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Cauldron Lake
Odin: Tom! We need to head to our next gig. We’re doing this for you and our lovely Saga. You take care of things on this side!
Tor: Don’t screw it up, Tom!
Alan (V.O.): I’d seen it all play out, like a horror movie I’d been forced to watch. The Dark Presence held all the cards now.
Estevez: Wake! We need to talk! Welcome back, Wake. You are Wake now, right? With the Shadow out of you? Some good news, at least. Bad news is I haven’t seen a situation this fucked since the AWE in Eagle River. The Shadow is now in Alex. And Anderson is gone. We need to figure out how to salvage this.
Alan: I’ll do anything it takes to fix this, Agent Estevez. I’m the reason this is all happening.
Estevez: It’s never that simple. But I should have put you in a box and shipped you off a containment facility the second I laid eyes on you. The only question now is, are you able to fix this?
Alan: I can try.
Estevez: Not the most encouraging answer, but we’ll make it work.
Alan: Scratch, the Dark Presence inside Casey, threw Saga into the lake. If she ends up in the Dark Place, she could be there forever. It took me 13 years to get out. Zane never did.
Estevez: Tor and Odin went after her, right? Maybe they’ll get her out. With the power of rock and roll.
Alan: I saw them when I was trapped there. They performed in my musical.
Estevez: I’m immediately less optimistic about this.
Alan: What’s the situation?
Estevez: I’ve never seen an entity break a Bureau containment unit like that. And now the Dark Presence is occupying Agent Casey. When it attacked him in the woods, it must have been preparing for this.
Alan: And now he has the Clicker. Scratch will go to Bright Falls and use the Clicker to bring about the horrific ending he wrote for Return. But I can still fix this.
Estevez: How?
Alan: Scratch must have the manuscript. If I can read the ending, I can rewrite it. I need to go after him.
Estevez: Well, you won’t get very far without these. This plan is a real hail mary, Wake. I wish I could help, but this is all on you. I got you every kind of weapon we have available. Don’t fuck it up.
Alan (V.O.): I needed a car. The FBI vehicle would be at the parking lot.
Alan (V.O.): I was awake again. Clear-headed for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. I was back exactly where I left. In a dark forest outside Bright Falls. A gun in one hand. A flashlight in the other. Haunted by my own writing. Alice taken from me. I knew what I had to do. Stop the horror story from coming true. Stop the Dark Presence.
Alan (V.O.): In the Dark Place, the Dark Presence went into me. When I was pulled back here, crossing over weakened it. Made it dormant. I couldn’t remember what had happened. But I could feel it getting stronger. Waking up. I thought it was haunting me, closing in. It was inside me the whole time. And then it took over. Turned me into Scratch.
Alan (V.O.): I had to get to Bright Falls. See this through to the end.
Alan (V.O.): I brought Saga Anderson into this story to help me escape. She succeeded. It cost her everything. I had used Alex Casey in my writing for years. The real Casey had been drawn here because of that. Now he was a victim too. Saga, Casey, Alice. All this horror originates from me. It’s my fault. Scratch had to be stopped. I’d driven down this road before. Been driving on it forever. If Scratch had brought the Dark Place here, this would take me back inside. In 2010 I had dived in, a leap of faith. For Alice. With no idea that the cost would be a nightmare worse than death. It had taken me 13 years to get out. Now Alice was dead. Because of me. And I was going to make that leap again. This time knowing the cost all too well. Another way to look at it: I had brought the Dark Place here with me. I never had gotten out. Maybe after this I finally could. It was a fool’s hope. I had no choice. I had to do it. That didn’t make me any less terrified.
Alan: Fuck it.
Bright Falls
Alan: This is… not what I expected.
Person: The stage fight scene in “Departure” is one-upped by the absolutely mind-frying Dark Ocean Summoning. Wake deftly tricks the reader into believing the Cult of the Tree is the story’s antagonist.
Person: Setting the trilogy’s exciting conclusion at Deerfest makes Return a genre-bending mixture of fact and fiction.
Tammy: Alan Wake’s latest novel, Return, is breaking every literary record in existence. It’s THE great American novel!
Ed: The Deerfest scene is a strong contender for the most memorable ending in literature!
Tammy: Alan Wake is this generation’s greatest storyteller.
Ed: The book begins in the victim’s point of view. A confident move by a veteran author.
Tammy: Return shines a light on its author’s brilliantly dark mind.
Ed: Among the scares, humor glows in Wake’s pages. The cult’s symbol and name resulting from a mushroom trip is evidence that Wake is winking at the reader.
Person: This motherfucker is a home run.
Person: Thrilling, moody, and captivating. Return had readers on the edge of their seats! Alan Wake knows his fans and never lets them down!
Person: Nightingale’s shocking death at the beginning is the first in a non-stop parade of shocks! The unanswered mystery is what stays with you the longest. Was Ahti really a resident of the nursing home? Perhaps we’ll never know. From terrifying supernatural dimensions to the quirky fun of Deerfest, Return’s tone is flawlessly executed!
Person: A spellbinding tour de force. Return is a story that can’t help but pull you in. Return is an early contender for a Pulitzer prize.
Donna: The worlds and characters echo each other in unique and surprising ways. The Overlaps scenes in particular are rich examples of this theme.
