Welcome to Night Vale

by Joseph Fink

  “He showed up again recently. I don’t know why he did. I’m worried that he wants back in Josh’s life. And of course Josh is interested in knowing his dad, whatever that word means.”

  “Ah, let him. He’ll just find out his dad’s a jerk. Like, Troy was cute. You got pregnant. He skipped town. He’s an asshole. Josh can figure all that out on his own. He’s not much younger than me.”

  He wasn’t, it was true. The limited scale of the human life startled Diane. There was so little actual time between ages that felt vastly different. She had categorized Jackie as different than Josh, and herself as different than Jackie, but the span of years between any two of them wasn’t much of a span at all.

  “None of us knows what we want to do when we’re his age. When we’re your age, when you’re my age,” said Diane, “any age, I guess. We think we do, and sometimes we’re right, but only ever in retrospect.”

  Her tone was halfway between reminiscence and lecture. Jackie sighed but let her talk. She knew that messages were for the sender, not the receiver.

  “Troy and I loved each other. We called it ‘unconditional love,’ which was true. Once conditions arose, the love dissipated.”

  “Everything that’s happened has gotten me thinking about a lot of stuff I’ve tried hard to not think about. Like, I’ve never loved anyone,” said Jackie. “Not that I can remember. I know this town, but I don’t feel like I’m on the same time scale as it. Something went off.”

  “Love is hard,” said Diane, who hadn’t really listened to what Jackie had said. “I wish Josh could love his father conditionally.”

  “The kid is smart. He’ll know what to do.”

  “How old are you, Jackie? If you don’t mind.”

  “Nineteen, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I don’t feel nineteen.” Jackie looked out the window at the houses across the street that were thinking nothing at all. “A woman who calls herself Mom asked me about stuff from when I was a kid, but I couldn’t remember any of it. People think I’m a child, but if so, I’ve been a child for a long time. I don’t know how old I am.”

  Talking about this made Jackie feel like she was looking down from somewhere high, or like she was staring straight up at a cloudless point of sky.

  “People look at me and call me a girl or tell me I’m too young to run a pawnshop. They wonder how I’m able to handle a tough business like that, and I don’t know. I just do. Always have. It’s the only thing I know how to do. Far as I can tell I’ve been doing it for centuries.”

  “Well, when you’re nineteen, everything feels like forever,” Diane said, staring at the dash and lightly touching the air-conditioning vent. “I don’t know. Did you ever think of just turning twenty?”

  “I gotta go,” Jackie said.

  “Okay.”

  “Meaning this is my car.”

  “Right.”

  Diane grabbed her belongings.

  “Hey,” she said. “I said I was going to let you ask the questions at Leann’s, and then I didn’t let you. That wasn’t right of me.”

  “Guess we all suck sometimes.”

  Diane and Jackie held a look for a moment, and this changed nothing about how they felt about each other. But there was a kind of simple peace that came from holding a gaze.

  Diane broke it off and shut the door. As she raised her hand to wave and opened her mouth to say “Good-bye,” Jackie’s car drove off.

  She walked into the house, set her things down, and turned on the radio. Cecil’s voice relaxed her. He was announcing some upcoming events in town. There was a new exhibit at the Museum of Forbidden Technologies that sounded interesting. Unfortunately, Diane had never been able to go to the museum because all of its exhibits are classified, and no one is allowed to see them. It is a felony to go to that museum.

  Diane flipped through the day’s mail as Cecil continued on. It didn’t matter what he said. The world is terrifying. It always is. But Cecil reminded her that it was okay to relax in a terrifying world.

  The mail was junk: a couple of furniture catalogs, a credit card offer, a dead mouse, and a flyer with coupons for 50 percent off the moon. The faceless old woman who secretly lives in her home had censored the credit card offer, using charcoal to blot out entire lines and amounts. Diane looked through the coupons, considering what a great deal it would be if anyone actually wanted the moon. It’s a hideous rock, Diane thought. You couldn’t pay me to take it.

