Who's a Good Boy?

by Joseph Fink

  CECIL: That sounds great, but I still need to get to the bottom of what is going on in this city. Intern Kareem pulled some documents for me that he says I need to read through, and I have some calls I need to make. The invasion by these strangers is a big story, and even if I can’t broadcast it, I still need to find some way to report it. I’ll call you later.

  CARLOS: You’re so good at your job.

  CECIL: You are too, Carlos. How’s your research going?

  CARLOS: I’ve been examining some of the places where the strangers have been spotted. I have a meter that makes squawking sounds sometimes. I’m uncertain if those last two sentences are related. Cecil, be careful. And if you see one of the strangers, just get out of there quickly and call me, okay?

  CECIL: We’ve survived one at the station before, I’ll be fine.

  CARLOS: Past performance is not an indicator of future results. I love you.

  CECIL: Okay. ’Bye.

  [hangs up]

  [phone ringing]

  SHERIFF SAM: Howdy. Sheriff Sam.

  CECIL: Sheriff. Hi, this is Cecil Palmer over at Night Vale Community Radio.

  SAM: What I just said was off the record. Don’t play it on air.

  CECIL: You only said howdy.

  SAM: Nope. Sure didn’t.

  CECIL: Sheriff, I’m not even on the air right now. No one is listening to this call except the Secret Police, the City Council, the mayor, and well, some neighborhood espionage clubs but they have our community’s best interests at heart.

  I’m calling because I wanted to find out what the Secret Police know about the strangers who are showing up all over town. Are the structural failures related to their presence here?

  SAM: Now, by strangers, do you mean the foreigners from Desert Bluffs who are taking over our beautiful city, after they managed to run their own city into the dirt? Or are you referring to the people who don’t seem to move except for their breathing, who stand and stare at seemingly nothing, who without any noticeable motion suddenly appear much closer and who cause our citizens to stand trancelike until they are taken or killed or subsumed or converted into nonmoving strangers themselves?

  CECIL: The latter.

  SAM: Cecil, there are two sinkholes opened up on Route 800. The dam along Night Vale Lake broke. Fortunately our lake is just an empty dust hole, but it still broke wide open. Also, I have a caffeine headache even though I don’t drink caffeine.

  CECIL: That sounds like just a headache, then.

  SAM: I don’t need the media dictating to me what is or is not a caffeine headache. The point is things are falling apart but not in the fun way, in the awful way.

  CECIL: There’s a fun way?

  SAM: Sure, like during a scheduled earthquake or when the lizard people dig new tunnels below old buildings.

  CECIL: Of course. What about the former Desert Bluffs residents who moved to Night Vale? Are the strangers doing the same to them?

  SAM: Who cares?

  CECIL: I care. The people who know them care. They’re humans, Sheriff. And as a reporter, I will report you said that.

  SAM: Well, I’m the sheriff of a Secret Police force, so no you won’t. You won’t do that at all.

  [tense pause]

  I’m just playing with you.

  I have a dry sense of humor. You might have missed that. I was delivering a real threat to your life but in a teasing way. For real, you definitely won’t report anything I tell you.

  Some of those Desert Bluffs people we can’t even track. Not all of them stayed here. Some of them moved away. In our regular interrogations and detentions of these noncitizens, we’ve learned that a lot of them moved to some other place, which they say feels a bit more like home. I don’t know anything about that except that I’m happy to get them out of here. They can set up all the Joyous Congregations of the Smiling God that they want some other place.

  Just tell your listeners that everything is fixed and everyone is safe. The sheriff saved the day.

  CECIL: But you didn’t do anything.

  SAM: Gotta go, Cecil. Just got some new calligraphy pens I need to break in before the press conference to announce that “All Is Lost.”

  [hangs up]

  [phone rings]

  MICHELLE: Dark Owl Records. Please shut up about music before you embarrass yourself.

  CECIL: Michelle, hey, it’s Cecil. I hate to bother you but I’m trying to track down Maureen. I heard you two are friends.

