Welcome to Night Vale

by Joseph Fink

  Jackie flipped open to somewhere in the middle.

  King City Fact #1061

  Did you know? King City is the only city in California to have had a mayor right from its very founding. It has never gone a second without a mayor. It has always had one!

  Again.

  King City Fact #702

  The fad of playing “Dark Side of the Moon” over “Wizard of Oz” was popularized by King City’s own George Taylor Morris.

  Again.

  King City Fact #986

  We have the most oranges.

  “What the hell?” she said, flipping faster through the useless book. “I almost died for this?”

  King City Fact #3

  No animals were harmed.

  She tossed the useless book on the car floor and picked up the stack of newspaper articles.

  KING CITY REPORTS SERIOUS TROUBLE WITH

  CONCEPTS OF EXISTENCE, LOSS

  JANUARY 23, 2003

  BY LEANN HART

  Senior Life and Style Reporter

  A city in central California with no apparent connections to our town of Night Vale or the vast, flat desert in which we reside is reporting trouble with ideas like existence and loss. They are reporting that reality isn’t what it used to be, and that life seems somehow empty, or that it always was, and they just never noticed.

  In a press release sent only to Night Vale for reasons we do not understand, King City indicated that it feels out of sync with cities only a few miles away and that perhaps everyone they know are just variations on the same, single person. Everyone is one person, says King City. There are a lot of that person.

  Also, they need to elect a mayor. They haven’t had a mayor in so long. It’s time to elect a mayor, they said.

  The local paper, the King City Rustler, has been printing large glossy photos of some man in a tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase. They have not been printing anything else. No one knows who he is, and no one can remember the photos after they look at them.

  These glossy, color photos seem expensive to print. This is a waste of the newspaper’s funds, everyone thought, but no one said.

  When reached for comment by an angry mob of King City citizens bearing torches, the editor of the Rustler hid.

  Those outside of King City are saying that it is getting harder and harder to find the town, like it is slowly sliding off the map. Roads that used to go into town do not go into town anymore. And those attempting to reach town simply disappear.

  “I’m pretty sure we didn’t used to disappear in King City,” said Wanda Nieves, a local resident who issued her own press release, consisting only of that quote.

  We at the Night Vale Daily Journal are using the massive amount of funds gained in the ever-lucrative newspaper business to investigate why people from King City are sending us annoying press releases and also, if it comes up, why King City is slipping out of our reality under the watchful eyes of a mysterious man in a tan jacket.

  As always, this article contains additional reporting by agents of various unnamed government agencies, who add and subtract words and sentences from newspaper articles in order to send coded messages to compatriots living deep undercover in distant parts of the world.

  Directly after that was another article, with the same layout and the same photo illustration, a self-shot portrait of Leann Hart that she was apparently quite pleased with and so had, for much of 2003–2004, used as illustration for most of her feature stories.

  KING CITY TOTALLY FINE AND BASICALLY

  NOT THAT INTERESTING

  JANUARY 23, 2003

  BY LEANN HART

  Senior Political Reporter

  A city in central California with no apparent connections to our town of Night Vale or the vast, flat desert in which we reside is totally fine. It has a population of about [a brown smudge] and an unemployment rate of [scribbled out with pencil].

  The sun shines there, much as it does here. Sometimes the sun does not shine, and people there refer to this as night. In this respect, and in all others, it is totally normal.

  We at the Daily Journal are not clear why we are reporting on this story, as the fact that King City exists is not in and of itself an interesting fact. If truth be told, and it often shouldn’t be, the town itself is not interesting.

  Good mayor.

  Citizens of King City, when asked via phone, wanted first to know who was calling.

  “Oh, I’m a reporter,” I said. “I was just checking to see if you had anything to say.”

  “Huh,” said the citizens. “Okay. Like, are you asking about something specific?”

  “No, no, no. I don’t even know what the story is here. Maybe if you started talking we’d be able to figure that out together.”

  “Most people don’t ask me to talk about anything,” said the citizens. “Well, I guess my job isn’t fulfilling, but I’m not unhappy about it. I never expected my job to be fulfilling. We’re told so often that employment won’t be fulfilling that the surprise would be if it suddenly turned out to be. I’m not happy about it, but I’m okay with it.”

  “That wasn’t interesting at all,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  The citizens of King City may have commented further. I hung up, so I don’t know.

  I’m not sure what this information does for you exactly, but just know that King City, a city in Monterey County, north of Mexico, south of Oregon, underneath the sky, over a lot of dirt, and then over a different part of the sky, is doing totally fine. Nothing more to report. It’s been a slow day here.

  As always, this article contains additional reporting by agents of various unnamed government agencies who have murdered an innocent man they did not know just so that one of their fellow agents, out of contact but with access to a newspaper, will read the man’s name and realize that the name of the murdered man is itself the message.

  Jackie held up the two stories. They were identical in every way except the reality they were reporting on.

  “This is not encouraging at all,” said Diane.

  “Dude.” Jackie meant a lot by that, but she had no other way to say it.

  “And this doesn’t help,” Diane said, holding up the photo from Troy’s file.

