Work Text:
For someone so young, Dale Cooper talks a lot about settling down. He likes to talk, and Harry likes to listen to his boyish enthusiasm and big plans. It must be part of having a great capacity for love; Cooper falls in love quickly and wholeheartedly with places and people alike. He loves life itself too much not to derive great joy from it all.
To be entirely honest, Harry is a little too used to Twin Peaks. He’s a local, born and raised, and to him the place has mostly lost its mystery, but to hear Coop talk, the little town is the best place on earth.
Before the pageant, before Windom’s final gambit, before disappearing into the red room, before everything, the sheriff comes in to the station one day to find recently-suspended Agent Cooper looking at real estate listings in the conference room as if there’s not a thing wrong in the world. He’s wearing flannel, and Harry can’t deny it’s a good fit.
“So you’re really thinking of settling here,” Harry says approvingly.
Cooper glances up from his papers, a smile already dawning. “Harry, in my experience, places of this caliber are few. I would consider myself fortunate to become a permanent part of this community.”
“Well, we’d be lucky to have you,” Harry says in his easy, good-natured way, leaning against the table. “We don’t get many newcomers here, but you wouldn’t get any trouble. Not from the law, or anybody else. We have our fair share of funny people, and nobody ever troubles ‘em.”
Cooper looks at him keenly, and Harry gets the feeling that he’s noticing far more than Harry meant to show. It’s difficult — Dale is always more perceptive than he expects. “Glad to hear it. A low level of social unrest is a highly desirable trait for any future community of mine, and as you know, I am a bit peculiar myself.”
“Nothing wrong with being peculiar,” Harry says firmly, and he cannot help but worry about seeming too invested, worry that maybe he gave himself away, because Dale gives him a curiously knowing smile and a firm nod.
“Harry, it would be my pleasure to be your neighbor,” Cooper says with such genuine warmth that it does ease his worries. He claps Harry on the arm, smiling warmly. “I would greatly appreciate it if I could continue in my capacities as deputy sheriff and as a Bookhouse Boy.”
“Sure, Coop. The job’s yours to keep,” Harry says, and Cooper positively beams.
Dale Cooper follows Windom Earle and Annie Blackburn into the Black Lodge.
After thirty hours, Dale and Annie emerge. There is no sign of Windom; killed by his own would-be ally, Cooper later explains.
Evil defeats itself. Good wins.
Harry is getting real sick of life not being that easy.
The Black Lodge changes things.
Cooper arrives at the sheriff’s office out of the blue, only two days after his narrow escape from the Black Lodge. His initial dizzy spells seem to have faded; he looks more comfortable in his skin already.
“Hey, Coop. I didn't think you were coming in today. How’s your head feeling?” Harry asks, voice gentle.
“Sheriff,” Cooper acknowledges as greeting. “I want to pick up the gun I relinquished when I was suspended.” His gaze drifts over to the window, fixing on the woods beyond. His lips twitch, but he doesn’t smile.
“Sure thing.” Harry goes to the gun safe, and he’s halfway through unlocking it when a thought strikes him. “I thought you told me Gordon gave you a better gun when you were reinstated.”
“He did,” Cooper says easily. “However, seeing as it would be irresponsible to abandon firearms whenever a better option becomes available, Bureau regulations require us to return old weapons.”
“The Bureau is on your case already about that? They could at least give you a day off.”
Cooper takes the gun from Harry with a certain relish. “I like the work.”
“By the way, Coop,” Harry leans forward. “What’s this I hear about you leaving?”
Cooper stills, his focus sliding back over. “Who says that?”
“Lucy,” Harry says, more amused than exasperated.
“Did she?” When he looks up to meet Harry’s eyes, his gaze is oddly flat. “Lucy likes to talk. Doesn’t she?”
Harry shakes his head, more to himself than as a response. “So you have been recalled. They shouldn’t be calling you back so soon, not after all you went through. No damn sympathy.”
Cooper puts up a hand to stop him. “No need to get fired up for my sake, Harry; the decision to return to the line of duty was mine alone. Work, I think, is exactly what I want right now.” He tilts his head, considering the sheriff. “Twin Peaks is a fine town — a damn fine town, if you don’t mind my saying. However, after recent events, I don’t think I could stay,” Cooper says, straightforward and apologetic without a trace of regret, as if their relationship really had been just business and nothing more.
