Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 47

“Mom,” Josh protested as Diane wrapped her arms around his sloped, furry shoulders.

She gripped his body tight, placing one hand across his wide back and the other hand to the back of his head, between the tall, pointed ears.

“Josh,” she said over and over. “Josh. Josh.” Jackie placed her casted hand on his mother’s back.

Diane concentrated on breathing deep, full breaths. “Thank you, Jackie.”

“Mom.” Josh blushed. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“Josh, it’s not okay. I haven’t seen you in a week. What have they done to you?”

“Nothing, Mom. I’m fine.” He gently removed her arms from his body.

She looked into his eyes, or into the eyes of his body, looking for him. Her own eyes hardened. Her tears dried. Her pupils contracted, lids narrowing. He felt the moment turning.

“I took your car for the afternoon,” he said, pleading the case in what he failed to keep from a whine. “I’m sorry. I found out that my dad had moved to King City and then I found that paper in your purse and then I thought I could take the car to King City to look up stuff about my dad. I thought you would be gone the whole day. You’ve been gone a lot lately.

“I mapped it out, and it looked like it was maybe only a couple hours’ drive. I was planning to come back tonight. But I ran up on the curb into someone’s lawn. I wanted to have cool-looking wings, but it was hard to drive with them. I was all pushed forward and they kept getting in my eyes. I dented your fender, and ruined their shrubbery and crushed this row of plastic garden flamingos that got stuck in the bumper, and apparently I ran Jackie off the road, but I didn’t see that. I’m so sorry, Jackie. The wings were in my eyes and I didn’t know.

“I was scared you’d be mad about your car, so I tried to drive home, but the city around me wasn’t familiar-looking anymore. I saw this building marked CITY HALL, which is where Ty told me I could find all kinds of stuff out about my real dad. So I came in here. That was like an hour ago.”

“Josh, you’ve been gone for days.”

“Mom, you just texted me a couple hours ago, and I said ‘Good. Be home later.’ See?” He held up his phone.

“Time is weird in Night Vale,” the mayor said.

“Shut up,” Jackie said. The cloud of black flies rose, but she moved at them without hesitation. They buzzed louder and retreated to the other side of the room.

“It’s not his fault, Diane,” Jackie said. “It isn’t. You and I both know that. We know it together.”

Diane continued to stare at Josh. Her eyes burned on the cusp between crying and yelling.

“But maybe, Josh,” Jackie said, “we finish driver’s ed when we get back to town. Or maybe you don’t need hooves when you drive, straight up hands will do the trick, all right? Full human form when you drive.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” Josh lowered his head. He saw the deep yellow and purple bruises around the edges of Jackie’s cast and along her neck, and cringed in shame.

“Let’s just go home,” Jackie said. “You and Josh can take your car, and I’ll follow in the Mercedes.”

“That is absolutely not possible,” said the mayor in the tan jacket.

“Shut up,” Jackie said again.

She moved toward him, her face set. The flies regrouped into an opaque cloud between her and the man. She stepped forward into them. The flies swarmed onto her skin and into her clothes and onto her face and into her eyes and her nose and her mouth. Their guts oozed onto her tongue as they crunched between her teeth. She batted at them with her uninjured arm, but they wouldn’t release even as she got to his desk and grabbed the pair of scissors leaning against the rim of a coffee mug.

She held up the scissors. The mayor moved back, gawping at her fly-covered body, everyone else in the room forgetting his look of terror the moment they looked away. She brought the scissors down, driving a blade into her cast, and sawing. The cast resisted and the blades were not sharp, but she hacked with a fury. The flies retreated one by one as she worked herself into a sweat fighting against her own cast. Her skin was swollen and red where the flies had been.

Finally, dull blades and all, she ripped off the top of the cast, exposing a hand still clutching a paper that said “KING CITY.” She held it up to the man in the tan jacket.

“Oh yes, of course.” He walked over and plucked the paper from her hand, like a person taking a slip of paper out of another person’s hand, and tossed it into the trash can, where it stayed. He did the same with the paper in Josh’s hand.

Jackie stared at her empty palm, breathing hard from exertion and relief. She clasped and unclasped her sticky, sore fingers, reveling in the emptiness of them.