  MICHELLE: I only talked about Maureen privately into my audio journal. Did you listen to the monologue I recorded?

  CECIL: Yes, I played it on the air six weeks ago.

  MICHELLE: I didn’t want anyone to hear that! That was personal!

  CECIL: Michelle, you mailed me a cassette with a note that said, “Here’s my monologue to play on your show, Cecil.”

  MICHELLE: But that was me from more than a month ago. I hate that me. Haven’t you ever made mistakes in your youth?

  CECIL: Yes. Many. Michelle, you’ve talked to Maureen recently? How is she?

  MICHELLE: She’s fine. I mean, she’s not that into leading an army or whatever, but it’s just a thing she does for a living. I sell records. You talk on the radio. Maureen leads the army of unmoving strangers.

  CECIL: She’s the leader of the strangers?

  MICHELLE: Or whatever. Maureen was sweet and let me see one of the strangers up close. They smell like compost and are all gray and they make you feel cold. They’re really beautiful, but they’ll devour your soul and turn you into one of them. Maureen says it’s super-painful when they do that, and the transformation is forever. That’s why they can only stand and breathe and not really move because they’re in so much pain for so long, trapped in immortal bodies. It was cool. Kind of cool. I mean, I don’t know. Will you hate me if I like something?

  CECIL: Michelle, how did you get up close to one without being devoured?

  MICHELLE: Maureen said she’d keep me safe from them because we’re each other’s only friend. Maureen’s a kind person. She does like country music, but I think friendship is sometimes about compromise. If it means getting to be around her, I’m perfectly happy covering my ears and humming the Bob’s Burgers theme.

  CECIL: What about the boy in the hoodie who hangs out with Maureen?

  MICHELLE: Chad? Chad’s okay, I guess. He’s just Maureen’s boss though. She has to hang around him a bunch and watch his evil dog. It’s just work, you know.

  CECIL: Michelle, I—

  MICHELLE: Cecil. Music sometimes calms me. You wanna hear a song I really like?

  CECIL: Sure.

  MICHELLE: Okay, here you go.

  WEATHER: “Palestine” by Sam Baker, featuring Carrie Elkin

  CECIL: That was a wonderful song, Michelle.

  MICHELLE: Are you still talking about that song I started playing five minutes ago? I’ve moved on from that. Glad you like oldies so much. Anyway, Maureen’s new phone number is Old Town 5–7614.

  CECIL: Thanks, Michelle.

  [hangs up]

  [phone rings; Maureen’s answering machine]

  MAUREEN: Hi, this is Maureen. I’m probably at work or asleep or somewhere else. Somewhere listening to the sound of the moon slowly trying to peel off our oceans with its gravity. Pulling, its weak chalky little speck of a body grabbing this blue giant and tearing away at its watery skin. A futile fight, a spinning battle of large and small. And in the sky you can hear the whirling of the battling siblings. Or maybe I just don’t want to take your call. Or maybe I’m dead. Or maybe you’re dead and this is the voice mail you get when you die. “Hi, Maureen here. Sorry you’re dead. For some reason I’m the one person you wanted to call the moment you left behind your short life, and I’m not even here to take it. So sorry newly dead person. Make sure you leave a phone number where I can reach you, because I certainly don’t know how to call dead people on the phone.” Or maybe I lost my phone and it’s in my car or under a pillow or I left it in a movie theater
or a raccoon ate it. Maybe there’s a raccoon somewhere in the brush or in a trash can behind a house, walking with a limp because it just ate a phone, a rectangle of glass and metal and electronics that’s a quarter the length of the raccoon’s body, and now that phone is inside the raccoon’s guts stretching its tiny tummy impossibly long, pressing against the masked procyon’s little heart and lungs as it walks tenderly to one side to alleviate the discomfort of such an intrusive foreign object to hold within. The raccoon—and this is kind of cute, kind of sad, to think about—walks diagonally all the while digitally emitting a little [deedle-oo-doo deedle-oo-doo deedle-oo-doo-dee] ringtone all muffled from within its quivering torso and questioning its eat-everything-it-can-find dogma and thinking perhaps to just limit that life philosophy to trash cans. Of course I bet people throw away phones all the time, so that’s probably not a big help, although in my case I’m positive I didn’t do that because my job is too important to just throw my phone away. Too, too important. Too many evil beings to manage. Too fragile a portal into another dimension—a dimension which is probably hell—I.D.K. I’m not a religious studies major, although if I were, I bet I would have graduated by now. I mean so much can go wrong if I lost my phone. Like no one could get hold of me to help fix it, which is not to say I know how to fix an interdimensional portal between hell and this world, but just that I could be a person to be like, “Oh no. I’m so sorry to hear the portal is malfunctioning. Let me panic a little bit and make some phone calls to feel like we’re all doing something about it,” and that would be helpful because sympathy is critical to good teamwork, and if you don’t care about your job, you’re not going to make anything of yourself. I am. I am making something of myself. Just sculpting away. Here’s a clump of Maureen. Let’s work it a bit with these hands. Yeah, this is looking great. This is a really nice Maureen here. All ready to be put in a fire and cooled and painted and set upon an alabaster pedestal in the foyer. So leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.

