by Joseph Fink
“The whole situation’s a blur from our vantage,” she said. “We’re too close. We can see colors, maybe the outline of a shape. But we need to find a way to get farther out, try to see this thing as a whole. That’s the only way we’ll understand what’s going on.”
“Huh,” Darryl said. “But what does the Joyous Congregation have to do with all of this?”
His tone was confusion, but also suspicion. Just what are you accusing us of? was the question under the question.
“Waffle,” said Laura, dropping the plate in front of Nilanjana. Both Darryl and Nilanjana had been so absorbed in the moment that they hadn’t heard her coming, and Darryl grunted in surprise, and then smiled to hide his embarrassment about the grunt. “And omelet.”
Grateful for the distraction, Nilanjana dug into her waffle, which had been cooked to a perfect medium rare.
Darryl watched her eat. He had been hungry before, but now he wasn’t touching his omelet. He wanted to hear what she had to say first. She reconsidered her thoughts on dating and was now glad they were not. This was why dating and friendships were so difficult. People want to confront you about differences of opinion, question you about what you’re doing, be always present in your life. She liked the measurability of numbers and nature.
“No, I don’t think your church is doing anything in particular,” she said, around a mouthful of food, wishing now that she hadn’t started eating. “Well, your description of heaven sounds a lot like the desert otherworld, which is interesting. And then, your pamphlet.”
“What about it?”
“It said it was written by someone named Wordsmith.”
His face was unreadable.
“And why was that interesting?” he asked, in a careful and flat voice.
“Well,” she said. Oh, what the hell. She had already told him this much. Maybe he would be willing to help her. “City Council said that the Wordsmith had told them about the otherworld, had warned them about what was out there. It seems like whatever conspiracy is trying to keep us from understanding the desert otherworld, the Wordsmith is at the heart of it. Maybe even collaborating with the city to stop Carlos’s research. Who knows? And then, in the pamphlet: Wordsmith. So this person has something to do with your church. And that’s why I was there.”
Darryl nodded, and finally took a bite of his food. She watched him chew, waiting for some kind of response.
“So? What do you think? Do you know who the Wordsmith is, and what they’re planning? Could you help me find them?”
Darryl laughed, quickly and without humor.
“Yes. I can help you find him.”
He held out his hand, like a prospective employee meeting his interviewer.
“It’s nice to meet you. I’m the Wordsmith.”
15
“You little shit . . .”
. . . was a phrase she could have said.
*SLAP*
. . . was an action she could have done to his face.
[stands up; leaves without saying a word]
. . . was a stage direction she could have performed.
“Oh . . .”
. . . was the actual sound she made.
“I’m not so good at verbal communication,” Darryl said. “Maybe you’ve noticed. So when I need to get a message across, I write a note. I got really good at writing because of that. Friends in college started calling me the Wordsmith and it stuck.”
It sounded like bragging. He was unaware of that.
“Do you have a nickname you wish people had called you? Like, in middle school, I tried to get my friends to call me D-Day, because my name starts with D, and that sounded tough. Plus I’m a big history buff, and, of course, D-Day is short for Dog Day, which happened during World War II, when we defeated the Germans by not letting them come over to pet our dogs anymore.”
I don’t know if you have a way with words, but you certainly have a lot of words, Nilanjana thought as she dabbed her face with the napkin and placed it on the table.
“Are you mad at me?” Darryl lowered his voice.
“Of course not. I’m just thinking about a lot of work I need to get done today. No. No. I’m not mad at you,” she said, not exactly meaning it.
“Okay,” he said, not exactly believing her.
“The church asks you to write stuff for them? Because you’re so good at it?”
“I write pamphlets and flyers and stuff. Did you see the illustrations that Jamillah made? She’s great at those. Has to do them one-handed because she never puts down the drill.”
“Did you ever talk to the City Council?” Nilanjana worried about asking, about making so clear the direction of her investigation, but her instincts as a scientist drove her forward.
“Yeah! That was a cool day. I decided to try to convert the City Council. Everyone else told me not to. That the council is dangerous. But I wanted to try anyway. I mean, I was afraid I was going to die the whole time, but it was . . . It felt important. A chance to have our say in front of beings who mattered. I gave them a pamphlet and talked them through it. They got excited when they learned about the Smiling God. Thanked me for ‘informing them of this matter.’ I half expected them at services the next week but it never happened. At least maybe they won’t be so quick to crack down on the Congregation. I felt good about that.”
“What exactly did you tell them about the smiling god and the house that doesn’t exist?”
“How would I tell them about the house when you just now told me about it? And I gave them the basic story of the Smiling God. What is this about anyway? Why are you so upset?”
There was silence. It was awkward. It was less awkward than his talking, so it was fine. The City Council had said the Wordsmith had warned them. Either he had lied to her, or the City Council had found information in his pamphlet that he hadn’t realized was in there. Now she needed to make him think that she didn’t suspect him anymore.
