Welcome to Night Vale

by Joseph Fink

  “Anyway, I don’t know where Josh is precisely,” he said. “Around, I suppose. The important thing is that he’s in King City. And he’ll stay in King City. For now, at least. Until everything is right again he’ll have to stay here. I’ve worked for a long time to get him here.”

  Some other version of Diane was running, although this Diane wasn’t sure whether it was for exercise or to flee. She didn’t have access to the other Diane’s emotions, only her speed. She had trouble focusing with so many versions of herself in her head.

  “Where is Josh?” she said, and moved at the man with her hand up. She wanted to destroy him. She had never wanted to destroy anything before. He sprang out of his chair, face red. The flies formed a furious, pulsing black cloud between her and him.

  “Attacking me won’t help,” he shouted, and the flies echoed his words with their buzzing. “Now sit down, Diane Crayton.”

  She did not sit down, but she didn’t move forward either. This wasn’t because of what he said but because the large black cloud of flies made her anxious. The other Diane in her head had stopped running, although she didn’t know whether this was because the exercise was over or because she had been caught.

  “Josh is completely safe,” he said, sitting back down. The cloud of flies lowered with him, still staying between him and Diane. “But this town needs him.”

  “You’re the mayor of this town, if you can call it a town. Why can’t you work out the problems on your own? Why would you need a fifteen-year-old boy from some other place to do your work for you?”

  “This town doesn’t know that I’m mayor. Ever since the problems started, no one can remember me.” He reset himself to a milder tone, a gentler posture. “I was mayor when that man came to town, and ever since then the people of King City will regularly decide they need to elect a mayor because they don’t have one. They will go through all the motions of that: setting up the polling places, arranging candidates, talking to each other about who would be right for the job or mostly not paying attention and not talking about it. And then on the day of the election, someone involved will look at the paperwork and realize they already have a mayor. Confused and frustrated, they’ll take everything down, cancel the whole election, and go home unsatisfied. Then, a few months later, they’ll start again, having forgotten completely that I exist.”

  He gestured to the cloud of flies in front of him, and they settled back down as a squirming ball in the open suitcase.

  “It’s been so long since anyone could remember me at all. To be remembered is, I think, a basic human right. Not one that occurs to a person when it is there, but like a parched throat in a desert when it is gone.”

  Diane didn’t care about the man’s problems. But there was one part of what he had said that interested her.

  “Who do you mean by ‘that man’?”

  44

  Jackie followed Troy to a bar. She knew what it was because it had a large sign saying BAR outside. It was in a wooden building that it shared with an insurance agency. The building itself looked old and worn but also like it might have been built recently to look old and worn.

  Troy went inside, and Jackie followed after.

  She couldn’t see him. The long bar was full even though the working day wasn’t quite over. All men, of course. She rolled her eyes. All the booths were full too, all men, all hunched over.

  There was the gurgle of a tap. The bartender, whom she couldn’t see over the line of men at the bar, was pouring a beer. Maybe for a newcomer to the bar, one who had just walked in. She headed in that direction.

  Her eyes were still grappling with the change from glaring sunlight to dim bar, and so she could not see what was happening when shouting started from the back of the bar.

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “Say it again.”

  There was the thump of a person falling over. The men at the bar were turning with interest, and she noticed something odd about them, but it was lost as the fight in the back became more violent.

  “I’ll say it as many times as I want.”

  A few punches. A clatter of people running into chairs. More punches. The men were starting to get up and run to the back.

  “If you break anything that belongs to the establishment, you will pay,” shouted the bartender. “Cash or jail time, means the same to me.”

  But he too started to run to the back.

  “Gentlemen, please,” he said.

  He was blond.

  Blond. That was what she had noticed. All the men in the bar were blond. Her eyes started to focus in on dim shapes. She followed the last of the running men to a small open area with a pool table and jukebox in the back.

  There were two men on the floor, wrestling and flailing. Their faces were red. Both of them were Troy.

  “Gentlemen, take this outside at once,” said the bartender.

  “Ah, let them fight,” said one of the bystanders. “What else do we all have to do out here?”

  She recognized both voices. The bartender was Troy. So was the bystander.

  Her vision fully adjusted. She was surrounded by an enormous circle of Troys, watching the two Troys fight in the middle. Every person in the bar was Troy.

  The crowd around her swayed in empathetic motion with the fighting men. She was jostled in the wave of Troys. As she tried to squeeze herself from the crowd, the group of alike men next to her lurched left and knocked her to the floor.

  They were laughing and cheering and attempted but failed to step gingerly around her tender legs.

  She grunted and cursed. One of the men made a barely attentive hand gesture toward her, but otherwise they ignored her, so, with great pain and exasperation, she lifted herself to her feet and edged her way behind the moving mass of men back to the exit.

  She sagged against the wooden facade of the building. She wished she had Diane again. The pain in her left arm was making it hard to think or move. She worried that pain meds would cloud her mind, and so she paced herself with them. Anyway, the pain meds the hospital had given her were just a bag of wood chips, and so she doubted their effectiveness.