  [beep]

  CECIL: Maureen. I finally figured it out. Chad Boenger. That boy I’ve seen you with. He used to intern here, just like you. He went to report a story on that used sporting goods store that we thought was a front for the World Government and never came back out. I guess it was something much worse he found in that shady old building. Now the two of you have a really successful start-up. I’m proud of our internship program here at the station.

  I’m also proud of you for becoming a professional. You’re leading an army, Maureen. That’s very impressive, much more so than filing papers, fetching me lunch, and updating my erotic fan fiction blog.

  Sounds like a great job with good benefits. It’s a tough job market for young people these days. Lots of changing technologies making old jobs like print journalism, cardiology, and computer programming obsolete. Plus, all these new people moving here from Desert Bluffs. Kudos to you, Maureen.

  Here’s my question though, and it’s an important one.

  So, Carlos, my boyfriend. Earlier when I talked to him, I forgot to say “I love you” at the end of the call. I was preoccupied. No big deal. My love was implicit in the way we talked to each other. Love needn’t be verbalized when it exists in intuition and physical contact. He knows I love him, but part of me wonders what if one of those rare times I forget to hug him good-bye or fail to say “I love you” turns out to be the last time I have that chance. Lots can go wrong in an indifferent universe.

  I’ll see him in a couple of hours, right? I’ll see Carlos later. Right, Maureen?

  Please call me back. I want to talk more about what you and Chad are doing to my town. I—

  [clicking]

  I’m getting another call from an unknown number. I’m hoping this is the sheriff. Call me back.

  [clicks over]

  Hello?

  [very faint breathing]

  Hello?

  [very faint breathing]

  Who is this?

  [distant dog bark]

  [click]

  PROVERB: Wanna feel old? People born in 2014 have already graduated college, don’t know what a trombone is, and are all named after gourds.

  Episode 89:

  “Who’s a Good Boy? Part 1”

  AUGUST 15, 2016

  I LOVE BEAGLES.

  Let me back up. I love dogs. But of all dogs, I love hounds best. It’s their dumb floppy ears, you know? And of all hounds, I love beagles best.

  When I was a small child, I used to hang out with my neighbor’s beagle, Romeo, in their driveway. He would be tied up outside while my neighbor was in his garage, and the neighbor was nice enough to let me just come over and sit with his dog, because his dog was a beagle and therefore my favorite thing in the whole world.

  One time I hugged Romeo too hard and he lightly bit my face to get me to let go. I once got bit by a beagle because I hugged it too hard.

  I wonder if most of the plot for this year was pretty much written so that we could name the last episode of the year “Who’s a Good Boy?” Probably, yes it was.

  We were doing an event in Jersey City with Maureen Johnson to promote the first Welcome to Night Vale novel, and I turned to Maureen and said, “I have this idea where Satan brings an army to attack Night Vale and you end up as Satan’s right-hand woman. Does that sound good?” and she was very into the idea. A lot of Night Vale ideas start with one of us saying, “Man, wouldn’t it be interesting if . . . ,” and then we go from there.