“Now then,” said the man in the tan jacket, “that’s done. And Josh will be back to you sooner or later, I’m sure.”

“No,” Diane said. Jackie was too struck by the burden that had just been lifted from her, and would not be able to do this confrontation for her. She would have to do it herself.

“You awful, forgettable man,” Diane said. “You will not keep him. You’ve infected my town with your blank face and your false memories. I am sorry no one knows who you are, I really am. I’m sorry that no one remembers you are mayor. I’m sorry for your town.”

She felt another Diane crossing a street somewhere else, arms full with groceries, and yet another, looking idly at the passing scenery outside of a bus window.

“I am sorry you’ve resorted to taking other people’s children—”

“I wasn’t taken, Mom.”

“Josh, honestly, you are not old enough to know the difference. I’m sorry you have to resort to taking other people’s children. Maybe the problem isn’t with Troy. Maybe the problem is with you. Maybe if you were a better mayor, you wouldn’t be forgotten. Good deeds don’t go unnoticed. If there was an economy and good roads and schools, no one would try to elect a new leader every few months.”

The man in the tan jacket’s eyes darkened. Jackie saw his eyes. They were unforgettable.

“And maybe, just maybe,” Diane said, her hand waving in asynchronous rhythm to her speech, “a good father only has to be a good father, not a good mayor, not a man with a memorable face. Look at yourself, Evan, or whatever the fuck your name is. Josh, I’m sorry I cursed. Evan, be accountable to your wife and family, and they will care enough to know who you are. Govern your city, and you won’t have to infect mine. Be a father to your child, and you won’t have to steal mine.”

The mayor backed up to his seat but did not sit. His flies stacked themselves in a subdued pyramid on his shoulder.

“Diane Crayton, I have infected no one. You misunderstand the situation. I came to Night Vale because there was no place weirder, and I thought someone there would understand. But my long conversations were forgotten. My pleas went unnoticed. So I started to write it down. A simple message that would stick better. That, in fact, it would be impossible to put down.”

He winced apologetically at Jackie.

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t think people would mind that much. I need the people of your weird town to tell me how to unweird my own. I was desperate. Desperation does not breed empathy or clear thinking.”

“You ruined my life,” said Jackie.

He shrugged. That was all he would have to say on that.

“Please understand, I didn’t want to force Josh. I knew he would be curious about his father. I just wanted to give him the information he would need to find him. I just wanted to give him the opportunity, a piece of paper with a town’s name on it, and I knew somehow, once given it, that he would take it.”

Jackie was trying to understand the implication of what he was saying.

“All of that, all that I went through,” Jackie said, “it wasn’t even for me? You were trying to get the paper to Diane and Josh? Why would you give it to me?”

The man shrugged again.

“I didn’t know what Josh looked like. He could have been anything. So I gave the paper to as many people as I could, hoping that one of them eventually would be him. None of them ever were. That’s when I decided that, as much as I didn’t want Diane knowing about this, I would have to get close to her and see if she would give Josh the paper.”

“So you understood that what you were doing was wrong?” Diane said.

“If you had just given that paper to him, it would have stuck. But you tried to keep it from him. Or maybe you just didn’t remember that you had it. I should have made it so you couldn’t get rid of it, but then you wouldn’t have been able to give it to Josh, and anyway I’m just a mayor of what is, after all, only a small town. I can’t think of everything.”

The flies buzzed sympathetically. Or that was their intention. It sounded no different than the rest of their buzzing.

“Mom.” Josh put a tentacular arm around Diane. “I want to stay. I want to help. It’s not dangerous. It’s a chance for me to meet my dad, to talk to him. I can really help these people.”

“Josh, we’re leaving. We will talk about your father later.”

“This town needs me to stay. Mom, I—”

“No,” said Jackie. “No. They just need one of Troy’s kids to stay. And we have another one of those. Troy’s my father too.”

Diane and Josh and the man in the tan jacket all turned to face her. Even the flies stopped flying, landing on the closest surface and turning to face her.

“You?” said the man.

