Episode 36 - Missing
Red sky at night. Sailor’s delight.
Red sky at night, the sailors are howling and laughing.
The sailors begin to surround us, and the night sky is so very red.
Welcome to Night Vale.
Listeners, I hate to start our program off with sad news, but our new station owner – StrexCorp – handed me a Missing Child Alert right as I walked into the studio.
“StrexCorp is asking Night Vale citizens to be on the lookout for Tamika Flynn, age 13. She is described as 5'1”, stocky build, black hair and dark eyes. Dark. So dark. So wise beyond time. So deep in their understanding that to gaze into them is to gaze into your own death. It is not important where she was last seen or by whom. Why do you need to know that? Why are you asking so many questions? You are taking valuable time away from important and highly-fulfilling work at your place of employment,” the Missing Child Report reads.
“StexCorp asks that anyone with any knowledge about Tamika Flynn’s whereabouts should contact StrexCorp Headquarters by picking up a phone, and talking. Don’t worry, you’re not hard to find.”
I asked my new supervisor, Daniel, why it’s StrexCorp that is issuing a Missing Child Alert, and not Tamika Flynn’s family or the Sheriff’s Secret Police. But he just started shaking, and sparking, and humming. Then the hallway got too cloudy and I couldn’t breathe, and my show was starting, so I left him alone.
He’s still standing at the studio window, staring at me, twitching, sparks subsiding, but his mouth has fallen open revealing…is that motor oil? Tar? I don’t know. But it’s going to be hard to concentrate if he doesn’t leave.
Let’s go now to the Community Calendar.
Tuesday, there’s a false start. A mistaken understanding of time. Tuesday, we will wake, and walk to our normal places – our showers, kitchens, cars, desks – only to find the day never began. We will slowly notice an absence of all matter, all light, all time.
And then, as suddenly as we false-started, we will begin our actual day. And everything will happen the same. Only, because of our awareness of it all, it will happen differently. Less differently at first, but more differently later.
Wednesday will take forever. For-eeeeeeevvvvvveeeerrrrr. Not literally, but very near literally. Ugh! Wednesday hasn’t even gotten here, and I already want it over with!
Thursday, a faint outline of a dull face will appear in the dark as you try to sleep. You will notice its blank stare; its straight, expressionless lips; its thick brow; and the subtle hint of slow collected breaths. It will seem to be watching you, curious about you, as if it were not from here. It is not from here. You will lock eyes. You will barely be able to make out the face’s humanoid features but you will know, deep down, it is not human. Not human at all.
“What does it want?” you will think. Probably nothing. Let it go. Get some sleep.
Friday is an open house at the Night Vale Community College. Thinking of furthering your education? Considering taking winter semester classes? Well, it’s a trap! Do not go near the Night Vale Community College this Friday. Ha! Nice try, giant worms, but we know your tricks! Faking a Community College open house is very obvious, don’t you think? I mean, it was a nice touch, creating a fake press release to get into various news outlets like ours, but we see through you!
No, we really do. Your skin is translucent, and it’s kind of gross. No offense.
Saturday, everyone is their own person. You are free to disregard others and recognize yourself as one, for once. Pour some wine, draw a bath, light some incense, and grab a city-approved novel. It’s your time.
Sunday will be full of regret. Also, joy. Also, laughter. Also, conversation. Also, long stretches of unmemorable moments. It will mostly be that last thing. In your old age, as you look back on your life, if someone were to ask what happened on that Sunday – you remember, that one Sunday, with the regret, and joy, and laughter, and conversation – if someone were to ask you that, you would be hard-pressed to come up with a single memorable moment from this coming Sunday.
This has been the Community Calendar.
An update on our missing child report: We just received world that 13 year-old Tamika Flynn is not missing. This word came from Tamika herself.
Witnesses said they saw Tamika standing atop the pedestal of one of this town’s most historical works of art: the 138 year-old bronze statue of actor Lee Marvin, just outside the Night Vale Post Office. Tamika told a gathered crowd that she was not missing, she has never been missing. She clarified that she has always been where she has been, she has always been from where she is from, and she will always be going where she is going.
