The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe

by Joseph Fink

  The coach then reached his fingers into his mouth, pulling his tongue slowly out, slowly, slowly, not stopping. He kept pulling his seemingly endless tongue out, staring at the reporters the whole time. After he stretched it to about two feet the last reporter left the room, clearly shaken. The coach remained in his office quietly, and with wide eyes, pulling out his enormous tongue.

  Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, says that just this morning he was visited by a man in a tan jacket who carried a deerskin suitcase. Larry said the man approached his farm and asked about how much sunshine he had been getting. “I told him. John Peters, you know, the farmer?, his imaginary corn crop had been good this summer, and the sun seemed to be doing just fine,” Larry said, “although, some days there’s no sunrise at all, and on other days the sunrise is extremely loud.”

  Larry added that this was a pretty strange question, asking about how much sunshine he’d be getting, as the sun comes up every day (save those two or three sunless days last week). Larry said he was a nice enough fellow, though, named Emmett.

  Larry said he couldn’t remember exactly what Everett looked like. Nor what his last name was. When asked who Everett was, Larry replied, the fellow in the tan jacket. When told he just said the man’s name was Emmett, Larry replied, “Yes. Ernest. I said that. Don’t bog me down, son.” Then he slapped the reporter’s tape recorder making the following loud thumping noise.

  [Loud mic thump]

  Larry said that after the man left his home, he saw a dark black line in the sky, coming from the heavens down to near where Old Woman Josie lives, down by the old car lot. He said he thinks it was probably something to do with those weird, tall friends of hers that fly around and make loud trumpet noises and will not stop smiling all the time.

  When asked if he meant angels, Larry replied, “Don’t bog me down, son,” and then started weeping. “Angels aren’t real,” Larry said through quick breaths and incomprehensible tears.

  As part of our service to our town, Night Vale Community Radio is taking another moment to allow one of the candidates for mayor to make a brief statement. The following is from Hiram McDaniels.

  GOLD HEAD: Hi, I’m Hiram McDaniels. You’ve heard a lot of things from my opponent about how the night sky is beautiful but sad, and how sagebrush is a very important smell. You’ve also heard that I’m literally a five-headed dragon.

  All of that is completely correct. But what you haven’t heard is that I’m literally a five-headed dragon who cares.

  This is also my campaign slogan. “I’m literally a five-headed dragon. Who cares?”

  What you haven’t heard is that I care about small business owners. What you haven’t heard is that I care about the future of our children. What you haven’t heard is that I care about the future of our small children business owners. Have you ever heard the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home say that?

  No, you haven’t. Really, you shouldn’t be able to hear her say anything at all. She doesn’t have a mouth. I have five mouths.

  What you haven’t heard is—

  GREEN HEAD: Do you hear the beating of my terrible wings? Do you feel the flames lick at the corners of a life you once thought belonged to you?

  GOLD HEAD: Sorry about that. My green head got excited. We all have human foibles. I don’t. I’m literally a five-headed dragon.

  What you haven’t heard is my new plan for an expanded park system and more youth sports programs.

  PURPLE HEAD: And you will never hear it. It’s secret, and buried in a hidden place.

  GOLD HEAD: That’s a good point, purple head!

  So vote for me, Hiram McDaniels. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is all about politics as usual. Also she doesn’t have a mouth, and that’s weird.

  GREEN HEAD: A stillness touches the most frantic heart as we all look up in awe and terror. A sudden shout of fire, and all is forgiven. A gentle touch of flame, and all is as if it never was.

  GOLD HEAD: Hiram McDaniels. What you haven’t heard can’t hurt you.

  CECIL: Listeners, we received word from Old Woman Josie that a half dozen yellow helicopters are circling her home at this moment. She also said that she’s receiving no sunlight. She says all of her clocks tell her it’s the middle of the day, but that she is receiving no sunlight.

