The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe (10 page)

But these new yellow helicopters . . . no one quite knows. They tend to hover in packs of three or more in fixed locations for several minutes before moving on. The City Council has said that the helicopters are our guests and they should be treated as such. But added that the helicopters, more specifically, are
uninvited
guests and should be treated with fear, hatred, and uncontrolled panic.

If you have more information on these yellow helicopters, keep it to yourself, there's no question they can hear every move, every sentence, you make. Be quiet and stay inside. They already know.

Let's go now to sports.

After a second straight loss this weekend, Night Vale High School football coach Nazr al-Mujaheed expressed some concern over senior quarterback Michael Sandero's poor play. Last season, the Scorpions won the division title under Sandero's leadership and special powers he had acquired from multiple lightning strikes. One such advantage was the second head he had grown, which helped him see rushing linebackers and get better reads on zone coverage. But in the off-season Sandero had one of his heads surgically removed leaving him with only the head that speaks Russian.

Angry fans speculate that because Sandero no longer looks like his original self, and because he no longer speaks English nor Spanish, he does not have the same rapport with his teammates. When asked whether or not Sandero was losing the respect of his team, coach al-Mujaheed said: “Our boys play together. Our boys play good games. We want to”—and here he paused, clearly upset with his star quarterback's decision to get off-season surgery without consulting team trainers. “We want to be good football boys,” he concluded.

The coach then reached his fingers into his mouth, pulling his tongue slowly out, slowly, slowly, not stopping. He kept pulling his seemingly endless tongue out, staring at the reporters the whole time. After he stretched it to about two feet the last reporter left the room, clearly shaken. The coach remained in his office quietly, and with wide eyes, pulling out his enormous tongue.

Larry Leroy, out on the edge of town, says that just this morning he was visited by a man in a tan jacket who carried a deerskin suitcase. Larry said the man approached his farm and asked about how much sunshine he had been getting. “I told him. John Peters, you know, the farmer?, his imaginary corn crop had been good this summer, and the sun seemed to be doing just fine,” Larry said, “although, some days there's no sunrise at all, and on other days the sunrise is extremely loud.”

Larry added that this was a pretty strange question, asking about how much sunshine he'd be getting, as the sun comes up every day (save those two or three sunless days last week). Larry said he was a nice enough fellow, though, named Emmett.

Larry said he couldn't remember exactly what Everett looked like. Nor what his last name was. When asked who Everett was, Larry replied, the fellow in the tan jacket. When told he just said the man's name was Emmett, Larry replied, “Yes. Ernest. I said that. Don't bog me down, son.” Then he slapped the reporter's tape recorder making the following loud thumping noise.

[
Loud mic thump
]

Larry said that after the man left his home, he saw a dark black line in the sky, coming from the heavens down to near where Old Woman Josie lives, down by the old car lot. He said he thinks it was probably something to do with those weird, tall friends of hers that fly around and make loud trumpet noises and will not stop smiling all the time.

When asked if he meant angels, Larry replied, “Don't bog me down, son,” and then started weeping. “Angels aren't real,” Larry said through quick breaths and incomprehensible tears.

As part of our service to our town, Night Vale Community Radio is taking another moment to allow one of the candidates for mayor to make a brief statement. The following is from Hiram McDaniels.

GOLD HEAD:
Hi, I'm Hiram McDaniels. You've heard a lot of things from my opponent about how the night sky is beautiful but sad, and how sagebrush is a very important smell. You've also heard that I'm literally a five-headed dragon.

All of that is completely correct. But what you haven't heard is that I'm literally a five-headed dragon who cares.

This is also my campaign slogan. “I'm literally a five-headed dragon. Who cares?”

What you haven't heard is that I care about small business owners. What you haven't heard is that I care about the future of our children. What you haven't heard is that I care about the future of our small children business owners. Have you ever heard the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home say that?

No, you haven't. Really, you shouldn't be able to hear her say anything at all. She doesn't have a mouth. I have five mouths.

What you haven't heard is—

GREEN HEAD:
Do you hear the beating of my terrible wings? Do you feel the flames lick at the corners of a life you once thought belonged to you?

