The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe

by Joseph Fink

  “Some things don’t come back,” the spokesbeing continued. “They can only travel in one direction, like mountains travel through the centuries. Yes, mountains. You were with grandfather when the voice on the radio rose in alarm. Grandfather stood up. There was fear upon the monument of his face. This was not supposed to happen. Not here. Do you remember the light so bright you could see it through the wall? Then nothing. Then dark. And a ringing telephone. But we are here and now and this is not there and then,” concluded the Sheriff’s spokesbeing.

  The spokesbeing responded to follow-up questions by cocking their head and slowly blinking their milk-glass eyes like an animal watching an insect crawl across the floor. Further inquiries were directed to the jade statue of a Cat Who Hums Almost Inaudibly in the Sheriff’s Secret Police’s Secret Garden.

  The Secret Police plan to open the hatches of the submarine and look inside at any moment. We’ll report back as we learn more.

  Listeners, many of you know I have a bit of a delicate relationship with our new Station Management, and recent events have caused some concern for many of you. But rest assured, while management and artists are often at odds about how to run a business, here at the station we all have one thing in common: We love radio.

  I just met our new program director: Lauren Mallard. And you know, she is a delight. In fact, she’s joining me in the studio right now. I thought it would be a good time to introduce you to the kindest, most gentle manager we have ever had at this station. Lauren, it’s great to have you here.

  LAUREN: It’s great to have YOU here. I know change is difficult, both for the talent and for the listeners, but our focus is always on good radio. And Cecil, you are the best at good radio.

  CECIL: Thank you. Listeners, please know that I really do think things are looking up. I’m very excited about the new direction we’re under with Lauren.

  LAUREN: Well, I can’t wait to be more involved. And I just love your show. I’ve loved every moment of it. I love your informative reports. I love your beautiful voice. I love the way you talk about the town. You clearly love your city, Cecil. It shows in your work. I even love your scientist boyfriend. What’s his name again? With his perfect hair, and teeth like a military cemetery? He’s always looking into the scientific mysteries of Night Vale.

  He even “broke the story,” as you reporters might say, about the transdimensional oranges our farmers had developed. Well, that sure was a good thing he was looking into our oranges or we could have harmed a lot of people on our way to making a ton of money. So very much money. What’s a few lives? So much money. He’s a good scientist you have there. What’s his name again?

  CECIL: Um . . . Carlos

  LAUREN: Right. That’s right. Carlos. Okay. Good talking to you. Gotta go! Bye.

  CECIL: Oh, okay. Well . . . thank you, Lauren. Good-bye.

  And now a public service announcement from the Night Vale Marine Biologists Association: The ocean is full of things that would like to kill you, and other things that would ignore or not understand you and then eventually kill you because they do not have the same understanding or valuation of life and death as humans. There are still other things that you would probably kill simply because you think they are beautiful and you want to possess beautiful things because you believe that beauty and sentience are mutually exclusive. Never go to the ocean. It is a confounding place. It is full of death and strife and terror. We’re marine biologists, and we won’t even go to an ocean, so you know it’s bad, the PSA reads. Maybe just take a nap and think about clouds until they find your body. This has been a message from the Marine Biologists Association.

  The Sheriff’s Secret Police have opened the hatch of the submarine from Nulogorsk. Onlookers describe a curious crack of pressure, as if peeling back the pop-top on a can of old soda, and a smell of something regurgitated. Wisps of steam were observed to rise from the open submarine. The Sheriff’s Secret Police drew their daggers and a Junior Secret Detective was encouraged to volunteer to be the first to explore the vessel. There was silence as she climbed through the hatch.

  Gentle listeners, the screaming began almost immediately. It was described as a sort of high-pitched shriek that deepened moment by moment until it was only an agonized moan, then rising back up in pitch again, then falling. Onlookers remarked they had never quite heard a scream like that before. Not even that time in the barn.