Witnesses reported that Tamika had a canvas tote bag full of heavy stones over her left shoulder, a worn-out copy of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop in her right rear pants pocket, and that she was still holding the severed head of the Librarian she defeated so valiantly in August, saving our town and all of the participants of the Library’s treacherous Summer Reading Program.
As yellow helicopters began to approach her, Tamika shouted to the gathered crowd to stop looking for her.
“I am found! I am found! I am found!” she repeated dramatically, rhythmically, the crowd swaying and moved by her homiletic passion. “Stop looking for me, and find yourself!” she was last heard crying over the crescendo of helicopters landing.
The remaining crowd, still singing her phrases, still undiluted, inadvertently blocked the StrexCorp agents from reaching Tamika before she disappeared in plain sight.
StrexCorp has issued, just moments ago, several dozen more Missing Child Reports. They say children keep going missing. And they bet that if you find one specific child, one specific, very determined, and difficult child (and they mean that in the best possible way), if you find that one child, you will probably find all of the missing children.
StrexCorp is asking that if anyone has seen Tamika Flynn, to contact them immediately.
“She is a missing child. And shouldn’t you care about that? Shouldn’t you care about the children?” StrexCorp asked. “Children are the future,” they added. “I wish you felt the same way and would help us find this…this…child,” they stammered, looking slightly agitated.
More on this, soon.
Let’s have a look now at traffic.
There’s a man. Imagine him. He’s leaning on a fence, shirtless and weary. He seems wise near the eyes, but his impatient feet suggest insidiousness. He’s marked with dried mud, and maybe some very deep but quickly-healing cuts – from the tree branches, most likely, or perhaps the birds.
OK, I’m not telling you the whole truth. It was definitely the birds.
Imagine these cuts and scratches, dry and brittle now, but tender to the touch. He is certain he did not offend the birds, but he is uncertain whether his complacency was construed as equal to said offense.
Picture this. Picture the man leaning on the criss-crossing metal wires, waiting. The birds are gone, but other things are coming. He doesn’t know specifically what, but he knows it’ll come for him.
You know this, too, because I have told you.
The man says nothing.
There’s never not something that has been displaced, marginalized. There’s never not something that, when feeling pressed to the wall, to a place with no room left to run, gathers its numbers, gathers its forces, and turns, savagely, on its oppressor. Turns viciously, and without inhibition, even on those who merely look like its oppressor.
Do you catch my meaning? Can you imagine the scene I am explaining?
How much of the world makes sense to you?
What does it mean to be a hero? To be a human?
The man thinks about his heart. It beats. It beats normally. Earlier, it did not beat normally.
Think about your own heart. Is it beating normally?
Listen. I’ll give you a long moment.
How is your heart?
Do you remember the man? The one on the fence, shirtless and scarred, with the normally-beating heart? He’s not real. Take him out of the story, but leave the story. Take him out, leave the story.
Do you catch my meaning?
Do you?
This has been traffic.
And now, a word from our sponsor.
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More now on the missing children story.
Several helmeted and sunglassed helicopter pilots have stepped forward to announce that they had nothing to do with the missing children.
Sheila Nowitzky, a pilot for one of the many black helicopters that are routinely circling Night Vale, said she’s a harmless spy from the World Government, and would never harm an American child without a direct order.
Marco Padilla, a pilot for one of the many blue Sheriff’s Secret Police copters, said nothing – but you could see in his face he meant no harm to our kids.
And a shadowy haze that claimed, through telepathy, to be the pilot of one of the mysterious helicopters with elaborate murals depicting birds of prey diving, admitted that, while their helicopters were the ones that took away all the children in Night Vale several weeks ago, they brought them back. “They brought them back, OK? And they’re fine. Get off of me!” the humid gray haze emphasized. “God, you take a bunch of kids one time. One time! Geez!”
Listeners, Today I want to talk to you about the dangers of deer.