“Do you think you’ll ever come back?”
“Hard to say. This town has a lot more of a criminal element than I first thought, and with Annie in a coma...” he eyes Harry, considering. His tone is matter-of-fact, but the words sting terribly all the same. “I would have no reason to return.”
“Well, if you do decide to visit, you’ll be welcome,” Harry says. Even though he can’t put his finger on exactly what’s changed, it’s harder to talk like they used to; Cooper has been so distant since returning. Almost a stranger. “I could show you around. You should see the town in the fall. Great fishing.”
Cooper looks doubtful, and Harry adds, with a meaningful edge in his voice, “I’m sure everyone would be glad to have you come back, Coop.” He goes to clap his friend on the shoulder. Cooper deliberately doesn’t flinch away, but there’s something long-suffering about how still and tense he is under Harry’s friendliness. He can barely tolerate the friendly touch. There it is again, that little flash of distance, that clear wall between them. It’s as if he’s seeing Dale through a distorted lens.
Suddenly, Cooper blinks and brightens, surprised realization breaking through the show of apathy. He watches Harry with new interest, eyes bright and head slightly tilted, as if he has just detected some delicate, marvelous song.
“I see,” Cooper says to himself, watching Harry with that bright, keen stare. “That’s how it is. I see.”
“What is it, Coop?”
Cooper smiles slowly. “I believe I’ll stay the night. I can leave in the morning.” He leans forward in a conspiratorial, friendly way. His smile is earnest, boyish and sweet. “You’re a valuable friend to me, Harry. Let’s spend time together after work. We can drink and talk. Just us two.”
There’s something very wrong here, Harry’s policeman’s instincts blare, fine-tuned by years of experience. There’s something you’re not seeing.
The smile doesn’t touch Cooper’s eyes quite right. It’s only a degree from normal, but the degree is there nonetheless. He’s never known Cooper to be anything other than genuine before.
“I’m sorry,” he lies. “Hawk’s got the night off, and after all that trouble with Windom and Leo, we’re still on alert. We’ve got to have an officer available at all hours. ‘Fraid I can’t do tonight. Or tomorrow. I could come visit you once you’re back home and settled, though.”
“Can’t do tonight,” Cooper echoes, more blank than disappointed. His glance flicks to the open door, and in the quiet they can hear Lucy loudly talking to Andy just outside in the hall. For a moment, Harry would almost swear he looks calculating.
Counting bullets.
The thought crosses his mind unbidden, and suddenly being there in the room, even with witnesses just outside of easy range, feels beyond unwise. There’s a coldness to Cooper’s eyes that makes Harry very, very aware of the fact that they are alone together.
Cooper looks at him in that all-knowing way of his. “There might be trouble tonight. Maybe being vigilant isn’t a bad idea. You might be on to something, Harry.”
“At least until we’ve got a fix on Leo Johnson,” Harry agrees.
“We can find him,” Cooper says, showing his teeth in a smile that doesn’t touch his eyes.
“Are you sure about leaving in the morning? I think the Bureau would give you time to recover, at least. After what you’ve been through, I’m sure they would give you time off so you could be there for Annie.”
“Annie?” Cooper repeats blankly, face unreadable, as if he cannot quite remember how she matters. Harry has seen firsthand how, since returning, Cooper swings from almost normal to emotionally distant, like his old lightheartedness is just too much to maintain, but to be apathetic about Annie? Selfless Coop, indifferent about the woman he faced the Black Lodge for?
“Annie Blackburn,” Harry prompts warily. “Norma’s sister.”
Cooper’s lack of expression doesn’t falter, and a returning surge of wrongness squeezes the sheriff’s throat. Harry doesn’t need his policeman’s instinct to know there’s something off. Stress-related shock and trauma are a hell of a thing, but he’s no psychologist. All he can do is be patient and supportive. Even so, his mind can’t rest. What the hell did Cooper go through to end up this withdrawn? What sort of hell could create this sort of emotional distance? Could entering an evil place have left Dale’s mind so badly damaged?