“I didn’t realize you were the Wordsmith, and so now I know that my investigation into that was a dead end,” she explained carefully. “It just made me realize how misguided I was to keep pursuing anything with the Joyous Congregation. You were so nice to show me around and welcome me in. Your friends and church were lovely. Then you brought me a sandwich, and we went out last night and had a lot of . . .”
Darryl coughed.
“Fun. Fun I was going to say.”
He laughed.
Nilanjana did not laugh at first. And then she laughed but it was too late. A poor acting choice.
[stands up; leaves without saying a word] . . . would have been a better acting choice, she thought.
“I’m not trying to recruit you or anything,” he said. “It’s not like that. I just. I just like you, Nilanjana.”
“I’m not worried about your church, Darryl. And I’m not worried about you.” Lies. “You’re not a dangerous person.” Not a lie necessarily, but certainly not her current working hypothesis.
Darryl did not react.
“A delightful person, in fact,” she said.
He smiled his usual wide, forced smile. He did not intend for it to come off as forced, but it did.
“You’re delightful too.”
“I’m going to be late to work.”
They split the bill and she drove him back to his car. Nilanjana wished it had been in awkward silence, but he told a long story about how Stephanie was such a good volleyball player that they started a church volleyball team. One time, during a game, she spiked a ball so hard that it broke the crystal pyramid at the top of the oaken tower. No one knew what the purpose of the pyramid on every volleyball court was, and no one had ever seen one get broken before.
Everyone was cursed for days after. It was terrible. A few people lost pets. Someone else was falsely imprisoned by the Secret Police. Darryl’s car was broken into. Once the pyramid’s curse had been lifted, they all had a good laugh about it as they buried all their volleyballs and nets and made Stephanie promise to never pl
ay the game again.
“She’s so awesome,” Darryl said.
“Sounds like,” said Nilanjana. His adoration of Stephanie didn’t bother Nilanjana. And so she ignored the fact that it did. She did as many scientists do against the precepts of their own profession: She was selective about which facts she allowed into her data set.
They were next to his vehicle. “Let’s do this again,” he said.
“Sure,” she said. She didn’t mean it, she adamantly told herself.
Darryl watched as she left. He texted Jamillah about what had happened and she texted back the cry-laughing emoji, followed by the orange tree on fire emoji, followed by the child walking through the contemporary sculpture wing of the art museum emoji.
“Wonderful, you’re back,” Carlos called out as Nilanjana carried her field notes into his office and laid them out in neat rows on his table. “It’s all been quiet here, but I’ve been afraid to start any experiments until I heard from you.”
“Some developments on our search for who Wordsmith is and what they are planning,” she said. “I slept . . . I had sex with him.”
“Huh,” said Carlos. He didn’t seem upset, but then he preferred to express himself through words or actions rather than emotive gestures.
“I thought he was someone else. I thought he was a nice guy with . . . I don’t know . . . a body I guess. Someone to have a drink with. And it’s not clear to me that he is definitely part of any conspiracy. He claims he only went to convert the City Council. That is, if you believe him.”
She slumped into a chair and sighed into her palms.
“This isn’t going well,” she said.
“Based on last night, it sounds like it’s going great.”
“You’re cute.”
He frowned.
“Of course I am. I’m a scientist. All scientists are cute.”
Even his frown was cute.
“No, you’re being cute.”
Carlos took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired but also perfect. His perfection was only emphasized by the small human details of exhaustion and stress.
“Let me tell you a story, Nils. When I first came here, I was frightened of this town. I was confused by it. Time didn’t work. The City Council were creatures I had never seen before. There were angels, actual angels, wandering around, and they were all named Erika. But the strangest part of it was that everyone here treated it as normal. No one was a bit surprised at the form that City Council took, or that UFOs are a regular part of the night sky. I would listen to Cecil on the radio, calmly describing the day’s events, and I would try to call him, to get him to understand that everything was all wrong, that time didn’t work here. But it wasn’t that he didn’t see the things that I saw, he just interpreted them differently. I was afraid of him and all the people of Night Vale because of that.
“But as I spent more time talking to him, explaining science to him, I realized that even though I didn’t understand his worldview, I liked talking to him. And even though he didn’t understand my worldview, he liked talking to me. And we liked being with each other. And that like turned to love. Sometimes still he’ll calmly report something on the radio that I know is impossible by all current scientific knowledge, but that same day he’ll squint up from bed with a pillow-wrinkled face as I bring him coffee, and he smiles like it’s the first time he’s ever seen me, and he says, ‘How did I end up this lucky?’
“I see my younger self in you, and I’m glad you’re helping me with my research. You and I are both outsiders. We always will be, but it gets less as we accept more of the town’s strangeness. And I know that’s hard. It was hard for me too. Still sometimes is. Everyone in this town is frightening and friendly and kind and awful. But everyone everywhere is.”
As he talked, Nilanjana glanced down at her findings next to Carlos’s findings, and something caught her eye. She scanned the data as Carlos continued with his lecture.
“People are complicated. This Wordsmith of yours, maybe he is working with the city, maybe he isn’t. But he isn’t necessarily bad. Of course, he could also be bad. You can only trust someone based on what you experience with them. People are complex. You can’t reduce them to charts and equations. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard. But it’s not possible yet.”