  The Junior Secret Detective reappeared after those few harrowing moments, only she was not the woman who went inside the submarine. Her hair was long and gray and her limbs were withered with age. She tumbled out of the hatch and was taken off to the hospital where she is listed in ancient condition, though expected to fully recover.

  Further volunteers discovered the body of an enormous, bald-headed man with some faded flower tattoos and a left arm that stopped in a rough stump just above his wrist.

  The Sheriff’s Secret Police also discovered a postcard depicting the painted houses and the beautiful clear water of Nulogorsk. Written on the back was a message in Russian. “One adult man, missing hand, and the other items,” it read, according to Google Translate. The other items in question included a rotary-dial phone with no receiver cord, a large tin full of hardtack, a wrapped parcel (which was carried away by a man who was not tall), a thick book (which was carried away by a man who was not short), and a front-page article from the September 24, 1983, issue of the Night Vale Daily Journal, written by foreign correspondent Leann Hart. The headline of this article was “Sister City Nulogorsk Decimated by Nuclear Attack; No Known Survivors.”

  Listeners, this is simply not true. I had Intern Zvi pull up that very issue, and the front-page article is by city beat reporter Leann Hart, and the headline reads “City Council OKs Book Ownership for Randomly Selected Students.”

  Which is the truth, listeners? I cannot comprehend what has happened to our old pen pals from Nulogorsk. Who were we talking to for all those years? Were they destroyed in 1983? I’m going to get Zvi’s article to the Secret Police. The correct historical truth must be validated, and all false histories brutally repressed. And until that time, the only truth we will have is the weather . . .

  WEATHER: “Offering” by Black City Lights

  Well, before the Sheriff’s Secret Police could respond to my news article discrepancy, the unconnected rotary phone on the submarine began ringing. The unidentified man in the submarine answered the phone, speaking his first words, in Russian of course. He still has yet to be identified, and no one is certain if he is a survivor or a ghost, but he spoke to someone on the other end.

  Trace the call, an officer shouted to a group of other officers in a nearby van.

  Listeners, they traced the call, and it was coming from the phone booth behind the Taco Bell. On the other end of the line was an adult man’s detached hand named Megan, the daughter of Tock and Hershel Wallaby.

  She was alone, all alone, except for the telephone booth (as forgotten technologies have been young Megan’s only friends). This broke the heart of the Sheriff’s Secret Police. This broke the heart of the two men who had skulked away from the submarine. This broke the heart of the unidentified man from Nulogorsk. And from this moment came wonderful news, listeners.

  The unidentified man told the Secret Police in stiff but practiced English: “I am a gift from Nulogorsk, in appreciation of Night Vale’s many years of friendship and kindness.” And the unidentified man offered himself as an organ donor, or rather, a body donor, for Night Vale’s very own Megan Wallaby. The young girl, born with congenital hand-bodiness, was rushed from the telephone booth behind the Taco Bell. The unidentified man has been rushed from the submarine in the Sandwastes. Megan has been surgically attached to the wrist stump of the unidentified man. Or rather, the unidentified man has been surgically attached to the single-hand body of Megan Wallaby.

  Megan’s surgeons have declared the operation a quick and complete success. After emerging from recovery, Megan even rose from her bed, her face dou
r, and took a few toneless steps, like a man balancing the weight of a wet overcoat on a failing hanger, before collapsing onto the floor of her hospital room while nurses screamed and called for help.

  Megan has a long road of therapy ahead of her, learning how to . . . everything . . . but we believe in her, don’t we, Night Vale? That little girl is going to enjoy the childhood she feels she has missed out on. We won’t mind if she smashes through a few walls or crushes a few rib cages in hugs. If this is what she wants, we will support her, because she is beautiful. And the unidentified man from Nulogorsk? Sadly, we will never see him again, nor may we ever learn why his truth was so different from our own.

  But Megan’s truth is she is finally happy, happy in the body she was born without.

