CHAPTER 25

“IMPRESSIVE, ISN’T IT? ” said Breaker.

Barry yawned. “Wow. ”

“Yeah, wow, ” said Wake

The three of them stood at the edge of the forest, staring up at the Bright Falls dam, a massive structure that loomed at least 250 feet above them and contained enough concrete to build a small city. The dam was dark, but the power station at its base blazed with light, inside and outside, an oasis in the darkness. The outer walls of the power station were covered with luminous scrawls, warnings against the darkness, exhortations to stay in the light, the words dripping down the concrete surfaces. Cynthia Weaver wasn’t taking any chances, a philosophy that had kept her safe all these years.

Wake looked around, checked the sky too, but saw only stars and the half-moon. They hadn’t seen any ravens since the helicopter crashed, but Wake had learned not to trust the night, no matter how peaceful it looked. They all had now. Crickets sawed away in the underbrush, their mating call rising and falling. Wake wished them luck.

Wake and Breaker set out for the power station, moving quickly in the dim light while Barry lagged behind, complaining about his sore feet and his allergies acting up. As they got closer to the dam, Wake could see huge metal pipes running from under the dam to the power station, the pipes running on concrete supports a few yards above ground. The scale was enormous, and not just the pipes and the dam; everything in Bright Falls seemed larger than life. The pines and cedars that soared hundreds of feet, the ten-story cranes and lumbering earth-moving equipment, the gigantic mining facility with drill bits bigger around than his waist, even the pickaxes and sledgehammers of the Taken seemed meant for a larger world, a bigger reality. Wake was used to skyscrapers, but it was easy to feel small and insignificant here.

Water dripped from some of the metal pipes, ran downhill in muddy rivulets that they trudged through, their boots making sucking sounds with every step. The wind stirred, bending the tops of the trees. An owl hooted in the forest.

“Wait up! ” called Barry, splashing through the muck, not wanting to be left behind.

Wake and Breaker stood in front of a large sliding door to the power plant. A symbol had been painted over the doorway, a crude drawing of a torch. Wake had seen the same symbol painted on rocks and trees all around Bright Falls, the paint oddly iridescent, seeming to increase as light shined on it. Wake grabbed the handle of the door, tried to pull it open, leaning into it, but even with Breaker’s help it wouldn’t budge.

“Now, what? ” said Barry.

“I don’t—” started Wake.

Creaking and clanking, the door slowly opened without any of them touching it. As they entered the building, a blinding light shined on them through the doorway. Wake threw his hand up to shield his eyes from the floodlights that caught him, and he could see Breaker and Barry doing the same thing.

“Hold it right there! ”

“Miss Weaver! ” called Wake, squinting in the glare. “I’m a friend. ”

“Prove it! ” said Weaver.

“He’s telling the truth, Miss Weaver, ” said the sheriff, shading her eyes.

“Sheriff Breaker, that you? ” said Weaver, invisible behind the floodlights. “I didn’t expect you to be paying me a visit. ”

“I’m Alan Wake, Miss Weaver. ”

“Who’s the other one? ” said Weaver. “The one in the ridiculous red parka. ”

“I’m Barry Weaver. ” Barry patted his pockets. “I’ve got a business card somewhere—”

“Why is he wearing Christmas lights? ” said Weaver.

“Miss Weaver, ” said Wake, still trying to get a glimpse of her, “we know about the Dark Presence. Barry’s wearing the lights for the same reason you’ve got this place lit up like the Fourth of July. You knew Thomas Zane. You’re the lady of the light in the song that the Anderson brothers wrote. We came here because I thought you could help me. ”

Silence.

“The Dark Presence has my wife, Miss Weaver, ” said Wake. “We need your help. ” More silence, and for a moment Wake was afraid that he had been wrong, that the song was just a song, that Weaver was as crazy as the townspeople thought she was. If Weaver couldn’t help him, then Alice was lost forever.

“Well, it’s about time, young man, ” said Weaver. “Come in. I’ve been waiting a very long time for you. ”

There was the sound of a heavy switch being thrown, and the glare faded, replaced by normal lighting. Even without the floodlights, the place was very bright.

