The faceless old woman does not like it when people watch television. Diane didn’t see her, had never seen her, but she looked down and there was a long hunting knife on the table. It was dull from use, but clean and otherwise in excellent shape.
“It’s a nice knife, Faceless Old Woman. Did you get a good deal on it?”
No reply.
She turned off the television. The anchors remained on-screen, talking about tornado safety in the desert, and her mind raced with the possibilities of how to better express her love to Josh.
A good person is a person who does good things. It was a deceptively simple prescription because it implied that she or anyone else knew what good things are. What could she do in this situation that was good, and by what standard?
She grabbed her phone and typed, “Son, I’m sorry I can be difficult. I’m sorry for whatever you are going through, and you don’t have to tell me. But I’m your mother, and if there’s something we—” She reached the text character limit.
Diane does not like sending a single message in multiple texts. She deleted words. She wrote words. She changed the part about not needing to tell her anything to something about how there are some things mothers need to know about, and if it’s a serious prob——
Character limit.
She deleted things and retyped things, something about setting aside one night. Just one night. An hour even. To talk. Even if they just talked about TV shows.
Delete.
Rewrite. Something about knowing how hard it is to be a teenager.
Delete.
Something that started with “How’s class?” but then devolved into wanting to talk later.
Delete.
Diane stared at her phone. The last text exchange between Josh and her was from a couple days ago. The final message was her: “what time u home?” The text before that was also from Diane: “running late; stopping for food; want anything?” She scrolled back through her and Josh’s texts. A few weeks prior, there was this one from Josh: “sorry sent to the wrong person.” The text before that was Josh on the same date: “i definitely want to meet him.”
Diane had forgotten this misdirected text. She read it again with the recent context of his note about meeting a boy. Invasive, she thinks, when she sees something not meant for her. Good parenting, she thinks, when she has concern for her son’s well-being.
Josh wanted to meet a boy. It wasn’t complicated. He was having a difficult time allowing her into a world that was already fraught with self-loathing and discomfort. Josh simply wanted to meet some boy, and her prying put him on edge. A crush. A teenager in an early approximation of love. It was sweet.
She did not cry, but she pre-cried.
“Reminder: I love you very much. That is all.” She sent the text.
The pre-crying turned to crying. A good cry. A sad, but good cry. The anchors on the television glanced over at her with concern but continued to report the news. She felt a hand rub her back gently.
“Thanks, Faceless Old Woman,” she said. “That feels nice.”
Her phone buzzed. She looked down. Josh had texted back.
“I want to meet Troy.”
THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE
CECIL: And now, the community calendar.
Saturday is a softball game between Night Vale Community Radio and Night Vale Local News TV. I don’t mind telling you, this is not a game I enjoy. The creatures that work in television news, because of the shape and quantity of their appendages, often hold the bat in ways that are unsettling to the human eye. They usually win by creeping out the other team so much that the opposing team all goes to sit mutely on the bench while the TV News team plays their way to a win on an empty field. Come out for what should be a great game!
Sunday is the annual Imaginary Corn Festival and Fun Fair, celebrating our town’s most important crop. Come try out some simple and healthy imaginary corn recipes and take part in a costume contest sponsored by the Night Vale Daily Journal. They are asking that everyone dress up as the decline of the printed word in a society reverting to a state of brainless animality. The best costume wins one year of not being forced to purchase several Daily Journal subscriptions by newspaper employees armed with hatchets. There will also be rides and carnival games and apprehensive excitement and hoped-for futures and stomach pains and sweat and disappointment and sweat and sweat and love and glances that mean more than they should but less than they need to and a dunking booth.
Monday will be free-sample day at the Sheraton Funeral Home.
Tuesday will be reversed. We will rise tired from sleep to find that it is night and brush plaque onto our teeth. We will move backwards to work, where we will undo spreadsheets, lose ideas to dissipating meetings, and unsee hundreds of cat pictures. Then, returning with a buzz of caffeine to our homes, we will spit liquid alertness into cups and, refreshed but groggy, return to dreams that we faintly, just faintly, remember.
Wednesday is Smell Like a Pirate Day. Everyone in town is encouraged to get in on the wacky fun by not bathing for weeks and rubbing yourself with ash and blood.
Thursday, the employees at Dark Owl Records will be holding a séance to reach the ghost of Patsy Cline. If you’d like to come by and help, just enter quietly and please wear a bolo tie. We’re all wearing bolo ties now. And don’t wear those shoes. God, do we have to tell you everything? Maybe it’s better if you don’t come by. Records are not for sale, as usual.
We are skipping Friday this week, but we’ll make up for it by having Double Friday next week. Mark your schedules.
This has been the community calendar.
I’ve just been handed an update. The Secret Police would like to retract their earlier statement that they will be out in large numbers tonight. That was not meant to be known.
“You think you want to know things, but then you know them, and it’s too late. You didn’t want to know that. You didn’t want to know that at all,” the Secret Police’s press release reads. “This is one of those things you will wish you had never known.”
The statement goes on to say that memory is a tenuous human construct, and nothing matters in the Grand Scheme, so whatever.
In other news, a man in a tan jacket, holding a deerskin suitcase, was seen. I don’t remember anything about him or why this was news, but it had seemed important at the time. I wrote it down: “Say the important thing about the man in the tan jacket.” What was it? What was I supposed to say?
Chapter 20
“It’s not a good idea, Josh.”
“Why?” His shouts were muffled behind his locked bedroom door.
“Because—”
In the space after the word because, Diane thought through what the next words could be.
Because he is a dangerous person? Maybe. Troy doesn’t seem to be a danger. But anyone could be a dangerous person.
Because he will only let you down? Probably. He had disappeared before, he could disappear again. He could also just be a terrible father.
Because it is complicated. More complicated than you can process with your young brain, she wanted to say.
Because she didn’t have a reason exactly but felt a storm on its way, a confluence of Troy’s reappearance and Josh’s interest and the disappearance of Evan, and she wanted to wrap herself around Josh and keep him from all of whatever was going to happen next.