  Maybe one day we will see her, six-foot-ten and bald, shambling down the street. We will say, “Hello, Megan,” and maybe, with enough hard work, she will be able to answer back, in the singsong voice of a child, “Hello, Cecil,” as she jauntily waves the hand that used to be her entire body.

  Yes, Night Vale, that sounds just about right.

  Stay tuned next for live coverage of college basketball, as two universities select a dozen students to perform unnatural physical tasks on a wooden rectangle inside a cavernous scream-chamber.

  Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

  PROVERB: You can’t get blood from a turnip. Listen, you need some blood? I can totally get you some blood. Set that turnip down and follow me to the blood. There’s a lot of blood.

  EPISODE 41:

  “WALK”

  FEBRUARY 15, 2014

  GUEST VOICE: JASIKA NICOLE

  I OFFICIALLY MET JEFFREY FOR THE FIRST TIME SEVERAL YEARS AGO AT A birthday party for Kevin R. Free. Kevin danced about, greeting each of his twenty thousand guests graciously and introducing them to one another (fact: Kevin has met every person living in or visiting New York City at least twice). I think he paired Jeffrey and me together because of the looks of bewilderment on each of our faces; introverted individuals tend to seek refuge in people who look kind and quiet. I spent most of my time at the party with Jeffrey. We laughed and talked about our lives and our partners and I gushed over the work he had done in a play I had recently seen him in. When he made a comment about “writing something” for me one day, I laughed politely. I knew that was just a nice thing that artists sometimes said to other artists to make them feel seen.

  Years later, I found myself in a dressing room at the Largo theater in West Hollywood, eagerly shaking the hand of a man who looked like a young, hot Santa Claus (this turned out to be Joseph), and subsequently being introduced to the gorgeous Welcome to Night Vale players: the undoubtedly talented Cecil, with his crisp, cool voice and hearty laugh, and Dylan, a man who turned out to be one of the loves of my life. Jeffrey had made good on his word—he and Joseph had written something for me, the voice of a character about a million times braver than myself and only half as scared.

  As I stood in the wings that night preparing to go onstage, I worried whether or not I could deliver Dana as courageously as she had been created. Welcome to Night Vale had been gaining steady momentum at this point, and its fandom was far-reaching and devout. I had voiced her on a few episodes, but Dana had never had a physical manifestation before, and I didn’t want to detract from Jeffrey and Joseph’s eloquent writing. Cecil’s voice boomed through the microphone and I glimpsed the audience sprawled out before him, utterly spellbound. I had never seen anything like it.

  Moments later when I walked out onto the stage, the audience’s applause was a wall. They cheered and hooted and screamed and threw their hands in the air and stomped their feet and it was so thunderous that I had to wait to say the first line. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. It turned out that I had nothing to worry about. Jeffrey and Joseph had already done the hard work of building the story; all I had to do was be seen, open my mouth, and let Dana speak.

  —Jasika Nicole, Voice of former intern Dana

  At a loss for words? Here’s a few you can use:

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  Hello listeners.

  We have some news that will affect your morning commute, so let’s dive right into it.

  Walk signals across the whole of Night Vale are malfunctioning. Of course usually they show either a graphic photo of a run-over pedestrian, indicating you should wait, or time lapse photography of flowers wilting, indicating that it is safe to cross. But this morning, commuters all over Night Vale are reporting that, bafflingly, they now all have just the word WALK in bold, white letters.

  Citizens are standing by the side of the road, unsure of whether they are allowed to—

  DANA: Cecil! Cecil, it’s Dana. Oh, it’s so good to be able to communicate again.

  Cecil? Where did he go? I don’t think he can hear me, but I’ll keep talking just in case.

  Cecil, I’ve been in this desert for months now. Years, maybe. Get enough minutes and you have days, have months, have years, have the whole of your life. There’s never a great shift, only a gradual sliding downwards.

  I can still see the blinking light up on the mountain. I looked into it and my head went one way while my mind went another. A lurch outside of all that seems to be.

