The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (8 page)

CECIL:
Do it, Dana! Yes!

DANA:
Here I go.

[
Her voice and the noise of the phone call cut off abruptly.
]

CECIL:
Dana? Hello? Dana, can you hear me?

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not know where Dana has gone now. I do hope that we hear from her again. I would try to call her back, but my phone has grown spiny legs and is crawling away now. If you are the type to pray, please pray for Dana's safe return home to Night Vale. If you are not the type to pray, please know that you are violating several laws and you will receive a knock on your door from armed agents very soon.

Let's have a look at sports.

This weekend the Night Vale High School Scorpions kick off their season against the Pine Cliff High School Lizard Monitors. Scorpions quarterback, senior Michael Sandero, had off-season surgery to remove the second head he grew in the middle of last season's division title run. Michael's mother, Flora Sandero, said she had her son's original head removed instead, as she liked the new head much better. “This new head is much handsomer and doesn't talk back as much,” Flora explained from the roof of the Pinkberry, where she was installing several long pikes with dead vultures and rodents on the ends. “This new head only speaks Russian, so I don't have to listen to him on the phone with his girlfriend all night long. And he doesn't hog the television anymore because he can't understand any of the English or Spanish programs here. He's a better boy now,” she said jamming another pike into the roof of the trendy Fro-Yo store before yelling skyward, causing the sparse clouds to part quickly, revealing a giant, floating crystal, glowing faintly red in the mid-afternoon sun.

And now a word from our sponsor.

McDonald's wants to remind you that the most important meal of the day is breakfast. So why would you let a morning go by without staring deeply into the mirror until you no longer recognize the face staring back at you, mimicking your every gesture, mocking your every movement. How else will you get the energy you need for a full day's work or recreation if you aren't silently screaming into the visage of a man or woman who gives you such uneasy spirit, such unshakable terror, a queasy feeling every time you make the connection between what that thing is and what you are becoming. What you have become. Where does the void end? Where do you end? When do you end? What time is it now? You are late for work. You are lying on your bathroom floor, half dressed in a cool sludge of toothpaste and hair gel. You've been crying, but for how long?

McDonald's: I'm lovin'.

Listeners, I just received word from Carlos, lovely Carlos, with his perfect teeth and hair and penchant for sometimes chewing a little more loudly than is preferred. Carlos who is with other scientists at the Desert Creek housing development.

For the past year, Carlos has been studying a house that does not exist. It seems like it exists. Like it's just right there when you look at it, and it's between two other identical houses so it would make more sense for it to be there than not. But it does not exist. Carlos said the scientists asked him to come over and ring the doorbell just to see what would happen. They offered him $5, but he turned them down, saying something about scientific integrity and blah blah blah. But I'm like, $5 is a taco lunch at Jerry's Tacos, so whatever, rich guy.

Carlos said that before he could take a step to the house, a woman emerged from the side door talking on her cell phone. He and the scientists ran up to the woman calling out to her as she walked quickly away from the house. She looked panicked. No, not panicked. Concerned. She looked concerned, Carlos said. She kept talking on her cell phone never responding to them.

Carlos said she kept walking until she walked through them. Right through the scientists, like she were a cold wind. And then, she stopped talking into her phone, stared back toward the house, and with a look of panic—no, with a look of concern—ran away. Carlos said—and this is very strange—Carlos said, “It sounded like the person she was talking to was you, Cecil.”

Listeners, I do not know where or when Dana is, but I am going to sit by this phone and wait for her call. I know she is all right. I hope she is all right. I fear she is not all right. With great anxiousness—no, concern—with great concern, I take you now to the weather.

WEATHER: “The Lethal Temptress” by The Mendoza Line

[
Start of message sounder—it's Dana again
]

DANA:
Cecil. I'm sorry I lost your call. I made it out of the door. Out of the empty house and its empty photographs into an empty desert, and I don't know if anything is improved. I can see nothing but endless sand and a single distant mountain. A mountain I have never seen, because I don't believe in mountains. But there is a mountain, and there is a tiny red light up on the mountain, intermittently blinking.

As I exited the house, the door shut behind me and now it's gone. As I walked, I moved through something that wasn't there. I heard voices through digital static and felt a cold wind across my body. Others are here but not here, Cecil. What, or whom, did I just walk through?

Cecil, something is coming. I can feel it in the ground. Something very large is coming. I've got to go. I will call when I can. Tell my mother and brother I am out of the Dog Park, and I am safe for now. Thank you, Cecil.

[
End of message; Background noise ends
]

CECIL:
Oh, listeners, I wish I had more news than this. I wish my phone would have rung. I wish I could have had that conversation, instead of another voice mail. I wish Dana were home, safe. I wish I could feel something other than overwhelming concern. No, not concern. Uncertainty. I wish a lot of things.

But as the old saying goes, “If wishes were horses, those wishes would all run away, shrieking and bucking, terrified of a great unseen evil.” So, instead, what I want to say is I am thankful Dana is out of the Dog Park. I am thankful I had my first conversation with her since Poetry Week. I am thankful Carlos did not ring that doorbell. I am thankful that people listen to this show and the stories about our wonderful little community—the most scientifically interesting community in America, as my Carlos once said.

And, of course, I am thankful for you, Night Vale.

Stay tuned next for loud, short-wave radio squelches followed by a lifetime of tinnitus.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

PROVERB: Look to the sky. You will not find answers there, but you will certainly see what everyone is screaming about.