Pat: The book continually subverts expectations. I expected the Koskelas to become Taken because of their similarities to the Huotari brothers. Saga and Casey will go down as literature’s best law enforcement duo! The salt shaker story had me rolling on the floor!
Donna: The novel begins as a murder mystery but pulls the rug out from under and turns into an all-out supernatural horror!
Pat: Why no love for Barry? Is our dear author planning something for the future? Whatever it is, I’m on board!
Person: The tragedy of Saga losing her family is a blatant commentary of a woman’s struggle to balance their personal and professional lives.
Norman: The gut-wrenching ending in which Saga is left to die in the lake is modern horror at its finest. I didn’t understand what was going on half the time but I loved every word of it!
Mandy-May: The Old Gods of Asgard are back! Wake clearly knows what his fans want to see!
Norman: Where do I sign up to live at the Valhalla Nursing Home? Its residents are laugh-out-loud funny!
Alan (V.O.): I needed to get a copy of “Return”. I needed to read the ending to have a shot of changing it. I was inside Scratch’s ending. A perverse version of reality. The townspeople brainwashed. Everyone and everything revolve around “Return”. As if it had just been published.
Alan (V.O.): I could see the round windows of the Writer’s Room in the photo. That’s where I had to go. To rewrite the ending of Return.
Ed: It’s a sick, sick story and I love it!
Ilmo: A book to die for!
Alan: Shit.
Alan (V.O.): I could get out through the back. I had the book now. I could write my ending to Return. I had to get to the Writer’s Room to stop this horror story.
Alan (V.O.): This was an obsessive, egocentric nightmare. All revolving around a vain monster of a writer. And his final, divine work of art. The novel, Return, come true. It wouldn’t stop here. It would keep spreading.
Alan (V.O.): I needed to reach the Writer’s Room. Write a new conclusion. Was Scratch’s insecure need for fame, for praise, drawn from my psyche? I would bring his sick fantasy crashing down around him.
Alan (V.O.): I had to find another way inside.
Alice: Alan.
Alan: Alice?
Alan (V.O.): What was that? Alice was dead? Was this a trap, or Scratch torturing me?
Alice: Alan… Alan…
Alan: Shit! Scratch!
Scratch: You are home! Fame! Worship! Alice!
Alan: Fuck!
Scratch: Everything revolves around us!
Alan: Fuck off!
Scratch: We made this!
Alan: Shut the fuck up!
Scratch: Happy ending! Our story! Our ending! Our book!
Rose: Get your butt in gear, Alan! It’s safe here!
Scratch: Everyone loves us!
Rose: We’re safe in the light, Alan. For now. But he’s very pushy.
Alan: Rose, right? From the diner? How are you here?
Rose: I’m here to save you, silly. I got your instructions. I found every hidden message you left for me. In the radio. In the wind. In the forums on my Alan Wake fansite.
Alan: What? No, Rose, I haven’t been leaving you any messages.
Rose: Oh, I get it! Yes, Alan, only a crazy person would think you’ve been leaving them secret messages. Wink. But now you need to get your but upstairs, Alan. This shit won’t write itself, no matter what William Shakespeare said.
Alan: Right. Thank you, Rose. I’ll do what I can.
Alan (V.O.): Upstairs. The Writer’s Room must be in the attic. That’s where the windows were.
Ahti: We loop around, and come together, Tom. I have put everything ready for the visitors. I’ll come to wash the floor of your room next. All you need is water and Vileda. Water is the oldest balm. Water finds its way. What water brings, it takes away. It can be clean or dirty, it can give life or drown it.
Alan: Ahti. I didn’t expect to see you here. But it makes sense. Can you help me find my way, one last time?
Ahti: Now there’s a devil in the fish trap. Don’t be spooked by it so that shit won’t start beating your underpants. Okay, I’ll get the door open for you, Tom. There you go. The matter is a steak. Now comes the end of the rhyme.
Alan: Thank you, Ahti.
Alan (V.O.): I was here. I needed to write the ending. I only had one chance to get this right. I needed an ending that took everything already in Return and extended it into a conclusion that would save. Only the perfect ending would work. Return’s ending was an eternal Deerfest that would keep spreading. Given time, Scratch would plunge the world into his nightmare. I had to stop that from happening. I had to write one more chapter for Return. A perfect ending that would save us all. I was the only one who could write it. Everything depended on this. On me. Any second now, Scratch would burst through that door. To stop me. Every plot thread dangled in my brain. It suddenly felt impossible. Something stirred in the room. Coming to me. An idea.
Alan: The ending has to fit the genre if it’s going to work. In a horror story, there are only victims and monsters. If there is a hero, they will ultimately pay a heavy price.
Saga: I won’t let the horror story take Logan and Casey. They were dragged into this. They need to survive. Non-negotiable.
Alan: Not just them. We need to try to save everyone.
Saga: The ending will have to be dark no matter what. The more people we save, the greater the cost. And the hero must pay the price.
Alan: The scales always need to balance.
Alan (V.O.): Something felt different. I had never seen myself in a vision before. But it fit. Saga and I were both at the center of this story. She was now my co-author. This was the beginning of the end. We were characters in a horror story, charging blindly toward the finale. We still didn’t have everything we needed. This would not work without the Clicker.