Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 34

Diane stood in Josh’s empty room, dialing again. Each time it went straight to voice mail. She checked her texts, reading his last text (“Good. Be home later.”) again and again.

She called the Sheriff’s Secret Police. She called Josh’s friends. She called Josh again. She called the comic book and video stores again. She called Josh again. She called Josh again.

He had to have his phone with him. It was illegal for any person to not carry at all times some sort of device by which the World Government could track their location. Most people opted for a cell phone because it also could do useful things like make phone calls and attract birds. A few holdouts still preferred the old tracking collars, bulky and impossible to take off though they were.

She rifled through the papers on Josh’s desk and the ones shoved in his books. She found all kinds of sketches and doodles and homework worksheets. She pulled open his drawers, finding his illicit writing utensils (She didn’t care. He was a teenager. What are you going to do, stop a kid from writing because it’s illegal?), some cockroaches with corporate logos on them, and a partial tarot deck. She confiscated the tarot deck, making a mental note to lecture him about that once he was safely home (he would be safely home soon, she was sure), but also keeping it for her own use later.

There was nothing from Josh, and no one else she had gotten hold of knew where he was. They all offered their heartfelt condolences. She could taste her worry about Josh as an actual taste on her tongue, and it tasted like rotten citrus.

Diane tried texting him again. When she pressed her thumb to send, she felt a familiar sharp pain. She did it again. She felt it again. Her phone’s touch screen grew cloudy with smudged blood. He was unavailable or, even worse, forbidden to call by civil ordinance.

She let out a high-pitched yelp of anger and kicked the open desk drawer shut. The framed movie poster above Josh’s desk of Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou rattled.

She sat on the corner of his bed, put her head in her hands, and let out a sob that swelled her face and burned her eyes. She slid down the side of the bed, her butt thudding to the floor. She intentionally inhaled and exhaled toward the sky. The ceiling fan blew her breath back at her.

From this vantage point, she could see under the desk. There was a pale fluttering, like a white moth.

“Josh?” she asked hopefully, foolishly. He had never been a moth before, but he liked to try out new forms.

She reached under the desk and felt something light, thin, small. Not a moth. Paper?

Paper. Before she pulled it out and held it up to her face, she knew what it said.

“KING CITY.” Over and over, as though the writer was unable to write any other words.

It was not the same as the paper the man in the tan jacket had given her. It was lighter, cheaper stock. The lettering was different too. It was shakier; the curves of the G and the C were bulbous and crooked, written in thin pen. The words on the paper Evan had told her to pass on to Josh was written in a thick, assured pencil.

She reopened the desk drawer. She ran her hand through the illegal writing utensils and found a pen that matched the color and gauge of the writing in her hand.

How did he know about King City? Diane pulled her purse off her shoulder and threw it against the wall. She smacked the desktop with her palms. She cursed. She stomped. Nothing helped.

She looked at her purse, lying open near the doorway. She remembered the paper Evan had given her. She had gone to throw it away behind the Moonlite All-Nite but put it in her purse after seeing Troy. She rifled through the purse. And just like her car keys, the paper was not there.

“No,” Diane said again and again on the floor of Josh’s empty room.

“KING CITY,” the paper said again and again in Jackie’s hand and probably now in Josh’s hand as well.

Diane grabbed her phone and tried calling him one more time. She could feel the phone burning her ear. She could smell it burning her hair. She let it ring and ring, until the pain was searing, until her hair caught on fire, until she could not physically hold the phone to her head a moment longer, and then she let it ring a moment past that.