Return: Observatory

[Page 1: Success]
As a storyteller, my first real love was crime, and it was in that genre that I finished my first novel, starring the perpetually miserable Alex Casey, whose entire life was a wound that never healed.

The books sold as fast as they hit the shelves. I wrote five more Alex Casey books, and they all were bestsellers. I became rich. I became famous. Success brought pressure, and I didn't handle it very well.

[Page 2: Pressure]
The pressure of the success got to me. My wife, Alice, was the sole thing in my life that anchored me. Suddenly, it wasn't enough. I couldn't write anymore.

I distracted myself with wild parties and whatever trouble I could scare up. I wallowed in the drama of my life, sure that Alice would stick with me, even though she didn't sign up to be the lifeline of a tortured artist. It was dumb luck she's not the type to give up.

[Page 3: The Genesis of Mr. Scratch]
I've seen the enemy, and it's me. I've faced dark horrors before, things that live in the unimaginable pressures of the world beyond our own. Sometimes they masquerade as humans

That's what ultimately lurks inside Mr. Scratch. He's every mean-spirited tabloid story about me, an evil caricature, a creature formed in that vague territory of misconceptions, half-truths and the dark imagination of people who "heard a story about me". An urban legend made flesh. A serial killer.

My dark half, brought to life by the power of Cauldron Lake.

[Page 4: Fighting the Taken]
I've carried a flashlight and gun for so long that I feel naked without either. It's all too often that I need them.

The darkness protects the Taken. Shadows crawl over their forms like living things, protecting them from harm. Blows that would injure or kill an human outright mean nothing to them as long as the darkness persists. But light makes them vulnerable. Light burns the shadows away. The darkness that drives them is still in them, but now there vulnerable.

Flashlight and gun. Sometimes, it feels they're all I have left.

[Page 5: The Spiders]
The spiders aren't really the work of the enemy. They're a side effect, a part of the Dark Place's less significant fauna that has managed to slip through the opening I made when I arrived; less an animal than an idea that has assumed the form of an animal.

It makes them no less dangerous, but at least there a little easier to deal with: the darkness doesn't protect them like the Taken, and thus they can be destroyed by either light or bullets right away.

[Page 6: New Reality: Fragment 1]
The atmosphere in the projection booth at the drive-in was charged, almost unreal. Despite that, the air felt cool and refreshing this late at night. It had been a hot day. The summer was nearing its end, but it wasn't over yet.

[Page 7: The Darkness]
The darkness rose from the depths of Cauldron Lake and took Alice. It needed words. It needed me to write its way into our world. She was leverage, a hostage.

I complied, but with a twist -- I put in a loophole that gave me a chance to fight back. I was hunted by shadowy enemies, but I faced the darkness. I fought it with light. I drove it back. I saved Alice. But it came with a cost: I was trapped in the Dark Place below Cauldron Lake.

[Page 8: Lost in the Dark Place]
After my disappearance, they thought I was dead. I might as well have been. I know it's been two years; I know Alice has moved on. I have tried to find a way back to her, back to my life, but escaping the Dark Place is almost impossible.

Time does strange things here. But dreams and radio signals can pierce the veil between the worlds.

I catch glimpses and echoes of the world. Sometimes I send messages out. I can only pray that they hear them.

[Page 9: The Nature of Stories]
Stories come naturally to us. We can't help it. There are many different worlds, many competing realities within our heads, fueled by books, television, even barely remembered childhood tales. There's an endless supply of fictional concepts more familiar to us than anything or anyone real. We have a far greater connection to the fictional characters we know and love than the random people we pass on the street. Our destinies and inspirations are shaped by lies, myths and fables.

[Page 10: Cosmological Truths]
There are places where our world is worn thin and another reality brushes against ours. One such site is Cauldron Lake near Bright Falls, Washington, but there are others.

That other reality is dark, vast and malleable, always in flux. In its depths dwell vast forces and alien energies. They are dangerous, but in one of these places, if you know how, you can channel the power of that place and use it to shape reality. Location: On top of the crates to the right of the Deliveries building in the Observatory area, second time through.

[Page 11: The Taken]
The Taken may well be the tool the darkness favors over any other. At some point, they used to be human, but whatever humanity they once had is long gone. Now they're just shells covered and filled by darkness.

The Taken Mr. Scratch throws at me are more grotesque and varied than the ones I first encountered in Bright Falls, but I know how to deal with them. I'd be lying if I said they don't frighten me, but I have survived worse. I can't let them stop me.

[Page 12: Dr. Meadows]
When Dr. Rachel Meadows got the call from Michael telling her to hurry to the observatory, she didn't waste any time. It had been a nice party, and she'd had a good time, but her social life would always play second fiddle to the mysteries of space.

Michael never showed up, of course; he'd pulled over at the wrong rest stop. She never even thought about him at the time; the phenomenon in the sky above her was too fascinating.

[Page 13: New Reality: Fragment 2]
The film noir poster reminded me of Alex Casey, the detective's cool exterior never cracking even with the gun pointed in his face. In the back room, all of the lights had been turned off, except for the lone spotlight, which illuminated the bright red fire extinguisher on the wall.

[Page 14: Everything Is as Real as Everything Else]
This act of creation is exhilarating and frightening. Subtext and symbols loom, eager to take effect. Causality and consequence become domino chains that stretch into infinity. The more fundamental the change, the more unpredictable the variables become; reality is too complex to control completely. Ordinary questions become meaningless.

"Who created who?"

"What is really real?"

Everything is as real as everything else. You learn to let go of the things you can't control and go with the flow, or go insane.

[Page 15: Dr. Meadows and Mr. Scratch]
The man before Dr. Meadows was handsome and slick. He moved with lazy confidence and didn't bother to pretend that he wasn't staring at her. She didn't mind, at first.

Then the man flicked open the knife and shoved here out of the control room so she wouldn't hear the signal -- whatever it was. Outside, she pulled here lab coat closed and thought about running. She didn't. She didn't think she'd get very far, not from him.

She never was entirely sure why he spared her.

[Page 16: New Reality: Fragment 3]
I'd found her film from the pile of containers is the back. I'd threaded it into the projector. I swallowed hard, staring at the screen hearing her voice, the sunrise I remembered so well only moments away.

And then Mr. Scratch was there, nailed by the projector's beam, caught in his own trap. He shouted at me, first in confusion, then rage. And then the sun came up, and things started to burn.