  The moon is a trick of light suggested to us by the seas, the house thought.

  From the radio, Diane heard the word “Chuckwalla.” This was the street she lived on. She stopped thinking about the moon and the mail and made her way to the living room. She stared at the radio. In lieu of her ears’ inability to open up, she widened her eyes to better hear Cecil’s voice. She listened to what he had to say, moving from distant unease to personal unease to panic.

  There are not a lot of blue Mazda coupes with double red stripes. Diane had just been sitting in one.

  There are quite a few burgundy Ford hatchbacks. Diane owned one of them.

  Everything she was afraid of was happening at once. She was only afraid of one thing.

  “No,” she shouted. She shouted it over and over because she didn’t know what she could do to change anything and at least shouting made her feel better. No one could hear except the house and the faceless old woman who secretly lives in it.

  Diane opened the door to her garage. She turned on the light. There was no burgundy Ford hatchback.

  “Goddammit, Josh.”

  Diane ran to Josh’s room. She knocked. She knocked again. She opened his door. He was not there.

  She worried for Jackie’s safety. She seethed over Josh’s disobedience.

  Josh did not answer his phone. Neither did Jackie. The calls went straight to voice mail.

  Diane texted both of them. No response. She ran out her front door, down Chuckwalla Road, past several crisscrossing streets, toward the crash.

  Is the roof the head of the house, or the hair, or is it a hat? thought the house.

  “This is just the start of it,” whispered the faceless old woman from behind Diane’s washing machine.

  THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE

  CECIL: . . . accident at the corner of Lampasas Avenue and Chuckwalla Road. All westbound lanes of Lampasas are shut down, and EMTs are at the scene.

  While there is only one damaged car at the scene, a blue Mazda coupe with double red stripes, which rode up the median and wrecked headlong into a light pole, witnesses described a second car, a burgundy Ford hatchback, that had run the Mazda off the road and then sped away. The driver of the Mazda—a woman in her late teens, early twenties—was taken to the hospital.

  There are no other reported injuries.

  The Sheriff’s Secret Police are suspecting this may have been a hit-and-run and are asking anyone with information to contact them. They’re also using this time to learn a little bit more about three-dimensional chalk art.

  Several of the officers have already drawn an orca leaping above a frothy ocean wave. The whole thing’s like ten feet wide. It’s remarkable because it looks not only photorealistic but also like the whale is coming right out of the street. Very impressive to have drawn that in the last fifteen minutes while also investigating a major accident. Wow.

  And now a word from our sponsors.

  Having trouble sleeping? Are you awake at all hours? Do birds live in you? Are you crawling with insects? Is your skin jagged and hard? Are you covered in leaves and gently shaking in the gentle breeze?

  You sound like a tree. You are perfectly healthy. Also, you don’t need to sleep. You’re a tree, a very very smart tree. Are you listening to the radio? Is a human assisting you? What plan do you have for our weak species? Please, tree, I beg of you to spare me. Please, tree. Spare me.

  This message has been brought to you by Old Navy. Old Navy: What’s Going to Happen to My Family?

  32r />
  Jackie woke up confused, as is usual. Sleep is confusing. Dreams are baffling. The concept of transitioning from one perceived reality to another is a tolerated madness.

  So far, normal.

  But the beeping and the various clear lines with fluid in them, those weren’t right. The cot she was in was not her bed. She tried to move and felt someone pull at her arm. Their fingernails were sharp, tugging at her skin. She looked down at the IV in her arm, not understanding what she was seeing.

  A nurse came in.

  “Look who’s awake,” the nurse said brightly. All the cameras in the room obediently turned to look. There were several cameras in the room. In this way, it was like every other room in Night Vale.

  “Where the hell is this?”

  “You had a touch of an accident,” the nurse said. “I wouldn’t worry about it. But then it didn’t happen to me. You should probably worry. Have a great day!”

  She trilled this and whisked out the door. She was the type of person to trill and to whisk.

