[Page 1: The Sudden Stop 1]
It's true what they say about the fall and the sudden stop at the end.
I'd lain here in the snow while the lurid chain of scenes that had led me here kept playing in my head, a rerun of my own private snuff movie, a memory of my corpse. Alone at my own wake. Thinking in metaphors again.
The femme fatale was gone. Only a sour taste remained of the kiss that k**ed me.
[Page 2: The Sudden Stop 2]
This was a late goodbye. Thirteen years after I'd gotten my revenge, it had finally caught up with me. It'd been a long time to bear the pain.
My blood painted the snow red -- a gruesome slushie -- dissolved all the scattered paink**ers, and leisurely dripped down to the sewer, mingling with the bile of the city, becoming one with it.
I can see them now, my wife and my baby. Honey, I'm home.
[Page 3: The Dark Presence in the Diner]
In spite of its human mask, to describe the Dark Presence as intelligent would have implied human qualities on something decidedly inhuman.
Nonetheless, it found the one spot in the diner that was dark enough. Some light spilled into the corridor, ravaging it, but it took the pain, horrible as it was. The writer would soon fix that. He would be coming to the one place where it still had power.
[Page 4: Wake at Lovers' Peak]
The kidnapper fired his gun one last time, and the shadow vanished into the darkness it had come from.
"See, nothing to it, Wake."
The thought of Alice in his hands was revolting. We stood on the wooden platform of Lovers' Peak, the waterfall and the mountain behind us, the lights of the radio-mast blinking red in the heights above. I fought with the urge to take a swing, forced myself to speak.
"Let's cut the act now. Where's my wife?"
[Page 5: Alice Sees a Shadow]
Alice looked through the viewfinder, lining up the shot. Cauldron Lake was breathtaking. Something caught her eye: a figure standing in the shadows behind the cabin, like a thin woman in a black dress.
She lowered the camera and looked again -- no one there, just a collection of bushes that looked vaguely human-shaped. She shook her head and laughed.
[Page 6: Barry Doubts Wake's Sanity]
Barry had never gotten along with Alice, but he knew Alan loved her with an almost frightening intensity. And now something had happened to Alice -- and here was Al, armed with a gun and saying things people got put in padded cells for. It was as if his friend had experienced a ma**ive psychotic episode and was now totally disconnected from reality.
It scared the sh** out of Barry.
[Page 7: Rusty Dying]
The air in the visitor center was heavy with an awful smell, as if some rotten drowned thing had crawled up from its grave.
Rusty kept coughing blood. My eyes were drawn to the twisted shape of his broken leg. The attack had been vicious. Max whined in his cage. Rusty's eyes were wild with fear and terror.
He gasped: "Mr. Wake, it happened just the way it was on that page."
[Page 8: Rusty Attacked by the Dark Presence]
The Visitor Center was sturdy, but the impact turned the front of the building into splinters. Rusty was thrown across the lobby like a rag doll and hit the far wall hard.
It didn't hurt until he tried to move and saw his leg bend the wrong way, felt the broken rib stabbing him on the inside. Rusty howled in pain and fear, suddenly afraid to die alone.
[Page 9: Wake Reaches a Safe Haven of Light]
At the last instant, I changed direction and threw myself down; the axe splintered the trunk of a tree.
I stumbled into the pool of bright light. My lungs burned; I was too exhausted to move. I tensed as I waited for the k**ing blow, but it never came. I raised my head. Nothing moved in the darkness beyond.
For the moment, bathed in the cold light, I was safe.
[Page 10: Rusty's Final Thoughts]
In that last instant of consciousness, Rusty thought about Rose. He was older than she was; Rose was barely out of her teens. But she made him feel young and forget what a train wreck his long dead marriage had been.
He still wore the ring. He'd been waiting for her to tell him to take it off.
Now she never would.
[Page 11: Wake Sees the Torch Symbol]
I turned the corner, afraid of what the flashlight's beam might reveal. Suddenly, a roughly painted symbol of a torch glowed in the light. Behind it, hidden by a rock, sat a battered metal trunk.
It was here for a reason, packed with supplies: batteries, flares, ammo. Things you need to make it through the darkness of the night. Something left behind by someone who knew what I knew, and more.
