The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe

by Joseph Fink

  Did you do enough with your cookie purchase to actualize what you believe in? To empower kids who will one day rise up and speak a great truth while waving tear-stained copies of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese?

  Did you? I’m sorry. I am not a good salesman.

  And now it’s time to go pick up Khoshekh from the vet, listeners.

  Stay tuned next for a lifetime of self-questioning followed by conflicting answers from an unreliable source.

  Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

  PROVERB: At your smallest components, you are indistinguishable from a forest fire.

  EPISODE 45:

  “A STORY ABOUT THEM”

  APRIL 15, 2014

  I HAD THE ENDING TO THIS EPISODE IN MY HEAD ALMOST AS SOON AS I had finished “A Story About You.” I even had little details like the crossword puzzle. Everything about this episode was there, and I sat down to write it and nothing worked. The writing took forever.

  I forget exactly how long, but probably about five months of staring at drafts and trying to understand why it wasn’t working the way that I knew it could.

  Eventually it worked. I have no idea what changed, but suddenly it was the episode I wanted it to be, and I could show it to other people.

  Stories about conspiracies rarely get into the tedious work of maintaining that conspiracy. Those are the stories I think that interest us the most. The people whose day jobs are worldwide conspiracies. Who have to handle the boring minutia of it.

  There is one little dip into the ongoing plot here in the middle, because we were coming toward the end of the year and needed to keep that moving. It’s a case where making the show as a whole better probably made this episode as a single unit slightly weaker, since we lose the single story intensity that “A Story About You” had. I think ongoing shows have to make trade-offs like that all the time. Ultimately the show is more important than the episode, and the episode is more important than the one really cool line of dialogue.

  On a good day though, you get to have some cool lines in a great episode in a show that’s working. I think we have good days sometimes. I think this was one of them.

  —Joseph Fink

  This is a story about them, says the man on the radio. And you are concerned, because this is not a story you were ever supposed to hear.

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

  This is a story about them. They sit in a car, much like your own, perhaps. Do you drive a black sedan with tinted windows into which innocent people disappear forever? Then it is very, very much like your own.

  There are two men in the car. The man who is not tall watches a house through the window. He makes no attempt to hide what he is doing. The car is similarly clear about its existence. What they do is secret, but there is no need to hide it. Not in this town.

  For instance, this day the radio has just started narrating what they do as they do it, for all to hear. The man who is not tall glances down at the radio, not annoyed or concerned or afraid. He just looks at it, because that is what his eyes do right then, and then he looks back at the house as the man on the radio says that he looks back at the house.

  The one who is not short is supposed to be watching the house as well. Four eyes are better than two. Seven eyes are better than three. And so on. But he is not watching the house. He is looking down at a crossword puzzle on which he has just written “teeth” for the fifth time. This iteration fits neatly into the horizontal of another.

  He considers the crossword for a long moment. His partner only considers the house. He, the one with the crossword, turns to the other and begins to say, “What is a five-letter word for the discrete bone structures attached—” but he is cut off.

  “There he is,” says the one who is not tall. They exit the car and approach a man who is leaving his house. The man does not appear surprised to see them. People rarely are.

  “What is this,” he says, but he leaves a period at the end of the sentence, not a question mark.

  They take the man and put a blindfold over his eyes and they put him in the car. This is not a story about the man. You don’t care about him.

  The two men and the car, along with the other, blindfolded, man, leave Coyote Corners, a quiet development of old tract homes, the same way they had come: openly, not thought-about, feared, secret.

  “I was thinking of inviting you to dinner,” says the one who is not short. He often voices what he is thinking of doing and rarely does any of those things.

  “That would have been nice,” says the one who is not tall.

  “Yes, it would have been,” says the other, a tad dreamily perhaps. That is not an adverb that is supposed to crop up in a car of this description. Very few adverbs are.

  “Mmmhmmmmhrgm,” says the man with the hood over his head. Forget him. This is a story about them.

  That part of their work done, they drive to the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. It is not night, but the neon is on, an insubstantial wisp of green in a larger, insubstantial wisp of blue. They are narrated along by the radio until the man who is not tall turns it off.

  In the parking lot, the man who is not short looks up. “Hey, what is that?” he says, indicating the clear nothing of the sky.

  “What is what?” says the other.

  “I saw something,” he says, “for a moment, just there, for a moment.” He points again. Again there is nothing. There couldn’t have been less. “Oh, I’m sure it was . . .” continues the man who is not short, but he does not say what he is sure it was.

  The man who is not tall considers his partner for a moment and shakes his head.

  Inside the diner, inside a booth, after menus and waters, they dig into matching turkey clubs. The diner smells like rubber and bread. The man on the radio tells them this quietly from staticky speakers set into a foam tile ceiling.

  “Read any good books lately?” asks the man who is not tall.

  “Of course not,” says the other.