“Annie,” Cooper muses, slowly meeting Harry’s eyes. “You know, Harry, it’s the strangest thing. I don’t believe we have anything to worry about with Annie. I can’t shake the feeling she’s going to be just fine.” He leans closer, staring intently at Harry. “It’s the strangest thing. Do you hear me? We don’t need to worry about Annie.”
Harry nods, watching Cooper carefully. “Dr. Hayward says Annie’s responding to treatment. He’s doing everything he can.”
“No need to worry,” Cooper repeats absently, expression fixed on the middle distance. Blinking, he seems to snap out of it, shrugging on his old sense of self like a coat.
“When Annie wakes up, contact me at the Bureau. I’ll return immediately,” Cooper says, perfectly normal and reasonable. Everything about him looks so neat and rational, but Harry has never heard a when that sounds so much like an if. He doesn’t need to ask to know that Cooper doesn’t think Annie’s coming back.
Harry is sorry to see Cooper go, but he doesn’t regret deliberately avoiding a final goodbye.
Maybe it’s for the best that he doesn’t see Cooper alone.
Cooper’s decision to abruptly depart after weeks of pleasant collaboration came as a shock to Harry and Harry only. Obviously a man could not be up front about his interests, but after how Coop had comforted him when Josie died, how he had taken interest in Annie but had looked at him the exact same way, Harry had thought…
He had thought…
Apparently he’d been reading into something that wasn’t there. It certainly isn’t there now.
Not that it had never been there. The mysterious Black Lodge that Cooper had vanished into had altered him, subtly but distinctly. He’d come out mentally thinned, less complex, as if the other plane had taken a toll on his depth and natural warmth. Apparently, any... curious leanings didn’t make the cut. Most of Cooper’s harmless eccentricities didn’t, actually, and Harry doesn’t know what’s going on but it seems less and less like shell-shock.
By the time Albert calls up a week later, fuming with worry over Cooper’s sudden resignation and subsequent disappearance, loud and accusatory and looking for answers, Harry has ceased to be surprised.
There’s something distinctly rotten about the whole situation. Some unknown factor is subtly but definitely throwing everything out of balance.
Covertly taking case files from the sheriff’s office hardly counts as theft when they’re closed cases and the person doing the borrowing is the sheriff.
The thing is, Harry doesn’t drink at work. The thought of impairing his coordination and judgement when he might have to handle a gun just doesn’t sit right with him. It’s unprofessional behaviour unbefitting of an officer. Besides, Andy gets upset when he sees his friends in distress, and Harry would rather not ruin a night of drinking over bittersweet memories with guilt.
So, he takes Cooper’s old case files home with him.
Later on, when searching for a logical explanation, he would think that drinking heavily over old case files might have done it. Getting blackout drunk while miserably fumbling through the file on the brutal murders of Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson, drowning himself in memories and memos alike, might not have actually been a good idea. But it’s all he has to remember his friend by, and Cooper is worth remembering.
Taking a deep breath, Harry half imagines he can still smell Cooper’s aftershave. The sudden wish to feel his presence is overwhelming, and Harry regrets not seeing him on that final night. He should’ve at least tried to get Cooper’s address. His telephone number, maybe.
Blearily, Harry thumbs his way through old notes, trying to pick out which ones Cooper had written, as if handwriting could link him to the man Cooper had been.
He wonders idly if Cooper’s handwriting is even the same, and instantly regrets the thought. He’s almost grateful that there’s no way to check. Different handwriting would make it all seem far too permanent. Cooper will get better.
A glimpsed drawing gives him pause: three diamonds in a row with mountains branching to the sides. Cooper’s accidental sketch of the Owl Cave glyph. Harry sets it aside with precise care, movements exaggerated by alcohol. Sentimental value, here, far outweighs the doodle’s objective worth to the completed case. Nobody will care if he keeps it.
Out of some halfhearted desire not to pass out on his irreplaceable papers and possibly damage them, he does stumble to bed soon after.
It’s not the first time he has gone and drunk himself unconscious over someone he’d cared too much about, and it won’t be the last.
Harry comes to walled in by familiar red curtains, more tangible than the ghostly ones Cooper disappeared into but otherwise identical. The thick red curtains absolutely muffle everything. The air has the stifling weight of a perfectly sealed room, too still, too dead.
Briefly, he’s relieved to realize that he’s wearing his sheriff’s uniform, cowboy hat and all. Grasping at his holster, his relief vanishes as he realizes it’s empty.
Standing in front of him is a small man in a red suit. The man shifts slowly, carefully, from foot to foot. Despite his measured motions, there’s something not right about the way he moves, fast and slow at the wrong times, jumpy like a scratched recording. When the little man speaks, making some serious observation if expression and tone are anything to judge by, it’s so garbled and twisted that Harry cannot understand the words at all. It takes a second for comprehension to slide into place, as if his mental translator is on a delay.
“He is not what he seems,” the man in red says, choking out the words.
“Where am I?” There’s something wrong with Harry’s voice. It’s not warped and distorted yet, not fully, but there’s a definite edge of strangeness to it. His words twist wrongly, hurting his throat.
The man looks up at Harry with large, solemn eyes. Evidently he sees what he’s looking for, because he grins, rubbing his hands together in amusement. “BOB is out. Everybody run.”
Harry steps closer, attention piqued by the name. “BOB isn’t here?” he asks cautiously. “Do you know where he is?”
The man wrenches his head jerkily, his explosive laugh making Harry jump. It sounds almost painfully wrenched out.
“He wears a new suit,” the little man says, words coming out in irregular, discordant surges. Jerkily, as if poorly puppeteered into the motion, he claps twice, a soft impact followed by violent withdrawal. The man runs his hands together in a dry raspy wash, considering them. “Wow, BOB, wow,” he croons.
“How can I find BOB?” Harry asks insistently, and the man in red shoots him a wry look.
The little man clicks his tongue, eyes sparkling mischievously. He raises a hand held flat, a silent command to halt, and then he snaps his fingers. Just like that, the man is gone without a trace.
Harry starts. The room is definitely empty. However the hell that was possible, Harry is alone.
The solid, unbroken curtain parts seamlessly at his touch, and Harry pushes through. The cloth is thickly soft and warm, not with the wholesome living warmth of something alive but the echoed heat of metal in sun. It shifts in his hand, the dark red velvet bristling. When he steps through, it seals up silently behind him.
Although the black and white floor has the appearance of linoleum, it gives way under his feet like pine needles, soft and silent and slightly yielding. His footsteps don’t click the way they should.
The next room is identical to the first, furniture laid out so exactly that Harry half thinks to turn back and double check the first room.
This one, at least, is absolutely empty. At least, so Harry believes, until he notices half a bloody handprint painted neatly by an armchair and the skewed tilt to the tall lamp nearby.
Four erratic red lines are clawed bloodily on the chevron floor, disappearing under a chair. The chair is haphazardly placed, jarring against the rhythm of the room, as if someone had tried to cover up obvious signs of a struggle. The entire familiar scene reeks of a panicked attempt to cover up a crime.
The smell of blood and bleach suddenly increase dizzyingly, as if freshly spilled. With a start, Harry remembers the first murder he ever investigated. It had been manslaughter, domestic abuse that had taken a turn for the worse, and the haphazardly cleaned up scene of the crime had stayed with him for months. It had been his first time seeing a fresh corpse. He’d been twenty three.
If Harry could examine the scene before him now, he knows he’d find more old clues plucked from his memories, a mockery of that first case. The room is responding to his thoughts.
The dark armchair is too low to the ground for anything of notable size to fit beneath it, and yet as Harry watches, he catches a sluggish motion of something dark seeping from beneath. A slowly growing pool of blood gradually obscures the four distinct clawed marks, growing and growing until the small chair is entirely encircled by a lake of blood.
Where the hell is all the blood coming from?
Harry hunkers down to look underneath, but beneath the chair is only blackness. Looking around again, he sees something that hadn't been there a moment before — sticking out from behind the chair, a faintly grey hand mired stickily in the bloody pool, deathly grey fingers...
Fingers which move.
Harry stops. His hand twitches toward his empty holster on instinct alone.