  The hospital room was small. Just a sink and a cabinet of supplies and a window looking out on the abandoned coal mine. The hospital had been built next to the mine for the convenience of the mining company and their many, many injured miners. It was not a safe mine. Fortunately it had been closed down years ago after a great deal of public outcry. Now it had been converted into a prison for the Sheriff’s Secret Police to keep people who didn’t vote correctly in municipal elections, its sordid past long behind it.

  Between the door and the window was Jackie’s bed, and on it, her. Above her were several cameras and a loudspeaker. Her left arm was in a cast. How did she get here?

  The loudspeaker crackled. An authoritative voice of indefinite gender issued from it.

  “Ask your doctor if she has a plan for the future,” the loudspeaker said. “Ask her what it is. Criticize it.”

  “Hello?” Jackie said.

  There was a doctor next to her. The doctor had presumably entered through the door and walked up to her. Jackie just hadn’t seen the doctor do that.

  The doctor rubbed her hands together.

  “Well, what do we have here?”

  The doctor was washing her hands, although Jackie did not remember her walking to the sink. Then she was by the bed again, her face quite close. There were no transitions, just her in one place and then the other.

  “You’ve been in a terrible accident. Are you in a lot of pain?”

  “I don’t know. No?”

  “We have you on a lot of drugs. The drugs keep you from feeling the pain. But the pain is there. You’ll have to believe me. But can I tell you a secret?”

  Jackie wasn’t sure.

  “Yes?”

  “The secret is that you don’t have to believe me. You have no reason to trust me at all.”

  The doctor winked, and then she was gone again. Or she walked out the door, is presumably what she did, only Jackie hadn’t noticed her leaving.

  The loudspeaker came alive again.

  “Ask your doctor a question only she would know the answer to.

  “Ask your doctor if you’ll be able to play the piano after. After everything. After it’s all finished and there’s nothing left. Will you be able to play the piano then? Ask your doctor that.”

  “Sorry,” the doctor said. She was hovering over Jackie again. “We’re not sure how to turn that off.”

  She waved vaguely at everything in the room, including Jackie.

  “You’ll have some trouble for a while,” she said. “It will be difficult. You might notice some problems with walking and with life in general. You should look at the sky and scream about how empty it is at least twice a day.”

  “What kind of accident?” said Jackie.

  The doctor smiled.“The accidental kind,” she whispered. She was gone again.

  “There was a slip of paper in my hand. Where is it?” Jackie asked the empty room. “I can’t feel it. I can’t feel it in the cast.”

  The nurse came bustling in. She was the kind of person to bustle.

  “Did you find a slip of paper in my hand?” Jackie said.

  “Do not fret for a sec,” she chirped. “Before we put the cast on, I set that paper safe and sound in this box here.”

  Jackie used whatever energy she had to sit up. Her face was warm. The nurse felt around in the box, frowning. Then she held it upside down. She smiled at Jackie.

  “Looks like it’s gone. Sorry, dear. You look sad. Was it important?”

  Jackie felt the blood leave her face. She couldn’t feel the paper in her hand, but she knew.

  The nurse shrugged and then zipped out the door (she was the kind of person to zip, too).

  Jackie moved her fingers inside the cast. Her fingers hurt so bad. It served them right for going numb and making her hope that the paper was finally gone.

  Various machines beeped. None of them seemed to be attached to her. There was a gurgle from the loudspeaker.

  “Ask your doctor a direct question with an unambiguous answer. Try to get your doctor to commit to something for once in her life.

  “Ask your doctor a rhetorical question and spread your hands out despairingly. Put your doctor in a position where he feels he can’t help you even if he can.”

  Jackie was alone.

  The doctor was standing beside her.

  “You’ll be fine. I think,” the doctor said. “I don’t know you, though. Maybe you’ll make a lot of mistakes and end up horribly unhappy. But the injuries will go away eventually. That’s the good news. There is also bad news.”

  Jackie was alone again.

  The voice from the loudspeaker came out as a whisper.

