Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 23

Sitting in her car, which sat in front of her house, which was not thinking anything at the time, Diane took out her phone and the paper that Evan had written on.

Diane did not remember much from her meeting with Evan at the diner. But she did remember he had texted her. She had also taken photos of him. She had also asked him to write down his name.

She remembered Jackie chasing after Troy. Diane, thinking of this moment, rubbed the burn marks on her left forearm. Why was Jackie looking for Troy? There was a great pit of the unknown under the rickety bridge of her and Josh’s relationship, and every time she looked down the pit was deeper than before. She felt annoyed with Jackie but furious with Troy. Another young person caught in the wake he was creating as he moved lightly through his careless, carefree life.

She looked at the piece of paper. It said “KING CITY,” and on the back it had Evan’s name. His name was not Evan. She looked at the name on the page and said it aloud. She said it again, and then put the paper down.

“Evan McIntyre,” she said aloud, and shrugged. “That’s just what it’s going to be then.”

Diane opened her photos and looked at one of the pictures she’d taken of Evan at the diner. He was wearing a tan jacket. She stared at the picture, then closed her eyes, hoping to burn the image into her mind, or onto the backs of her retinas, or into the mystic cloud of the collective unconscious, whatever it is that makes us remember images. She was no scientist.

She muttered his name with her eyes shut, trying to hold on to the image of him. His eyes, nose, mouth, hairline. Nothing. She looked back at the photo. She took in his lips, and thought about the many adjectives that could be used to describe them. Then she looked at his nose, and took in the adjectives that could be used to describe it.

Upon staring at the nose, she forgot those adjectives she thought about the lips. She looked back at the lips and forgot the nose. She never even got to the ears.

Diane searched her text history and tried texting Evan back. Another way to remember someone is to create more memories with that person. The more there is to forget, the longer forgetting takes.

She typed: “Hey, good talking to you the other night. Let’s do it again.”

It sounded like a date. She deleted the text without sending.

A horsefly sitting on the right rear headrest flew to the left rear headrest.

Diane saw it do this.

She wrote a different text: “Evan, I can’t remember what we talked about. Can you come back?”

She hit send.

Her thumb seized up in a sharp moment of pain. She didn’t cry out, just winced. Her text remained unsent. She tried again. Another sharp pain, almost to the bone. A small bead of blood ballooned on the middle of her right thumb.

This is a common feature on smart phones. If a person is unreachable by text or if the underground government agencies that control the phone companies don’t want a person to be reachable, the phone is allowed to cause mild physical harm. She put the thumb to her mouth to clean it off.

The day before, the phone had caught fire while she tried to call him. She smelled burnt hair most of the morning, and had to stop by the drugstore to get calamine lotion for the top of her ear and then stop by a garden nursery and place the side of her head onto aerated topsoil for fifteen minutes, per her doctor’s orders. She didn’t know why the doctor would tell her to do that, but no one knows why doctors do anything they do. Doctors are mysterious creatures.

Diane looked at the horsefly on the left rear headrest through the rearview mirror. She stared at the fly. She could feel the fly staring back. It shuffled its half dozen legs. It moved a little left, a little right. It stood tiny and alone in the middle of what was, to it, a vast cloth field. There was no place to hide.

“I see you,” she said.

“It’s not what you think,” the horsefly said.

“What do I think?”

“You think I’m spying.”

“Yes, I do. And what is it you are doing instead, Josh?”

He flew to the front of the car and landed on the dashboard.

“I wanted to hop a ride with you.”

“I’m going to work.”

“Then I’ll just fly.”

“You will do no such thing. You walk or ride. You are not to fly outside until you are eighteen. It’s dangerous.”

The horsefly moped.

“Josh, you can’t hide in my car. How am I supposed to trust you if I can’t trust that my private space is private?”

“I didn’t think you’d see me.”

“That’s the trust thing I’m talking about.”

“I’m sorry.”

Despite the fact that horseflies are incapable of dropping their heads in a gesture of penitence and submission, and despite the fact that, even if they could do this, it would be so subtle as to be unnoticeable by human eyes, she heard this action in Josh’s voice. She didn’t need to see her son in human form to understand his physical language. Even when Josh took the form of a sentient patch of haze (he rarely did, only once or twice after watching a scary movie, when he had felt that, if he had no physical form, no monsters or ghosts could get him), she could still tell when he was rolling his eyes or slumping or smirking or not paying attention.

“I can always see you, Josh. I’m your mom. You could be anything, and I would know it was you.”

Josh didn’t say anything. He vigorously rubbed his legs together because that was something he had seen flies do, but he didn’t know why they did that.

“Why did you want to ride downtown with me?”

“Just to hang out. Maybe go to the video store or something.”

“First, you don’t get to skip school. You understand me?”

“Yes.”

“Second, you don’t get to hide from me. That is deceitful, Josh.”

“Okay. Okay.”

“And third.” She hesitated. “You were going to dig up records on your dad, right?”

Josh didn’t respond.

“I don’t want you doing that. He’s your father, yes, but I don’t trust him.”

“You did at one point.”

“I raised you for fifteen years. I fed you and clothed you. I loved you and still do. I love you because you have been with me for fifteen years. I am your mother because we have been together your whole childhood. I have earned you as my son.

“Troy does not get to be your father simply because he participated in your creation. Troy does not get to earn your love as a son because you are biologically his. I have done the work. I have put in the time. I have loved you. Troy does not get to be my equal in your life because he has not earned it. I need to protect myself. And I need to protect you.

“So promise me you will leave this all alone. And I will promise you that I will find out more about him, and, when the time is right, I will tell you.”

“Okay,” the horsefly said. He didn’t sound like he thought it was okay.

“Get moving, so you don’t miss your bus. No more of this, okay?”

Diane pressed her finger to the automatic window button for the front passenger side. With a robotic whir, the window cracked open. The horsefly flew up and out in a loose spiral.

“I love you,” she called out. “No flying.”

“Okay,” came back the soft buzz from the human boy with the horsefly face.

Later she would go over this conversation again and again in her head, one of the last they would have before he disappeared.