  A blond man with a future shiner across his right eye staggered out of the bar. He stopped near Jackie and looked down the street, cursing under his breath.

  “Hey,” Jackie said, pushing off the wall with her back in hopes of not looking so weak, although her pain and the shock of meeting Troy after everything she had learned about him made her sag right back against it. Without much practice to this point in her life, she tried, clumsily, to make casual adult conversation: “You smoke?”

  “No, sorry,” he said, looking at her without recognition.

  “Neither do I. Don’t know why I asked. I’m sorry. My name’s Jackie. What’s your name?”

  “Troy.” His eyes narrowed. “How old are you? Your parents know you’re out at a bar?”

  “My dad does.”

  He looked out over the empty fields and low, brittle-grassed hills to the always busy 101 and the deepening sky of late dusk behind it, rubbing the back of his head vacantly. He looked concussed, but, more than that, he looked like he knew something he didn’t want to know.

  “All right, kid. I got clocked and just needed some air. Gonna head back in and—”

  “What’s the deal with everyone here? Why do you all look the same? Are you all named Troy? Do you know Diane Crayton?”

  She had so much to ask, like when you run into a favorite actor or author. How do you say everything you’ve wanted to say to a person who has been a big part of your life and doesn’t know you at all?

  “Diane,” Troy said, frowning nervously.

  “Diane Crayton. From Night Vale. She’s raising your boy Josh.”

  “Oh. Well.” Troy nodded, edging toward the door. “How is she?”

  “Why don’t you ask her yourself?” She let him hear the bitterness in her voice.

  “Yeah,” he said, not exactly in response to what she said but just to make a s
ound.

  “There’s dozens of you. Why doesn’t one of you go talk to her? Do you do anything but sit here and drink?”

  “This is just who I am . . . um.”

  “Jackie.”

  “Jackie. I am who you see. I don’t know how to explain it. How to . . .” He grunted. “It’s hard, okay. It’s just a thing I deal with.”

  The door to the bar opened and another Troy came out. And then several, if not all, of the Troys came out. They all stared sideways at Jackie.

  “Whatever, it’s fine,” she said, not afraid of any one of her fathers, but nervous around so many.

  “Of course it’s fine,” the Troy with the bruised eye said. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. I don’t know you. How’d you break your arm? Why does your dad let you drink? Why’re you bothering me about Diane?”

  The Troys stepped forward. One of them said, “Is this girl bothering you?” Another one said, “Give a guy some room, lady.” And another one said, “Back off, guys.” And another one—and Jackie wondered if she imagined this one, it was so quiet—said, “Jackie?”

  The crowd of Troys were all speaking at once to her, to each other. She backed up.

  “Listen, man,” she said. “All of you . . . men. I just . . . all right. I gotta go.”

  Her father was so many, and all of him did not know her. She limped away as quickly as she could. Once out of sight, she fell against the stained stucco wall of a store with a sign that said PLANTS, slumped and aching. None of him called after, and none of him followed her. One by one, all of him drifted back into the bar.

  45

  Jackie pulled on the front door of City Hall, but it was locked. She shook it a couple of times. She knocked. She tried bleeding on it. Nothing.

  “Open,” she shouted at the door. “Open up.” But it was not a shouting door either. The buildings in King City looked mostly the same, mostly cold and colorless, but City Hall, the breath of life for any living city, sat small and shriveled like a smoker’s lung. “C’mon,” she whined, helpless.

  Nothing in this town made sense. Nothing makes sense anywhere, she supposed, but the difference between the comforting nonsense of home and the alien nonsense of King City made her feel deeply the miles between there and here, and the time that had passed since she had felt comfortable anywhere. She kicked the door, and the only result was a searing wave from her toes up her leg and through her arm.

  She walked around the building. On the far side was another door. Unlike the front door, it had no signage and was plain and heavy and dark. Also unlike the front door, it was open.

  Instead of a trash room or storage closet, the back door led into a classy, if dated, reception area. The left and right walls were lined with paintings of people in chronological eras of dress. Under the paintings on each wall was a plaque that read, FORMER MAYORS.

  The receptionist sat at a metal desk, and on the wall behind the receptionist was a painting of a man wearing a tan jacket. On the desk was a guest sign-in sheet.

  “Hi, did a Diane Crayton come in this way?” Jackie said, leaning over the sign-in, scanning for Diane’s name. Every line was blank. The receptionist grabbed the sign-in sheet away from her.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she said, her voice hoarse and her eyes swollen.

  “My friend was here to meet with the mayor. E-Ev-Evan?” Jackie said, curling his name into a question. “Everett. Elliott. Your mayor. She came to meet with the mayor.”

  “We don’t have a mayor.” The receptionist smiled, as if this had been a convoluted icebreaker and now they could have a real conversation.

  “You do, though.”

  “I’m sorry. We do not currently have a mayor. We’re an unusual town in that way, I guess. If your friend said she was coming to see the mayor of King City, she was either lying or disappointed.”

  The receptionist’s smile turned from friendly to smug.

  “No. You do. Look.” Jackie pointed to the painting behind the receptionist.

