Welcome to Night Vale (5 page)

CECIL: . . . which implied a lot while saying little. Indeed the same could be said for the rest of the planets in the solar system. None of them commented.

Our town is once again facing a serious tarantula problem. The Night Vale Unified School District indicated that fewer than one in five tarantulas graduate from high school. Indeed, most spiders never even enroll in public education, choosing to instead spin webs and eat smaller insects.

Tarantulas are simple creatures, thought PTA Treasurer Diane Crayton today, without ever voicing that sentence aloud to anyone, according to several reliable and invasive spy satellites that were scanning her brain at the time.

We reached out to the tarantula community for a response to Diane's privately held opinion, and were immediately crawled upon by several of them. I think they are gone, but I am feeling a vague tickling on my back that I am afraid to investigate.

Maybe I'm developing migraines. I should ask Carlos about that.

Listeners, the Sheriff's Secret Police are out in large numbers tonight in Night Vale. They are not looking for a killer or a missing person. There is no disaster or accident to handle. They are simply wandering around town in large numbers. Some of these police are working, sitting in patrol cars waiting for minor traffic infractions or calls to duty.
Some of these police are not working. They are out to dinner with their families, or watching a popular sporting event on a bar television with friends. Some are reading books or catching up on television shows. Some are working late in a secret precinct office probably hidden in that heavy-looking, unmoving cloud.

The secret police are out in large numbers tonight. Nearly every member of the secret police is somewhere in Night Vale. They all exist. We feel very safe.

More news next, but first a brief word from our sponsors.

Pepsi. A refreshing drink. A soft tone playing when you wake up, but then it is gone and you don't know if you dreamed it. A hallway glimpsed in the back of your refrigerator, but when you look again it is gone. The recurring feeling that your shower is losing faith in you. Desperation. Hunger. Starving, not literally, but still. That hallway again, lined with doors that you know you can open. Your fridge is empty. You haven't left your home in days, and yet you come and go. This isn't food. What are you eating?

Pepsi: Drink Coke.

The City Council held their third press conference in as many hours to reiterate the extreme dangers posed by angels.

“There is no such thing as an angel,” said the council, in their unified manyvoice, “but if there were, what a dangerous and disgusting creature it would be. Think of its many legs and its ghastly voice. Think of an angel as a murderer hiding in your home. Think of an angel as the very concept of meaningless injury and death. You'll have to imagine all of this because angels do not exist.”

“Stay away from them,” they concluded.

We now return you to the sound of whatever is around you, which is probably a great deal more sound than you think, only some of which indicates future harm for you.

Old Woman Josie would come first. Jackie could visit her mother later.

Josie's house was near the edge of town, next to the used car lot. When a person was done with a car, and they didn't need to pawn it, they would park it in the used car lot, open the door, and run as fast they could for the fence, before the used car salesmen could catch them. No one ever came to buy one. The used car salesmen loped between the lines of cars, their hackles raised and their fur on end. They would stroke the hood of a Toyota Sienna, radiant with heat in the desert sun, or poke curiously at the bumper of a Volkswagen Golf, nearly dislodged by potholes and tied on with a few zip ties. The used car salesmen were fast and ravenous, and sometimes a person who meant only to leave their car would leave much more than that.

Jackie parked her car down the street to avoid any confusion with the salesmen. Her stomach hurt, not like she had eaten something bad but like she had done something bad. It was a stabbing pain on her right side. Maybe her appendix had burst. That's a thing, right?

Jackie was not at work. She had left her routines fully. In her hand was a paper. In her mind were vague memories of a man with a tan jacket, holding a deerskin suitcase.

She approached the house. It was a low bungalow, avocado green, with a neat lawn kept well watered in the dry climate at the expense of some other place far away and out of mind.
The lawn was surrounded by a border of pebbles, arranged into geometric patterns that were perhaps meant to ward away evil or might have just been the way earthquakes had left them. The fence between the house and the car lot was tall and chain link. A used car salesman howled, hopping from car roof to car roof with an animal joy. Jackie creaked open the metal gate into Josie's side yard, with an outdoor sitting area made of rusted metal rocking chairs with cushions whose fabric was faded nearly all the way to white by the sun.

“Can I help you?”

She turned. There was a being that was difficult to describe, although the best and most illegal description was “angel.” Angels are tall, genderless beings who are all named Erika.

“I was just doing some trimming,” the being said. They were holding hedge trimmers and standing by an empty patch of dirt. There were no plants of any kind anywhere near them.

“I'm looking for Old Woman Josie,” Jackie said.

The being shifted. There was the crack of heavy wings flapping and a flash of a blinding, bright blackness, a darkness so radiant it seemed to Jackie her heart would break.

