by Joseph Fink
“That Troy,” said Ynez, an older retired woman who worked weeknights at the music shop. “He is a helpful one, though, isn’t he?”
“Sure is,” said the mayor. He was wearing a tan jacket. The mayor sometimes wore a tan jacket, but often did not.
Then the trouble started.
It began with Troy being helpful. He was carrying groceries for an old man who possibly could have carried the groceries himself, but it had been a long day, and he was tired, and if Troy wanted to carry them then he would let Troy do that.
As they walked out through the parking lot, the old man and Troy passed another Troy who was jump-starting a worried teenager’s car. The teenager hadn’t been allowed to take the car, and now she couldn’t get it to start, and she was worried about her parents coming home to both her and the car missing.
“They’re going to call the cops,” she was saying, aloud but to herself. “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”
Troy had hooked the cables to his battery and was in the process of hooking up the other side to her car when Troy walked by with the old man and his groceries.
“Hello,” said Troy.
“Oh, hi there,” said the other Troy.
The old man and the teenager gaped at the Troys and at each other. Troy kept carrying the groceries and hooking up the jumper cables. He turned and looked back at the old man, who had stopped walking.
“What’s wrong?” Troy asked.
And with that, Troy started to multiply. First a little, and then more than a little. He was everywhere. He was competent, and friendly, and helpful, and there were so many of him.
The citizens of King City had no idea what to do. They looked to their mayor for guidance. Their mayor had no idea what to do.
He put on his tan jacket, because it happened to be chilly that day, and he went to visit Troy. Or one of the Troys. The one he thought was the original, although it was difficult to tell at that point.
Troy smiled when he opened his door.
“Oh hey,” Troy said, lounging back in toward his living room. “Come on in, man. Do you want something to drink? Water? A beer?”
“No, that’s okay,” said the mayor. “Listen, Troy, I have some questions.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Troy, where did you come from, exactly?”
Troy frowned.
“Place called Night Vale. Great town. Grew up there. Never actually lived anywhere else. But got a lot of heartbreak back there. Lot of bummer life decisions. King City is nice. Plus I feel like I’m doing real good here. Hey, speaking of which, anything you need to get done? I’m feeling productive today.”
“No, Troy. Thank you.” The mayor sat uncomfortably in a comfortable chair. “Troy, there are more of you.”
“Yeah,” said Troy.
“There are lots of yous. There are multiple Troys.”
“Well, sure,” said Troy. “I think we’re all being pretty helpful though, right? Listen, if any of them aren’t helpful, you come talk to me. I’ll set myself right.”
“Helpfulness is not the problem, Troy. The problem is that people do not multiply. There is never suddenly more of a person.”
“Of course there is. Look at me.” He frowned again. “I dunno. Where I’m from, you just kind of roll with things. I guess I assumed this place would be like that too.”
“We like you, Troy,” said the mayor in the tan jacket. “But we’re confused.”
“Oh, hey, I like you all too.” Troy got up. The mayor got up too. “This is a great town you have, and I’m going to keep doing my best to make it better.” He started to guide the mayor out the door. “Thanks so much for coming by. Feel free to come by anytime if you have something needs doing or if you just want to talk. I love talking.”
The mayor left the house, feeling uneasy and like he had not accomplished anything at all.
The Troys continued to multiply. Soon there were entire neighborhoods full of them, smiling and waving and offering to help each other out.
The other people in King City changed too. They became forgetful. They found they were talking less to people that did not live in King City. They would get calls from their mother, telling them that they hadn’t called her in so long, and they would realize that until the moment she called, they had forgotten that they had a mother.
It wasn’t just their memory. There was something happening physically. They were finding it harder and harder to leave town. They would try to do just a quick twenty-minute drive out of city limits and find that all the roads led back to town, that the sky for a moment looked like video static or maybe just a lot of stars, more stars than anyone had ever seen, but either is strange in the middle of the day, right? The 101, so closely tied to the life of the town, became impossible to reach. There didn’t seem to be any entrances, and no matter where they drove, it didn’t seem to get any closer. Soon they couldn’t even hear it, as close as it was. Silence descended on their town.
And the Troys continued to multiply. The mayor tried to warn the town about Troy, but no one could hold that thought in their minds long enough to do anything about it.
“We need a mayor,” they would say. “A mayor would be able to lead, would know what to do,” and then they would discover that they had a mayor but had forgotten about him. And then they would forget that they had discovered that.
