The Buying of Lot 37

by Joseph Fink

  The City Council added: “Hissssssssssssssss.” And then they released a bunch of badgers into City Hall much to the delight of the onlookers who thought that the badgers were kittens. The onlookers were quickly and painfully corrected in this matter.

  More on this story as it develops. But first today’s horoscopes!

  ARIES: You have much in common with a tree. A sadness that no one can see or understand. Communication only through silence and wind. Skin made of wood. The way you collect sustenance through roots buried in soil. You are very, very much like a tree. Almost impossible to tell the difference.

  TAURUS: Today is the day you change everything. Oh, I’m sorry. Misspoke. Let me try that again. Today is the day that everything changes you. You will be completely unrecognizable. Yeah, there we go.

  GEMINI: How scared are you of centipedes, Gemini? I mean, no reason. The stars are just asking. Like, are you super, super scared? Because like if you’re really, really scared of them, then, well, I can’t say exactly, but you’re pretty brave right? Like you can handle a few centipedes? You can handle a bunch of centipedes, right, Gemini? I mean, no reason. Just asking.

  CANCER: Today is an excellent day to demand a promotion, to approach the one you’ve been secretly thinking about for years, to try your hand at that new hobby you’re considering. Unfortunately, it’s a terrible day for getting a promotion, having that person say yes, or not injuring yourself badly on a power sander, but you should at least feel great about the attempt.

  LEO: There’s just a thick green smudge here and the word CRYPTOTOXICOLOGY. That’s probably a good sign, maybe.

  VIRGO: There’s still some of you left? But how did you survive the Great Culling of Virgos that swept through . . . oh, I’m sorry. That’s not until next week. I was really confused there. Yeah, today looks pretty good for you. Maybe use this nice day to get your affairs in order. Just a thought.

  LIBRA: All your dreams will come true today. Or I mean, one of them will. You know that recurring dream where you are chased through a house that seems like your own but isn’t quite, by a swarm of bees that you can’t see even though you know they’re there? Well, it’s not that one. It’s the other recurring dream. I’m so, so sorry.

  SCORPIO: Your arms look weird, and your face is a natural irritant. Your personality leaves much to be desired, the principal desire being your immediate absence. You disgust me, STEVE CARLSB——. I mean, Scorpios. Ugh. Gross. Scorpios.

  SAGITTARIUS: Buy a tourniquet. The best money can buy.

  CAPRICORN: Today’s lucky number is imaginary. Coincidentally, so are you and your entire experience of the world.

  AQUARIUS: Want to make money fast? I dunno. Rob someone. Commit fraud. There’s lots of ways.

  PISCES: You’ve won another brand new car! You stare bleakly at your home, filled with stacks upon stacks of new cars occupying every possible space at impossible angles. Today’s brand new car is wheeled in, and as its bulk presses against you, taking the last bit of your home that had still been yours to live in, you feel tears hot upon your cheeks. Congratulations on your prize.

  Listeners, I’ve just received word that there has been an accident at the library. The intricate papier-mâché and balsa wood scaffolding has collapsed.

  The Sheriff’s Secret Police have reported no serious injuries from the accident, but they say that one of the dense titanium and heavily electrified cages containing a librarian was damaged and that that cage is now empty.

  Night Vale, this is terrible news. There is a librarian on the loose in our city, Night Vale, and there is no triple-thick armored wall or bloody animal carcass laying over a bamboo-covered pit of sharp sticks to protect us from this stalking oblivion.

  Without the military-grade steel walls of the library to keep the librarians contained, Night Vale, we are helpless. We are doomed.

  Watch your back, Night Vale.

  CECIL:Oh, I almost forgot. We have a new intern. That’s always fun. Let’s have him introduce himself on air.

  INTERN:Hi, I’m Intern Andrew. I’m super excited about being here. There was a way long waiting list when I signed up, and I had to wait, oh, three days before all the other interns had “left the station” and my name got to the top!

  CECIL:Well, we’re thrilled to have you here.

