CECIL

Blood is thicker than water. Blood is redder than water. Blood is messier and stickier and gorier than water. There are a lot of differences, really.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Spring is almost here. It’s hard to say exactly when. Usually we make predictions based on what the groundhog sees in February. If he sees the wavering image of a cloaked woman with a scimitar floating on the horizon, there are six more weeks of winter. If he sees a pigeon eating a pile of millet spilled across the train tracks, spring is just around the corner. This year, unfortunately, the groundhog did not make an appearance. After years of bachelorhood, it seems he’s found a mate and they’ve been in a deep hibernation state together since September, so the seasonal forecast is anyone’s guess. Could be tomorrow, could be months from now. But I’ve got a good feeling that the days of making sand-angels and sandmen out in the Scrublands are coming to a close, and the days of sand-tubing and sand-surfing at Ash Beach are in our very near future.

In anticipation of spring, I decided to take a little trip out to the Night Vale Botanic Gardens to see what’s starting to bloom.

[music cue: drastic tonal shift]

It was a clear, cloudless day.

I went alone.

The sign out front said “Closed to the Public,” like always. But the gate was easily opened with a lockpick, which means “Come on in.”

Once I started down the path, I was surrounded by bees. I didn’t see any bees, but the air was filled with a vibrating hum that sounded pretty pollen-thirsty to me, if you know what I mean. I walked until I found myself in front of another gate that was marked with a skull and crossbones inside of a circle with a slash through it, which clearly means “Do Not Don’t Enter.” Which is a double negative meaning “Enter.”

And then I was looking out on a field of 6-foot long pink blooms. Not blooms exactly, but whatever happens before a bloom. Buds? They looked like large fleshy cocoons, writhing gently in the dirt.

They’ll be so beautiful when they blossom, I thought.

Then I noticed one near me had already started to open, and so I…I went over for a closer look. And (a bit haunted) I saw…well…(a beat, regains composure) More on that after the headlines.

In Sports, the first minor league game of the season is kicking off on Monday with the Night Vale Spiderwolves playing long time rivals—

LEONARD

Blood is thicker than water. Blood is redder than water. Blood is much more disturbing to see spilled across Mesa Avenue than water, especially when it’s your own.

Welcome to Night Vale. I’m your host, Leonard Burton.

In my top story, I’ve been dead for a long time. I was hit by a cargo truck in front of the radio station over 40 years ago. I’ve come to terms with that now. It’s fine. The important thing is that I’m back on the air, once again, as the host of Night Vale Community Radio. Well, some version of it anyway. I know these aren’t actual radio waves that I’m broadcasting on. Any veteran broadcaster can tell the difference, by the way their voice feels when it bounces off different frequencies in the atmosphere. It’s definitely some other kind of wave, one I’ve never felt before. And I’ll admit, I don’t know how I got here or where I am exactly. But I was told I could have my old show back, and that I could say whatever I wanted as long as I made sure to read a few specific pieces of copy, word for word, at regular intervals. More on that later.

I am pure consciousness now. I have seen infinity.

More on that later.

First, the television listings.

On The Muppet Show, guest star Lee Marvin joins the Muppets in their own version of the classic gran guignol play Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations, in which a doctor performs zombie-inducing brain surgery on his wife’s lover. Starring Bunsen Honeydew as the doctor, Rizzo the Rat as the adulterer, and Camilla Chicken as the wife.

On Nightline, President John F. Kennedy publicly addresses the scandals marring his fifth term in the White House.

On Wild Kingdom, the Columbia River salmon faces many obstacles on its journey to spawn, including increased gas prices, the rising cost of living, and a plummeting stock market.

And on the Wednesday night movie, Jack Lemmon accidentally joins a doomsday cult and becomes comically entangled.

Now, back to our top story. I am dead. Well. What I’ve realized is, the part of me that was briefly alive is now dead, but the part of me that never existed still doesn’t exist, and is the same as it’s always been. Basically, everything is back to status quo for me, your host, Leonard Burton. Or it was, until I got my job back. Now the lines have blurred once again. I remember the feeling of being awoken from a deep sleep. I remember seeing a circular insignia that looked like a labyrinth. I remember being surrounded by the color pink. A vaguely familiar man, a man who was not short, handed me a microphone and a set of words on a piece of paper. The man and the microphone and the paper were not physical objects, of course, but the ideas of them. I remember saying the word “no” but having it change shape in the air and become the words “Yes, of course. I am a broadcaster. It is who I am and what I will always be, for eternity.”

[Clears throat]

Now, the headlines.

CECIL

Now, back to my trip to the Botanic Gardens.

I leaned in for a closer look at the opening flower tendril, peeking out from its six-foot-long pink pulsating sack. And inside the cocoon…I saw a face. It was the face of a man whose eyes were closed, whose skin was shiny with translucent goo, and who was wearing a blue suit. And listeners, I knew that face. And that suit. It was my old mentor, former Night Vale Community Radio host, Leonard Burton.

That can’t be, I thought to myself. Leonard has been dead for decades. I saw him get hit by a truck on Mesa Avenue. I saw it speeding around the corner and I saw the labyrinth insignia on its driver side door and I saw it strike his body with incredible force. And okay, maybe I still haven’t fully processed that experience, sure, maybe it still feels like a moment of detached reality that happened to someone else and I literally never, ever think about it to the point that I barely remember it even happened—but I also know that I did see it, and I know that Leonard is dead and buried out at Rattlesnake Rest Cemetery.

And then I thought, wait, is he buried at Rattlesnake Rest Cemetery? Come to think of it, I don’t remember there ever being a funeral for him. Or a memorial of any kind. Or an obituary, even. And I’ve never seen a headstone for him, even though I take all my lunch breaks at the cemetery and know all the tombs pretty darn well by now. Where did Leonard’s body end up?

