Cecil:

Hello listeners.

We have some news that will affect your morning commute, so let’s dive right into it.

Walk signals across the whole of Night Vale are malfunctioning. Of course usually they show either a graphic photo of a run over pedestrian, indicating you should wait, or time lapse photography of flowers wilting, indicating that it is safe to cross. But this morning, commuters all over Night Vale are reporting that, bafflingly, they now all have just the word “WALK” in bold, white letters.

Citizens are standing by the side of the road, unsure of whether they are allowed to -

Dana:

Cecil! Cecil, it’s Dana. Oh, it’s so good to be able to communicate again.

Cecil? Where did he go? I don’t think he can hear me, but I’ll keep talking just in case.

Cecil, I’ve been in this desert for months now. Years, maybe. Get enough minutes and you have days, have months, have years, have the whole of your life. There’s never a great shift, only a gradual sliding downwards.

I can still see the blinking light up on the mountain. I looked into it and my head went one way while my mind went another. A lurch outside of all that seems to be.

I moved my head just a touch to the left, a glance in a world of perspectives, and I was here, in your studio. Well, not here here. I don't know how it happened, or how long this vision in which we all pretend to be real will last.

I am pretending as hard as I can.

When I first got here, being a good mountain unbeliever, I turned my back to it and marched directly into the flat desert. But soon enough I had somehow come back to the mountain. I turned and marched away again, but ended up right back here. There is a blinking light up on the mountain, and I blink in and out of its vicinity against my will.

Occasionally I see huge masked figures. Warlike, towering, but also distant and listless. They haven’t seen me. Or if they’ve seen me, they haven’t cared. Or if they’ve cared, they haven’t done anything with that feeling. I’m not scared of them. There are so many things in this world to be scared of. Why add to that number when the only cause is you know nothing about them and they are huge? It would make no sense.

I found a door out in the desert, but it was chained shut on the other side. From behind it, I thought I smelled that particular Night Vale smell. The smell of home. Like sour peaches and linen. Like freshly cut wood and burnt almonds. I knocked and knocked, hoping someone from back there would hear and let me through. But it never opened. I wasn’t even sure which side was supposed to open. I knocked on both sides, but nothing. I kept walking and found myself back at the mountain.

There is a blinking light up on the mountain. And so there is nothing else for it. It is time for me to climb. The face of the mountain is steep, and lined with sharp ridges and crumbling ledges. This will not be easy. I wonder if anything ever will be.

Hopefully I will know something when I am up there that I did not know when I was down here. Elevation must equal knowledge. It must. Because nothing else has.

Cecil, I will keep trying. I don’t have to keep trying. There is no obligation for me to not just give up, just slump down until I fall away and join the inanimate matter of this strange other world. I don’t have to keep trying. Remember that, I say to myself, as I keep trying.

I don’t know if you’ve heard any of this. I’d like to think you did. I’d like to think that I’m home. I’d like to think that mountains aren’t real, even though I know now, without doubt, that they are.

I will see you again, perhaps. From up there, wherever that is. Just me, always me, but from higher up.

Goodbye Cecil.

Cecil:

-unable to stop walking. Walk, the signals say, and the pedestrians walk. In unison, arms swinging in a rigid rhythm. This is the worst malfunctioning of walk signals Night Vale has seen since the time all their light bulbs were accidentally replaced with poison gas dispensers. More on this story, as it looms closer to us.

And now, a word from our sponsors.

A balding grassland beneath a low cliffside. There is a monk. Picture what a monk looks like. A bell rings, from his hand maybe, then he takes a small step, then there’s that bell again. It will take him a long time to make it from this bit of grass to whatever there is beyond it. An entire lifetime it will take him, and even then he will die unfinished, undone in midst of doing, having gone slowly to nowhere much. Then a bell will ring, from his hand maybe, or from somewhere else, and then nothing. Mountain Dew. Do the Dew.

And now back to-

Dana:

Hello, Cecil? Cecil can you hear me? Damnit.

Cecil, it is beautiful here. It is empty here. I found a lighthouse up on the mountain.

Tall, maybe 40 feet, built of brownstone and about 15 feet in diameter. Beyond the lighthouse, I found a settlement of sort. It was bound inside the stone walls of a tightly wound gorge. I hoped to find answers in this settlement. I hoped to find anything.

Here is what I found: Dust, mostly. Emptiness. A sense of loss as I thought about the distance between myself and those I love. An interesting rock, but I can’t find it anymore. I miss my brother. A sense of loss as I thought about the people who never returned home to this settlement. If they no longer exist to feel loss, then I shall feel it for them.

Also, there were strange drawings along the walls of the gorge. Orange triangles, growing bigger and bigger as I traced my way deeper into the spiral. There was a soft light just around the edges of the triangles. When I looked at them, I felt the light in my head and it pounded like a migraine against the back of my eyes. I could not look at them. I could not look away.

I was lost in the spiral. It was built by good people, but they were gone, taken by something larger and stronger than them. Much larger and stronger even than the masked warriors I saw before. I worried about what...who would be taken next. My eyes hurt, so through my subjectivity, the entire world hurt.

And then a bright blackness, from somewhere beyond the spiral. That was when I realized I had forgotten that there was anything outside of the spiral. It had become the entirety, the totality. All of that.

But I followed the bright blackness, a near blinding beam of pure darkness, and it led me back out again. The orange triangles grew smaller and smaller, until they were little dots, a freckled rock face.

There is something coming, Cecil. I feel it in the air. It is like a hot wind blowing, but not hot, deathly cold. And not a wind, a vast creature. And not blowing, rushing at us out of the gaps in time and memory with which we hold together our lives.