Are they beautiful? Yes. Are they graceful and picturesque, even borderline majestic beasts? Yes, yes, and yes. And, are they helpful to the community because real estate agents live inside of them? Of course!
But deer are also dangerous creatures. They are terrible, deceitful, and vile animals. I’m not being mean, this is just basic science.
Look, I know deer are cute and friendly-looking. We all remember adorable little Bambi, from the classic animated movie, with his sweet voice and white freckled rump. But we also remember the bloody end that he wrought on the humans at the end of the film, the graphic beheadings, and trees streaked with gore during the famous revenge-fueled climax.
The lesson of that movie, as in life itself, is that nature is gorgeous, and it is horrible, and it will kill you.
This has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.
This just in:
Oh my, uh, some disastrous news! Quite terrible! There has been a helicopter crash out by the old Car Lot. Witnesses report hearing youthful shouts and screams, followed by loud metallic clanging. They saw smoke trailing across the cold, dark afternoon sky (because, of course, the sun again did not rise today). They saw a yellow mangle of metal, and rotors, and–
Um, listeners? Daniel is still standing at my studio door. He has stopped staring. He is now yelling, but…without noise. He looks very upset. I can read his lips. He is saying, “Turn it off. Shut it down. No more news today. We are shutting you down?”
They’re going to turn off my microphone, Night Vale!
Um, I’ve locked the door, which will buy me some time while Daniel goes to find a security guard with keys. So let me take you now, for as long as it can last, to the weather.
[“Peanuts” by Sam ‘n Ash]
Listeners? I do not know if you can hear me. I am only trusting that I did this right.
I wired my phone into the soundboard, and then wired the soundboard into the radio tower, which is running on auxiliary power. It’s, um, a cool trick my childhood best friend Earl Harlan taught me back when we were in Boy Scouts together, earning our Subversive Radio Host badge.
I doubt Daniel, or any of the new station management, can hear me as they do not like listening to radio shows. Also, I’m hiding up on the roof with my makeshift studio.
During the weather, I got word from some witnesses at the helicopter accident. The Sheriff’s Secret Police found several large slingshots and heavy stones nearby that matched, in size and shape, the dents on the helicopter’s engine casing.
They also found a well-worn and heavily-notated copy of Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.
Inside the book was a bookmark, marking page 267. On that page was the underlined phrase, “I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.”
And on the bookmark was a handwritten note. It said, “Your pilot is fine. She is ours now. She will return when she is ready, but she will return better. T.F.”
I do not know if that T.F. Stands for our missing girl – our brilliant, and bold, and missing girl. If station management is listening, I, of course, hope we find Tamika Flynn and bring her home safely.
I hope that she will find you first, that is.
Remember what I said, listeners, about the traffic? About the birds? Think on that. Think on lots of things. Think about heroes, and whether we should even need them.
The answer is, we do not.
I sometimes wish I could tell you more, but I cannot. I cannot tell you everything I think you should hear because it is…boring. Or, it is unnecessary. Or it is very necessary, but unapproved.
There are many reasons I cannot always tell you what I want to tell you, but the main reason is that you need to find it out for yourself. I could preach, and teach, and shout, and explain, but no lesson is as powerful as the lesson learned on one’s own.
You can do it! You don’t need old Cecil telling you what’s happening in town. No. I just report the news. I just arrange it. You figure it out. You learn from it. You take action. You create the meaning. It is all up to you.
And, given my current broadcasting situation, it may be up to you for a long time.
I’d better get downstairs before they discover what I’m doing. Stay tuned next for silence, self-reflection, and a long pause to hear yourself think.
Use that silence well.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s just the Void. Infinite and indifferent. We are so small. So very, very small.
Episode 37 - The Auction
Velvet darkness. Silken light. The rough burlap of evening. The frayed cotton of daybreak.
Welcome to Night Vale.