EPISODE 31:

“A BLINKING LIGHT UP ON THE MOUNTAIN”

SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

GUEST VOICE: MARA WILSON

W
E'RE OFTEN ASKED WHERE THE IDEAS FOR
N
IGHT
V
ALE
EPISODES COME
from, and how long it takes us to write them. The answer is this:

One: Who knows, but many
Night Vale
ideas start as a single image or, more commonly, a single phrase that gets stuck in my head and won't leave until I go ahead and write an episode about it.

Two: Writing an episode usually takes a few days to a week, and in difficult cases can be a draft that I poke at for months.

In this case, I was about to go to bed around one in the morning, and the phrase “A Blinking Light Up on the Mountain” popped into my head. It wouldn't go away and I couldn't sleep until it did. So I got up and wrote this episode. It took about an hour. And then I went to sleep. It's the shortest amount of time it's ever taken me to write a first draft of an episode.

Lights in the distance create a feeling of almost religious awe in me, and I don't think I'm alone. Something about that solitary bit of human creation in a vast field of nothing sparks something primal in us. When I think of things that match the feeling I want from
Night Vale
, seeing a blinking red light far off in an otherwise dark horizon is one of those things.

Meanwhile the Faceless Old Woman is continuing her mayoral campaign. When Mara showed up to record her first part, I think she was expecting a professional or at least professional-esque recording studio. Instead, what she got was my tiny Williamsburg apartment and a USB mic plugged into my iMac. She is a very kind person and never let on any disappointment she might have had, and we got to recording the second guest part we had ever had.

We tried it with a few different voices, but it was easy to pick the one we used moving forward as the right choice. I love that it makes no attempt to sound old, but that it also doesn't sound quite like a normal human either. It is the voice of someone telling you a terrible secret. And the Faceless Old Woman has many terrible secrets to tell.

—Joseph Fink

Our God is an awesome god, much better than that ridiculous god that Desert Bluffs has.

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE.

There is, listeners, a blinking light up on the mountain. It is red. Blinking lights are always red. It is nestled among the crags and nooks of the precipitous slope. We all can see it. No use denying it. The City Council tried. “Nope,” they said. “Blinking light? Let me think. Blinking light. No, sorry, it doesn't ring any bells.” But then a bell started ringing, a signal from the watchman who lives in Night Vale's invisible clock tower, letting us know that he had seen something. And we all saw it too. It was a blinking light up on the mountain. “Ah, well,” said the council, crawling backwards through a window into Town Hall, one by one, “Ah, well, it was worth a shot.”

What does this light mean? Who will dare investigate it? Will it spell our doom? Dear listeners: Who knows. No one. And probably. More, later. For now: just this. Just a blinking light. Red. Up on the mountain.

Harrison Kip, adjunct professor of archaeology at Night Vale Community College, announced an upcoming three-part series on Night Vale Community Television, defending his fringe views that the pyramids and other ancient structures were constructed by human beings, rather than benevolent ancient aliens. Harrison, against decades of reasonable evidence, raved that “it's possible that these historical marvels could have been made using mathematics and slave labor.” He went on to explain, shrieking like an obvious lunatic, that agriculture was probably not started on Mars and that humanity was created through evolution and not through selective breeding of alien DNA.

We reached out for comment to the president of Night Vale Community College, Sarah Sultan, who is a smooth, fist-size river rock, about the extreme beliefs expressed by a staff member. Sarah had no comment, as she is a smooth, fist-size river rock and unable to speak. She can write, however, and wrote No Comment before drawing an insulting caricature of your humble reporter, which was hurtful and unnecessary.

Listeners, here's something weird. I know you can't see it, but it's sitting in the studio with me at this very moment. And it is definitely something and definitely weird. I'm not sure how it got here, but I'm not sure how I got here either. Causation is difficult and confusing. I haven't tried touching it. I'm going to try touching it now.

I believe it likes being touched, because it started to vibrate and lean in toward my body. But that could just be its way of expressing anger or immense physical suffering. When something is this weird, one shouldn't assume to understand anything specific about it at all.

Is it a bomb? Is it one of those objects that isn't a bomb? Is it just a kind of dog? We don't know, and we will never find out, and we will never try to find out. Ignorance may not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work.

So with no new information, and with nothing learned, I'll repeat what I said, gesturing at it with a hand you cannot see: Listeners, here's something weird.

A continuation on our previous report about a blinking light up on the mountain: As many of you noted, the very nature of our report indicated the existence of a mountain, which is surprising, given that we live in vast desert flatness. So yes, there is a mountain. Let's start there. There is a mountain now, rising up out of the alluvial floodplain. It is made of rock and height and awe. Its peak is higher than where I am now, but lower than the void. Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, said that it was definitely a mountain, saying, “That's a mountain if I've ever seen one. I haven't though. Seen one. I think that's what they're like. Mountains are like that, right?” Madeline LaFleur, head of the Night Vale Tourism Board, said, “Oh great, now we're going to have to reprint all of these brochures” before taking more sips of her coffee than she needed to in a given span of time, because the frequency of sips was under her control, and her own life was not. John Peters, you know, the farmer? We haven't heard from him in a while. If anyone knows where he went, or about the blinking light up on the mountain, or the mountain rising up out of this muddy plain outside of town, please call into the station and release the information with your mouth.