Alan Wake Episode 6: Departure Pages

[Page 1: The Dark Presence Wants to Stop Wake]
The Dark Presence was no longer trying to capture the writer so he could create the ending it wanted.
The writer knew too much. He was too strong, and he carried a weapon left behind by Thomas Zane, something that could hurt it.

Now the darkness was doing everything in its power to simply stop the writer from ever reaching Cauldron Lake and the dark place it came from.

[Page 2: The Trail of the Dark Presence]
The bottom of Cauldron Lake was a graveyard of things the lake had claimed in one way or another over the decades. The Dark Presence brought them up in its wake, scattering the rotten, waterlogged hull of an old boat here, the remains of a long-ago crashed airplane there.

Trees shattered under the impacts. The earth groaned. It didn't even notice.

[Page 3: Thomas Zane's Last Dive]
Zane cut its heart out, but it didn't die. The thing that wore Barbara's face kept crooning sweet nothings, sugar laced with poison.

He put on the suit, untied the monster from the chair. The thing in his arms thrashed weakly, but he held fast. He stepped outside, off the pier, and into the dark water, a sinking pinprick of light, descending toward a bottom that never came.

[Page 4: The Dark Place]
The dark place I found myself in was unlike anything I could ever have imagined; it wasn't solid, it flowed. It was conceptual and subjective.

For someone else, an artist in another field, it would have been very different. I could sense the story of the manuscript all around me, the words and ideas floating in the air, poised to become real.

[Page 5: The Way through the Dark Place]
After Zane had gone, I stood alone in the shifting dream that was the dark place. I had to find a way to the cabin. I had written myself a way through this place in the manuscript.

I followed the idea of a path. I had written myself across the ocean that blocked my way, and with that, there was a bridge to the island beyond. The idea of the cabin flickered in the underwater darkness. I willed the cabin to be real.

And it was.

[Page 6: The Poet and the Muse Lyrics 1]
The Poet and the Muse lyrics by Old Gods of Asgard.

The first verse:

There's an old tale wrought with the mystery of Tom the Poet and his muse

And a magic lake which gave a life to the words the poet used

Now, the muse she was his happiness, and he rhymed about her grace

And told her stories of treasures deep beneath the blackened waves

'Til in the stillness of one dawn, still in its misty crown

The muse she went down to the lake, and in the waves she drowned

[Page 7: The Poet and the Muse Lyrics 2]
The Poet and the Muse lyrics by Old Gods of Asgard.

The second verse:

The poet came down to the lake to call out to his dear

When there was no answer he was overcome with fear

He searched in vain for his treasure lost and too soon the night would fall

Only his own echo would wail back at his call

And when he swore to bring back his love by stories he'd create

Nightmares shifted in their sleep in the darkness of the lake.

[Page 8: The Poet and the Muse Lyrics 3]
The Poet and the Muse lyrics by Old Gods of Asgard.

The third verse:

In the dead of night she came to him with darkness in her eyes

Wearing a mourning gown, sweet words as her disguise

He took her in without a word for he saw his grave mistake

And vowed them both to silence deep beneath the lake

Now, if it's real or just a dream one mystery remains

For it is said, on moonless nights they may still haunt this place

[Page 9: Sarah and Barry in the Well-Lit Room]
In the end, Barry wasn't going to shoot Sarah, they both knew that. Once she had no chance of catching up to Wake, Barry gave up the gun and sat down on the floor, shielding his face from the merciless glare of the Well-Lit Room.

"I don't think I'm ever gonna see him again," he said in a weak voice.

Sarah didn't have it in her to be mad at him. Besides, he was probably right.

[Page 10: Zane's Poem]
I'd first heard the poem in a dream, recited by a strange UFO-like light. I'd read it again in the cabin, in a book by Thomas Zane:

For he did not know
That beyond the lake
He called home
Lies a deeper, darker
Ocean green
Where waves are
Both wilder
And more serene
To its ports I've been
To its ports I've been.

[Alan Wake]
It's not a Lake; It's an Ocean.