  And, yes, I’m looking at our own station clocks, including the wristwatch Carlos gave me for our one-month anniversary—the watch he said is the one true timepiece in all of Night Vale—and it is indeed the middle of the day. I have only been on the air a few minutes, and before I arrived in this studio, the sun was definitely out, no clouds in the sky.

  Josie also told us that she used her old opera glasses to look more closely at the helicopters. Just an aside, for our younger listeners: Josie was the chairwoman of the Night Vale Opera for many years, until it folded in the early 1990s when a massive puppy infestation destroyed the theater’s infrastructure.

  Josie said each helicopter has a large triangular logo with an orange S in the middle. She doesn’t know what that means, but she thinks the darkness enveloping her home is the angels’ last act to try to protect her. Wherever they have gone, they have left behind a protective shade, keeping out the helicopters and all other dark forces.

  I reminded her that angels aren’t real, and she said, as if I hadn’t even interrupted, that if she falls, so does this town.

  There was a long pause, and then she said, “We never go bowling anymore, Cecil. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know,” I reflected. “There has been a tiny underground army living under the bowling alley, and they’ve declared war on us all. They injured my new boyfriend. Also, I have a new boyfriend. Listen, we should totally get the team back together and go to league night again, like old times.”

  “I would like that, Cecil,” she said, but then her voice slowed, turning cold, as if we were strangers with wrong numbers. “I’m afraid the sunlight has come back,” and the phone went silent.

  Listeners, I do not know what is happening or to whom these helicopters belong. But I do know that we must protect our town, Night Vale, protect it from all outsiders, whether they are flying machines, or tiny warmongering civilizations, or simply neighbors who don’t say the pledge of allegiance loudly enough.

  I hope Josie is safe. I hope you are safe. I hope we all live to see tomorrow’s sunrise, or whatever day the next sunrise is. But for now, I give you the weather.

  WEATHER: “Palabras de Papel” by Nelson Poblete

  Listeners, I just received word from Vithya, who went downtown to the city records office. She said she found several Emmetts, Everetts, and Ernests, but there was one particular file that stuck out to her. And she copied that file and put that copy in her backpack and then walked out into the street, ready to begin her investigation into the identity of the man in the tan jacket.

  But according to witnesses, Vithya found herself caught up in what looked like a strong wind. She lifted slightly off the ground. Witnesses all agreed that she began to elongate. She began to glow a deep black. A dark pulsing aura. And amid the sounds of bold trumpets and melancholy cellos and even the haunting call of a muted French horn, Vithya ascended to heaven.

  To the family of Vithya, let me say that she was a very good intern, and while angels are not real, we are certain she is in a better place, whatever that place might be. She has become a better thing, whatever that thing might be. Know that your daughter did not die in vain, and perhaps given the tenuous reality of existence, she may not have died at all, for it’s debatable whether any of us ever truly live.

  The witnesses all agreed that Vithya was no longer real and that we were no longer allowed to know anything about her.

  “It was a lovely sight,” said one witness.

  “I cannot even describe the beauty of her ascension,” said another.

  “You kind of did, though,” said another witness, who was wearing a fedora. “By saying you cannot describe somethi
ng, that is a sort of apophasis (a paralipsis, if you will), which gives the object an implied description through nondescription,” he continued. “Plus the word indescribable carries with it a universal connotation, and is itself a description. Here, let me explain.”

  But the other witnesses moved a little ways up the sidewalk, so they could no longer hear the man. They said nothing to one another. They just stood in a circle, sharing the knowledge that they had seen something they should never have seen. They looked one another in the eyes. They breathed in unison. They smiled politely, intimately, knowingly, until one of them, in fact, each of them as individuals, decided that the moment had passed, and they parted ways. They will likely never see the others again, and if they do, they will be but unacquainted pedestrians.

  But before they left, the witnesses said that some low-flying yellow helicopters began dropping orange leaflets onto the city streets. The leaflets read: “Strexcorp Synergists, Inc. Look around you. Strex. Look inside you. Strex. Go to sleep. Strex. Believe in a smiling god. Strexcorp: It is everything.”