  “I have never seen that painting before.”

  “Read the plaque.”

  The receptionist read the plaque aloud. “Current mayor.”

  “That’s who I’m here to see.”

  “How did I not know that we have a mayor?” The receptionist frowned, looking neither friendly nor smug. She stood and said, “Wait here,” before running out the entrance of the building, leaving a ring of keys on the desk and an unsecured computer, which on closer inspection was unplugged, and on even closer inspection was a painted model carved of wood.

  Jackie shrugged, grabbed the keys, and headed down the hallway next to the reception desk. There were few doors along the long hall. What doors there were had no knobs or hinges, which made them not doors but door-like walls. They had frosted-glass windows and etched room numbers that followed no simple logic: 43-EE was next door to AX-6, which was across the hall from L. Jackie tried pushing on them and sliding them and knocking on them, but nothing happened.

  The hall was long and winding. There were no tributary hallways. Given the small size of the outer building, and the incredible length of the hallway, Jackie was certain the hall was spiraling underground, but every few feet there was a window facing outside. Jackie could peer out and see trees and buildings and taupe, slow-moving traffic. The last light of dusk mixed with the anemic low-watt fluorescent lighting.

  She knocked on each door hoping to find someone, hoping to find Diane or the mayor or whatever he was. Sometimes she thought she heard voices in soft conversation behind these non-doors, and as she would knock and push and shake the wall, the voices would go silent.

  She pressed her face to the frosted glass when she heard voices, hoping to see inside, hoping just to catch movement of some sort. Even if it meant a terrified or irate employee bursting into the hallway to confront her, that would have been fine by Jackie. She would at least have someone to talk to.

  But each door, nothing. Nothing at door 55. Nothing at door T9. Nothing at FLX-8i.7. Nothing at 2. Nothing at SUPPLIES. Nothing at 3315. Something at CTY. REC. Something small.

  It was one of few doors that had meaningful lettering. She listened at first, then pushed lightly, then heavily. She tried lifting and sliding the door. She knocked. She pressed her face to the glass. She didn’t know why, but she did something she had not done at any of the other non-doors. She put her hand to the glass.

  She set her palm against the glass and spread her fingers. When she lifted it away, it left its ghost upon the glass, a hand raised to say, “Stop.” Or “Come here.” Or “Hello.” Or “Help.” Or maybe only “I am here. This hand, at least, is real.”

  Behind the handprint she saw a shadow approaching the glass.

  “Diane?” Jackie stepped back and prepared whatever energy was left in her to flee whatever might be behind the door.

  As it neared the glass, she could see that the shadow had what looked like antlers—sleek, tapered antlers from a bulbous skull.

  “Diane?” Jackie asked, less hopefully.

  “No,” said a voice, and the door began to crack. A yellow sliver of light split the black floor near Jackie’s feet and began to widen. Jackie could not move. The door opened and she saw.

  46

  “Who do you mean by ‘that man’?” said Diane.

  “Troy,” said the man in the tan jacket.

  “Troy,” she said.

  “Diane,” he said, “let me tell you a story about Troy.”

  A STORY ABOUT TROY

  There once was a town called King City that was completely normal. Or it had many small abnormalities, minor secrets, moments throughout its history that didn’t quite add up, and events that no one ever talked about. And, in that way, it was completely normal.

  It sat on a stretch of the 101 freeway between a town called Greenfield and a state wildlife area. This stretch of the 101 was not interesting to anyone. Citizens of King City would dispute this, because they had been born there, or had fallen in love
or had gone south of the law or gone above expectations, had lived full lives along that stretch of freeway. But for most anyone else driving past on their way north or south it was nothing and then a town and then not a whole lot more.

  The mayor of that town was a young, energetic man, with a wife and a daughter and a house. There were people he loved and things he owned. There were also people he did not love and things he did not own. He lived a full life.

  Not long after he was elected, a new man arrived in town. People arrived in town all the time. It wasn’t that distant from other places, and it was along a major thoroughfare. There was a Taco Bell where people could pee. There was a gas station where people could pee. There were all sorts of things. The mayor was proud of his town.

  But the stranger wasn’t passing through. He was coming to live. He said he came from a town, not that far away, or possibly quite far away. He wasn’t sure.

  “Distance is confusing,” the stranger would tell people, anyone who would listen. “So is time.”

  He would shake his head and invite them to join him in considering the folly of space and time.

  This was not why he was noticed.

  Why he was noticed was that he was very helpful. As it turned out, he was that rare combination of nice and competent. There didn’t seem to be a lot he couldn’t do.

  Car troubles? Sure, I know a thing or two about engines. Nothing much, but I can take a look. And the car would be running in no time.

  Bill troubles? Actually, I know a bit about the law on that stuff. Let me just talk to them for a second, see if there’s anything I can work out. And the bill collectors would never call again.

  Broken heart? Buddy, you don’t know how much experience I have in that area. Let me buy you a drink and we’ll talk about it. And while alcohol never fixed the problem, it certainly made the person feel better for the time that the conversation lasted.

  Everyone in town grew to like him very much.