  “Nope. Makes everything worse. I don’t see another car. You need a ride?”

  “Yes, please. I walked here. I needed to get my blood pumping for a library trip. But I think I’ve had enough for today.”

  “Yeah,” said Jackie. She found there was nothing to add to that, no modifiers or scorn or jokes. So she just said it again. “Yeah.”

  Diane studied the photo as Jackie started her car. Every time she looked at it, she could feel her head start to throb. Maybe she did have migraines.

  “Can you develop migraines later in life?” she asked.

  “Why the hell do people keep talking to me about migraines?”

  “You too?”

  They shared a confused glance.

  “Fine. I don’t care. I don’t need another stupid mystery to solve,” said Jackie.

  The photo in Diane’s hand was old, yellowing and cracked, and bending at the edges. In it, there was a man who was definitely Troy. He could not have been anyone else. He had his arm around a little girl. They were posed in the middle of downtown Night Vale, but a downtown that had not existed for probably more than a hundred years.

  Diane studied the face, blandly handsome, smiling blandly. Definitely Troy.

  “Maybe we should talk to Leann Hart,” Jackie said.

  “Yeah.” There was a lot she could add to that, but she didn’t have the energy. So Diane just said it again. “Yeah.”

  She thought she might throw up. If not right then, later. At some point in her life she would. It was a statistical thing.

  30

  Diane and Jackie quietly read the clippings on the wall, displayed around a large, well-used hatchet. It was one of many hatchets Leann Hart kept as part of her
business. It was a failing business, but Leann kept it alive.

  The clippings showcased some of Night Vale Daily Journal’s most famous headlines:

  Glow Cloud Threatens Farms:

  Dead Animals Falling from Sky

  City Council Approves Humming:

  Private Residences Only, Max 50 Decibels

  Everything Is Fine

  Totally Fine

  Carry On

  Feral Dogs Actually Just Plastic Bags, Says Mayor

  Scientists Announce “Relax. Sun Is Not Real.”

  WORMS!

  All Hail the Glow Cloud!

  Wheat-Free Night Vale

  Wheat and Its By-Products Turn into Snakes, Cause Deaths

  Street-Cleaning Day: Run for Your Lives. Run! Run!

  As editor of the Night Vale Daily Journal for the past three decades, Leann had been present for the steady popularity and then sudden decline of print news.

  Many of her ideas were cost-effective (cutting back to four issues a week). Some seemed like good ideas but failed for unexpected reasons (replacing newspapers in street kiosks with 2 percent milk, which apparently spoils quickly in sunlight). And some were hugely successful (attacking independent news bloggers with hatchets).

  The last was a controversial decision, as attacking a person with a hatchet (with anything really) is technically a crime. But Leann made it work by engaging in semiotic arguments with law enforcement about what is assault and what is a business plan. One of her degrees is an MBA, she often told law enforcement officers. Few officers have an MBA, so they rarely argued with her.

  Leann’s office featured an entire wall of hatchets, held up at angles by screws drilled into the faux wood paneling. Most of them were new and shiny. There were five in the center that were old, with curved gray wood handles. Their heads were smaller than those of the other hatchets. They were flinty, dull, with inscriptions depicting each of the five Ws of Journalism (What? What! What!? What. Why?).

  On another wall were her college diplomas, both of which were handwritten in Cyrillic. Neither could have been her MBA, as, since the early 1960s, all MBA degrees have been issued via subdermal microchip.

  Having read everything on the wall twice over, Jackie broke the silence. “Let me do the talking, okay?”

  “That’s fine,” Diane said.

  “I mean, you can if you want to.”

  “No, really, you do it.”

  “You obviously want—”

  “Hello.”

  This last was from Leann, who had entered the room with her hatchet. Her voice sounded distant, like she was still in the other room even as she sat on a couch underneath the wall of hatchets and gestured for the two of them to sit across from her in the smooth, white chairs. (Were those ivory? Unlikely, especially since ivory had been outlawed, and even living elephants had had their tusks confiscated by strict regulators.) The chairs were tall and rigid with thin seat pads but were surprisingly comfortable. Diane and Jackie did their best not to move around much in them. (Definitely not ivory. Perhaps some kind of bone? The knots where the legs met seemed almost like joints.)

  “Well?” said Leann. Her voice sounded even farther away, like she was shouting from down a long corridor.

  Diane looked at Jackie, who was looking at Diane.

  “Go ahead,” Diane said, and Jackie laid out the two news articles about King City.

  “Hi, Leann. I’m Jackie, and this is Diane C——”

  Leann snatched the articles from the table and held them to the light.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “The library.”

  Leann widened her eyes and mouthed “Library.” It was not clear whether she was impressed or skeptical.

  “King City, huh?” she said. “Quiet town. Suburban without the urban. Not much to say about it.”

  She set the articles down on the coffee table. Jackie opened her mouth, but Diane spoke first.

  “But what about this other article? Which article is telling the truth?”

  Jackie closed her mouth and looked at Diane.

  “A good journalist doesn’t have to discuss the truth,” said Leann, waving toward her diplomas. “Some details are secret or off the record.”

