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Throughout the entirety of his journey through Bright Falls, Alan Wake is looking for pages to a manuscript.  It’s clear that what’s written on the pages is unfolding right before his eyes.  These pages are important, but what are they to?  Who wrote them?  And furthermore, who scattered them throughout Bright Falls for Alan to find them?

The manuscript pages are an integral part of the storyline.  They reveal important plot points about characters and certain events that take place in the story.  More importantly, Alan needs these pages.  The pages will lead him to Alice, he’s certain of it.

If you’re not interested in finding the pages, but just looking to see what they actually say, you’ve found the right place.  If you choose to find the pages on your own, turn back now because there are some heavy spoilers ahead.  Here you’ll find the detailed manuscript pages of the first two episodes of Alan Wake.

Episode One: Nightmare

Title Page

Departure
By Alan Wake

Wake Attacked by a Shadowy Murderer

The man turned to face me.  His face was covered in shadows.  It was hard to make him out in the darkness of the forest that surrounded us.  But the axe he lifted was plain to see.  It glistened with the blood of his victim.

He grinned madly.  The shadows were alive, distorting his features.

It was a scene from a nightmare, but I was wide awake.

Wake Fights a Taken with Light

The Taken stood before me.  It was impossible to focus on it, as if it stood in a blind spot caused by a brain tumour or an eye disease.  It was bleeding shadows like ink underwater, like a cloud of blood from a shark bite.

I was terrified.  I squeezed the flashlight like my life depended on it, willing it to stop coming any closer.  Suddenly, something gave, and the light seemed to shine brighter.

The Dark Presence Wakes Up

For a long time, the Dark Presence had been weak, sleeping, nothing but a half-forgotten nightmare or a shadowy flicker in the corner of an eye in the forest at night: not real enough to properly exist, but too evocative to fade away completely.

Now it was waking up, the writer like a fly caught in a spider’s web, each jerk and kick vibrating the strands that led deep into its lair.  It was aware of him now, and it could use him.

All he’d need was a little motivation.

Wake Attacked by Birds

I heard them before I saw them, swooping down from the sky and screeching as they came.

I spun around just as the cloud was upon me.  For an instant, I stared into a hundred dead eyes, black pearls glittering in the darkness.

I raised the flashlight and the swarm exploded like fireworks.  Feathers burned, turned into ash.  I couldn’t hear my scream above theirs.

Wake Finds Pages

At first I kept finding the pages as if by accident.  The book I couldn’t remember was either a terrible and true prophecy, or an act of creation that had re-written the world.  I began to hunt the pages feverishly, for they held the answer to the mystery.

With it I could save myself.

With it I could save Alice.

TV in the Gas Station

I stepped into the gas station’s garage.  It was dark and quiet.

The place was a mess, like someone trashed the place, or that there’d been some kind of fight.  Light spilled into the room through an open window at the back, and I made my way toward it.

Without any warning, I was blinded by a bright light.  An old portable TV on the shelf had come alive by itself.  Impossibly, I could see myself on the screen, talking like a madman.

Wake Lies to the Sheriff

“The cabin on Cauldron Lake?” she asked.

The sheriff looked at me suspiciously.  The early morning light flooded through the office windows.  I would probably never have gotten out of the woods alive without her help, but I couldn’t tell her the truth of what I’d faced the previous night.  She’d think I was lying, or crazy.  She’d lock me up.

And she wouldn’t help me find Alice.

Stucky Taken

Stucky spat on the garage floor and tried to shake the cobwebs from his head.  Ever since the couple never showed to pick up the keys, things had been fuzzy.  Something—a feeling—caught his attention.  Stucky looked up and stared as his brain tried in vain to process the horror before him.  He stumbled back, knocking over a can of oil: a black pool spread across the floor while he struggled for a brief moment, then let go as the unrelenting darkness engulfed him.

Rose Daydreams About Wake

Rose knew she’d been gushing, but right now she didn’t care.  As far as she was concerned, her brief meeting with Alan Wake was literally the high point of her life.

She watched as he got in the car with his wife.  She was pretty, and confident. At ease with Wake, not like Rose.  They were perfect for each other.

She’d have given anything to be called their friend.

Barry’s Arrival

Barry Wheeler was bouncing off the walls.  He’d jumped on a plane after his calls were ignored by both Alan and Alice for several days.  It could mean that they were both on another honeymoon, but Barry didn’t buy it.  Al had been way too unstable for that—not sleeping, messed up.

Barry had years of experience dealing with Alan Wake, and he couldn’t ignore it: something was wrong.

Toby the Dog

Toby knew the smell: it was the man, the nice man who always gave him treats and never got tired of playing with him.  Toby wagged his tail in excited anticipation and gave a joyous bark.

Then there was another smell—a wrong smell—and it was alien enough to stop Toby in his tracks.  Confused, he growled deep in his throat.  The wrong smell was coming from the nice man.

Blind animal terror pierced the dog’s brain an instant before the axe followed suit.

Rose is a Fan

Barry took another sip of the heavenly coffee.  He grinned at Rose.  Surely, this was love.  Rose gushed on, breathlessly: “The new one will be a masterpiece, I know it!  You must tell him not to listen to the trolls in the forums saying Departure will never get finished.  He should take his time and make it perfect, I can wait.”

Episode Two: Taken

The Sudden Stop 1

It’s true what they say about the fall and the sudden stop at the end.  I’d lain there in the snow while the lucrid 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 killed me.

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 had been a long time to bear the pain.  My blood painted the snow red—a gruesome slushie—disolved all the painkillers 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, my baby.  Honey, I’m home.

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.

Wake at Lover’s 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 Lover’s 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?”

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.

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 mass psychotic episode and was totally disconnected from reality.  It scared the shit out of Barry.

Rusty Dying

The air in the Visitor’s Centre 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 fever and terror.

He gasped: “Mr. Wake!  It happened just the way it was on that page!”

Rusty Attacked by the Dark Presence

The Visitor’s Centre was sturdy, but the impact turned the front of the building into splinters.  Rusty was thrown across the lobby like a ragdoll, 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.

Wake Reaches a Safe Haven of Light

At the last instant, I changed direction and threw myself down; the axe splintered the trunk of the 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 killing 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.

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 had been waiting for her to tell him to take it off.  Now she never would.

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.

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 passed out or ran out of road and booze.  But he had a job to do.  He had a writer to catch-at any cost.

Alice’s Fear of the Dark

On more than one occasion, Alice had tried t oexplain to me how it felt to be afraid of the dark.  To her, darkness wasn’t simply an 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 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.

Wake Hears a Chainsaw

The night had been one desperate situation after another.  I was exhausted, and by body felt as if 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.

Barry in Elderwood

When Barry saw the darkness attack the Visitor’s Centre, it made him a believer.  The man Al said he’d shot—they hadn’t just been locals on crank.  Somehow the world had changed.  Like the channel had been switched without 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.

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 all felt 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.

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.”

Rose and Rusty

Rose knew that Rusty was in love with her, and she liked him too.  She liked him a lot.  He taught her how 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.

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 but Al hated, but she really tried to help.  She was smart, too—knew a lot about 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.

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 Hartmann, that hair-trigger rage flaring up without warning.

Deputies at the Logging Site

The logging site was a mess.  The modular office had been pushed off 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 kind of weird it is this time around.”

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 towards me.  Then the moonlight was blotted out buy the 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 there.

Wake’s Despair

There was no misunderstanding.  Cauldron Lake was where Alice and I had stayed, but there was no cabin, and there was 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

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