First off, welcome back! Everything is fine. Nothing happening, if you know what I mean. You shouldn’t know what I mean. If you do know, you should forget. I’m not going to mention anything, and you’re not going to hear anything. And both of us will fail to remember. No one will be named. Nothing will be referenced. And so…
Listeners, today is an exciting and important day in Night Vale. The Sheriff’s Secret Police are holding their annual Auction of Contraband and Seized Property to benefit their purchase of balloons, birthday candles, yellow cake, and a piñata. They hope to raise $7.3 million dollars, and they say the piñata is armored, and will be used to crush rebellions.
Personally, I love the annual auction. You never know what sort of fun stuff might come up. The catalog has so many interesting items! Umm, let’s see…
Lot 1 is an all-clad dinnerware set. Eight pans, in cast aluminum for perfect distribution of heat. New in the package. It’s just waiting for you to season it with a dollop of olive oil and start cooking for friends and family – regardless of how no one comes over anymore after the last dinner party, when your mother drank all the Chianti and announced you never lived up to your potential.
At least, that’s what the description of the lot says.
Lot 2 is a glowing coin with the image of a grim, horned god on the obverse, and a half-collapsed panopticon on the reverse. It’s been graded MS-45 by the Sheriff’s Secret Police Coin Grading Service, which in no way colludes with the Sheriff’s Secret Police Auction House to inflate the grade, and thus the value of the coin.
Lot 3 is a silver candelabra that once floated across a series of dining rooms-turned-abattoirs, to better illuminate the flying daggers that accompanied it.
Lot 4 is a set of flying daggers, with maniacally-detailed designs on the shaft collars. Knife collectors and maniacs alike will want to bid on those. Don’t get in the way of that bidding war! Haha.
Let’s see…
There are also carpets, and some mid-century modern furniture. Oh! These are very stylish.
And look! Lot 17 is a near-mint copy of Uncanny X-Men #3, 1964. It has slight foxing on the back cover, perfect registration of the color separations, off-white pages, rustless staples, high cover gloss, and no Marvel chipping, and it features the first appearance of The Blob – not the Blob who lives in the housing development out back of the elementary school, the fictional one.
What else?
Lot 37 is…umm…Cecil Palmer. There is no description.
Listeners, we’ll have more on this auction as it develops.
On the lighter side of the news:
Today, an invincible, all-powerful alien presence with telepathic powers came to Night Vale to enslave us all. It planned to bend every sentient being to its will, ending violence and conflict by subjugating all of us to its omniscient, telekinetic powers. Hilariously, this all-powerful but bumbling alien presence didn’t know we were already subjugated to the omniscient force that’s been controlling our thoughts for years! We’re guaranteed to continue our violent and irrational ways, so…in your face, inept newcomer presence!
Toddlers of Night Vale! The Night Vale Community Pre-School invites you to fulfill your potential! Commit to a new and demanding educational curriculum, while exploring your ultimate dream – the same dream that every toddler has: economic opportunity. That’s right! You too can learn to be a chimney sweep. Clean the many, many chimneys of leading citizen – and friendly billionaire – Marcus Vanston. What a good man Marcus Vanston is!
Every one of his houses, from his smallest penthouse apartment atop the dirigible hangar, to his 46-room hilltop estate, has multiple chimneys. He has built chimneys even in places where he has no houses, so his well-deserved carbon credits can go to good use. There are numerous chimneys on his shopping mall, his office buildings, his dirigible, his moon rock-plated recreational vehicles, and – due to new and creative laws that allow eminent domain for the generous Marcus Vanston – every other house in town as well.
He has strapped traveling chimneys onto the pushcarts of festive peddlers, whose rags, hunched shoulders, nagging coughs, and forced tin-whistle merriment accompany the sad antics of their emaciated vest and marching band cap-wearing capuchin monkeys holding tin cups, rattling with a single penny from some defunct, outmoded currency, asking us to contribute to their upkeep, as we turn up our collars, clear our throats, and make convenient excuses to walk a little faster until, instead of embarrassment about their fates, we find our way to feeling superior about our fragile position on the economic ladder.
Marcus Vanston understands. He doesn’t want you to be a lowly peddler! Or a capuchin monkey! He wants you to be a chimney sweep.