GOLD HEAD:
Sorry about that. My green head got excited. We all have human foibles. I don't. I'm literally a five-headed dragon.

What you haven't heard is my new plan for an expanded park system and more youth sports programs.

PURPLE HEAD:
And you will never hear it. It's secret, and buried in a hidden place.

GOLD HEAD:
That's a good point, purple head!

So vote for me, Hiram McDaniels. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home is all about politics as usual. Also she doesn't have a mouth, and that's weird.

GREEN HEAD:
A stillness touches the most frantic heart as we all look up in awe and terror. A sudden shout of fire, and all is forgiven. A gentle touch of flame, and all is as if it never was.

GOLD HEAD:
Hiram McDaniels. What you haven't heard can't hurt you.

CECIL:
Listeners, we received word from Old Woman Josie that a half dozen yellow helicopters are circling her home at this moment. She also said that she's receiving no sunlight. She says all of her clocks tell her it's the middle of the day, but that she is receiving no sunlight.

And, yes, I'm looking at our own station clocks, including the wristwatch Carlos gave me for our one-month anniversary—the watch he said is the one true timepiece in all of Night Vale—and it is indeed the middle of the day. I have only been on the air a few minutes, and before I arrived in this studio, the sun was definitely out, no clouds in the sky.

Josie also told us that she used her old opera glasses to look more closely at the helicopters. Just an aside, for our younger listeners: Josie was the chairwoman of the Night Vale Opera for many years, until it folded in the early 1990s when a massive puppy infestation destroyed the theater's infrastructure.

Josie said each helicopter has a large triangular logo with an orange
S
in the middle. She doesn't know what that means, but she thinks the darkness enveloping her home is the angels' last act to try to protect her. Wherever they have gone, they have left behind a protective shade, keeping out the helicopters and all other dark forces.

I reminded her that angels aren't real, and she said, as if I hadn't even interrupted, that if she falls, so does this town.

There was a long pause, and then she said, “We never go bowling anymore, Cecil. Why is that?”

“I don't know,” I reflected. “There has been a tiny underground army living under the bowling alley, and they've declared war on us all. They injured my new boyfriend. Also, I have a new boyfriend. Listen, we should totally get the team back together and go to league night again, like old times.”

“I would like that, Cecil,” she said, but then her voice slowed, turning cold, as if we were strangers with wrong numbers. “I'm afraid the sunlight has come back,” and the phone went silent.

Listeners, I do not know what is happening or to whom these helicopters belong. But I do know that we must protect our town, Night Vale, protect it from all outsiders, whether they are flying machines, or tiny warmongering civilizations, or simply neighbors who don't say the pledge of allegiance loudly enough.

I hope Josie is safe. I hope you are safe. I hope we all live to see tomorrow's sunrise, or whatever day the next sunrise is. But for now, I give you the weather.

WEATHER: “Palabras de Papel” by Nelson Poblete

Listeners, I just received word from Vithya, who went downtown to the city records office. She said she found several Emmetts, Everetts, and Ernests, but there was one particular file that stuck out to her. And she copied that file and put that copy in her backpack and then walked out into the street, ready to begin her investigation into the identity of the man in the tan jacket.

But according to witnesses, Vithya found herself caught up in what looked like a strong wind. She lifted slightly off the ground. Witnesses all agreed that she began to elongate. She began to glow a deep black. A dark pulsing aura. And amid the sounds of bold trumpets and melancholy cellos and even the haunting call of a muted French horn, Vithya ascended to heaven.

To the family of Vithya, let me say that she was a very good intern, and while angels are not real, we are certain she is in a better place, whatever that place might be. She has become a better thing, whatever that thing might be. Know that your daughter did not die in vain, and perhaps given the tenuous reality of existence, she may not have died at all, for it's debatable whether any of us ever truly live.

The witnesses all agreed that Vithya was no longer real and that we were no longer allowed to know anything about her.

“It was a lovely sight,” said one witness.

“I cannot even describe the beauty of her ascension,” said another.