  I moved my head just a touch to the left, a glance in a world of perspectives, and I was here, in your studio. Well, not here here. I don’t know how it happened, or how long this vision in which we all pretend to be real will last.

  I am pretending as hard as I can.

  When I first got here, being a good mountain unbeliever, I turned my back to it and marched directly into the flat desert. But soon enough I had somehow come back to the mountain. I turned and marched away again, but ended up right back here. There is a blinking light up on the mountain, and I blink in and out of its vicinity against my will.

  Occasionally I see huge masked figures. Warlike, towering, but also distant and listless. They haven’t seen me. Or if they’ve seen me, they haven’t cared. Or if they’ve cared, they haven’t done anything with that feeling. I’m not scared of them. There are so many things in this world to be scared of. Why add to that number when the only cause is you know nothing about them and they are huge? It would make no sense.

  I found a door out in the desert, but it was chained shut on the other side. From behind it, I thought I smelled that particular Night Vale smell. The smell of home. Like sour peaches and linen. Like freshly cut wood and burnt almonds. I knocked and knocked, hoping someone from back there would hear and let me through. But it never opened. I wasn’t even sure which side was supposed to open. I knocked on both sides, but nothing. I kept walking and found myself back at the mountain.

  There is a blinking light up on the mountain. And so there is nothing else for it. It is time for me to climb. The face of the mountain is steep, and lined with sharp ridges and crumbling ledges. This will not be easy. I wonder if anything ever will be.

  Hopefully I will know something when I am up there that I did not know when I was down here. Elevation must equal knowledge. It must. Because nothing else has.

  Cecil, I will keep trying. I don’t have to keep trying. There is no obligation for me to not just give up, just slump down until I fall away and join the inanimate matter of this strange other world. I don’t have to keep trying. Remember that, I say to myself, as I keep trying.

  I don’t know if you’ve heard any of this. I’d like to think you did. I’d like to think that I’m home. I’d like to think that mountains aren’t real, even though I know now, without doubt, that they are.

  I will see you again, perhaps. From up there, wherever that is. Just me, always me, but from higher up.

  Good-bye, Cecil.

  CECIL: —unable to stop walking. Walk, the signals say, and the pedestrians walk. In unison, arms swinging in a rigid rhythm. This is the worst malfunctioning of walk signals Night Vale has seen since the time all their lightbulbs were accidentally replaced with poison gas dispensers. More on this story,
as it looms closer to us.

  And now, a word from our sponsors.

  A balding grassland beneath a low cliffside. There is a monk. Picture what a monk looks like. A bell rings, from his hand maybe, then he takes a small step, then there’s that bell again. It will take him a long time to make it from this bit of grass to whatever there is beyond it. An entire lifetime it will take him, and even then he will die unfinished, undone in midst of doing, having gone slowly to nowhere much. Then a bell will ring, from his hand maybe, or from somewhere else, and then nothing. Mountain Dew. Do the Dew.

  And now back to—

  DANA: Hello, Cecil? Cecil can you hear me? Dammit.

  Cecil, it is beautiful here. It is empty here. I found a lighthouse up on the mountain.

  Tall, maybe forty feet, built of brownstone and about fifteen feet in diameter. Beyond the lighthouse, I found a settlement of sorts. It was bound inside the stone walls of a tightly wound gorge. I hoped to find answers in this settlement. I hoped to find anything.

  Here is what I found: Dust, mostly. Emptiness. A sense of loss as I thought about the distance between myself and those I love. An interesting rock, but I can’t find it anymore. I miss my brother. A sense of loss as I thought about the people who never returned home to this settlement. If they no longer exist to feel loss, then I shall feel it for them.

  Also, there were strange drawings along the walls of the gorge. Orange triangles, growing bigger and bigger as I traced my way deeper into the spiral. There was a soft light just around the edges of the triangles. When I looked at them, I felt the light in my head and it pounded like a migraine against the back of my eyes. I could not look at them. I could not look away.