  “Ask your doctor why. Say it like that: ‘Why?’ See if you can find out for us, okay? See if you can find out why.”

  The machines beeped. Jackie closed her eyes and returned to the relative normalcy of dreams.

  33

  Diane stood near Jackie. She had first gone to the accident site, but there wasn’t much to see. Just some skid marks and an elaborate piece of 3-D chalk art. Then she had a cab take her by a few of Josh’s favorite hangouts (the video store, the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, the sand wastes outside of town), but he hadn’t been at any of them. He was probably (if he was not injured as well, but she couldn’t bear to even think of that) at one of his father’s several jobs, doing exactly what Diane didn’t want him to do. There would be consequences when Josh came home tonight. There would be a reckoning.

  In the meantime, she needed to see how Jackie was doing. It had been Josh, not her, that had done this, but still Diane felt the guilt personally, as though she herself had been at the wheel.

  Jackie had broken off the tip of the plastic knife the nurse had given her with her dinner and was using the jagged edge to hack away at her arm cast.

  She had not seen Diane come in, but she had grown used to that. Most results have no visible causation. You wake up, and there’s a friendly face above you, or a part of you you had never seen and will never see again has been taken from you, or a part of you you never had before you now have. This is how hospitals work.

  Everything about Jackie looked sore to Diane. Her skin hung from her skull, her hair lay flat. Even her teeth looked loose. Her neck and face were still covered in angry purple blotches from the librarian’s poison. What little strength Jackie had was being used to cut at her freshly cast cast.

  Diane had a cast when she was twelve. She had fallen out of a tree and broken her leg. This is a common injury for children, as trees dislike young humans and are notorious for picking them up and dropping them if they get too close. She had been grabbed by a ficus tree in her mom’s office. Ficus trees are not tall trees, but they are muscular trees, stronger than they look. Diane had been able to break its grasp, but when she fell, she stumbled forward to the top of some steps, where she tumbled down to the lower floor, landing on that floor’s emergency secret trapdoor, which had opened u
p onto the basement’s jagged rock pile. She had, like most people, feared and loathed houseplants ever since.

  “It itches like crazy, I know,” she said.

  “Not trying to scratch it. I’m looking to see if that paper is still there.” Jackie had gotten a good-size hole in the cast. “But now it also itches, thanks.”

  “Ask your doctor if he is a cop. He is legally required to disclose this information if you ask,” the loudspeaker said.

  The nurse buzzed into the room.

  “Oh, it looks like the cast didn’t set right,” the nurse singsonged as Jackie openly hacked away, using the full motion of her arm to chisel at the plaster. “We’ll just have to reset that, won’t we?”

  Jackie put her swollen, sunken eye up to the hole in the cast. She couldn’t see anything. She sawed at the frayed edge of the hole with the impotent edge of the knife.

  “I think I almost got it.”

  “Ask your doctor if she is you. Ask your doctor if everyone is in your mind. Ask your doctor for tips for living in lucid dreams,” the loudspeaker said.

  “Reset the cast,” the nurse said with a voice like a tolling church bell, her arm landing hard on Jackie’s free hand. “Reset the cast.”

  The nurse’s pupils went vertical, and Jackie let go of the knife, relaxing her hand.

  “I would rather have the pain than the fatigue,” she said.

  Her head rolled back and her arms flopped open.

  “Just relax,” the nurse said, although she was no longer in the room.

  “You don’t look well,” Diane said.

  “I don’t feel well.”

  “How long are you supposed to stay here?”

  “Dunno. Probably until tomorrow morning. Maybe tonight. Didn’t even know this place was still open. Did you?”

  Diane did not, but she was too distracted by her worry for Jackie and her frustration with Josh to care.

  “What happened?”

  “Driving up Chuckwalla, leaving your house. I got to Lampasas. Then all of a sudden, I’m lying in this cot.”

  “You didn’t see the car that hit you?” Seeing Jackie’s condition, Diane began to worry more about how Josh was doing. And why hadn’t he stopped after the accident?