She finished looking through the combined data and pounded her fist on the table.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re upset. I’ll drop it.”
“There’s something big happening, Carlos.”
“Nilanjana, I’m sorry if I offended you. Sometimes I can’t tell—”
“No, in the desert. Look.”
She pointed at the chart. Then at the graph below it.
“We’ve been assuming that agents from City Hall have been causing these events. But look at this.”
The first few events had happened several days apart, each one minor but larger than the last. They were scattered all over the map. Then the next few happened a day or two apart, increasing in magnitude, but still with no pattern to their placement. The most recent events were even larger, more frequent, dotting all over town and culminating in the vanishings of Larry Leroy and Big Rico.
“Most result in the disappearance of material and people,” she said, “and leave behind those pits. And they correspond with every time you try to study the house or any other aspect of the otherworld. This supports the idea that it is the City Council, trying to stop your work.”
“Pamela nearly said as much,” Carlos agreed.
“But there are also these.”
She indicated smaller events, with a different set of data. Short localized tremors. Sketching a series of triangles in the desert outside of Night Vale, out toward the mountains if you believe in that sort of thing.
“This movement doesn’t correspond with your experiments at all. I’ve gone out to look at these pits, and there’s nothing anywhere near them. It looks like the random movement of an animal.”
Carlos traced the triangles with his finger.
“I’ve seen something like this before,” he said, “but I can’t remember where.”
“Let’s say it’s possible that a living thing is causing this, then what kind of creature moves like this?” she said. “The incidents don’t connect linearly. How does it appear, destroy, and then appear somewhere completely different?”
“Perhaps it is moving underground, and we only see it when it pops up from below?”
She thought about that. And she thought about a stained-glass image of a gigantic creature emerging from an old oak door. An old oak door that leads to “heaven,” which is a desert.
“Or,” she said, “when it pops up from another world.”
16
If there was anything moving out in the desert, the helicopters would see it. And she knew of one helicopter that had shown a particular interest in her. So Nilanjana went back out to the desert, to a quiet place in the scrublands, and waited. She didn’t have to wait for long.
“How’s it going up there?” she called to the helicopter when it arrived.
No response.
“I’m just hanging out here looking at this cactus. Kinda boring,” Nilanjana said. “Thought some conversation would be nice.”
The helicopter hovered noisily and wordlessly. Whap-whap-whap.
“Do you mind if I use a pen and paper? To take some notes. I know writing utensils are illegal, but, like, everyone uses them, right?”
“WRITING UTENSILS ARE BANNED FROM NIGHT VALE CITY LIMITS, CITIZEN,” the helicopter loudspeakers boomed.
“Okay.” Nilanjana took out her phone and typed her notes into the screen. “How’s this?”
No response.
She decided to try a more direct approach. She held up the graphs and charts from Carlos’s notebook.
“I’m looking for something big out here in the desert. Have you seen anything? Anything like the movement these charts are showing?”
Whap-whap-whap
.
“Ah, sorry,” Nilanjana muttered, putting the papers down. “There’s no way you can see tiny charts from that far up.”
“I can see the charts perfectly. My vision is excellent,” the loudspeaker said. “And don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Oh! Thanks.” She held the charts back up.
“That data indicates wild seismic stuff all over town. Fascinating,” the loudspeaker said. “Are you taking into account air pressure and humidity levels? Also are you checking those with the City Earthquake schedule?”
“Yes and yes.”
“And those movements out in the desert. Those are interesting. They suggest something moving underground maybe?”
“What makes you say that?” Nilanjana asked.
“I’m a big fan of Stephen R. Covey’s Seven Habitats of Highly Effective Beings. Number two is Beneath the Earth’s Surface. It used to be the lizard people lived down there, but they all returned to space decades ago.”
“And these events are too random to be the work of the lizard people,” Nilanjana pointed out. “So you’re up there, it seems, all the time? Have you seen any of these events actually happen?”
Whap of the blades. The loudspeaker crackled.
“Can you hear me?” she said.
“Duh.”
“Well?”
“DATA RECORDED BY SECRET POLICE IS CLASSIFIED.” The loudspeaker volume had increased quite a lot. “Wait. Not classified. IT DOESN’T EXIST. FORGET I SAID CLASSIFIED. I’M JUST FLYING A HELICOPTER HERE. No, wait. I’m not. YOU DON’T SEE THIS HELICOPTER. LEAVE THE AREA.”
Nilanjana sighed and put her stuff back into her car. The Secret Police recorded everything in town: conversations, people walking to work, financial activity, people sleeping, people playing with their cats and dogs. It wasn’t uncommon to see Secret Police standing outside a person’s window taping cats playing with catnip-stuffed toys. They loved that garbage. She knew that the helicopter had to have taken video of this area, showing some kind of moving thing, or at least a visual on how the pits had formed. She stood at the open door of her car for a few seconds, trying to figure out what to say that would change the pilot’s mind. But what did she know about how the helicopters thought? After all, this wasn’t her town. She hadn’t grown up with them.