“You kind of did, though,” said another witness, who was wearing a fedora. “By saying you cannot describe something, that is a sort of apophasis (a paralipsis, if you will), which gives the object an implied description through nondescription,” he continued. “Plus the word
indescribable
carries with it a universal connotation, and is itself a description. Here, let me explain.”

But the other witnesses moved a little ways up the sidewalk, so they could no longer hear the man. They said nothing to one another. They just stood in a circle, sharing the knowledge that they had seen something they should never have seen. They looked one another in the eyes. They breathed in unison. They smiled politely, intimately, knowingly, until one of them, in fact, each of them as individuals, decided that the moment had passed, and they parted ways. They will likely never see the others again, and if they do, they will be but unacquainted pedestrians.

But before they left, the witnesses said that some low-flying yellow helicopters began dropping orange leaflets onto the city streets. The leaflets read: “Strexcorp Synergists, Inc. Look around you. Strex. Look inside you. Strex. Go to sleep. Strex. Believe in a smiling god. Strexcorp: It is everything.”

Oh no.

Dear listeners, we must issue an apology! Those helicopters are completely safe. Even safer than safe. In fact, Strexcorp recently bought our little radio station from the mysterious unseen forces who founded it centuries ago.

I'm glad to know that Josie will be okay, and that Strexcorp has come to Night Vale. Rest easy, listeners, knowing that this was all just a simple misunderstanding. But now we fully understand everything that is happening, and we are not misunderstanding anything else at all. We are completely safe.

Stay tuned next for the sound of slow steady dripping and occasional screams.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

PROVERB: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never quite describe the pain.

EPISODE 33:

“CASSETTE”

OCTOBER 15, 2013

T
HIS EPISODE REPRESENTS THE COMPLETE OTHER END OF THE WRITING
speed spectrum as episode 31, “A Blinking Light Up on the Mountain.” I'm not sure whether this or episode 45, “A Story About Them,” took longer, but they both probably tie as the episodes that took me the longest to write.

I remember some time in the spring of 2013 running into Jeffrey at a bar and telling him more or less the entire plot of this episode, because it had just occurred to me and I was excited about it. It was so clear to me, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

I now know this is a warning sign, but at the time I thought it was a hopeful omen. Surely knowing exactly what the story would be would make it a quick one to write. But instead I spent months on the draft, trying and trying to make it sound on the page the way it did in my head. I think finally I made it work. I've often seen this episode pointed to by fans as one of the scarier ones. Good.

Also, if you are reading these scripts without having listened, I'd urge you to jump in for just a couple minutes to hear Cecil's teen voice. It's delightful.

—Joseph Fink

S
O
, I
LOVE HORROR MOVIES
. . . S
TEPHEN
K
ING WAS THE FIRST ADULT AUTHOR
I read as a kid. I begged my mom to let me watch
The Shining
and
The Exorcist
at way too young an age. I snuck out past my bedtime to catch
Twin Peaks
when it premiered. My teenage years were spent watching deliciously schlocky horror flicks after midnight on cable television (
Basket Case, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, C.H.U.D.
, etc.).

I think it's pretty obvious why I love this episode, both as a creator and as a listener. I have always thought of comedy and horror as not-so-distant cousins.

Recording this episode was pure fun for me. Working in off-off-Broadway theater has taught me to look for simple, effective (and cheap) solutions to complicated artistic puzzles. When Joseph presented the idea of portraying a “teenage Cecil” to me, we talked a lot about post-production voice manipulation (which there is a bit of in the final product), but the real answer was pretty clear . . . just create an honest portrait of a teenage character, and the audience will go along for the ride! Besides pitching my voice a tad higher, I recorded the cassette portions of this episode while pacing and almost dancing around my living room in order to capture the exuberance I associate with being a teenager. Cecil Palmer is a pretty excitable character that wears his emotions on his sleeve, so I figured teenage Cecil was an extension of that excitement, taken to the nth degree. So after establishing that youthful enthusiasm, what an amazing gut-punch at the end of the episode to reverse those expectations and quietly, honestly play a young person in peril. The final product, I believe, is quite chilling. Enjoy!