by Joseph Fink
CECIL:I’ve never heard of Fütür.
MICHELLE:Of course you haven’t. The only way to get a copy is to walk out to the middle of the Whispering Forest. The trees there will try to lure you into becoming one of them by complimenting your outfit and physical appearance, but I’m immune to positive feedback so I’m one of the only people who can walk through there. My friend Richard is a tree there now. He used to intern here. He wanted me to tell you, “Hi, and you have a nice voice.” You have an okay voice, I guess.
Richard’s the one who told me about the magazine. In order to read it you have to climb this one tree, this creepy cedar named Reg, who appreciates my hats way too much. At the top of Reg is a plastic magazine kiosk that’s covered with band stickers and misspelled cuss words. Fütür magazine comes out weekly and it tells you news well before it happens, ensuring that I never have to have my parents or someone over thirty tell me something I didn’t already know. So, yes, I knew about the librarians well before anyone else.
CECIL:So what happens? Did Fütür explain how we were able to save our town? Or if? IF we were able to save our town?
MICHELLE:Probably. I don’t remember. It wasn’t very interesting. There was a review of an Amanda Palmer album that comes out in eight years. I read that instead. Anyway, I’m covered in spiders. So know that.
CECIL:Oh my gosh. I’m sorry. Please. Go call an exterminator right now.
MICHELLE:No! The spiders are my outfit, Cecil. I’m not going to kill them.
CECIL:Okay. Well, thank you Michelle. Listeners, this Thursday night at Dark Owl Records, Michelle and her staff will try to discover fire.
MICHELLE:Please stop knowing this.
CECIL:Do you have any special approaches or techniques you’re going to use to discover fire for yourself?
MICHELLE:We’re going to use simple elements, like cigarette lighters and gasoline. I gotta go, my hat is crawling down my back.
CECIL:Okay, then.
Friday night all lanes of Route 800 will be shut down in both directions as work crews stand in the middle of the empty dark highway repeating Bloody Mary three times just to settle this thing once and for all.
Saturday afternoon on the Great Lawn near City Hall is the annual Children’s Fair. There will be face-painting booths, street food, balloon animals, real animals, hungry animals, feral wild animals that fear no human. Children and adults are prohibited from attending until they get these animals under control.
Sunday morning the Night Vale Junior League will be opening the one-hundred-year time capsule that was buried there by disgruntled Subway employees all the way back in 1914. It’s very exciting to see what kinds of bread and cold cut slices they buried in that cardboard box for an entire century. We’re sure to learn a lot. And then forget it, only to have it resurface subtly couched in horrifying Jungian dream imagery for the rest of our lives. This is how time works.
Monday would like for you to leave it alone. It’s not its fault that you are emotionally unprepared for your own professional lives.
How are you doing right now, dear listener? Are you afraid? I would like to tell you that I am not afraid. I would like to be strong in the face of imminent death, Night Vale. I am the voice of a community, and I must be neutral, impassive, simply reporting the news.
I’d like to feel something resembling confidence, but I am feeling something resembling petrified terror. I am very similar to a scared person.
The City Council announced that . . . oh dear listeners . . . I do not know how to tell you this. The City Council announced that ALL of the librarians have escaped.
Night Vale, we do not yet know how many librarians there are or what exactly they are capable of. We were already too scared to read or even think about good literature, but now even our book-free personal space will be invaded by these monsters. Like the great American writer Mark Twain once said, “Reading is hardly worth all the bloodshed. This is why all of my novels are wadded up candy store receipts that I leave on park benches. They should never be put in libraries, even after I die in the next few minutes at the hands of this drunk minotaur standing in my parlor right now.”
Mark Twain was wise enough to know that libraries are a bad idea. Listeners, I’m calling my boyfriend, Carlos, to see what he thinks. He’s a scientist, and so he might have some idea about how to handle these unholy beasts.
[phone ringing]
CARLOS:Hello.
CECIL:Carlos. Hey, it’s me. I’m calling you from the show.
