Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 14

Jackie felt, as the door swung her back out onto the sun-cracked asphalt, that science had taught her little. Carlos had suggested seeing the mayor. It would mean going to City Hall, which would put her in dangerous proximity to the City Council, but the mayor herself was a comforting figure, and probably safe enough.

City Hall was certainly better than where Old Woman Josie wanted her to go. Anywhere was better than the library.

She sauntered to her car, not in any hurry to leave the mild warmth of the evening sunlight. The desert beyond the roads and buildings was going pink at the edges, orange farther in, and then a deep yellow glow where the setting sun met the horizon. It was all very pretty to look at, and so she did. As a result, she did not notice what was in her car until it grabbed her as she opened the door.

“Erika! You scared the shit out of me.” Jackie had to intentionally restart her breathing.

The impossibly tall being, seemingly made of bright black beams of light, shrugged, and there was the flutter of hundreds of tiny wings all beating at once.

“Fear is a reasonable response to life.”

Jackie didn’t have time for general philosophizing from a being it was illegal to acknowledge existed. Or maybe she did have time. She wasn’t about to pretend she understood anything at all about time.

“You’re in my car, so explain why or get out.”

Erika turned to look at her. Where eyes might be on a human being was a shadowy glow that Jackie could taste in the back of her mouth. It tasted like strawberry candy covered in mud.

“I come with a message on behalf of the angels. We are afraid. All of us. I am perhaps the most afraid.”

Jackie forced herself to meet Erika’s gaze directly, or as directly as she could given that she could not locate their eyes.

“Is that message supposed to be useful to me?”

“It is not supposed to be anything. It is just a message. Messages are for the sender, not the receiver.”

“Then, dude, I hope it helped you out, telling me that. I really do hope that, but could you get out of my car? Or else you’re going to end up at City Hall, because that’s where I’m going.”

The fluttering of wings again. A soft voice singing somewhere far above them.

Erika shrugged.

“Actually, I could use a ride. Do you mind?”

“Do you have gas money?” Jackie wadded up the piece of paper in her left hand and threw it into Erika’s chest. It bounced to the window and then back down into Erika’s lap.

“I am afraid of this piece of paper,” said Erika.

“KING CITY,” said the paper.

“Even angels are afraid,” said Jackie. Erika stared blankly into a blank lap. Several listening antennas on nearby rooftops swung around to point at the car. A small blinking light on the dashboard repeated the warning

ANGEL ACKNOWLEDGED.

Jackie pushed the reset button to turn it off.

“Sorry, I meant even you are afraid,” she articulated loudly for the listening devices. “Seriously, do you have gas money?”

“There was a time where I was extremely wealthy. One of the most wealthy people. But angels don’t use money, as they keep telling me over and over.” Erika folded their hands in their lap.

“Figures. All right, Erika, let’s go.”

She started the car, somehow, even though nothing about the engine should have started. “Rocks. This is just a bag of rocks,” her mechanic had muttered during her last scheduled maintenance, tears running down his face.

As she pulled the car out, Erika pointed into the desert.

“Behold.”

Out amidst the spectrum of sunset, the giant glass building had returned. There were others with it, a multitude of glass specters, and bubbles of light with a source that did not seem to be the rapidly departing sun. The voices of a crowd chanting something just on the edge of intelligible came with it.

“So?” said Jackie, continuing to navigate out of the parking lot. “Sometimes in my mirror I see brief flashes of a faceless old woman. These things happen.”

“Not these things,” said Erika. “This is all wrong. We are worried about Old Woman Josie. We are worried for her. I am terrified. I am terrified.” A few of their long hands were rubbing together.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to be terrified of about visions in the desert. It’s just our eyes lying to us. Every part of our bodies lies to us constantly. Didn’t you ever take a health class in elementary school?” Jackie said.

Erika turned in their seat to keep whatever they passed as eyes on the spot in the desert where the lights had been until the desert was no longer visible. They turned back.

There was a comfortable quiet between Erika and Jackie, only breaths and breeze and faint traffic.

After a few moments of this, Jackie asked, “So, seriously, man, no gas money?”

“All right, I think I have maybe ten bucks,” said the angel.