[Page 12: Nightingale's Arrival]
Agent Nightingale didn't want to be in Bright Falls. These little communities revolted him. And he didn't like the trees or the coffee. He now knew that impossible horrors lurked behind the storefronts and smiles.
He desperately wanted to turn the car around and just drive until he pa**ed out or ran out of the road and booze. But he had a job to do. He had a writer to catch.... at any cost.
[Page 13: Alice's Fear of the Dark]
On more than one occasion, Alice tried to explain to me how it felt to be afraid of the dark. To her, darkness wasn't simply the absence of light, but something more tangible than that. It was something you could touch and feel.
Worse than that, it was something with a mind of its own, something malicious and malign. For her, things changed when they were wrapped in the darkness, they turned into something else, something foreign, and nothing was safe or innocent anymore.
I'd never really understood what she meant, until now.
[Page 14: Wake Hears a Chainsaw]
The night had been one desperate situation after another. I was exhausted and my body felt as though it had been chewed up and spat out.
The flashlight was heavy in my hand, and each pull of the trigger sent a painful shock up my arm. But I was finally out of the woods and things were looking up.
That's when I heard the chainsaw.
[Page 15: Barry in Elderwood]
When Barry saw the darkness attack the Visitor Center, it made him a believer. The men Al said he'd shot -- they hadn't been just locals on crank.
Somehow, the world had changed. Like the channel had been switched without a warning. You think you're watching a sitcom and you're really watching a horror show.
When the birds started attacking the cabin, Barry wasn't surprised, just terrified.
[Page 16: Nightingale Fires at Wake]
The FBI agent's command froze me in place. I considered surrender. It was all falling apart anyway; I could give in, let someone else deal with it.
But it felt all wrong. Call it instinct; his posture, the way he held the gun. He was no friend.
Shots ringing in my ears, I leaped for the hole in the fence and stumbled into the darkness beyond.
[Page 17: Wake at the Dark Presence's Mercy]
The Dark Presence had touched the girl to lure the writer into a trap. now it was night and he lay helpless, drugged, lit only by the flickering of the TV
screen filled with static.
Shadows coalesced in the room as the Dark Presence leaned close to the writer, ready to touch him again: "Back to work, boy."
[Page 18: Rose and Rusty]
Rose knew that Rusty was in love with her, and she liked him, too. She liked him a lot. He'd taught her to dance, and life had certainly taught her the value of a man who was gentle. He treated her well, made her smile, made her feel good.
But Rusty wasn't the prince of her dreams, and that tended to underline the unbearable truth: she was no closer to that Hollywood magic than he was.
[Page 19: Barry Meets Rose]
Nobody in Bright Falls seemed to know where Al was, but Rose, the waitress at the diner, had seen him. From what Barry could tell, Al pretty much fell off the face of the Earth when he left the diner.
Rose was just the kind of fan that Al hated, but she really tried to help. She was smart too, knew a lot of what was going on in the town, knew a lot about Al, even knew who Barry was.
Barry liked her. That was no big surprise. When it came to women, Barry and Al rarely saw eye to eye.
[Page 20: Sarah Thinks About Wake]
Sarah didn't care about the legal threats Wake's agent had made. She let Wake go without argument because there was something about him she couldn't quite put her finger on, something that reminded her of her father.
She didn't think Wake would hurt his wife. Then she thought about the way he waded into Hartman, that hair-trigger rage flaring up without warning.
[Page 21: Deputies at the Logging Site]
The logging site was a mess. The modular office had been pushed out of the cliff.
Deputy Thornton climbed up from the wreckage, excited, breathing hard from the exertion. "Nobody there. It's weird. Don't you think that's weird?"
Bored, Mulligan let out a mighty snort, "Hell, it's always weird, Thornton. Just a question of sorting out what kinda weird it is this time around."
[Page 22: Wake Feels the Dark Presence]
Shadows stirred and the wind picked up as I ran through the forest. I felt the Dark Presence turning its gaze toward me.
Then the moonlight was blotted by dark shadows that raced violently across the ground, moving too swiftly to be natural. Darkness gathered between the trees, and melted again to reveal the Taken. No natural path had brought them here.
[Page 23: Wake's Despair]
There was no misunderstanding, Cauldron Lake was where Alice and I had stayed, but there was no cabin and no island. I was missing a week. What had happened to me? What had happened to Alice?
I had to get her back. I couldn't face life without her.