Nothing could lose that much blood and live, he rationalizes. But still, he has to see.
Harry steps toward the crime scene.
Somewhere, distantly, he can hear moaning, an odd low cry like an animal in pain. Harry jolts and straightens up, looks around, hand at his holster.
Before him, standing eerily still in the middle of the room with his wide staring eyes fixed directly at Harry, stands Leland Palmer. Leland, who just last month smashed his skull open on the interrogation room door.
In his shock, for a brief moment Harry half believes someone dug up the dead man and propped him up.
Leland lunges, catching Harry by the sleeve. “Have you seen my daughter?” He demands, a tremulous edge of hysteria in his warped voice. “Have you seen my daughter?” His face crumples, and he covers his mouth with a hand, gasping raggedly. His voice is distorted from trying to speak through immense emotion. “Have you seen what I did to her?”
Leland’s hand flies up to grip at his hair, and Harry realizes that Leland is struggling to contain lunatic laughter, convulsing with the effort. His eyes bulge nearly out of his head, mouth hanging open in a coarse approximation of a splitting grin. Unrestrained hysterical mirth violently wracks his body.
“Did you see,” Leland chokes out between sobs of laughter. His grip on Harry’s sleeve tightens, balling up the fabric in a deathlike grip, and Harry pulls away forcefully, backing away from the grinning spectre to the curtain. The ground is too soft under his feet.
“Did you see!” Leland calls after him, voice rising.
Leland doesn’t follow him out of the room.
The next room already has people in it. The man in red from before sits facing him, across from a man in black whose back is to Harry.
The little man in the red suit rolls his eyes toward Harry, fixing him in an intent stare. “Another friend,” he says in his jerky, unnatural fashion.
Without even a glance to check for the subject of the man in red’s scrutiny, the man in black is out of his chair in a flash, backing up, distancing himself without a second thought. As recognition settles in, Special Agent Dale Cooper slows, staring. Harry cannot look away either. He’s so surprised to see a familiar face in a place like this that he almost misses how alarmed Agent Cooper looks, how he moves instinctively, a man leery of attack.
Agent Cooper looks worn down.
The thought comes unbidden, and almost immediately, he cannot tell what made him think that. Cooper’s suit is neat and pressed, and there are no shadows under his eyes. He’s perfectly well-groomed, not a single hair out of place. But his eyes dart restlessly, and he’s wired as tense as a cornered animal, ready to bolt. It’s too automatic a survival instinct. He’s expecting an attack, and Harry can see it wouldn’t be the first.
Harry puts his hands out in a calming gesture. “Hey, hey. Relax, Cooper, it’s only me.”
Harry can see the tightly coiled spring of stress hesitantly unwind, Cooper losing the tense set to his jaw and mistrustful look in his eye as he stops telegraphing fight or flight.
Harry thinks to the illusions he has already seen, and he understands.
“Harry? Harry, I told you not to follow me,” Cooper says urgently, striding towards him. His footsteps are too sharp-sounding on the smooth unscuffed not-linoleum, broken glass staccato echoing wrongly. His footsteps seem almost condensed, too full of sound; this place thins and warps like a funhouse mirror. He looks different from last time, more whole somehow. Although physically the same, that subtle note of wrongness is gone; whatever wasn’t right has apparently been corrected, even if Harry still can’t lay his finger on exactly what he was detecting. It’s almost like the space behind the eyes where the spirit should be is no longer empty, but even that’s not entirely it. Somehow, Dream Cooper looks more like a person than Real Cooper.
It’s... strange. Dream Cooper lacks the indefinite vibe that all the other dream people have. It’s not a visible thing, just a vague permeating aura of unreality, as if their material is stretched a little too thin over their frames and at any moment the seams of their skin might give, forcing Harry to witness whatever lies beneath.
Cooper… doesn’t give that impression.
With all the strength of a dreamer, he knows that Leland wasn’t real, but he can’t muster up the same conviction for the Cooper he sees before him now.
Cooper comes to a stop too close, at a distance meant for secrets, and that’s another familiar pang. Personal space has always been difficult for them, and all the more necessary for that. It shouldn’t be so hard not to touch someone. Wouldn’t want any rumours. At this point, Harry is sure that Hawk, at least, knows there’s something between them.
