by Joseph Fink
“Then I don’t know where we can get a flamingo. Carlos said he’s got them all.”
“Can you hang on, Diane? I need to run into this store and get something.”
“Sure. Oh, if you’re going into Patty’s, can you get me a croissant?”
“Got it.” Jackie shut the door.
Diane considered the ways they could get a plastic flamingo. Driving around town looking would take all day, especially if Carlos and his team of scientists and Josie and her team of angels or whatever they were had already done a lot of searching.
The radio station was not too far from here. They could head over there and see if Carlos would let them have one of the flamingos. This would be a tough ask, but considering how much Cecil cared for Diane and for her search for Josh, she might have the ally she needed to convince the handsome scientist to hand over a bird or two.
No, she realized, that wouldn’t work. He’s a scientist. Above all things, scientists are protectors of our world. “Scientist is another word for hero,” Mayor Cardinal was fond of saying. They use science to not only learn things but also to change those things so that everything is better going forward. Just like the scientist who cured polio, or that couple who invented radiation, or the astrologers who write our futures for us.
A good scientist would never compromise societal good for one person’s needs.
Jackie opened the door to the car.
“Here’s your croissant.” She handed Diane a cup full of melted butter, yeast, salt, and cold water as well as a spoon and napkin. After wheat and wheat by-products became illegal in Night Vale, Patty continued to make her pastries using the same ingredients and techniques, minus the flour.
“Thanks,” Diane said, desperate for a snack. “Hey, Jackie, listen. I’ve been thinking about how to get a flamingo. It’s a long shot but . . . What’s that?”
Across Jackie’s lap was a metal crowbar, solid black save for a small yellow price sticker.
“We’re going to go to the lab to get some flamingos. If Carlos is on the radio, who’s going to stop us?”
Diane bit her lip. She stared at the crowbar.
“I’ve never thought of myself as a person who steals things.”
“Well, what’s your plan?”
“Never mind. It wouldn’t have worked. Let’s steal them.”
They drove to the science district and pulled up to Carlos’s lab. Diane was on lookout while Jackie tried to crack the combo lock with her crowbar, which was not as easy as it looks in Lee Marvin films.
Loud metal thwack after loud metal thwack made Diane nervous. Surely someone would come to see what the noise was. Or worse, someone would summon the Secret Police using the poorly hidden microphone in their house. They would surely be arrested, or maybe even vanished.
Jackie had not made any progress when a woman with long, wild hair and long, wild nails and long, wild eyes touched her shoulder. Jackie pivoted around and raised the iron bar in an automatic defensive response. The woman did not flinch.
“The world ended over thirty years ago,” the woman said.
“Did it?” Jackie said. She kept the crowbar up.
“I live inside the Community College. I should know.”
“Are you a scientist?” Diane asked, moving between the woman and Jackie, waving for her to lower the crowbar. Jackie did not.
“1983,” the woman said.
“Is 1983 when the world ended?” Diane said, in the way a mother might ask a child if a picture of a train is a train.
“No! Are you crazy?” the woman said. “Well, maybe. Hard to say exactly what date.”
“What’s 1983 then?” Jackie said, finally lowering the crowbar because her arm didn’t have any more strength to keep it up.
“Combo to that lock you’re trying to smash.”
“Who’s trying to smash a lock? I was just checking how strong it was,” Jackie said while smashing the lock once more.
“The good-looking guy keeps snacks in there sometimes. Mostly crap though. You want the tasty stuff, go to the biomed neighborhood. They almost always have beef jerky.”
“Thanks,” Diane said. “We will.”
Jackie shrugged and tried the code. The door opened with an electronic whir. The woman pushed past them and rummaged through the fridge while they grabbed a couple of the linen-wrapped plastic flamingos.
They locked the lab back up, hopped into the Mercedes, and drove.
Diane drove to give Jackie a rest after the exertion of failing to break the lock. Soon they were back on Route 800, heading the same direction as before.
They passed Old Woman Josie’s house, next to the used car lot. No one was in the front yard. The used car salesman still stood on the roof of the old Toyota, howling. Diane did not howl back, but she felt hopeful, once again. Every time she was hopeful.
“Jackie.”
“Mm.”
“Thank you for keeping me company in my nightmare.”
Jackie grinned at her.
“Nah, it’s our nightmare now.”
Diane smiled a little, meant it a lot. Jackie took the flamingos from their wrapping and laid them across the center armrest, and they both put a hand on them. For a moment they both separately thought about holding the other’s hand, and both separately decided not to.
42
Jackie could not remember the highway exactly, but she knew she was in a car, and that car must have come from somewhere. She cast a rearward glance. Empty fields and low hills and the 101 freeway, a distant, growling ribbon with no obvious way to get from there to here.
“How did we get here?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did we take a highway?”
“We took the highway. We used these.” Diane indicated the flamingos under their hands. Somewhere during the journey they had grasped each other’s hands after all.
A sign by the road said, KING CITY WELCOMES YOU across a drawing of two dolphins leaping in fat, blue arcs over a faded sketch of a factory. The wooden sign had grown pale with water damage and disrepair, so the factory building looked hidden in its own smog.