  INTERN:I look forward to a long and healthy life in radio.

  CECIL:Say, what do you know about librarians?

  INTERN:Librarians . . . Oh no . . . Librarians . . . When I was young, my mother used to work in the coal mines, before they were converted into a holding pen for those who vote incorrectly in municipal elections. She went out each day, miner’s helmet under her arm, pick slung over one shoulder, fencing sword tucked into her belt, and bloodied axe across her back. The usual miner’s get up. She would descend into the dark with her fellow workers, seeking out coal or the tiny, valuable hearts of rare bats.

  CECIL:Fantastic! So your job—

  INTERN:My mother saw terrible things down there in the dark. Hazy, feathered things. Swarming, weeping things. Gawping, gasping things with claws and spokes and stingers and more claws. Day in and day out, this was her job. Mining coal, and fighting the denizens of the dark downwards for their hearts. When she came home, she’d be covered in coal dust and lymph.

  But my mother was never afraid. Nothing fazed her. Except for the day I had to get a book from the library for a school science project. She insisted on going in ahead of me and clearing the way. But after a few minutes she came out, shaking, pale, her fencing sword bent, her axe broken in half. RUN she shouted RUN. Librarians are feared even by the fearless. I got a B on the project anyway.

  CECIL:Well, good news! That was a well-told story. Also I need you to head down to the library and do some research on librarians.

  INTERN:To the library?

  CECIL:Yep! Good luck! Listeners, I can’t wait to hear what Intern Andrew comes up with! On your way now. I can’t wait.

  We’re getting reports from all over town about the escaped librarian. Liesl Schmid, who owns the auto body shop near Somerset and Gray, said she heard whispers. The whispers sounded as if they were coming from just next to her. “Where do you live Liesl?” “Do you like cars?” “How many cars will you fix before you die?” “What is your favorite color of paint?” “Do you know what I look like, Liesl?” “Would you like to?” “Would you like to?” The whispers echoed off the closed garage doors of the vast, empty workshop. Liesl said with each question, a halogen work light would fade to black, her auto body shop slowly darkening until the whispers were all she could see, and yes, somehow, she could see them. Until the final question: “Liesl, can I come live with you? I am all alone, Liesl,” and the last light exploded. The room went black, and before she could even start the usual process of panic, Liesl felt—here she is, alone, in the dark—a small hand slide slowly into her own.

  Liesl tried to pull away, but the childlike hand kept sliding further and further into her palm, and the childlike hand was thick, serpentine, enlarging continually and wrapping around her wrist and forearm as she felt the sharp pierce of what seemed like blades but were likely just the rigid caudal spine common on most librarians.

  Liesl tried to scream but only gasped. She gasped, through a clenched throat and bared teeth, “Please, let me be. I have a family,” and it was the possession of this family that saved her, as her business partner and sister, Heike, having just arrived, fired a blowtorch at the book-loving monster and it slitheringly scurried and scurriedly slithered away.

  I’ve also received word from Green Market Board President Tristan Cortez that he cannot stop feeling his own heart beating. He feels it throughout his entire body. It feels like there is an enormous engine buried in the earth beneath him, shaking the foundations of the land, but it is not an enormous engine, it is a heart and it is actually so fragile and small.

  There’s something just on the other side of his front door, he said. It is breathing. He is also breathing. He cannot
bring himself to look outside. He knows who it is, what it is. His heart is reacting as any heart would in the presence of a librarian. The rhythm of his own liquid life pulses through his tongue and lips, throbbing and impossible to ignore. He can feel it in his feet as he tries to stand still. He can feel it in his chest as he tries to yell over the din of his pulse, the boomboombooming of his heart and finally he manages one terrified shout into the cool morning air.

  Tristan could not say for sure that it was a librarian on the other side of the door, but he did say that he could smell that familiar librarian odor of burnt coffee during a sinus infection. He also said that after the beast left, the day’s mail had appeared on the porch so it could have just been a really spooky postal worker.

  And now a word from our sponsors.