“I didn’t, Coop. Where are we?” Harry looks around, head thick with dream confusion. “Looks like the entrance to One-Eyed Jack’s.”
Cooper had raised a hand to grip Harry’s arm, but at this he stops, hand hovering. “You’re dreaming,” Cooper realizes, relief evident in his voice. There is an odd cadence to his words, Harry realizes; the slightest hint of whatever accent had distorted the words of Leland and the man in red alike has infected Dale’s speech as well. His voice is thin in the heavy air.
“You mean this isn’t real?” Harry asks.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Cooper, what is all this? We’re in Glastonbury Grove?”
“No, Harry. The Black Lodge,” Cooper corrects quietly. He casts his gaze around the red room with detached wariness. “You shouldn’t wait for me out there. The grove is unsafe. As Jupiter and Saturn are currently conjunct, the Black Lodge is open: the things that dwell here might be able to leave.”
Harry puts up a hand to stop him, not quite brushing against Cooper’s chest. “Hold on. If they can leave, can you leave?”
Cooper’s gaze darts around the room again before flickering back to Harry’s face. “I hope so. My exit is still a work in progress.” A realization strikes him, and he inhales suddenly, taken by new urgency. He looks genuinely concerned. “Annie! Harry, I haven’t seen Annie in several hours. Did she make it out?”
Gently, Harry breaks it to him. “Yeah, Coop. She made it out. She’s been in the hospital for the last month. I’m sorry.”
“A month,” Cooper muses, preoccupied by the new data, a faraway look in his eyes. “While I realized that a place so reliant on dream logic might experience a similar time dilation, I had no way of confirming my theory.”
He snaps back to attention. “Harry, there was something here that looked like me, but it’s gone now. I believe BOB left with it,” Cooper says urgently.
Harry recalls, growing unsettled. “I think I saw another you. That was BOB in disguise?”
“Yes, that’s correct.” To all intents and purposes, Cooper still appears to be in control of his emotions, but there’s something distinctly agitated about the way he scans the room again. Despite the tense set of his jaw, despite the barely noticeable way the Lodge staggers his words and drags at his syllables, he manages to sound practical, almost businesslike. “Harry, I’d like you to give me a detailed account of its movements and actions. I believe BOB might be able to kill again.”
“Cooper, wait.” Harry grabs his friend’s shoulder. Although the body beneath is firm enough, reassuringly human in consistency, the texture of the cloth is slightly off. It’s not Cooper’s. Cooper likes simple things done well, his coffee hot and black, his suits fine and fitted. Harry can already tell by the fabric’s roughness that the thread count is wrong. The threads don’t weave the right way beneath his fingertips, leaving it strangely coarse, the very cloth deteriorated and simplified. It hardly even feels like the right material. Maybe after a little time, Harry wouldn’t even recognize the suit jacket. This place changes things.
Cooper’s slightly off-kilter voice and the subtly worsening fabric set Harry on edge.
Red glints on Cooper’s polished black leather shoes, the wet shine dabbling bloody highlights. It’s only a reflection from the deep red walls, he knows, a perfectly natural reflection, but Harry can’t shake the feeling that he’s seeing dark spots of blood.
A distant crooning starts up, indistinct and feminine. Harry is sure that it’s coming from some room ahead and to the right, but this place is so twisting that he knows it to be another ploy.
“I saw Leland out in the hall. Leland Palmer. Cooper, this place…” He shakes his head, still having trouble voicing supernatural ideas even after everything. “Are you alive?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Cooper admits frankly. “I cannot deny the question has crossed my mind. While I have been wounded several times, any attacks have had little to no lasting effect on my person. I don’t believe I’m dead, although it’s true that I have felt neither hunger nor fatigue since entering this place. My experience up until this point is that I seem to be unaffected by the passage of time. The body’s natural cycles must provide more structure than a chaotic place such as the Black Lodge could permit.”
“Go now, before the fire takes us,” the female voice distantly implores, just barely close enough for them to distinguish the song’s Lodge-tangled words. The thick, suffocating, hideously soft curtains diffuse the sound, but he’s pretty sure it’s coming from behind him.