When I look to the horizon, I see light. Like the light in the spiral. I feel it push against the back of my eyes.

It is the unraveling of all things. The great glowing coils of the universe unwinding.

I wish I could tell you more. Communication is difficult. It is impossible, some say, communicating the idea of its impossibility to others.

I feel myself slipping. I’m getting fainter now. Or no. No. You are.

Goodby-

Cecil:

-which I haven’t done, by the way, in years, or at least days, or at least I’m not doing it right now.

Thursday is a lost cause, but we will keep on fighting. We will get up, say “Yes, today is a different day than before,” believing this against all evidence, eating food like that matters, going to jobs that mean the same thing as they did before but cast in a new light by our own optimism, which will slowly drain away until all that is left is the movements and thoughts we've had before, echos of ourselves, underlined to emphasize the lack of emphasis, coming home, drifting home, aimless homeward wandering into a kitchen that is too small for our needs and eating food that isn't what we imagined it would be and watching television that means more to us than our jobs, and finally falling asleep, in which we dream of the Thursday that could be if only we lived Thursday to the full potential of its Thursday-ness, not expecting it to be anything but Thursday, embracing every inch of its Thursday reality and living each Thursday moment anew, only to wake the next Thursday and again impose, unsuccessfully, our imagined Thursday onto the unyielding frame of Thursday, our Thursday, a lost cause.

This has been the community calendar.

The crowd amassed by the walk signals is now marching down Route 800, apparently advancing on City Hall. When reached for comment, the City Council said that they were definitely at City Hall ready to receive the concerns of their constituents, and not, say, hiding in a hastily dug hole in Mission Grove Park, keeping as still as possible and breathing through their dirt gills until this all blows over. Incidentally, their comment continued, if you happen to see a conspicuous pile of earth in any parks, maybe just throw some leaves on it or put a bench over it to make it less obvious. No biggie. Just if you get a chance that’d be cool, the Council concluded, their voices noticeably muffled.

Fortunately the effect of the walk signals only reaches those who are looking at one, and I myself...hey, how did that get in here?

Listeners, there is a walk signal in my studio. Walk, it says. I must walk. The signal is saying so. I will have to leave my desk in order to do that. And, so, before I go, I take you to the walkther….the weaalk.. the walk. Walk. Walk. Walk.

[Weather: "What Have They Done to You Now" by Daniel Knox, danielknox.com.]

Dana:

I can’t seem to get hold of Cecil. I’m trying to tell him something important. But just as I showed up here again, he announced the weather.

The weather is beautiful there.

Cecil cannot hear me, and I do not remember what I wanted to say.

[pause]

I remember the table at my grandfather’s house. It had carved legs in the shape of a myriad of animals, spiraling around each other, whole ecosystems within each leg. But it was also well-used. We ate there. We talked there. We lived around it, in rows and columns delineated by chairs and space.

I remember diagonals of sunlight in the late afternoon drawn across its flat expanse, transversed by my grandfather’s hand as he swept it through whatever story he was telling, to highlight the words with motion, to motion us closer to the words. I remember my mother, as rapt as I was. I remember my brother, as rapt as I was.

I remember that I haven’t seen my mother or my brother for months now. And, in some ways, I miss that table more than I miss them. We are all of us only one life each, but that table is all of our lives added together, a delicate tangled problem we never wished to solve.

But life solves all our problems against our will.

I remember I am Dana. Or I am Dana’s double. One of us killed the other with a stapler. Even I don’t know which one. I have these memories, but memories prove nothing. Experiences also prove nothing. There are many proofs for nothing. It is the concept of which we are most certain.

I’m sorry. I am trying to remember something important and I am failing.

My grandfather died a long time ago. A few months ago I killed my double. These facts have no symmetry. They are disconnected.

I must find a way back to you, listeners. I must protect Night Vale, and Cecil, and my mother, and my brother, and whoever I am, I must protect them from what is coming. The unraveling of all things.

This winding gorge spirals around itself, an empty ecosystem within the mountain. Beyond it, the desert is a flat expanse, with diagonals of sunlight, transversed by my passing. I am sweeping through my own story, highlighting the words with motion, motioning us closer to the end.

This is not what I wanted to tell you.

Listeners: Look past the things you think you see. Move your head just a touch to the left. A glance in a world of perspectives. And then you might see it. An entire universe in the corner of your eye.

I have seen this lighthouse with its red beam rotating out into the desert distance. I have seen the dog park and it's infinite, bland secrets. I have seen the settlement in the gorge, and I do not wish to see it again. I have seen Cecil. But I have not seen my mother. I have not seen my brother. Life solves the problems we hope it won’t.

You may hear from me again. I am afraid... no, concerned...no, afraid...that you will not.

I wish I could stay, but the noise of the approaching... whatever it is... has gotten louder, closer. I must go. This is Intern Dana. Sister. Daughter. Or not. Dana with a question mark. This is me or my double, signing out. I miss you, Night Vale. Goodbye.

Cecil:

-and so we are all saved again. I’ll be honest Night Vale. That was the most worried I’ve been in some time, and how we were saved was so unlikely and miraculous that I feel that today will become one of the standard tales told every year on Frightening Day. Certainly it is a story I will never forget.

Here is where I leave you. Not to walk away. I think I will avoid walking for awhile. But certainly to go somewhere. To see someone.

And I don’t know. If he suggests a walk, I might change my mind. He can be as persuasive as hypnotic malfunctioning city equipment sometimes, as the old saying goes.

Stay tuned next for the noises of my hurried retreat, echoing first as sound and then as memory, and maybe then again as part of tonight’s fractured dreaming.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.