  “Good,” says the first.

  Bites of sandwich. Bits of time.

  “I’ve done the living room in a different color,” says the other, who is not short. “It was one color. It is now different. I hope that I will feel differently as a result.”

  “Mmm,” says the first. He never knows what to say to things like that. He wishes he did. He offers the man who is not short some fries instead, to indicate what he feels about their friendship but cannot say. The man who is not short eats a couple. He knows what the man who is not tall means by offering the fries, because they have worked together a long time and also because the radio explained it to him just then.

  Outside, the blindfolded man sits in the car, the desert heat trapped within by the glass. Don’t worry about it.

  After lunch, the three men drive to the industrial part of town, which was set aside by the City Council to be the industrial part of town some time ago.

  “Yes,” the council said, “this area around here will be pretty industrial. Warehouses and factories and things like that. Some graffiti and chain-link fences.” They cut a ribbon that they were carrying with them. The council always carries a ribbon for that purpose.

  The car pulls into a warehouse. The radio is back on and still talking about them. The warehouse is cavernous and full of crates. Some of them tick. Others do not. They form an angled hillscape of corners and flats, up and away in every direction. The warehouse smells like rotting wood and dryer sheets.

  Their supervisor waits for them with crossed arms and a cross expression.

  “A disgrace,” she says. “Let me tell you something,” she says, and says nothing more. The two men indicate the blindfolded man in the backseat of the car. “Ah, ah,” she says, waving vaguely at the blindfolded man.

  “Someone has to be to blame,” she says, pointing at everything but herself.

  “It was very simple,” she says. “We take buildings from the miniature city we discovered under the bowling alley. We put them in crates. We sh
ip the crates out to various warehouses in the desert. And as a result, our interests are furthered. It could not be more simple.”

  The man who is not short is not paying attention. Something has caught his eye. It is so dark and distant what he sees, it seems like it cannot possibly be real.

  “Hey, look at that,” he says, pointing at what he sees. The man who is not tall and their supervisor look where he is pointing. There is nothing but the ceiling of the warehouse, with some dust and light in between.

  “Very good,” says the supervisor.

  “Yes, good,” says the man who is not tall. They turn back to each other.

  “Oh, is it?” says the man who is not short. He squints up at what he sees. “I was worried that it wasn’t very good at all.”

  “Anyway,” says the supervisor. “Now the city has declared war in revenge. Although they haven’t yet figured out it was us stealing the buildings. They just declared a general war, in the name of their god Huntokar, on everyone from the ‘upper world’ as they call us.”

  This war has been raging for almost a year now. People have died, yes, but listen: People die all the time for all different kinds of reasons. I wouldn’t worry if I were you.

  “Hold on,” says the supervisor.

  She mumbles instructions into a walkie-talkie, and a series of “yes sirs” and “no sirs” and hawk shrieking sounds come in response.

  “Sorry,” she says when she is done. “I didn’t have to do that now. Wasn’t urgent at all.”

  “I understand,” says the man who is not tall. He understands the second most of the three people in the room.

  And then the voice on the radio coming from the car changes its story. They all notice. They are told by the radio that they are noticing before they notice because that part of the narration happens before the story changes.

  Even the man on the radio does not know why he changes the story, or where this other story comes from. He does not always understand everything he does. Sometimes he does understand, but hides it from you. In any case, here is a new story, one he tells, without regard for why he is telling it:

  Somewhere else, not here, there is a woman wandering a desert. A desert not unlike this one. But not like this one either. It’s not the same desert. I need to clarify that.

  Also with her are great masked warriors, women and men of enormous size, who listen as she speaks, and follow her as she walks. She is winning them over because she has survived so much. She is young, but in her experience she is as lost and scared and ancient as the rest of them. Her feet hurt. They hurt. She keeps walking, and they keep following.

  Beyond her, no longer just on the horizon, much closer than that, is a light, spreading across the desert. The light is alive and malicious and vast and encroaching. It buzzes and shines and everything about it hurts those who are close to it and destroys those who are within it. It spreads not just in the desert I am talking about. It spreads, in different forms, in deserts not unlike it. In deserts very similar to the one I am talking about now. Not always in the same form, not always as light at all. But with the same intent. To devour everything. Until there is nothing left. It is a smiling god of terrible power and ceaseless appetite.

  The woman wanders the desert, followed by the masked warriors. They look back at the light on the horizon, and they know that the time when it will reach their little patch of land is coming. And so many other little patches of land as well. Soon, they will have to turn. Soon, they will have to face it head-on. And not just that woman and her desert. Not just her at all.

  The man on the radio returns to the story about them. He does not know how he knew what he just said, or why he would tell it to you. He is innocent and kind. But anyway, this is a story about them, and so you do not care about anyone but them.

  They, and their supervisor, are listening with interest to what just happened on the radio. The man who is not tall has taken notes.