  “What—” said Jackie

  “So what stuck out to you about this mayor?” Diane asked. “You don’t mention his name in either article. You just say ‘Good mayor.’ You wrote that here as an entire paragraph: ‘Good mayor.’”

  “Well, they have a good mayor,” said Leann.

  “But—” said Jackie.

  “Hang on, Jackie,” Diane said. “Leann, we need any information you have. This is important.”

  “And why is it so important?” said Leann, testing the edge of the hatchet against her finger. It drew a dot of blood and she smiled.

  “I don’t know who I am and I don’t understand the progression of time as it relates to me,” said Jackie.

  Leann nodded. “We’ve all been there.”

  “I lost my job,” said Diane. “I’ve distanced myself from my son. I’m teetering. I feel like the breath before a scream.”

  “Listen to me, young ladies.” (“Young ladies,” Diane mouthed but did not interrupt.) “Good reporting is not wasting words or space. I can’t afford the column inches to describe every insignificant detail about a story or all the information that might be pertinent.”

  “But what about—” said Jackie, but Diane spoke over her.

  “We’ll make this simple. Which of those two stories is true? Which one can we trust?”

  Leann thought about this.

  “I don’t know. Or I don’t remember. Or a journalist never reveals her secrets.”

  “That’s a magician,” Jackie said. “A magician never reveals her secrets.”

  “Isn’t a journalist a type of magician?” said Leann, lifting one eyebrow. The effect was very irritating.

  “No,” said Jackie. “Definitely not, no.”

  “I think what Jackie’s trying to say, Leann, is that—”

  “I’m trying to say this,” said Jackie, standing.

  She reached over Leann’s shoulder, grabbed a hatchet (the one inscribed with “What!?”). Jackie hefted the hatchet over her head and put her hand down on the table between all of them. Before either of the other women could do anything in response, she swung the hatchet down and chopped the slip of paper in her hand in two. Then up again, this time a series of quick, light hacks, like a chef cutting up a chiffonade. Once the slip was shredded, she swept all the paper off the table, scattering it into the air and onto the thick carpet.

  “Look,” Jackie said. She held up the intact piece of paper that said “KING CITY.”

  “Now, I need to know everything you know about this place,” she said, waving the paper.

  “How did you do that?” Leann said.

  “A magician never reveals.”

  Diane had of course noticed the piece of paper in Jackie’s hand, but this was confounding. She found she had nothing to ask, or she had many things to ask but no way to voice them.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” was all Diane could say.

  “There’s a lot of us with these papers,” said Jackie. “Diane, I saw you had one, but I don’t know what you did with it.”

  “He wanted me to give it to my son. But I didn’t. I threw it away. Or no, I—I don’t remember what I did with it.”

  “Lucky.” Jackie dismissed Diane. “I keep mine in my hand, because it won’t leave. Now, Leann, which of these stories is true? Do you have any idea?”

  “I imagine they both are,” said Leann. “I’m imagining that because I don’t have any idea.”

  She narrowed her eyes to better assess Jackie. Definitely impressed this time.

  “You’ve obviously been there,” said Jackie. “You wrote two articles about the place. Can you put us in touch with anyone there?”

  “Oh no, I never actually went there or talked to anyone there. I’m a reporter, not a
snoop.”

  31

  Jackie pulled up to the front of Diane’s house. She looked down at her hand, which was crumpling up the paper and then letting it spring open uncreased again and again. The drive had been quiet since she told Diane the story of the paper.

  “I know the man in the tan jacket you’re talking about,” Diane broke the silence. “His name is Evan.”

  “If you say so. I don’t remember the name he gave me. Efran maybe?”

  “I used to work with him, I think. But I’m starting to feel that what we think may not be the most reliable test of truth.”

  “John Peters. You know, the farmer? He told me that you were involved with the man in the tan jacket.”

  “John said that?”

  “Well, nah, not outright. But he implied it, sure.”

  Diane shook her head.

  “That man. He always loves to be ahead of the gossip. So much so I think he makes up half of it.”

  “All of these men,” said Jackie. “Each one carrying a mystery that’s not as interesting as he thinks. I don’t want their mysteries. I want a life on an even level.”

  Diane nodded. Jackie’s exhaustion was also her own.

  “Or maybe I want to grow older,” Jackie said. “Maybe that is what I want. But I want to do it because I’m ready, not because someone else is ready for me.”

  She found that when she looked at Diane now, she saw a woman who, yes, happened to be older than her, but, yes, also had her own worries, her own worrying lot in life. Jackie softened her voice.

  “Who are we following, Diane? Who’s the blond man at the diner? And at the bank and the movie theater and who knows where else?”

  “He’s a police officer too,” said Diane.

  It’s amazing how much a roll of dimes weighs, the house thought.

  “So who is he?”

  “Josh’s father. Left town when Josh was born.”

  “Asshole.”

  Diane smiled. She hadn’t talked about Troy leaving since shortly after it happened. It always felt somehow like a mistake she had made. An embarrassing moment for her. Jackie’s response was honest and simple, and in just two syllables put all the onus on Troy.

  After all the back-and-forth with Josh, the weird business at work, it felt good to have a person on her side.