She hit send.
Her thumb seized up in a sharp moment of pain. She didn’t cry out, just winced. Her text remained unsent. She tried again. Another sharp pain, almost to the bone. A small bead of blood ballooned on the middle of her right thumb.
This is a common feature on smart phones. If a person is unreachable by text or if the underground government agencies that control the phone companies don’t want a person to be reachable, the phone is allowed to cause mild physical harm. She put the thumb to her mouth to clean it off.
The day before, the phone had caught fire while she tried to call him. She smelled burnt hair most of the morning, and had to stop by the drugstore to get calamine lotion for the top of her ear and then stop by a garden nursery and place the side of her head onto aerated topsoil for fifteen minutes, per her doctor’s orders. She didn’t know why the doctor would tell her to do that, but no one knows why doctors do anything they do. Doctors are mysterious creatures.
Diane looked at the horsefly on the left rear headrest through the rearview mirror. She stared at the fly. She could feel the fly staring back. It shuffled its half dozen legs. It moved a little left, a little right. It stood tiny and alone in the middle of what was, to it, a vast cloth field. There was no place to hide.
“I see you,” she said.
“It’s not what you think,” the horsefly said.
“What do I think?”
“You think I’m spying.”
“Yes, I do. And what is it you are doing instead, Josh?”
He flew to the front of the car and landed on the dashboard.
“I wanted to hop a ride with you.”
“I’m going to work.”
“Then I’ll just fly.”
“You will do no such thing. You walk or ride. You are not to fly outside until you are eighteen. It’s dangerous.”
The horsefly moped.
“Josh, you can’t hide in my car. How am I supposed to trust you if I can’t trust that my private space is private?”
“I didn’t think you’d see me.”
“That’s the trust thing I’m talking about.”
“I’m sorry.”
Despite the fact that horseflies are incapable of dropping their heads in a gesture of penitence and submission, and despite the fact that, even if they could do this, it would be so subtle as to be unnoticeable by human eyes, she heard this action in Josh’s voice. She didn’t need to see her son in human form to understand his physical language. Even when Josh took the form of a sentient patch of haze (he rarely did, only once or twice after watching a scary movie, when he had felt that, if he had no physical form, no monsters or ghosts could get him), she could still tell when he was rolling his eyes or slumping or smirking or not paying attention.
“I can always see you, Josh. I’m your mom. You could be anything, and I would know it was you.”
Josh didn’t say anything. He vigorously rubbed his legs together because that was something he had seen flies do, but he didn’t know why they did that.
“Why did you want to ride downtown with me?”
“Just to hang out. Maybe go to the video store or something.”
“First, you don’t get to skip school. You understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Second, you don’t get to hide from me. That is deceitful, Josh.”
“Okay. Okay.”
“And third.” She hesitated. “You were going to dig up records on your dad, right?”
Josh didn’t respond.
“I don’t want you doing that. He’s your father, yes, but I don’t trust him.”
“You did at one point.”
“I raised you for fifteen years. I fed you and clothed you. I loved you and still do. I love you because you have been with me for fifteen years. I am your mother because we have been together your whole childhood. I have earned you as my son.
“Troy does not get to be your father simply because he participated in your creation. Troy does not get to earn your love as a son because you are biologically his. I have done the work. I have put in the time. I have loved you. Troy does not get to be my equal in your life because he has not earned it. I need to protect myself. And I need to protect you.
“So promise me you will leave this all alone. And I will promise you that I will find out more about him, and, when the time is right, I will tell you.”
“Okay,” the horsefly said. He didn’t sound like he thought it was okay.
“Get moving, so you don’t miss your bus. No more of this, okay?”
Diane pressed her finger to the automatic window button for the front passenger side. With a robotic whir, the window cracked open. The horsefly flew up and out in a loose spiral.
“I love you,” she called out. “No flying.”
“Okay,” came back the soft buzz from the human boy with the horsefly face.
Later she would go over this conversation again and again in her head, one of the last they would have before he disappeared.
Chapter 24
Jackie hit the steering wheel of her car, which did not hurt the car at all. Sometimes it is easy to forget which things in the world can feel pain and which cannot.
What did Diane know about this? What was her connection? Could she be the mastermind behind the blond man and the man in the tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase and maybe even Jackie’s mother’s strange behavior?
John Peters certainly seemed to think she was involved. And why not Diane? Wasn’t Night Vale a town full of hidden evils and the secretly malevolent? That was what the Tourism Board’s new brochures said right on the front (“A town full of hidden evils and the secretly malevolent”) along with a picture of a diverse group of townsfolk smiling and looking up at the camera in the windowless prison they would be kept in until enough tourists visited town to buy their release.
If it was possible that Diane was behind any of this, then Jackie needed to talk to someone who knew her. Sure, she seemed nice, but lots of people and things seem nice yet are terrible underneath: like poisonous berries, rabid squirrels, or a smiling god. (Is that a smile?)
This was how it was that Jackie ended up at the Night Vale Elementary Multipurpose Room, which was, among its multiple purposes, the headquarters of the Night Vale PTA. Diane had been the treasurer since back when her son was a student at the school, and had kept it up even as he had gone on to high school and puberty (and the myriad physical forms it had brought him). Josh was just a few years younger than Jackie, and she liked him well enough. Some of his shapes were a little scary, especially the dream forms, but in general he was a good kid. Jackie had always hoped that things would turn out well for him, in the vague way one feels goodwill toward semi-strangers. May his life turn out better than hers had.
The multipurpose room was a cluttered space befitting its many uses. There was a small stage where school plays could be put on. There were stacks of folding chairs for PTA meetings and the various support organizations (Alcohol, Narcotics, Immortality) that used the room after school. There was a full bloodstone circle for bloodstone demonstration and worship, and a child-size bloodstone circle so that the students could try out the rites on their own. There was also a popcorn machine, but no one was allowed to touch it. No one was quite sure why touching it was disallowed, but warnings like that are worth heeding in Night Vale, and so it had been left alone for decades, in its supremely inconvenient place in the center of the room.
“Diane?” Jackie said, hoping she wouldn’t be there. The best person to run into would be Susan Willman, who was known to be chatty and who was not on friendly terms with Diane. Susan would be thrilled to pass on any gossip she had about Diane. She also, Jackie knew, would be only too happy to make up gossip about Diane, so perhaps she wouldn’t be the best option after all. Jackie would have been fine with an empty room, so she could root around in PTA records and check for files or notes from Diane that might give her any new information. Her worst-case scenario was: