such a sense of relief in the light’s glow, of normality, of… safety, which was ridiculous and primitive, but it was true. Seeing the lights on inside the trailer made it even better. Wake could hear the trailer door squeaking as the wind moved it back and forth.
He put his hands on the fence. “Anybody there?”
No answer.
Wake scooted along the chain-link fence, looking for a gate, slipping on the rocks in his haste. Halfway down he saw where a fallen tree had landed on the fence line, crushing it halfway down. He hopped onto the tree trunk and carefully started up the incline. He’d been too eager and his momentum nudged him off.
He landed on his feet and tried it again, taking his time, wobbling at the very peak, then jumping down on the other side. He stuck the dismount, almost wanting to throw his hands over his head in Olympic triumph, anything to break the tension that had increased since he hit the ground, worse even than when he woke in the car.
The mist hung over the camp in layers. A wood smell hung there too. It should have been pleasant, fresh-cut, alive, but instead the air felt dead, a toadstool stink. Logs lay jumbled everywhere, slippery with moisture, the footing treacherous. Sawdust covered the ground, stained with grease. He started toward the office, guiding himself by the glow that shone over the top of one of the piles of stacked logs.
He kept getting lost in the maze of stacks, wandering into cul-de-sacs of logs and lumber that he couldn’t squeeze through, forcing him to retreat and retrace his steps. On his third attempt to thread his way to the light he heard a sound, a human voice crying out in fear and pain. Wake couldn’t make out the words, but he knew the emotion behind them.
He ran toward the sound, but found himself blocked again by a mountain of logs. He tried to scramble up them, desperate now, but the bracings holding the stack in place gave way, the logs rolling toward him. He barely had time to jump aside, banging his elbow on a rusting iron girder lying on the ground.
He watched as the logs rolled down the incline, gathering speed, then hurtled through the safety fence and into the ravine below. It sounded like thunder, and he hoped there was nothing and no one down there, because anything alive would be reduced to a smear of flesh.
Another cry, closer this time.
“I’m coming!” shouted Wake, his left arm numb where he had banged it. He ran through the stacks of lumber, round and round, until he finally saw a man lying at the end of one long corridor of logs, a hunter in a red plaid shirt, wearing jeans and suspenders, one of his legs twisted under him. A rifle lay on the ground beside him.
The hunter saw Wake too. He moaned, rose up on one elbow, beckoning.
Wake hurried toward him. As he got closer he could see there was something wrong with the hunter. The man’s shirt wasn’t red plaid, it was a plain gray shirt splattered with blood.
“Help me, Mister,” blubbered the hunter, crawling toward Wake. “For the love of God, help…”
Someone stepped out of the shadows, a tall, rangy man in boots and work clothes, with a single-bladed ax resting on one shoulder. He ambled toward the hunter. “Carl… Stucky,” he said, his voice contorted as though he were suffering through a convulsion. “Pleased to… meet you.”
Wake stared at the man with the ax inching toward the hunter. This was Carl Stucky, the man who they had rented the cabin from?
“Stucky… why are you doing this?” cried the hunter, fumbling with the rifle. “You… you know me.”
Stucky moved closer, stepped into the moonlight at the end of the row of logs, but the shadows seemed to cling to him, clothing him in an oily darkness. Blood dripped from the blade of the ax, blood black as night.
“Hey!” shouted Wake, looking around for a weapon. “Leave him alone!”
Stucky didn’t react to Wake’s voice. “I offer premium cabins,” he squawked at the hunter, dragging out the word as he raised the ax. “Premium cabins in the Bright Falls area.”
Lying on the ground, the hunter raised the rifle, tried to hold it steady. He had bushy eyebrows and they knitted with the effort. He fired once, threw the bolt and fired again, the bullets hitting Stucky square in
the chest.
The gunshots rocked Stucky for an instant, but had no other effect. His body bent backwards slightly as he hefted the ax and then swung it down with full force.
Wake flinched as the ax cleaved through the hunter’s midsection; a slaughterhouse sound, moist and solid, spraying blood. Stucky put one foot on the hunter’s neck as he struggled to pull the ax free, and Wake saw the hunter’s eyelashes flutter in the dim light, his finger curling helplessly. Stucky jerked the ax out of the man, left rib bones glinting in the sawdust. He turned to Wake, his face a mask of shifting shadows. Things crawled in the dark of his eyes, but there was nothing human there.
Wake backed up.
“Car-llllll Stucky, pleased to meet you.”
“Did you take Alice?” demanded Wake. “Did you do something to her?”
“Premium cabins for rent.” Stucky shambled toward him.
“You son of a bitch. What… what did you do with Alice?”
“Preeeeemium cabins,” hissed Stucky, hefting the ax. “But a non-refundable reservation deposit is required.”
Wake tripped, sprawled in the sawdust, and scrambled back up again. He looked around now, wanting to run back to the gap in the fence. Even the darkness of the forest was more inviting than this place, but he wasn’t sure which direction to go, afraid he was going to be caught in a box canyon of logs with Stucky coming toward him. All he knew was that he had to get to the trailer. There would be a phone inside and maybe a weapon… something.
“You fail to arrive,” snarled Stucky, his face a torrent of shadows as he closed the gap between them, “you lose the deposit.”
Wake ran. He dodged between the stacks of logs, emerged into a clearing, and stood there, looking around, trying to decide how to get to the trailer. He darted between two long rows of logs, panting now, more from fear than exertion. He glanced behind him. No Stucky. He slowed slightly, cried out as a shadow crossed over him, Stucky leaping from atop one row to another, cackling.
Alan Wake Page 4