  “I’ll look into that,” he says. “It is exactly as we suspected,” he does not say. He did not suspect any of that.

  “Someone has to be to blame,” the supervisor says again, gesturing this time directly at the blindfolded man.

  “I understand completely,” says the man who is not tall.

  “Me too,” says the man who is not short, although he does not understand. He usually does not. His partner understands for him and it all works out okay.

  As they leave the warehouse and the supervisor and the piles of wooden crates, the voice on the radio says something about the weather.

  WEATHER: “Pretty Little Head” by Eliza Rickman

  By the time they leave the warehouse it is night, or maybe the sun has just set early. The sunrise that morning had been particularly loud and strenuous.

  “You know,” says the man who is not short, looking down at his crossword, “I worry every time that I’m not going to finish these when I start them. The future where I have finished seems so distant from the present where I have started.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” says the man who is not tall. “But you would, I know. I know you would worry about so many things. I do worry about that, about you worrying.”

  “Do you think everything will turn out all right?” says the man who is not short. “I mean everything,” he says to clarify. “Absolutely everything,” he says, as further clarification.

  “Yes,” says the other. “I do.” He does not. “I do,” he says again. He does not. He glares at the radio.

  They drive past the Moonlite All-Nite, a glass box of bad food and good people. They pass Teddy Williams’s Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, badly damaged by the war but still running its weekly bowling league. They pass by City Hall, which is covered in a yellow tarp, stamped with an orange triangle. Moving farther out, with absolute purpose, they pass by the used car lot, alive with the wolves that populate all car lots at night, and Old Woman Josie’s house, silent and empty for months now. Then the town is behind them, and they are in the Scrublands and the Sandwastes.

  They stop the car, and get out. Pebbles crunch in the sand in response to their movement. The radio murmurs behind the closed doors of the car. The headlights illuminate only a few stray plants and the wide dumb eyes of some nocturnal animal. The two men don’t look back at Night Vale. They look forward at the darkness that stretches out as far as anyone here can imagine. Most anyone here tries to imagine as little as possible. There is no need to imagine here.

  “Well, get him out,” says the man who is not tall, and the man who is not short opens the rear door of the car and guides the blindfolded man out. The blindfolded man stumbles a little, but not much, and there isn’t anything specific he stumbles on. He stumbles like a stage direction, like the next in a bulleted list of items.

  “Put him over there,” the man who is not tall says unnecessarily. We all know the drill. We all know how this and everything else ends.

  The blindfolded man walks fifteen feet or so in the direction of the darkness, so that the men and the car are between him and the distant dome of light that is Night Vale. He walks to a certain point in the cool sand and then stops, partly because the man who is not short guided him there but mostly because he has taken himself there, as we all eventually take ourselves to that point where we will not be able to take ourselves any farther.

  The man who is not tall, still by the car, pulls out a knife. It is not stained, does not look used, but he speaks its brutal history in his posture, in the way he holds it. The blindfolded man breathes normally, his shoulders loose, his covered face slightly down. His feet sink a little in the sand. Behind him, in practical terms as far away as anything has ever been, is the town he is from.

  The man who is not short, standing next to the blindfolded man, looks up at the sky. The man who is not tall walks up to join them with the knife.

  “What is that?” says the man who is not short, pointing at the sky.

  “What is what?” says the man who is not tall fr
om just behind him.

  “That planet up there,” says the man who is not short. “It’s so dark, and so close. It’s looming. It’s so close. I wonder if I could—”

  He reaches up. The man who is not tall makes a gesture with the hand that holds the knife. The man who is not short is no longer reaching up. He is no longer standing up. In many ways, he no longer exists at all.

  “Someone has to be to blame,” says the man who is not tall. Or no, he sighs this. Or no, he thinks it out loud, but it comes out more thought than speech.

  He looks up at a night sky that is absolutely clear of anything but void and stars and the occasional meteor and mysterious lights moving at impossible speeds and the faint glimmer of spy satellites looking back down from the nothing to the something.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, although not to anyone that still exists and can hear him. He just says it, leaves some undirected words in the hot night air and then returns to the car. He may be crying. I know if he is or not, but I am choosing not to tell you, because this is private information, and you have no real need to know it.

  The blindfolded man removes his blindfold and looks down at the man who once was not short and now is not anything at all. He, the man who can see, is also not short. He follows the man who is not tall to the car.

  The man, not short, not blindfolded, gets in the passenger seat.

  “Always an unpleasant business,” he says. He does not comment further. He does not need to.

  “Looking forward to working with you,” says the man who is not tall.

  “The same to you,” says the man who is not short. “Ah, the same as well to you.”

  This has been a story about them. The radio moves on. News. Traffic. Political opinions, and corrections to political opinions. But somewhere in the desert, there is one person who does not move on. This was also a story about him.