  Today’s show is brought to you by American Express. I have with me a representative from American Express in the studio, here to tell you all about this amazing card’s many features. The representative is a slight haze in the air, and her name is Deb. Deb?

  DEB:Thanks, Cecil. Hello listeners out there, I think I speak for all American Express employees and also for all sentient patches of haze when I say that I am just thrilled about the new American Express Obsidian Card.

  CECIL:That sounds very exclusive. I’m still using the Amex I got in college. It’s a post-it that says, “REAL AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD” and has a drawing of a thumbs-up. I trust this card completely, although admittedly I have yet to find a merchant that will accept it.

  DEB:Well the new Obsidian Card will solve all of your problems. It is accepted worldwide, by any merchant that keeps their store dimly lit and lingers sadly all day on memories of lost loved ones. It’s easy! If you hear crying, then your card is welcome!

  And the benefits are better than ever. The Obsidian Card features full purchase protection, extended warranty on electronics, a deathless hunger that can never be sated by mere carnal appetite, and the quiet loss of one part of your body every month. We don’t tell you which part. It’s a surprise! It also gives you points for airlines. Or it points at the nearest airplane if put on a flat surface. I don’t remember which.

  CECIL:That really does sound great.

  DEB:I don’t care what it sounds like. It’s already in your wallet now. It’s in the wallet of all of your listeners. It has replaced the wallet of your listeners. Many objects in their home will now be replaced by the American Express Obsidian Card. Everything they touch will turn into a black, volcanic stone credit card. They will accidentally kill people, people they care about, and whose only crime was being touched by the cursed listener. American Express: Don’t leave home.

  CECIL:Wow, what a product and/or service. I try not to listen to or remember what anyone says to me. Taking in knowledge can be a super dangerous thing to do.

  Speaking of danger, the librarian was seen near the Dog Park. The long-taloned creature with its many round, black eyes, and hairy, brown teeth was seen scaling the Dog Park fence. City Council has warned us many times that the Dog Park is off limits, that dogs are not allowed in the Dog Park, that people are not allowed in the Dog Park, that we may see hooded figures in the Dog Park. Well, witnesses said that as the librarian approached the Dog Park fence, the hooded figures ran away in all directions, cloaks fluttering in the wind of motion, revealing matching black and white Nike tennis shoes.

  But before the librarian could enter the Dog Park, a small band of masked children showed up holding slingshots and well-worn copies of Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed post-fatalist novel No Longer at Ease. By all accounts, this was the same group of fifth through eighth graders who bravely escaped last year’s Summer Reading Program at the Night Vale Public Library. The leader of that escape, thirteen-year-old Tamika Flynn, was with the group of kids at the Dog Park trying to back the librarian down from the fence.

  As a small boy blew a low, long tone from a conch shell, Tamika held aloft the severed head of the librarian she defeated last summer—still surprisingly well-preserved—as a gruesome warning for the librarian currently terrorizing the forbidden municipal park.

  Witnesses said the librarian shrieked meekly and leapt from the fence, as the children chased after it shouting suggested additions to the library’s fiction stock. “Maxine Hong Kingston,” came one shout. “Larry McMurtry is a keystone of new Western literature,” another yelled. “I have never read Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I hope you add her,” came a final call as sling-shotted rocks plunked hard off the retreating librarian’s exoskeleton.

  Tamika then spoke. We have her actual speech, because we are all being recorded at all times by several different government organizations and amateur community spying clubs. Here now, is Tamika Flynn’s statement.

  TAMIKA:People of Night Vale. We are your children. We are your children who survived the librarians. We are your children who defeated StrexCorp. We are your children who learned the power of books.

  The power of books is that they teach you how to destroy what is but should not be. The power of books is that they show you what it might be like to think as someone other than this person you are stuck being. The power of books is poisonous gases and spring traps.

  Nothing is more powerful than a book. A larger book is slightly more powerful than a smaller book, because it can also be used to hit your enemies. Smaller paperbacks are terrible for that.