The man who happened to be mayor the day that Troy came to town felt these changes too. He went home less and less. Sometimes he would forget where his home was, and even when he did go home, his wife and daughter and he would all stare at each other with wide, blank eyes, unsure of who any of them were, terrified of the strangers in their home.
Every time he looked down, he seemed to be wearing that tan jacket. He would decide to take it off, and then he would forget until he noticed again and the process would repeat.
Soon he stopped going home at all. This was not a decision, it was just what happened. He always seemed to be at City Hall, with a staff who did not know who he was or that they even had a mayor.
The only thing he could hold clearly in his mind was the place that Troy was from. A town called Night Vale. So he went looking for Night Vale.
Night Vale is not an easy place to find, but he had a lot of time. In the infinite weirdness that had descended on King City, time was an inexhaustible resource.
He made it to Night Vale and began trying to see if anyone could help him save his city from Troy. He spent months, maybe even years there, he wasn’t sure. No one could remember talking to him, or what they talked about. No one could help him. And then he talked to Diane, and she, for whatever reason, mentioned Troy in passing.
So the mayor, whose name was not Evan McIntyre, began working at Diane’s office to learn more about Troy, a man of many selves but only one form, and in time learned about his son, Josh, a boy of many forms but only one self. And the mayor knew what he had to do.
He wasn’t happy about it, but then nothing made him happy anymore.
“Your Josh is the son of the man that took my town from me,” the man in the tan jacket said to Diane. “Your son Josh is also an unusual person, but he is different than his father. I need his help to understand Troy and save my town.”
He sighed, looking out his window as though the view were anything but a wall and a garbage can.
“I feel as though we have been replaced by some other King City that has gone on with the normal progression of its life as a city, right where we left it, diverging from us as we have spiraled out into whatever part of space and time you would call this.”
Diane stood. She didn’t care about the man or his town.
“Tell me where you took my son. I want my son.”
The flies swarmed again, catching Diane off guard. She stumbled backward into the leather chair. The man in the tan jacket shook his head.
“Space and time are weird, right?”
He was right.
“Listen, Evan, or whatever your name is,
it’s terrible what happened to your town. But I need my son back. Because as much as I care about the world, I care more about my son. You have a daughter, you understand.”
“I do. I do have a daughter,” he said, turning back around to face her. “And as much as I care about your son, I care more about my daughter. You, I’m sure, understand. We’ve all had family taken from us because of Troy.”
She pointed at him. She meant it.
“Understand this. I will find my son. I will find my son right away.”
Which is when her son walked in with Jackie. He had a squat body and enormous antlers.
“Hi, Mom,” Josh said.
THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE
CECIL: . . . break into his storage locker? Who would do such a thing? Feral dogs probably. They are notorious thieves.
In other news, a recent report suggests that things may not be as they seem. The report explains that things are definitely what they are, but never what they seem. Many scientists contributed to the report. They studied numbers that were on computer screens and wrote out long equations and drew many diagrams that helped prove their point.
“Even these pages you think you’re reading could be quite different from what you think you see,” the report explained. “It’s possible this report is just a sprawling aloe plant or a mid-century modern maple credenza. You could try to study it more closely, but you will never know for certain.”
No word on whether or not things have been what they have seemed before this report or whether they will be what they seem at some point in the future.
And now, traffic.
There is a man walking out into the desert. He doesn’t have much. At one point he had a new job and a nice car and people in his life. Now he only has his gray pin-striped suit stained with dirt and a five-dollar bill. Soon, he thinks, he will have less. The less he has the more things make sense to him, although he doesn’t understand why.
He thinks back to the men he had been in the past. The man with a lover. The man with a job. The man driving without a destination. The man with a fancy watch in a place where time doesn’t work. The man standing out in the desert with blood all over his hands. The man entering a pawnshop. They all seemed to be different people, people who didn’t know each other although they might vaguely recognize each other from different corners at a party none of them liked.
But he also knew that they were all him, that all of them still lived inside his body, somewhere. That they could never leave, just recede into a background hum in his mind.
The young man is in the desert. He is looking back at a world that does not belong to him. Nothing belongs to him. He is looking around at a landscape that desolates outward forever. So he stops where he is, as good as any other place.
He looks up. Again, it is there in the sky. The planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. It is very close now. So close that he wonders if he could touch it. As he reaches up, he thinks he sees movement on its surface. Through the canopy of the forests and upon the slopes of the mountains and on the shores of the churning ocean. People maybe. Crowds of people all wrapped in white cloth. They are leaning into each other like dropped puppets. They sway lifelessly. He feels horror in the back of his throat, but still he reaches up.