The door clanked shut behind them. They were in an industrial warehouse with a metal-beam ceiling and unpainted concrete walls. An open office built of gray Sheetrock stood nearby, searchlights mounted on top of it, one on each corner. The office was set up as a living area, and in spite of the surroundings, it appeared surprisingly cozy, with a hooked-yarn floor rug and small kitchen. Newspaper clippings were taped to one wall, and stacks of newspapers and magazines sat beside a red reading chair with a floor lamp beside it. There was also a rolltop desk and a neatly made bed with a quilt. Bottles of water and cans of food were carefully arranged under a round wood table. There were lamps everywhere, and all of them were lit. Bare lightbulbs were strung from the ceiling all around the office. It was bright enough in that room to do brain surgery.

Cynthia Weaver stood there looking them over, carrying the lantern that accompanied her everywhere. She wore a prim, brown tweed suit with a dark suede collar and a matching light brown blouse. She looked like an old-fashioned librarian, her hair pinned back, her expression severe.

“Thanks for letting us in, Miss Weaver, ” said Wake.

“Nice to see you, Sheriff, ” Weaver said to Breaker, ignoring Wake. “Not surprised, though. You were always one of the smart ones. You and your father. ” She nodded to herself. “We used to drink coffee together at the diner sometimes, and I’d tell him about Thomas, and how much I had loved him, and your father… he never laughed. ” She moved closer to the sheriff. “Why aren’t you in town? Things are very bad tonight. ”

“We’re well beyond rowdy, Miss Weaver, ” said Breaker. “The Dark Presence swept in… half the town is ruined. ”

“I thought so, yes indeed, I thought so, ” said Weaver. “I tried to warn folks, but no one listened. I saw it coming. This last week, seemed like the darkness just kept getting stronger and stronger. ” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen it this bad. ” She peered at Wake. “I remember you now. You were in the diner that day. You were looking for Mr. Stucky. ”

“You tried to warn me, ” said Wake. “You told me to not to go down the corridor. You said the bulbs were burned out. ”

“You didn’t listen, though, ” said Weaver.

“I didn’t, ” admitted Wake. “Barbara Jagger was waiting for me—”

“That thing is not Barbara. ” Weaver stuck the lamp in Wake’s face, turned up the wick so it was even brighter. “It just wears her skin to fool the foolish. ”

“I know that now, ” said Wake.

“It cost you though, didn’t it? ” said Weaver. “The lesson didn’t come cheap. ”

“Yes, ” said Wake, and the word was like a stone in his stomach. “It cost me the person I care most about in the world. ”

Weaver nodded, lowered the lamp slightly. “It’s in the Well-Lit Room. ”

“Excuse me? ” said Wake.

“What you need to drive back the darkness, ” snapped Weaver. “It’s in the Well-Lit Room. ”

“What is it? ” Wake said eagerly.

“It’s not for talking, it’s for showing, ” said Weaver.

“Where is the Well-Lit Room, Miss Weaver? ” Breaker asked gently.

Weaver eyed Breaker. “When you were a little girl, you made up a nasty rhyme about me. ”

“Yes… yes, I did, ” said Breaker. “I’m sorry—”

“You used to say the rhyme under your breath when I walked past, thinking I couldn’t hear, but I have very good ears, ” said Weaver. “I don’t miss a thing. Then… one day you stopped. You were nice to me after that. Scared, but nice. ”

“Where’s the Well-Lit Room? ” said Wake.

“He’s impatient, ” Weaver said to Breaker. “Most men are. They can’t help it. My Tom was the same way. ” Her eyes teared up, moisture caught in the nest of wrinkles. “The Well-Lit Room is inside the dam, ” she said to Wake. “The thing you’re looking for is in there. I built the room to keep it safe. ”

Wake had no idea what she was talking about. “Will this thing help me find Alice? Will it get me back to the cabin? ”

“Are you a brave man, Mr. Wake? ” said Weaver. “You’ll need to be. ”

Wake walked quickly to the sliding door, grabbed the handle. “Let’s go get it and find out. ”

“Not that way! ” said Weaver. “Not outside, not at night. Never at night. That’s rule number one. ” She wagged a finger at him. “You’ve been breaking the rules, young man, and look what’s happened. No, I have a secret route, a lit route through an old water pipe. ” She headed into the office. “This way, we always have to go through my little house. ”

Wake followed her upraised lamp, Breaker and Barry close behind.