CARLOS:Oh hey, I was listening earlier but I got distracted with work. I’m standing in front of a row of beakers full of different-colored liquids, intermittently rubbing my chin and writing down long, complex equations. There’s a giant computer next to me, too, with several blinking buttons. So I missed most of your show, but I heard there’s a new wing at the library opening. That’s exciting.
CECIL:No. No. Carlos, it’s not exciting. Well, yes, technically, yes, it’s exciting. But horrible excitement. There are escaped librarians on the loose. We are in great danger. Carlos, have you not boarded up the doors?
CARLOS:No, it’s such a nice day today. I’ve got the windows open and everything. Why would we need to be afraid of librarians? Librarians are helpful and kind. I mean, I don’t want to generalize about all librarians. There are certainly some mean librarians, just as there are some mean people, just as there are helpful and kind librarians and people. They are no different than any of us.
I myself have never actually seen a librarian. Since I am a scientist, and not a writer or editor, I have never actually had to read a book and thus have never been inside a library. But I had friends in college that were literature or journalism majors, and they told me that librarians did things like help recommend good books and find important information related to their interests. And nearly all of my friends that have visited a library are still alive. Well, a little over half, anyway. I don’t see what the panic is about.
CECIL:Carlos, listen to yourself. That is insane.
CARLOS:Perhaps. As the great mathematician Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is available inside this cave. Come inside this cave. Please enter the cave and the definition will be told to you. It’s so nice in this cave.”
CECIL:True. But please, for my sake, lock the doors and turn out the lights. Do not let the librarians know that you are home. Do not answer the door for any reason, Carlos. I don’t know what I would do without you.
CARLOS:Okay. I will. I need a break from all these experiments anyway. I’ll try doing some quiet mental science in the dark. I’ll see you tonight.
CECIL:I love you. Be safe.
CARLOS:I love you, too. And I’ll be fine. I am a scientist. A scientist is always fine.
CECIL:Well, I certainly feel better having talked to Carlos even though I have learned absolutely nothing new about librarians. Night Vale, all I can tell you is to board up your doors and windows. Turn out the lights and do not answer the door for any reason. We do not know how long we must hide ourselves. You must continue to live your lives, but do so in a way that draws no attention. Requires no light or motion. Shut down your lives, listeners, for fear of losing them. Remove all semblance of living to prolong a few more moments of that empty life. Be safe, Night Vale. I will do my best to keep bringing you the news.
INTERN:Hello, Cecil?
CECIL:Intern Andrew? How wonderful to hear from you again. Are you at the library?
INTERN:Yes, I’ve found my way into the library. It’s very dark in here. The construction crew is standing over the collapsed scaffolding, poking at it with sticks and ordering it to put itself back together again. Their antennas are in the “nonaggressive” position, so I don’t think they realize the danger they’re in.
CECIL:Be careful, Intern Andrew. But also, be closer to the story. Be much closer, and tell us what you see.
INTERN:I am walking between the shelves. There are books all around me. I don’t feel safe around so many books.
There are small wallows here and there where a librarian has nested for the night. Some of them look quite fresh.
CECIL:Move quietly. There could still be a librarian arou——
INTERN:There is a librarian. It’s seen me. It has me trapped in the biographies section. There are many books about Helen Hunt. I have no choice. I will have to fight my way out.
CECIL:You’d never survive. Just pretend you don’t exist and hope the librarian shares your delusion.
INTERN:It’s too late. I have my fencing sword in my hand. Say goodbye to my mother, wherever she buried herself after the mine closed, I’ll do her proud!
CECIL:I will—
INTERN:And say good-bye to my best friend, Joann, and my second best friend, Jaime, and my tied-for-third best friends, Xerxes and Hassan. Wish them well on their artisanal upholstery business. Cover those chairs, my sweetest friends. Cover those chairs!
CECIL:Okay.
INTERN:And say good-bye to the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in My Home. I don’t know what I would have done without her. Probably mostly the same things I always did, because I didn’t know she was there until she started running for mayor. And now I’m not clear how she’s “secretly” living anywhere? How is it a secret at this point? Ask her that. Kind of smirk while you do. Lean back and cross your arms too. More. Great. Do that. For me.