And as I was thinking about all of this, and staring at what appeared to be the face of my dead mentor inside a sticky pink bloom, a man who was not short emerged from the path behind me.

“Let’s talk,” he said.

More on that after the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner.

LEONARD

Now for the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner. Death is one of life’s biggest mysteries. What happens when we die? Is dying scary? Does life have meaning? I know the answers to all of those questions now, of course. Spoiler: Death isn’t profound. It’s anticlimactic and a bummer at best. For example, the last thing I saw was my own teeth scattered across the pavement and the last thing I felt was ashamed that I had been such a bad custodian of my own teeth and that I hadn’t held onto them better. And then I saw a ring-tailed cat on the side of the road lapping up a pool of my blood, which may or may not have been a hallucination, but probably was. And then I died. And that was it. It was a disappointment, to be honest. Birth is where the real drama is, but no one cares about that because everyone’s done it already and no one remembers it. We come screaming into the world with nearly infinite alternate realities opening up in front of us at light speed, and we go out mumbling and hallucinating animals until we fall into a dreamless sleep.

But if you do still want those original answers, they are, in order: not much, kinda, and kinda. This has been the Children’s—

CECIL

—this has been the Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner. Wow, who knew the burrowing owl had such complicated religious rituals?

Now back to my experience at the Botanic Gardens. A man who was not short stepped out from the bushes and placed a hand on my shoulder. It felt like ice.

“Maybe we should sit down,” he said. We sat together on a stone bench overlooking the field.

“What kinds of flowers are these?” I asked him.

“Geraniums,” he said, looking me in the eyes.

“I think I recognize that one,” I said, nodding toward the bloom containing the well-preserved corpse of my dead mentor.

“Of course,” the man said, also nodding. “Geraniums are common flowers. They will seem familiar to you.”

I looked again and saw that the flower had blossomed while we’d been talking. There were endless clusters of bright pink petals with red streaks, clinging to vines of vibrant green.

“I see now that it is a geranium,” I said.

“Yes,” the man agreed. “Very common. Let me show you the way out.”

Listeners, even though it had only been an ordinary geranium, and I clearly did not see the corpse of Leonard Burton inside a fleshy pink cocoon, it got me thinking. Why don’t we ever talk about him? Why did we all seem to forget about him the moment he died? To me, he’s one of the most influential citizens who’s ever lived in Night Vale. And so I’ve come to an important decision. More on that after a word from our sponsors.

You are walking down a long hallway. The carpeting is dark and musty. The pattern on the wallpaper moves as if it’s alive. You—

LEONARD

Now a word from our sponsors.

WHITE horse. SHARP needle. SLOW dance. NEW book. BLUE boy. QUIET evening. FAST bird. SWEET taste.

I don’t know what any of that means but—

CECIL

—You enter an empty, cavernous room with a dining table set for twelve. You sit down. No one else has arrived.

LEONARD

—but I was told to read these sets of words at certain times. I hope whoever needs to hear them hears them. I hope they understand what it’s supposed to mean. I hope it isn’t anything questionable that I would regret being involved in. But I really do like having my show back. Oh, I missed a few—

CECIL

You wonder, not without dread, who else is coming. In a crystal glass in front of you, a beverage. It’s bubbly and pale yellow in color. As if compelled by another force, your hand reaches out for it and brings it to your lips.

It’s more than seltzer. Proudly made with only real squeezed fruit. Never from concentrate. Bold. Authentic. Spindrift.

This has been a word from our sponsors.

I’m dying to tell you about my decision regarding the memory of Leonard Burton but first—

LEONARD

SCREAMING voices. ANCIENT languages. VENOMOUS animals. DARK skies. RED rivers. NEW gods. [simultaneous with Cecil line below >] BAD weather.

CECIL

—the weather

[THE WEATHER]

CECIL

As you all know, Leonard Burton was more to me than just the person who gave me my start in broadcasting and guided me down my chosen career path. He was a person who believed in me. And as a kid who grew up without a father figure and always in trouble at school, that meant a lot. It showed me that I was capable of things. That I could even be good at things. It made me believe in myself. And belief in yourself, I’ve come to learn, is the most important weapon we have against simply disappearing into the ether.

He was also more to this town than just the voice who gave us the headlines. He DJ’d at the roller rink for Gregorian Chant night. He was an amateur aircraft maintenance technician with Delta. He played a serial killer in a national commercial for bathroom cleanser. He loved Boston cream pies and paintings of snakes. Oh, and he once saved Old Woman Josie’s Buick Skylark from crashing into the credit union when she left it parked in neutral. He was a great man and he has gone underappreciated long enough. That changes now.

Listeners, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. I’ve invested my own funds, applied for a permit, hired a contractor, and in exactly one month’s time, the City Council and I will be unveiling the Leonard Burton Memorial Drinking Fountain in Mission Grove Park. It will have filtered, refrigerated water and a bronze plaque. It will feature a laser-etched portrait of Leonard and his famous quote “Please organize the supply closet, Cecil.” Besides chilled water, it will have several other buttons, including one for hot water, one for cola, and one for hot cola. And it will be available for all you thirsty joggers and passersby just in time for spring.

It should be spring then, right? Still waiting for that groundhog to let us know, but really don’t want to interrupt whatever he’s got going on down there.

Up next, stay tuned for—

LEONARD

Well, that’s it for me today. On a personal note, I just want to say that I’m happy to be back on the air. Whatever type of air this is. And whatever audience is hearing it. And whatever it means. Until next time…

See ya, Night Vale.

CECIL

Good night, Night Vale.

LEONARD

[simultaneous with below Cecil line]

See ya.

CECIL

[simultaneous with above Leonard line]

Good night.