Below the factory was a banner that read MAYOR E . . . But the remaining letters had long ago lost their legibility. There was a very large crow standing just below the sign in the red desert dirt, but, as they drove slowly past, Jackie realized it wasn’t a large crow at all, but a very strange dog.
The dog (or perhaps it was a crow; it was tough to tell) stared at Jackie as they rolled by, mouth agape, displaying small, sharp teeth and a thin, red tongue.
“Guess it worked,” Diane said, smiling, but not feeling any joy.
“Yes,” Jackie said, cringing, but not feeling any fear.
There were few cars on the road as they entered what seemed to be the business district. The cars that were there were taupe, long, flat-hooded with short windshields, and they moved slowly, well below speed limits. No pedestrians were on the streets.
The dusk brought a sandy mist to the hot air, turning the sky ocher. There was a dull roar from above, as if a seashell had been placed directly atop the town.
Diane drove past the post office, which was a one-story stucco building with no front door, a splintered parapet wall with letters missing from its marquee, and a tree that had grown through the broken sidewalk and into one of the many shattered windows lining its front. There was no sign of movement inside.
The hum of the sky did not let up. It sounded like a low-flying jet in a never-ending holding pattern. Diane began to hear whispers in the noise, the way one sees patterns in clouds. The whispers were not words but had the rhythm of language, the tone was needy and desperate, but no matter how much she concentrated she couldn’t understand any of it. The whispers sounded like her own voice.
Diane felt both here and elsewhere. Like she was in the car with Jackie, but also entering addresses into a spreadsheet at work. She was sitting at her desk, clicking keyboard keys, with headphones in listening to soft r
ock. Diane felt two of herself. She had never looked at herself before, not like this. She did not recognize herself, but she understood who she was. Diane looked at her hand on the flamingos and felt her hand on her work desk.
Jackie’s good arm was out the window, the sandy air tickling her skin with hundreds of inconsequential stings, a tangible Morse code saying something meaningless. Jackie could almost hear the staccato pings of grains, the sound traveling through her skin into her body, bypassing her ears. She closed her eyes, partially to force rest on herself, partially to block out the deep amber of King City’s early evening.
Neither told the other what she felt.
Diane noticed a store with a charcoal canvas eave with bold silver sans-serif font reading VHS AND VHS AND VHS . . . She parked the car in front of the store. Neither of them knew exactly where to begin, but if Josh were here out of his own free will, he would certainly find his way to a store like this. He had the teenage attraction to petty bravery, like doing skateboard tricks and watching unmarked VHS tapes.
Jackie stuck a quarter in the parking meter, which was bent in the middle, like it was bowing. There was a hollow clink followed by a hiss. The meter hissed continuously. She circled it, trying to find the source of the noise, and realized it wasn’t coming from the meter but from a few feet to her right.
The hiss was coming from the very large crow, or the very strange dog. It had four legs, but stood on only one. It had sharp teeth and a sharp face.
The dog’s mouth (Jackie was going with very strange dog) was open, and it was hissing. It didn’t seem to need to stop for breath. She took a step backward, and its three unused legs unfurled from its thick barrel body. The legs dragged its body toward her, and then curled back into itself like landing gear. The hiss continued.
Jackie yelped and limped around the back of the Mercedes, grabbing Diane with her good hand. They crossed to the VHS store, Jackie turning to see the dog following them, disappearing and appearing like a figure in a badly constructed flip-book, a little closer each time she looked at it, still hissing, still staring.
Diane was alarmed by Jackie’s alarm as she was firmly pushed into the shop. The store was dark. It was unlocked and the lights were on, but the lights were dim and inconsistently placed, leaving pockets of deep shadow throughout.
There was no clerk’s counter at the front of the store. Only tall shelves full of loose tapes, some labeled and some not. Some shelves were densely packed to the point where tapes lay horizontally across the tops of the vertically pressed rows. Others were nearly empty save a couple of loose tapes scattered on their sides.
They walked down the best-lit aisle toward the back of the store. After several feet, the light grew dimmer, and their aisle grew dark. There were no side aisles to turn down, so they kept walking. Jackie, a teenager herself, couldn’t help but run her hand over the tapes on the shelves. Most had stickers with handwritten titles. She did not stop to browse the selection, but she was certain that some simply had rows of Xs instead of titles or descriptions.
The dog, or whatever it was, was not visible through the shop window, but Jackie could still hear the hissing coming from somewhere. She hurried them down the aisle. It was too dark at this point to see the dead end until they were right up on it. Diane extended her hand just before running into the shelf. She expected her hand to hit a wall of tapes but instead felt something damp and soft and cold. It gave way slightly to her touch. Her jaw tightened and she pulled her hand away. It was wet, and in the low light she could see her fingers were covered in what looked like soil.
As they headed back to where they had entered, there was the hissing again in front of them, source unseen in the distant light or, worse, unseen in the nearby dark. Diane walked behind Jackie, Jackie’s hand on her own shoulder, fingers intertwined with Diane’s. As they walked faster, the hissing grew louder. Ahead was a deep shadow in the aisle. Neither could see anything beyond it.