“This way, ” said Weaver, beckoning as she walked out the other side of the office and into the warehouse. “Follow me. ”

The walls of the warehouse were daubed with messages in the same iridescent paint that Wake had seen over the door, but the farther along they went, the more distorted and uneven the letters became, paint dripping onto the floor:

RULE #1: DON’T GO OUT AT NIGHT.

RULE #2: KEEP THE LIGHTS ON!

RULE #3: ALWAYS REMEMBER THE LANTERN.

DON’T STEP ON SHADOWS.

CHECK THE BULBS, CHANGE THE BULBS.

THE BULBS NEED CHANGING.

I MISS YOU TOM.

I CURSE YOU THOMAS ZANE.

INSURANCE.

“Oh, this is a real confidence builder, ” Barry muttered before Breaker shushed him.

Wake knew what Barry meant. He also had doubts about Weaver. Wake had only encountered the Dark Presence a little over a week ago, and it was all he could do to hang on to his sanity; Weaver had been living this way for years… for decades, living in a world where darkness attacked, and the dead walked again, where something old and powerful lingered under a mountain lake, waiting for its time to come. This was Wake’s world now too, a world where a writer could change reality, where a writer who couldn’t write anymore created horrors to save the woman he loved. If Weaver was still sane after all this time, she was doing better than he would have.

Weaver stopped in front of a six-foot access plate set into the wall, opened it up. She stepped inside the water pipe. The entire length of the pipe was strung with lights, not a shred of darkness visible. “Well? ” Weaver hefted her lantern from the opening. “Are you coming? ”

Wake joined her in the pipe, heard Breaker and Barry follow.

“You’re sure this is the way, Miss Weaver? ” said Breaker.

“You look a lot like my Tom, Mr. Wake, ” said Weaver, shuffling forward, their footsteps echoing. “Perhaps that’s because you’re both writers. ”

“Yes… yes, I would imagine, ” said Wake, glancing back at Breaker.

“I had such a crush on Tom, ” said Weaver, continuing on, “such a beautiful man. I was jealous of Barbara. There was a part of me, a tiny part, that was a little glad when she had the accident. ” She sighed, her steps slowing. “And then Tom started writing and he woke the darkness up. ” She turned and looked at Wake. “He tried to bring Barbara back, just the way you’re trying to bring your wife back, but you can’t. The witch looked like Barbara, but it wasn’t. Barbara was sweet. There are no free rides, Mr. Wake. ”

“Not if you write what the darkness wants you to write, ” said Wake. “The trick is to make a few changes, small changes that the darkness won’t notice until it’s too late. ”

Weaver held up the lantern, peered into Wake’s eyes. “Yes… yes, small changes… a way out of the nightmare, a secret passage. ” She nodded. “Perhaps you’re smarter than Tom was. He tried to undo what he had written, but all he could think of was to erase himself, erase Barbara, erase everything he had written out of the world. The darkness was so angry with him, but Tom, my darling Tom… he was gone. ”

Wake reached for her, but she had already turned around and was walking down the pipe, moving faster now.

“You’re famous, aren’t you, Mr. Wake? ”

“Sort of, ” said Wake.

“Very famous, ” said Barry.

“My Tom was famous too, ” murmured Weaver, “and after-wards no one even knew who he was. He left only one thing behind, one thing that he put in my care, in case it happened again. Insurance. He trusted me, or perhaps used me a little. Tom knew how I felt about him, he knew I wouldn’t refuse him. So, I built the Well-Lit Room and put it there. It’s been waiting for you, Mr. Wake. ”

Weaver stepped out of the end of the pipe. The three of them followed her to the end of the corridor, where a massive door confronted them, thick as a bank vault. Light spilled out into the corridor from the interior of the room as Weaver slowly swung the door open. She held the lantern high as she backed inside. “All aboard! ”

Barry rolled his eyes.

Wake stepped into the room, Breaker right behind him, then Barry.