Annie, Harry realizes. That’s why the voice was familiar. He doesn’t know Annie as well as he used to, and he’s never heard her sing, but that’s her, all right. Annie, who was supposed to be free, sleeping away in a hospital at this very moment. In the waking world, is her mind still here?
“I’ll see you in the trees,” sings the high distant voice, garbled by a halting Lodge accent. Higher pitched, now, and not so distant. The voice hasn’t changed, but Harry is dead certain the voice is Laura’s. The singer is the same, he’s sure of it, but what once was Annie’s sound is now Laura’s. It was always Laura.
Harry thinks of a jacket that doesn’t feel quite right and a voice that’s not as rich as it once was, everything drifting into threadbare weakness as the Lodge drinks up its victims.
Cooper’s dark brown eyes haven’t lost their depth and warmth yet, but it’s only a matter of time. This place is poison.
Harry grips Cooper’s arm tightly, giving a reassuring squeeze. He has felt it since the song approached clarity; his time here is running out. The singer is close, filling his head with high words too whispery to distinguish, pure velvet raking seductively on the mind. Already, he feels less weighty, his head swimmingly insubstantial. “I’m going to get you out of here,” Harry promises. “No man left behind.”
In that moment, the muddled dreamlike atmosphere clears. The unreal filter Cooper had taken on, hair too black and suit too rough and stance too stiff and still, strips away, taking with it all its subtle funhouse distortions. Harry cannot tell if his altered perception was a trick from the clever not-place around them, or if his slowly waking mind is simply less observant as it eases out of the dream. Details slip away between his fingers; as sleep dissipates around him, he cannot focus.
Cooper takes him by the shoulders, trying to hold Harry close for one last moment. His eyes are clear and lucid. Cooper is too real for this place. “Harry, listen to me: stay away from the Lodge. If I cannot find my way out from inside, you entering would make no difference. My dilemma is secondary. You must find BOB and stop him. Whatever you do, you can not underestimate him. He might look like me, but he can’t feel mercy…”
Harry wakes to a lingering sense of urgency, the sort of alarm that a good old heart-stopping sweat-drenching whopper of a nightmare might stir up. A steady course of dream-fuelled adrenaline has his heart thudding insistently, the overwhelming need to act tangling with his total inexperience with the supernatural. He wakes filled with the drive to act but no clear direction.
The morning routine brings no comfort. Coffee tastes burned and acrid as he drinks it too hot, but Harry drinks mechanically, hardly noticing. His thoughts are on Special Agent Cooper, who had suddenly cut all ties and vanished without a trace. Cooper, who had been nothing but kindhearted and devoted and true until he’d thrown himself to the Lodge and never entirely returned.
BOB has a new suit, he remembers. Harry runs a hand over his face, overcome with sudden weakness.
Grimly, Harry passes a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels from one hand to another, contemplating the escape there. He cracks it open, holding the bottle by the neck, and moves to spike his coffee. The stench of alcohol is an assault on the senses, too much after such a dream, and he falters. His grip tightens on the bottle’s neck. Throttling the whiskey, he forces it back before it can pour. Harry drops the whiskey heavily back on the table, heedless of the way it sloshes.
It’s not right. He can’t drink himself into oblivion — not now, not when he knows that Cooper needs him at his best. This isn’t like Josie’s death, he’s not in mourning. He’s not going to mourn Cooper. That would mean giving up, and he’ll be damned before he gives up on Cooper.
Very deliberately, Harry pushes away the whiskey. This is bigger than his personal vices. Getting drunk won’t help anyone.
BOB has a new suit and Cooper is not what he seems.
The taste of coffee turns to ash in his mouth, sickeningly acidic. Harry hangs his head, staring unseeing as the horror of his dream and its terrible unthinkable meaning rise to choke him.
It wasn’t so long ago that he examined Laura’s body. Maddy’s autopsy was even more recent. He still remembers how BOB kills, the unhinged vicious pleasure that creature takes from unfettered violence. He will remember that limitless brutality until the day he dies.
BOB is out.
BOB is out of the Lodge, and Cooper is…
Something is wrong with Cooper.