  Oh no.

  Dear listeners, we must issue an apology! Those helicopters are completely safe. Even safer than safe. In fact, Strexcorp recently bought our little radio station from the mysterious unseen forces who founded it centuries ago.

  I’m glad to know that Josie will be okay, and that Strexcorp has come to Night Vale. Rest easy, listeners, knowing that this was all just a simple misunderstanding. But now we fully understand everything that is happening, and we are not misunderstanding anything else at all. We are completely safe.

  Stay tuned next for the sound of slow steady dripping and occasional screams.

  Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

  PROVERB: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never quite describe the pain.

  EPISODE 33:

  “CASSETTE”

  OCTOBER 15, 2013

  THIS EPISODE REPRESENTS THE COMPLETE OTHER END OF THE WRITING speed spectrum as episode 31, “A Blinking Light Up on the Mountain.” I’m not sure whether this or episode 45, “A Story About Them,” took longer, but they both probably tie as the episodes that took me the longest to write.

  I remember some time in the spring of 2013 running into Jeffrey at a bar and telling him more or less the entire plot of this episode, because it had just occurred to me and I was excited about it. It was so clear to me, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

  I now know this is a warning sign, but at the time I thought it was a hopeful omen. Surely knowing exactly what the story would be would make it a quick one to write. But instead I spent months on the draft, trying and trying to make it sound on the page the way it did in my head. I think finally I made it work. I’ve often seen this episode pointed to by fans as one of the scarier ones. Good.

  Also, if you are reading these scripts without having listened, I’d urge you to jump in for just a couple minutes to hear Cecil’s teen voice. It’s delightful.

  —Joseph Fink

  SO, I LOVE HORROR MOVIES . . . STEPHEN KING WAS THE FIRST ADULT AUTHOR I read as a kid. I begged my mom to let me watch The Shining and The Exorcist at way too young an age. I snuck out past my bedtime to catch Twin Peaks when it premiered. My teenage years were spent watching deliciously schlocky horror flicks after midnight on cable television (Basket Case, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, C.H.U.D., etc.).

  I think it’s pretty obvious why I love this episode, both as a creator and as a listener. I have always thought of comedy and horror as not-so-distant cousins.

  Recording this episode was pure fun for me. Working in off-off-Broadway theater has taught me to look for simple, effective (and cheap) solutions to complicated artistic puzzles. When Joseph presented the idea of portraying a “teenage Cecil” to me, we talked a lot about post-production voice manipulation (which there is a bit of in the final product), but the real answer was pretty clear . . . just create an honest portrait of a teenage character, and the audience will go along for the ride! Besides pitching my voice a tad higher, I recorded the cassette portions of this episode while pacing and almost dancing around my living room in order to capture the exuberance I associate with being a teenager. Cecil Palmer is a pretty excitable character that wears his emotions on his sleeve, so I figured teenage Cecil was an extension of that excitement, taken to the nth degree. So after establishing that youthful enthusiasm, what an amazing gut-punch at the end of the episode to reverse those expectations and quietly, honestly play a young person in peril. The final product, I believe, is quite chilling. Enjoy!

  —Cecil Baldwin, Voice of Cecil Palmer

  Perhaps you noticed something strange yesterday, and perhaps you have forgotten it.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  Hello listeners. I’ll get to the news in a moment, but first: I was digging through some of the stored-up belongings clogging my closet, you know, childhood toys, blood-soaked rags, a gem the size of a fist that shows you visions of yourself as an old man staring wistfully back at the past that is your now. That kind of thing. And I came across these cassette tapes marked “Cecil Radio Test. Age 15.” You know, listeners, I have no memory whatsoever of making these tapes. Isn’t that so weird? At one point they must have meant so much to me, and now they are just objects, with no remembered life attached to them at all. I thought we could listen to them together, just me and you, all of the yous out there.