“I told you, ” said Weaver. “I needed a safe place for what Tom gave me. ”

The room must have originally been a storage area, but Weaver had fixed it up. There must have been a thousand different lamps inside. Heavy-duty electrical cables snaked across the floor, connecting everything together. Not one inch of the room was in shadow. There was no place where the darkness could get a foothold. In the middle of the room, under the brightest light, was an old cardboard box, open to the light.

“I’ve looked after the Well-Lit Room for many, many years now, ” Weaver said proudly. “The power is fail-safe, fed directly off the dam’s turbines, and all the bulbs are numbered and changed regularly based on their make and model. ”

“Riiiiiiiight, ” said Barry.

Breaker elbowed him.

Weaver nudged the box toward Wake. “Take it. Then I won’t need to worry about the room anymore, because bulbs 6 and 33 and 118 need changing soon, and I don’t want to climb up the ladder to change them. Take it, Mr. Wake, because it’s very late and I’m tired. ”

Wake leaned over and slowly looked into the box. Inside was a page from a novel and an old light switch. He picked up the page. It wasn’t from one of his books; it was from one of Thomas Zane’s, his name printed on the upper right corner. Barely able to breathe, Wake read the page.

Alan, seven years old, would fight sleep to the bitter end. When he did sleep, he soon woke up, screaming, the nightmares fresh in his mind. One evening, his mother, sitting by his bed, offered him an old light switch. She called it the “Clicker” and flicking the switch would turn on a magical light that would drive the beasts away. To imbue the talisman with all possible power, she added that it had been given to her by Alan’s father. Alan never knew him, and anything of his took on mythical proportions in his mind. With the Clicker firmly in his hand, Alan finally slept like a baby, safe from harm. Now, almost thirty years later, Alan thought of this, as he stood on the rim of Cauldron Lake, the Clicker in his hand. He took a deep breath and jumped.

Wake put the page down as though it might explode.

Barry peeked into the box, saw the Clicker.

“That’s what we came all the way out here for? Geez, Al, there was a hardware store in Bright Falls. ”

Wake picked up the Clicker, his mind reeling, trying to make sense of it. He flipped it on, flipped it back off.

Wake’s mother had given him the Clicker when he was seven years old, exactly as Zane had written it. The whole page was straight out of Wake’s life, everything from the father that Wake had never known to his frantic insomnia. Wake had never written about it… but Zane had. Two years ago, Wake had given his childhood talisman to Alice in hopes of helping her overcome her own fear of the dark. Now here it was, lying in a cardboard box under the Bright Falls Dam. The same light switch. The same two wires coming from the back of it, insulation worn off in places from Wake’s childhood rubbing. He turned the Clicker over in his hand. Wake would recognize it anywhere. How had it gotten here?

“What’s wrong, Alan? ” said Breaker.

Cynthia Weaver said Zane had written himself out of existence to prevent the Dark Presence from achieving its awful goal, erased himself and all of his works, as though they had never been. Save for this single page. Wake had revived Zane somehow in his hour of need, restored Zane to life while Wake typed away in Bird Leg Cabin. Zane had been Wake’s escape hatch, his means of setting himself free, his only hope to get Alice back from the Dark Presence… but Wake had no memory of giving Zane knowledge of his own history, no memory of giving him possession of the Clicker. Even if he had, Cynthia Weaver had said that the Clicker had been lying in the cardboard box for decades.

“Al? You okay, buddy? ” said Barry.

The question… and Wake hated that he kept coming back to it, no matter how hard he resisted, was whether Thomas Zane was a handy creation of Alan Wake… of whether Wake was a creation of Thomas Zane. One of them had used the other to fight the Dark Presence. One of them was going to finish the fight.

“We’ve both been touched by the darkness, young man, ” said Weaver. “Thomas saved us both with light. But the darkness stays with you, leaves a stain. I miss him so… miss him so badly. ”

“I know exactly what you mean, Miss Weaver, ” said Wake.

“Then you tell me what she’s raving on about, ” said Barry.

Wake tucked the Clicker into his jacket. He looked from Barry to Breaker. “I know what I have to do to save Alice. ”

Zane could feel the poems, taking form, shaping things. As he experimented, he imagined he could almost feel the power surging through the keys of the typewriter. It exhilarated him, but there was fear, too. If not for his young assistant, Hartman, he would have given it up. But Hartman convinced him otherwise. He, too, had a way with words.

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