“Josie?” the being said. “Sure. She's around. Let me go get her.” They didn't move.

“Ah, okay. Thanks, man,” Jackie said. The being still did not move. “I'll just knock then?”

“No need,” said Josie. “Erika got me.” She was walking in from the backyard, hunched over a cane, her long hair in strings over her face. But there was something about her body that seemed powerful, like an Olympic athlete perched on an old woman's skeleton.

“Great,” Jackie said. “Thanks, Erika.” The being still did not move. A flock of birds took off from a tree on the street, bird
after bird, more birds than could possibly fit in a tree. They seemed confused, cawing and flying into each other.

“What can I do for you today, young Jackie Fierro?” said Josie. “Finally taking a day off and enjoying yourself?”

“Nah, just wanted to ask you about some stuff.” More pain. Maybe her appendix really had burst. Maybe she would die. “I have a . . . problem. Thought maybe someone else might be having it too.”

“Almost always we are all experiencing the same problems as everyone else,” said Josie, “and pretending we don't so that every one of us thinks we are alone. Come on inside.”

She hobbled over to the front door. Under her arm was a cloth-wrapped bundle, with dirt clinging to it. As they entered the cool of the house, she set it on a kitchen counter and led Jackie into the living room.

“Take any seat you'd like in here,” she said. “They're all the most plush thing your butt will ever experience.”

Jackie chose an overstuffed easy chair with a paisley design.

“Wow,” she said, settling back and back into fabric that continued to give. For a moment the pain vanished. Comfort was the answer to all life's problems. It didn't solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened.

“You wanted to ask me a question?” said Josie, who had put herself on the couch with a good view of the bundle on the kitchen counter. She seemed to be counting under her breath, keeping time with a tapping foot.

“Yes. What do you know about a man in a—”

“Ah, hold on, dear.” A different being, just as difficult to describe as the one outside, was bringing in coffee and a plate of Oreos. “The only thing for company, of course. Coffee and Oreos. Would you like any?” Josie asked.

“No, thanks.”

“No?” Josie frowned. The being may have frowned too. It was difficult to tell and, of course, impossible to describe.

“Well, sure then.”

“Sure then?” Josie shook her head. “No, no. If you don't want the coffee or the Oreos then you don't take the coffee and the Oreos. Please take it away, Erika.”

The being was gone. Presumably they walked away. Jackie must have just missed them walking away. Josie glared at the bundle on the counter.

“Don't you dare,” she said.

“Don't I dare what?”

“I wasn't talking to you. Tell me your question.”

“Josie, do you know anything about a man in a tan jacket, holding a deerskin suitcase?”

“The man in the tan jacket?” Josie's voice took on a new tone, one filled with interest and perhaps panic. Erika was back. Both of the Erikas. They sat on either side of Josie on the couch. Their faces were similar to the ones that a human uses to express fear. No, not fear. Concern. They looked concerned.

“Yes,” Jackie said. “A man. In a tan jacket. Holding a deerskin suitcase.”

The angels' eyes flared, which was an action as odd to witness as it is difficult to picture.

“Oh, my dear,” said Josie. “I don't know if you should be asking about all that. Are you sure you wouldn't rather have some Oreos?”

“I wouldn't, no.”

“Fair,” Josie said. “Then we'll talk about a man in a tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase.” She clutched her left hand against her side like she had a pain there, but no pain registered in her face.

“We don't know anything about him,” Josie continued. “Not Erika, nor Erika. Of course Erika never really knows anything about anything, but Erika's a sweet one, so.”

“Do you know about him or not?”

“We know about him, we just don't know anything about him. We are aware that he exists, so there's that much, but his existence is the limit of it, the knowledge.”

“Knowledge is made of limits,” said Erika, the one who never really knows anything about anything.

“That's cool,” said Jackie. She did not mean it, and she said it in a way that let them all know she did not mean it.

“Yes, it's pretty cool,” said Erika, the sweet one, meaning it completely.

“Here is what it is,” said Josie. “We have seen the man you are talking about many times. But we can never remember anything about him.”

The Erikas nodded sadly.

“We were not even aware he was a man,” said the Erika who was not sweet. “We cannot see gender.”

This was not why they were sad. Their sadness was unrelated to the conversation. It was not unrelated to the dirt-covered bundle on the kitchen counter.

“Had the same problem,” said Jackie. “Kept forgetting everything I knew about him moments after I had started knowing it. It, I dunno.” She struggled to find a combination of words that would encompass how deeply the last twelve hours had unsettled her. She knew how she felt. She just needed to describe it in words. “It sucks,” she said instead.

“Yes! Yes, it does suck,” said Josie. Her face was limp and her mouth kept forming a smile only to lose it. This was related to the conversation.

