He tossed a beer Sam's way and opened his, idly wondering how anyone kept the foam from getting everywhere, but being alive meant having foam to clean up. Which...admittedly, that was a crazy and slightly furtive though. Nervously, he checked the corner where the television used to be in order to make sure it was still exiled to the hallway and breathed yet another sigh of relief.
"With my luck, it's entirely possible," he pointed out. "And it's a long story, but basically, the presence gained power because it forced me to write about it. That was the thing about the lake in Bright Falls, it didn't just feed off creativity, it made whatever you came up with powerful. Painters didn't run out of subject matter, no matter how gruesome the art turned out to be. Musicians went crazy because their lyrics got too intense. Writers...ended up being able to write the future. There was a guy before me - a poet. I can't be too sure, but a part of him was still trapped there. He helped me write a loophole."
Even talking about it required more alcohol, if only to take the edge off. Alan wasn't entirely sure he wasn't going to be falling backwards into the microwave because it decided to manifest as Barbara Jagger yet again. "I had this fear of the dark when I was a kid, so my mom gave me an old light switch. I had it in my hand because Zane wrote it...so I shoved it into the guise the darkness was wearing at the time and it filled her up with light. I dunno if she was a ghost or what, but it weakened it somehow."
It had to have. If it hadn't, the two of them wouldn't have been standing there at the moment. None of the people in the city would have been after long. When the microwave chimed, he opened it and had to fan away some of the steam - it smelled horrible, but it was definitely going to do the job. He poked at it, feeling his finger sink in. "Oh yeah. Chicken's done."