“Anything you could learn from Josh, you could learn from me. And if you’re not putting me in some lab, I don’t mind helping you. You’re not like a mad scientist, right? This is just a research project?”

“Jackie, no.”

“Diane, yes. Josh has you and you have him. You are a family. What do I have? Years of repetition and a mother I can barely remember. This is no better, but this is no worse, and if I keep your family together, then at last I’ll have done something that isn’t running a pawnshop. Take Josh, okay? Take your son and leave.”

Diane did not want to do that. She saw the waver in Jackie’s posture, the way she leaned her hand on the wall. She was not well, and she needed Diane to help her. They needed each other. But there was Josh. And as much as she loved, and maybe she did, maybe she loved Jackie, she loved Josh more.

Dusk had turned to night, and the cheap overhead lighting in the office accentuated the unimpressive realness of this man’s life: his ballpoint pens, his worn-out coat (probably one of only a couple of jackets he owned), the chipped paint on the walls, the wrinkles streaking out from his eyes and nose.

Diane felt herself at that very moment getting a thick piece of skin removed from her back. The doctor was taping the wound closed and telling her to come back for results next week. Diane felt herself filling out a pet adoption form at a shelter. Diane felt herself falling off a ladder. She felt herself riding an elevator. She felt herself living in a moon colony hundreds of years in the future. She felt so many of her, but still she was alone with this decision.

“I’m young, yes,” said Jackie, “but I’m also much older than you can imagine, Diane. I’m older than I can imagine. I have all the time in the world. I’ll continue being nineteen with no connections, no one to give me a reason to grow a day older. I have a mother who will miss me, sure, but she already saw me through childhood. You need to have the same chance. You need to help your son be a better man than his father.”

Josh opened his mouth to protest.

“Josh, I get it, man, I do,” Jackie said. “I grew up without a father, same as you. But you will have time. Later, after your mother has finished what she needs to do. The next time you see me, maybe you and I will be the same age, and we can have this talk again. I’d like that.”

Diane turned to her, but before their eyes met, Diane saw the window. The night reflected everything in the room back at her. There was a woman in the window, translucent and warped, wearing what she was wearing, standing the way she was standing, making the same small movements she was making, and looking deep into her eyes. She did not recognize the woman in the window, even though she had seen her many times.

“You know I’m right,” Jackie said.

“I’ll accept whatever decision you make,” said the mayor in the tan jacket. “Either one is fine with us. You just have to make a choice.”

Diane put her hand out to Jackie, who took it. Jackie was crying, but calm. She accepted what would have to happen next. Diane did not break eye contact with the woman in the window.

“No,” Diane said, “I don’t.”

“Oh, come on,” the man said. “Yes you do, get on with it please.”

“This is not about King City and it’s not about Troy’s children. It’s about Troy. He has infected King City with our town’s weirdness.”

“Asshole.”

“Exactly, Jackie. What an asshole. And what an asshole this guy is.” She pointed at the asshole in the tan jacket.

He seemed much taller than before. His flies spread out behind him, an angry, buzzing aura.

“You must choose,” he roared. “You must choose who will stay, or I will choose for you.”

“You’re not staying here,” she said to Jackie, ignoring him, “and Josh is not staying here.”

Jackie nodded. “You’re right. It’s not our fault. It’s not us should be solving these problems. It’s time for Troy to do it.”

“And Troy’s not staying here. It’s time for Troy to go home.”

“Damn right it is.”

“Stop talking and choose which child,” the man shouted. No one was listening.

“I met a group of him at the bar. Good a place to talk to him as any.”

“Then let’s go.” The woman in the window walked away, but Diane did not move. She had a sudden moment of doubt. What if she was wrong? What if she was making a mistake? Her reflection was gone and she still could not move. And then she felt Jackie take her hand.

“I’m with you,” Jackie said gently. “Let’s go.” She hooked her injured arm through Josh’s tentacular arm and led them both out the door and back up the hall.

The man in the tan jacket followed them into the hallway.

“Where are you going? Come back here at once.” The flies buzzed around him. None of the three looked back, and the buzzing grew faint as they pushed open the front door into the dusty night air.

“You must choose. You must choose,” said a distant voice, and then the door closed and it was silent once again.