She reached across and placed her hand on Jackie's.

“Erika? Erika? Can we have a moment alone?”

The two beings were no longer on the couch. Through the window Jackie could see one of them plucking absently at a tangle of blackberries, although their head was turned slightly back toward Jackie, presumably trying to hear.

“Jackie, there are things that I cannot tell you.” Josie's hand was still upon Jackie's. Josie's other hand was clenched at her side. “I cannot tell you because they are secret, or because they are impossible to put into words, or because I do not know them. Mostly it is because I do not know them.

“Considering an entire universe of knowledge, worlds upon worlds of fact and history, I know almost none of it. And much of what I know is not the kind of thing that I'm aware I know, or think of as ‘something I know.' What toast smells like, for instance. What sand feels like. Those are not the kinds of facts I would tell anyone, or even think to tell anyone.”

Jackie didn't know what to say. She agreed with all of what Josie was saying but also didn't care about most of it.

“Okay” was all she ended up saying.

“All of this is to say that I am choosing to not tell you some of what I know. Or I am lying to you about it. And I want you to forgive me.”

“We all want things,” said Jackie.

Josie nodded sadly. She stood, which involved a complex rearrangement of flesh and joints and muscles.

“Walk with me,” she said. And Jackie did. They walked into the kitchen. Josie did not acknowledge the bundle on the table, and so neither did Jackie. If Josie wasn't going to express concern about something, then Jackie sure as hell wasn't going to either.

Josie produced a glass of water, through practiced manipula
tion of cupboards and valves and municipal plumbing. Neither she nor Jackie was impressed with the human miracle represented by how easily the glass of water was produced.

“Drink this,” she said, extending it to Jackie. “It'll help with your migraines.”

“I don't get migraines. I've got something much worse.” She started to hold up her left hand.

“Drink.”

Jackie did.

“I don't get migraines, though,” she said after.

“Jackie, I'm sorry that this has happened to you when you are so young. For all those decades you have run the pawnshop, you have been so young and unaware of the cruelty of life outside of the equally but differently cruel bubble of youth.”

“How many decades?” Jackie asked, mostly to herself.

“I know what you are looking for. I know what has happened. And it's going to be very dangerous. You may not live through it. And if you do, the you that lived through it will not be the same you that lived before it. In that sense, you will definitely not exist after, and I'm sorry.”

The bundle started to float off the table. Josie rolled up a Cave and Cavern Decor and Accessories Catalog, the kind that clogged up so many Night Vale mailboxes, and slapped at the bundle. It plopped back on the table.

“Damn ungrateful,” she said.

“What is?” said Jackie.

“Nothing. Nothing is. The man in the tan jacket is from a dangerous place. A place that no one can go to and return from. That's what we think.”

Josie held out her left hand. In it was a slip of paper. It said the name of a place.

“You too?”

“There are many of us. We're not sure what's happening. We need to know more.” Josie tossed the paper on the counter and sat down at a kitchen stool, the slip of paper already back in her hand.

“Where do we start?” said Jackie.

Josie told her. Jackie swore at her, and then apologized for swearing.

“The library, though.” Jackie considered. “No. That's. That's.” She indicated with her hands what it was.

“The search for truth takes us to dangerous places,” said Old Woman Josie. “Often it takes us to that most dangerous place: the library. You know who said that? No? George Washington did. Minutes before librarians ate him.”

Jackie opened the front door. The pain in her gut subsided for a moment, or perhaps only faded under the anxiety of thinking about the library.

The yard outside seemed so bright and so distant from the dim interior. The Erikas carried on with their yard work. There was a hole dug into the backyard that one of them was starting to fill. They stood motionless, muttering at the hole, and a bright black light enveloped the displaced dirt, nudging it back into its place.

There were hands wrapping around her. Josie was hugging her, but the angle was wrong, and there was a significant height difference. They both stood in the unnatural hug for a moment, neither wanting to acknowledge the misalignment of the physical affection.

When Jackie thought about where she had to go, she did not feel fear. But she felt an awareness of how tenuous it was, the collection of thoughts and habits that was Jackie Fierro. How
easily those could all be taken away and rearranged into some other form of matter.

“Stay away from the man. Don't try to follow him to his city. It's a trap.”

“Josie. I can't live with this,” Jackie said, looking at the paper in her hand.

“It's going to be okay,” said Old Woman Josie. “It will be.”

She squeezed harder, and Jackie turned in to the hug, allowing herself to be comforted. Her stomach did not hurt anymore, or it hurt differently.

“That was a lie,” said Josie. “That was one of those times I was lying.”

“I know,” said Jackie. “It's fine.”

She was lying too.