  There was a clue we put in very early on this year that the thing that Chad had summoned was Satan, but I don’t think anyone caught it. Maybe no one ever will. If you want to try to find it, here’s a hint: It was during one of the episodes of our show. (Okay, since you went ahead and paid for this book to get the real dirt, I’ll tell you it was in Episode 81. No more hints.)

  Incorporating some traditional horror elements into the Night Vale story this year was a lot of fun. We don’t often swing completely creepy, but sometimes it’s nice to take away all humor and let the horror stand on its own. This was also the year that I started writing my other podcast, Alice Isn’t Dead, which often goes into straightforward horror. Doing that definitely gave me a taste for it, and emboldened me to create episodes of Night Vale that were more scary with less humor to balance. Sometimes you want nervous laughter, but sometimes you want to go for blood.

  Who’s a good boy? Who is it?

  —Joseph Fink

  Who’s a good boy? Who’s the good boy? Who is it? Who is it?

  WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE

  All over town, the question, painted on walls. Written in the sky by our flying aces. Tapped out in Morse code from within the walls of our homes.

  “Who’s a good boy?”

  The radio station is . . . unavailable, as so much of the town is currently . . . unavailable. Down for maintenance. Wiped off the map. However you want to say it.

  The strangers who do not move, but who seem closer every time you look, they have torn our town apart. They do not seem to have an agenda, no plan, just destruction. They only seek to rend, to shatter.

  Carlos has locked himself in the lab with his team of scientists, working without sleep to find a solution to this crisis, as they have found solutions to so many crises before. He wanted me to stay there with him, since within the proximity of science is of course the safest place to be in any natural or unnatural disaster. But I am a reporter. I can’t not report. My town needs me to witness. And so I will walk through my city. And I will witness.

  I sent my sister, Abby, and her family to the lab, so they could keep my niece safe.

  “Keep them safe,” I said to my brother-in-law, Steve.

  “Ah geez,” he said. “With Abby around, I can’t imagine a bad thing that could happen.”

  He really loves my sister. If I am to spend this time witnessing, maybe I should start there. Maybe I should finally allow myself to see the depth of his love for my sister and their daughter. Ugh, and then he tried to hug me and he smelle
d like onions and I shouted, “Oh no, we better get you barricaded in there Steve, I think I see some strangers not moving,” while I slammed the lab door on him.

  The wreckage of Night Vale is complete. It is even worse than Valentine’s Day, 2013, when much of the town was reduced to rubble and candy hearts.

  I passed by the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex, site of so many great and terrible memories. Old Woman Josie throwing the ceremonial first pitch of the Bowling Tournament. City Council and Station Management finding horrifying love on the skating rink. And other memories, too, that I don’t like to talk or think about.

  Now the complex was boarded up, under siege from the strangers. There were three of them in its parking lot. None of them were moving. The only car in the lot was upside down and on fire.

  Dark Owl Records was somehow untouched. It was the only building in blocks without smashed windows, and it somehow still had electricity.

  Michelle Nguyen and former intern Maureen were leaning casually outside, smoking candy cigarettes. This took a lot of relighting as candy cigarettes do not burn well at all.

  “Maureen! Michelle!” I said. “You’re okay!”

  They both rolled their eyes.

  “Michelle, how did you keep Dark Owl from being destroyed along with everything else?”

  She glanced at Maureen.

  “Um . . .,” she said.

  “Well,” Maureen said, “say someone was leading an army or whatever. Then they could command that army to not attack a specific person or place. Or whatever. So maybe that’s what happened. Anyway, if that’s what happened, then that person wouldn’t be leading that army anymore.”

  “You quit your internship?”

  “I didn’t like my boss. Especially since I found out what . . . who he is. I didn’t have all the details before. Feels like I was misled. That’s a familiar feeling, Cecil,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “At least you were just clueless.”