So, little ones, lower your standards! Smother your dreams in carbon, and enroll in the Pre-School Chimney Sweep Academy. Make good-old Marcus Vanston happy, for a few brief moments.
An update on our earlier story:
Violence has broken out among bidders in the Sheriff’s Secret Police auction. Bidding has been frantic, and angry. It is confirmed that there has been hair-pulling. Unfortunately, attendees have been using their bidding paddles to slap each other across the face – a motion the auctioneer has been repeatedly mistaking as indication as a new bid. Thus, Lot 1, the all-clad dinnerware set, sold for $175,000 – and that’s before the buyer’s premium.
Listeners, I have been in touch with the auction staff about Lot 37, which is of a certain interest to me. I want Lot 37! I want it badly! I asked if they might take a photograph and send it to me. Well…the peals of laughter that broke out in response were a cross between sleigh bells and the cackles of hunched, gray-faced court jesters. You know how that sounds.
Listeners, in order to learn more about Lot 37, it’s likely I will need to visit the auction myself.
More as it develops.
The Night Vale mayoral race is heating up in preparation for the mayoral election this next June. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home has taken to leaving leaflets inside the wiring and pipes of your appliances, to be found when the sparking and the shaking become so much that you must hire, or capture, a repair person.
The leaflets are tastefully designed, with an anatomically-detailed drawing of a sparrow’s heart, and the simple slogan: “You are fragile, and blind, and wanting, and stepping alone into the great darkness of the future.”
It also has her five-point policy platform, which is mostly interesting facts she has learned about bees.
Meanwhile, Hiram McDaniels, in the interest of saving time, has taken to standing on corners giving five different campaign speeches – one with each of his heads. His heads have radically different personalities, and agendas, leading to some discord in their messages. But they all agree that they would like to be elected, that youth sports programs are important, and that the Time of the Lizard will soon be upon the helpless human race.
Oh! And speaking of the good-hearted and great-walleted Marcus Vanston, he has also thrown his hat into the proverbial ring. He actually constructed a special proverbial ring in the middle of town, with an LCD light display and a fountain with hourly waterspout show, and commissioned a gold-plated hat, with remote-controlled hat launcher, for just that purpose. As the hat flew into the ring, a 40-piece children’s choir sang a song composed for the occasion, titled, “Hi, I’m Running Too, I Guess. Oh, I’m Marcus Vanston, Whatever. Anyway, I’m Going to be Mayor, Thanks.”
Many tears were shed by onlookers – due to civic pride, and some helpful gas Marcus had added to the air supply.
Well, this is starting to look like a mayoral campaign for the ages!
When reached for comment, outgoing mayor Pamela Winchell showed us a collection of mosses, and explained the songs that must be sung to each of them for proper growth.
Hey kids. Ever go walking in the woods and wonder whether a fairy ring of mushrooms is poisonous? Well, look at its center. If there is a body no older than yourself lying there, the ring is perfectly fine. If the body is also screaming, the ring is perfectly fine. Everything is perfectly fine! There is nothing under your bed, there is nothing in your closet. Your parents are, most likely, actually your parents, regardless of what the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home might tell you.
Do not fear the black helicopters, or the black windowless school buses that circle your block at night. You need not be afraid of the bogeyman. There hasn’t been a sighting of a bogeyman for several months – or at least a couple weeks.
And yes, you will die – but probably not until everyone you know is already dead, too. Your parents, your friends, your pets…each death leaving a small but irreparable scar on your not-yet-still, still-beating heart.
The living tell the dying not to leave, and the dying do not listen. The dying tell us not to be sad for them, and we do not listen. The dialogue between the living and the dead is full of misunderstanding and silence.
There’s nothing to fear in oblivion – unless, of course, your consciousness survives death. If so, it would be reasonable to fear the sensation of consciousness without senses, suspended alone in the cosmos, with no one to hear you, and no way to make yourself known. No reference point for counting time – a count that does not matter anyway in a literal eternity.