  Take it from me, I have tried. A Hero of Our Time might be a classic of Russian literature but it is useless against the hide of a librarian, even when launched with a handmade book launcher. This is why Vladimir Nabokov’s famous translation added several thousand blank pages and a carbon steel, bullet-shaped dust jacket.

  But your physical stature is unrelated to your strength. You are strong because you are many. You are strong because you are in this together. You are strong because of that weird rain that gave many of you double-quick hand combat reflexes and seventh eyes. You are strong because if enough people believe in their own power, even if armed only with mass-market paperbacks, they could bring down not just a librarian, but an entire corpocratic regime.

  As for us, your army of missing children, we are not missing. We are found.

  Here is our plan, Night Vale: We will give up. We will lay down our arms and quit fighting. We will close our eyes and sleep. Yes, that is what we will do once we have crushed every enemy in our path. Once we are victorious and bathed in blood, and placing stickers on reading levels far beyond our age, reading levels that are yet to be discovered, pizza reading rewards in quantities and kinds that are unimaginable for the unenlightened.

  As Indira Gandhi once said, “You cannot shake hands with a mangled fist that has been chewed up by an unchained librarian.” You are not alone. You were never alone. We will advance on the librarians together. Believe in us Night Vale. We will exist either way, but you might as well. You might as well.

  CECIL:Unfortunately, witnesses were too shaken to see where the librarian disappeared to. Listeners, I urge you to follow Tamika’s example of strength and courage. Be brave like Tamika, but do so indoors. Keep your homes locked and listen here for further instructions.

  Let’s have a look now at the community calendar:

  This Thursday afternoon at the rec center is the Sheriff’s Secret Police’s semi-annual Gun Buyback Program. If you have an illegal or unregistered gun, bring it to the rec center, and the Secret Police will buy it from you, with full amnesty, no questions asked. A Secret Police representative said it’d be especially cool if you had fully automatic rifles and some grenades. Really cool, she repeated, eyes darting about, knuckles rhythmically cracking. Also, please don’t tell anyone we’re doing this. It’s totally covert, she whispered.

  CECIL:There’s an event this Thursday night at Dark Owl Records. For more on that, we’ve got owner Michelle Nguyen on the phone. Michelle?

  MICHELLE:Hi, Cecil.

  CECIL:Welcome to our show, Michelle.

  MICHELLE:Am I on a podcast?

  CECIL:
No. It’s a radio show.

  MICHELLE:Oh good. Podcasts are dead. I hate podcasts.

  CECIL:Michelle, I got a press release saying you have a special event this Thursday at Dark Owl Records.

  MICHELLE:I wish I hadn’t sent that out. I didn’t want anyone to know about it.

  CECIL:It doesn’t say what the event is. It just says “Dark Owl Records. This Thursday Night. You probably wouldn’t understand and probably won’t be invited.”

  MICHELLE:So this Thursday night, the Dark Owl staff and I are going to try to discover fire. It’s a private event, and I’ve ordered them never to tell anybody what we find out, because if everyone knows how to make fire, then everyone will start talking about how to make fire. And then people will be making fire all the time, and suddenly making fire won’t mean anything. We will no longer feel what it means to create flames. We will no longer cry under the glimmering orange lamp of nature’s most cruel and useful force. If everyone loves making fire, then how can we truly know what it even means to feel heat or light a scented candle or fry an egg or take revenge on your own diary.

  CECIL:Not to be a spoilsport here, Michelle, but fire was discovered a long time ago.

  MICHELLE:I know that. Fire’s been around for decades. Blah blah blah. History blah blah. I get it. But it is important that my staff and I discover it for ourselves. It’s like Bono said moments before he died, “It’s all been a lie and I wish I had been more aware.”

  CECIL:Well, it sounds like a cool event.

  MICHELLE:Please don’t ruin it with adjectives.

  CECIL:It sounds like an event. Michelle, I don’t know if you’ve heard the news today about the escaped librarians.

  MICHELLE:I found out about the escaped librarian years ago from this underground magazine called Fütür (with two umlauts).