Jackie’s left arm pulsed. Her body hurt badly. Her legs wobbled, and her eyes felt tender and loose in her skull.
“Diane,” Jackie whispered. The hissing was only a few feet in front of them. She heard the soft click of claws on the floor. “Diane. Grab those tapes.”
“What?” Diane was alarmed by Jackie’s alarm. Jackie was grabbing tapes off the shelf near her waist, and so Diane did the same.
The sides of the tapes were all marked with strings of Xs or Js or Ps or Us. As she pitched them to the floor, she felt the same cold dampness as before. The tapes came apart in their hands, falling away into soft clumps of wet soil. A long beetle crawled out of one and tentatively made its way across the pile they were forming.
There was another soft click on the wood floor as they tore away enough tapes to reveal an open passage to another aisle. Bright light poured through. The hissing stopped.
In the dark quiet of the store, Diane felt the wet tapes pool around her ankles. Jackie felt her atoms letting go of one another. They both watched the shadow where the hiss had been.
“Jackie.” Diane’s eyes filled but did not flood. She placed her hand on Jackie’s back.
They stood, hand to back, teeth together, feet apart, faces parallel to an unknown unseen. They waited for an attack. A tear came loose and trailed down Diane’s cheek. They waited.
A scream came from the shadow ahead of them, a scream like that of a terrified child.
Jackie crouched and dove through the hole in the shelves. Diane stayed, staring, streaks down her face as her mouth loosed itself open, silent, lip-synching the scream she was hearing. Her ears hurt. The scream burrowed into her head, splitting her brain, crawling down her throat, and coming to rest deep in her guts.
She felt a soft touch. Something was tapping lightly at her hand. It was wrapping around her little finger. She could not look. She wanted to follow Jackie, but she could not move. She was trying to scream, but could not find space for it in the continuing, sobbing scream from the shadow around her. The thing grabbed her hand tightly and pulled.
“Diane! Diane, please!”
Jackie, reaching through the hole in the shelf, was pulling on her hand. The moment broken, Diane crouched and crawled through the hole. The other side was bright, fluorescent lights and well-organized, clean shelves. She grabbed a stack of the tapes and used them to fill the hole they had come through. Jackie helped, and soon the hole was completely gone. The scream was muffled, but it continued.
They sat up, leaning against the opposite shelf. The scream stopped. There was no scream. No hiss. Jackie thought she still heard the quiet click of claws on the wood floor, but she couldn’t say for sure.
They exhaled, and then again, over and over until they were exhaling together, Jackie’s arm around Diane’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Diane said after however long, seconds or minutes, they had sat there breathing. “I’m sorry I froze. I’m sorry I brought you here when this is my problem.”
“No, man. I’m sorry I’m broken. I’m sorry I’m weighing you down.”
“Jackie, I know what that was.”
“Seriously?”
“When I was a child, I would, like all children, cry because childhood is traumatic and confusing. And when crying wasn’t enough? When I felt that despair children feel because they don’t understand and won’t be able to for years? Well, then I would scream. I would scream as loud and long as I could. That scream from the shadows was my voice. That was me screaming.”
“Diane, shh.” Jackie’s head rolled onto Diane’s shoulder. “Shh. Let’s just rest for a while.”
Jackie didn’t sleep, but she closed her eyes and wheezed through the pain. Diane looked at the way Jackie’s legs curled outward from the knee across the dusty floor, the way her right arm lolled loosely over her torso.
Diane felt herself standing in her kitchen at home, heating soup on the stove, listening to the radio. She could smell the vegetable broth. She could hear Cecil’s voice. She could feel the steam on her face. She could
see herself. This was not a memory but a moment happening now. Lying with Jackie on the floor of a King City video store, she felt herself splitting, becoming multiple, and, in doing so, becoming less with each iteration.
She stood up. Jackie had rested enough. Diane helped her, groaning, to her feet.
“Hello,” Diane tried calling to someone, anyone, in the store who could help.
“Hello,” came a voice past the shelves.
“Hi, how do I find you?”
“What are you looking for?”
“You.”
“What do you need me for?”
“We’re looking for someone. We’re new to town and we just wanted to see if you can help us. We just have a couple of questions.”
“So ask them.”
Diane decided not to walk any farther, not wanting to get lost in the aisles again.
“Do you have a Secret Police? We’re looking for a missing child.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. The Secret Police sounds secret. I wouldn’t know about that. We have nonsecret police.”
“We’re looking for a police station. Also the City Hall. Maybe the mayor’s office. I mean, if you just had some phone numbers that would be helpful.” Diane was half shouting. She had no sense how far away the voice was, or from which direction it was coming.
“Well, City Hall is where the mayor’s office is. It’s four and a half blocks down Pleasant Street here. That’s the street you’re on now. Of course, we haven’t had a mayor in years. Gonna be an election soon, I hear. Don’t know why, but we haven’t had a mayor, for, oh, I don’t know how long.”
“Where are you?”
“If you got a missing child, I’d try the police first. I think there’s gotta be one nearby. I mean, I don’t know for sure. I’ve never been arrested, you know?” The voice laughed the insipid laugh of casual conversation.