You might wish that you still had a corporeal form, only so that you could make your mouth move to express your terror, to make the universal form of a terrified scream, the form of a letter O. But you won’t be able to. You just won’t!
This has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner, brought to you by shame, loneliness, and the letter O.
I have been told, listeners, that the auction has descended into chaos. Michelle Nguyen, owner of Dark Owl Records, having bid on a sealed box of Elvis Presley 45s, opened the box to find it was in fact a box of Elvis Presley’s .45-caliber revolvers. The upended box has made bidding much more treacherous.
Mayor Pamela Winchell, interested in Lot 28 – a gently-used 5-cup coffee maker – has begun laying down suppressing fire over the ducked heads of anyone trying to outbid her.
Despite this, I must enter the auction house myself, taking my life into my hands even more than usual.
Lot 37. Cecil Palmer.
I must know. I must bid!
I go now, listeners, to await the crying of Lot 37.
As I go, you go, to the weather.
[“Absentee” by Jack Campbell]
Listeners, many complications ensued during my attempt to bid on Lot 37. First, in registering for the auction, I had to indicate my current income – which is made difficult, as our new owners (who I have been asked to stop talking about) are now paying us in scrip, redeemable only at merchants they own, like Dust Hut or the Ralph’s.
Luckily, the Sheriff’s Secret Police turns out to be one of those select merchants. I was able to get a paddle, only moments before the bidding on Lot 37 began.
When confronted with destiny, there are external events to record, yes…but also internal. I would say, time slowed down even more than usual. The edges of the room went blurry, and then went, completely. There was a deep throb of distant machinery that I realized was my own heart propelling inadequate amounts of blood through my parched and aching body. If I did not win Lot 37 I would be…unraveled.
Perhaps I would be unraveled either way. The dull ache I felt was a primal ache of incompletion, the separation an infant feels when pulled too soon from its mother’s embrace. My cheeks flushed with the irrationality of desire. I needed Lot 37.
I counted my breaths. I judged myself for wanting, and judged myself wanting. I focused on those parts of my life completely out of my control in order to calm myself down, drowning my fears in pleasant helplessness.
The upshot is, I forgot to raise my paddle. Oh! Oh, foolish Cecil! And through the tears that came then to my eyes, I couldn’t see who won Lot 37 with only one bid!
Winner of Lot 37, if you’re listening, on one hand I wish you good luck with your prize. On the other, I will be using the mightiest bully pulpit of all, community radio, to strike back at you and destroy you!
But also, congratulations. Also that.
I am authorized to tell you that the Sheriff’s Secret Police have declared the auction a resounding success. In celebration, they deployed the piñata to the screams – presumably delighted – of everyone in attendance. The winning bidders walked away grinning, laden down with trinkets and trophies that reassured them with the cleverness of sheer acquisition.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police went on to say that objects are invested with mana, magic power caused by the dangerous ideas of property and ownership. And holding onto them is our attempt at having something that will never let us down, even though eventually all will.
People leave. Parents leave the room. Lovers leave your life. You leave the world.
We clutch teddy bears first, then dolls, then sports jerseys, and automobiles with hand-sewn leather and excellent gas mileage. As if that were something permanent.
The Sheriff’s Secret Police gave a great cheer in honor of constant decay, and the inevitability of abandonment.
Listeners, accumulating objects is just a way, we hope, to turn back the grim specter of death. Thank you for your participation in this auction, and for your hope that making a certain purchase – all-clad cooking ware, a candelabra, a comic book, a community radio show host – would render you anything more than mortal.
I go now to find myself, or to find who has myself, or to find someone that might make me feel better about what has happened today.
I’d take that last one, honestly. I’d take that honest, last one.
And so, dear listeners, and whatever unknown person or entity that is now the owner of Lot 37, I bid you a farewell – the fondness of which is determined by your place relative to mine in my heart.
Stay tuned next for our popular home medical program, Yes, That’s Probably Cancer.
Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.
Today’s proverb: Listen, I’m not a hero. The real heroes are the people that point out to us when protesters have smart phones, thus invalidating all concerns.