  Here we go.

  [Teenage Voice]

  Hi! Cecil here. Mom gave me this recorder for my birthday so I could make my own radio shows, just like Leonard Burton’s show at the real Night Vale Community Radio. I’m going to replace Leonard one day. I really want to, plus the tablets down at City Hall say so. Better start practicing now. Leonard always starts out his show with his big catchphrase and so I’ll do it too, just the way he does it. Here goes: “The sun is actually cold. It’s cold and empty and all is lost. Greetings from Night Vale.” How was that? Hold on, I want to hear that back. Where’s the stop button?

  [Break]

  Cecil again! Wow, is that what I really sound like? Haha, this is so weird! Okay, okay, so: In local news, a new pizza place opened and I went to it. It’s called Big Rico’s and it’s pretty good. I prefer Sammy’s Ultimate Slice-a-ria by the Ralphs, but it burned down last week. That’s too bad. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll be rebuilt soon. Wait, what is that?

  [Break]

  Huh, it went away when I hit stop. Oh, but now it’s back again. It’s this kind of flickering in the corner of my eye, like someone’s waving their arms right next to me, but when I turn, there’s nothing there. Oh well. Hey! Do you want to hear me sing? Here’s the Night Vale High Fight Song. [Snatches of melody covered up by a tape warp and static] Wow, the flickering got really strong when I sang. Oh, oh, oh. Leonard’s going to be on soon. All right, good-bye for now. Or as Leonard always says: See ya, Night Vale. See ya.

  [End Teenage Voice]

  Well, listeners. Leonard Burton. Now that takes me back. Leonard was the host of this very show when I was a child. I remember . . . actually, I remember almost nothing about him. Still don’t remember making these tapes. Finally, on this show, something strange to talk about!

  But first, the news.

  The Museum of Forbidden Technologies is proud to announce their new special exhibit, a startling and highly forbidden piece of technology brought to us by time travelers, or ancient long-dead aliens, or Russians, or whatever. The technology will be kept in a locked vault, which itself will be wrapped in thick black bandages with a handwritten sign taped to one side saying only “NOPE.” Your ticket includes a free audio guide, which will play a single piercing tone designed to considerately remove you from the world of thought and sound and sentience. The Museum of Forbidden Technologies. Bring your kids! Otherwise something even worse might happen to them!

  And now for traffic.

  Everything’s looking clear out there today. All the commuters feel like, perhaps for the first time in their ent
ire lives, they are seeing themselves and the world around without illusions or denial. All of them have pulled their cars to the side of the road in the sudden shock of such absolute truth. Some are sobbing into their steering wheel, touching their skin and remembering what they hadn’t known they had forgotten. Others have stepped out of the cars, and are picking up handfuls of dirt and laughing at the realization this is bringing them about atoms and the universe and death. A representative for the Sheriff’s Secret Police announced that there wasn’t such a thing as a secret, not really, or that maybe the entire world was a secret and we are all in on it. She then saw a cloud she liked, and smiled at it. So be sure to allow a lot of extra time for any journeys today, and be on the lookout for abandoned cars and dazed people wandering into the roadway because, listeners, everything’s looking clear out there today.

  This has been traffic.

  I admit, listeners, I’m very curious. Let’s get back to these tapes of this younger person with whom I share a life.

  [Teenage Voice]

  Cecil again. My brother says that I’ll never make it in radio, because my voice isn’t right for it. I need to get more like Leonard, with that perfect radio voice, all high pitched and grating like sandpaper, just the way radio voices should be.

  I’ve been seeing that movement more, even when I’m not recording. It’s like someone is walking toward me, but when I turn there’s nothing there. And it’s not the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Our Home, because I asked her and the next day our kitchen table had been flipped over and superglued to the floor, which I’m pretty sure is her way of saying no. I wish whatever it is would just say hi. WHOA. I felt something touch me. I think maybe making these tapes are encouraging it. I’m . . . going to hit stop now.