He can’t help himself. It’s just what he does next.
This has been traffic.
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47
“Mom,” Josh protested as Diane wrapped her arms around his sloped, furry shoulders.
She gripped his body tight, placing one hand across his wide back and the other hand to the back of his head, between the tall, pointed ears.
“Josh,” she said over and over. “Josh. Josh.” Jackie placed her casted hand on his mother’s back.
Diane concentrated on breathing deep, full breaths. “Thank you, Jackie.”
“Mom.” Josh blushed. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Josh, it’s not okay. I haven’t seen you in a week. What have they done to you?”
“Nothing, Mom. I’m fine.” He gently removed her arms from his body.
She looked into his eyes, or into the eyes of his body, looking for him. Her own eyes hardened. Her tears dried. Her pupils contracted, lids narrowing. He felt the moment turning.
“I took your car for the afternoon,” he said, pleading the case in what he failed to keep from a whine. “I’m sorry. I found out that my dad had moved to King City and then I found that paper in your purse and then I thought I could take the car to King City to look up stuff about my dad. I thought you would be gone the whole day. You’ve been gone a lot lately.
“I mapped it out, and it looked like it was maybe only a couple hours’ drive. I was planning to come back tonight. But I ran up on the curb into someone’s lawn. I wanted to have cool-looking wings, but it was hard to drive with them. I was all pushed forward and they kept getting in my eyes. I dented your fender, and ruined their shrubbery and crushed this row of plastic garden flamingos that got stuck in the bumper, and apparently I ran Jackie off the road, but I didn’t see that. I’m so sorry, Jackie. The wings were in my eyes and I didn’t know.
“I was scared you’d be mad about your car, so I tried to drive home, but the city around me wasn’t familiar-looking anymore. I saw this building marked CITY HALL, which is where Ty told me I could find all kinds of stuff out about my real dad. So I came in here. That was like an hour ago.”
“Josh, you’ve been gone for days.”
“Mom, you just texted me a couple hours ago, and I said ‘Good. Be home later.’ See?” He held up his phone.
“Time is weird in Night Vale,” the mayor said.
“Shut up,” Jackie said. The cloud of black flies rose, but she moved at them without hesitation. They buzzed louder and retreated to the other side of the room.
“It’s not his fault, Diane,” Jackie said. “It isn’t. You and I both know that. We know it together.”
Diane continued to stare at Josh. Her eyes burned on the cusp between crying and yelling.
“But maybe, Josh,” Jackie said, “we finish driver’s ed when we get back to town. Or maybe you don’t need hooves when you drive, straight up hands will do the trick, all right? Full human form when you drive.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” Josh lowered his head. He saw the deep yellow and purp
le bruises around the edges of Jackie’s cast and along her neck, and cringed in shame.
“Let’s just go home,” Jackie said. “You and Josh can take your car, and I’ll follow in the Mercedes.”
“That is absolutely not possible,” said the mayor in the tan jacket.
“Shut up,” Jackie said again.
She moved toward him, her face set. The flies regrouped into an opaque cloud between her and the man. She stepped forward into them. The flies swarmed onto her skin and into her clothes and onto her face and into her eyes and her nose and her mouth. Their guts oozed onto her tongue as they crunched between her teeth. She batted at them with her uninjured arm, but they wouldn’t release even as she got to his desk and grabbed the pair of scissors leaning against the rim of a coffee mug.
She held up the scissors. The mayor moved back, gawping at her fly-covered body, everyone else in the room forgetting his look of terror the moment they looked away. She brought the scissors down, driving a blade into her cast, and sawing. The cast resisted and the blades were not sharp, but she hacked with a fury. The flies retreated one by one as she worked herself into a sweat fighting against her own cast. Her skin was swollen and red where the flies had been.
Finally, dull blades and all, she ripped off the top of the cast, exposing a hand still clutching a paper that said “KING CITY.” She held it up to the man in the tan jacket.
“Oh yes, of course.” He walked over and plucked the paper from her hand, like a person taking a slip of paper out of another person’s hand, and tossed it into the trash can, where it stayed. He did the same with the paper in Josh’s hand.
Jackie stared at her empty palm, breathing hard from exertion and relief. She clasped and unclasped her sticky, sore fingers, reveling in the emptiness of them.
“Now then,” said the man in the tan jacket, “that’s done. And Josh will be back to you sooner or later, I’m sure.”
“No,” Diane said. Jackie was too struck by the burden that had just been lifted from her, and would not be able to do this confrontation for her. She would have to do it herself.