CECIL:Okay, is that—
INTERN:And say goodbye to Cecil. Tell him his voice is like swimming in a clear, cold underground river.
CECIL:I’m Ceci——
INTERN:Tell him for me. All right, I’m going in. This will be a perilous and lengthy struggle. We will be intertwined in a gruesome embrace until one of us dies, maybe hours from now, maybe days. For Night Vale! Aaaaaaaaaa . . . [sudden choking cut off]
CECIL:To the family of Intern Andrew, he was a brave intern, although not very knowledgable about fencing swords and their complete inability to cut human flesh, let alone librarian exoskeletons.
And now, a public service announcement.
The Greater Night Vale Medical Community is calling on all citizens to give blood. There are always patients, unfortunate people, who need your help. Sometimes there is a great natural disaster like an earthquake or tornado. Or even a great artificial disaster like scissor fog. But don’t wait these moments to give blood. Doctors need it every single day.
Never given blood before? It’s easy. The Greater Night Vale Medical Community knows that many of you are afraid of needles, but there are so many non-needle ways to get your blood: court injunction, satellites, wolverines, a very carefully staged accident.
Put aside your rational fear of needles and pain, and give blood. This message has been brought to you by the Greater Night Vale Medical Community, which, oh this is weird, I’m sorry but I said I’d ask. The Greater Night Vale Medical Community wanted me to tell you that they, um, well, they think you’re cute. Are you seeing anybody right now?
Because I told them you were. So no pressure, okay. They still wanted me to ask. They were very persistent. Okay, I’ll tell them you are. No worries.
Listeners, the worst has just happened. We are getting reports that a librarian has entered a theater. Thankfully you are not one of those doomed souls who risked their lives for something as useless as live theater, but let us all, as an exercise in empathy, imagine what it would be like to be one of those unfortunates, in their last oblivious moments.
Imagine you are in a theater. Imagine rows of seats. Imagine a stage. Imagine amplification and a person a row behind you whispering to their friend constantly. Picture this. Picture yourself as you’d never be, in a crowd of listening strangers.
Now imagine the librarian in the theater, not yet spotted in the dark of the house. Imagine it slithering silently beneath the theater seats. What if, hypothetical theatergoer, it were under the seat you were in right now? No. Don’t check. Don’t check. If it knew you saw it, what would it decide to do to you? Don’t check. Don’t check. Okay, check. Ah. Nothing there. Good. So you are safe in your imagined theater seat. Or maybe the librarian anticipated your movement and slipped out of view just as you looked. That is a possibility too. What is wonderful about this world is that anything is possible. Anything that can eventually result in your death in this world is possible.
Was that a dry, scaled hand upon your shoulder? Oh, not that shoulder. Not that shoulder either. No, the other one. Oh, it keeps moving back and forth, doesn’t it? You feel breath faintly on your neck, so faintly that you dismiss it, over and over, until it dismisses you for good. One by one people are disappearing from their seats, without a sound, just a flash of red and a dark stain, and your brain adjusts for this by remembering those seats as always having been empty and moist.
And then the screams start. First the left side of the theater. And then the right. The librarian is everywhere now. The entire theater is screaming. A person in the front row gets up, clutches their chest, and screams. Or, oh, several people in the front row. They tear at their hair. They scream louder than the rest of the theater combined. And then: silence. Utter silence. The front row sits down.
The silence is worse than the screams. No one is saying anything at all. No one is making the slightest move. The librarian is above them. Don’t look up! The librarian descends. Perhaps on a web. Perhaps on great black wings. Perhaps with its tendrils wrapped around the walls and the beams. Its jaws open. It focuses in on a single person. Don’t look up! There are only moments now. While that person waits, unknowingly, to get taken, I take all of you—safe at home, of course, not actually helpless in a theater—to the weather.
WEATHER: “Sepentine Cycle of Money” by Carrie Elkin and Danny Schmidt
Listeners, good news. I mean, the news was always good for you, safe at home with only a few hidden entities lurking around you and none of them so dangerous as librarians. But the news, surprisingly, is also good for those screaming victims trapped in a theater.
The librarians have been re-captured. Not by the Sheriff’s Secret Police, not by Tamika Flynn and her valiant band of well-read child vigilantes, but by the librarians themselves.
We have learned that the initial escapee was named Randall. We have also learned that Randall was trying to leave his job as librarian. He was curious about all the other jobs in the world, as he was born a librarian and had only ever known the secret evils and dark magicks of library science.
Randall wanted to know what it would be like to work as a construction contractor, an auto body mechanic, a food co-op manager, a municipal park employee, a hooded figure. There is a whole world of occupations and opportunities in America. It is a free country, we explain to ourselves regularly without quite knowing what we mean. Randall even slipped into a theater to find out what it might be like to be a folk singer or an actor or an usher or just a regular audience member, just a human full of regret and worry, trying to find a moment outside of themselves by watching a live performance.
But the librarians, knowing that they are not human—far from it—found Randall and brought him back to the library. For while they are terrible, bloodthirsty pseudo-reptilians, librarians are also quite organized. Just as they would never want a highly researched nonfiction travel guide like Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series to end up in, say, fiction, or a sci-fi fantasy comic book like Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides to end up in religious studies, librarians also know that they should never be seen or felt or heard outside of a library.
Librarians know they cannot enter society and co-exist with humans without succumbing to immense hunger and curiosity, tearing us all into pink, pulpy piles of post-existence. So they dragged unhappy Randall from the theater (along with a couple of collateral audience members).
The people in the theater were filled with relief, and shaking with the echo of their terror. They each turned to a person near them, not even a person they came with, not a person they knew at all. They each turned to that stranger and they said, “You are alive for now.” And then
they said, “Congratulations.” They shared a couple moments of eye contact to acknowledge the unlikelihood of this claim. One . . . two . . . and then they looked away, uncomfortable with all that eyeballs and vision imply. They mumbled, “Well, it was nice to meet you,” And they all said, “My name’s Amanda,” even though very few of them were named that. And then the show went on, and that moment of exchange hung between the strangers in the audience, latent and invisible, perhaps to be reprised later or perhaps already only existing in the poor reconstruction of memory.
As usual, we had nothing to fear. And in saying that, I mean that we have everything to fear. Death is slotted for us all. Maybe many years from now in a soft bed surrounded by the soft eyes of those we love. Maybe not many years from now at all. We have every reason to be scared. But we should also put that fear aside. Like a library book, we sometimes need to check out our fear, read it, peruse it, study it closely, but at a certain point return it to its proper shelf and experience something else. Contentment, worry, calm, hunger, spine parasites, and a great deal of love of every kind. Put that fear in a place where you can find it again when it’s useful, but don’t carry it with you. Do not carry it with you.
Stay tuned next for a shuffling movement outwards, a dimming of lights, and a large hall left empty and silent until the next time it is not.
Good night, all of you listeners.
And good night, Night Vale. Good night.
Acknowledgments
THANKS TO THE CAST AND CREW OF WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE: Meg Bashwiner, Jon Bernstein, Desiree Burch, Nathalie Candel, Adam Cecil, Aliee Chan, Dessa Darling, Felicia Day, Emma Frankland, Kevin R. Free, Mark Gagliardi, Glen David Gold, Angelique Gran-done, Marc Evan Jackson, Maureen Johnson, Kate Jones, Ashley Lierman, Erica Livingston, Christopher Loar, Hal Lublin, Dylan Marron, Jasika Nicole, Lauren O’Niell, Zack Parsons, Flor De Liz Perez, Teresa Piscioneri, Jackson Publick, Molly Quinn, Em Reaves, Retta, Symphony Sanders, Annie Savage, Lauren Sharpe, James Urbaniak, Bettina Warshaw, Wil Wheaton, Brie Williams, Mara Wilson, and, of course, the voice of Night Vale himself, Cecil Baldwin.