“He’s fine,” Diane said to Trinh. “He’s fine,” she said again, as if that made it more true than before.
“We heard he was on a search for his birth father,” Tim said.
“Yes, exactly yes,” Trinh agreed.
“Josh and I have been talking about it. I don’t want him looking for his father. But the important thing is—”
There was an orchestral fanfare from the TV, cutting her off. An animated graphic flashed on the screen, below Josh’s photo. The graphic said, TEEN SLEUTH. The letters were red and yellow with a silver-lined bevel, and there was a grotesque digital arpeggio hammering home each letter as it appeared.
Diane rubbed her forehead. “Is this going out to everyone?”
“More news tonight on local teen Josh Crayton, the amateur sleuth in search of his birth father,” Tim said.
“We’re getting reports now that the junior private eye has gone missing,” Trinh said. For emphasis, the word MISSING appeared over Josh’s photo.
“What?” Diane stood up. “No, he’s just driving around looking for his father. It’s only been a couple hours.”
“For a report on this breaking story,” Tim said, “we go now to Ben, who is live at Night Vale General Hospital.”
“Yes, thank you, Tim,” another voice said. “I’m reporting live from just outside the ICU of NV General.”
She could hear Ben’s voice both live outside the door and a few seconds later from the television. She felt like there was a gap where her chest had been.
“Are you guys…” She turned. The nurse was gone. Jackie was asleep.
Diane cried. As long as you have some control over your situation, her father used to tell her unhelpfully, there’s no need to cry, only to take action. That statement made sense right up until the tears came.
“Jackie.” Diane’s voice cracked. “Are you hearing this?”
There was a knock at the door.
“Can we come in, Diane?” said the voice behind the door.
“What’s up?” Jackie said, her eyes still closed.
“Can we come in, Diane?” the same voice repeated from the television.
“The TV news. They say Josh has gone missing.”
Jackie opened her eyes and forced her body into an upright position. Her face went pale with the effort and pain.
Diane was still crying, and did not cover her face. She let the tears fall openly. She thought of all the minutes, each individual minute, that she had left Josh home alone while she had chased useless ghosts all over town. If she had been home, he wouldn’t be gone.
The Ben on the television screen was knocking on a hospital room door.
Jackie turned her legs off the bed with slow, careful effort. “He’s a teenager. Probably ran away for a little bit. Call him. Get in a cab. Get home. Call him.”
“He wouldn’t have run away. He just took the car without telling me. That’s all.”
“Sometimes kids run away. You can sit here watching the TV talk about it, or you can do something.”
Diane’s tears stopped. Her dry red eyes looked into Jackie’s tired, bruised eyes. She eased Jackie back into bed, gently helped her lie down, and pulled the cover up over her. She placed her hand on Jackie’s forehead and stroked her temple. Jackie let her eyes close again.
“You’re right,” Diane said, trying to keep her panic from showing. “Okay. Okay. Okay.”
Jackie closed her eyes and was instantly asleep again.
Diane opened the door and walked out into a completely empty hallway, hurrying toward the elevator. Behind her on the TV, Ben stood in an identical hallway frantically knocking on an identical door.
“Ms. Crayton, a word about your missing son,” the reporter on the screen said into his microphone, pounding on the door. “Ms. Crayton, are you in there?”
Diane stood in the elevator as the doors slid shut on an unpopulated and silent hallway.
THE VOICE OF NIGHT VALE
CECIL: “… the hospital, which of course closed down years ago and is not being run by recognized medical professionals, or even by anyone who is, or ever was, alive. Do not go in there. Do not go,” the press release for the new Ralphs deli counter concluded. Well, I for one can’t wait to get a sandwich there.
And now a look at traffic.
There is a man with a gray pin-striped suit covered in dirt. His hands are more dirty than the rest of him, but they are differently dirty. They are covered in rust-colored streaks. The last few days have been unclear to him.
There was a time when his life had seemed like a hallway proceeding to a door. Now it was a garden littered with rocks.
How did his hands get dirty? He couldn’t remember. But the question made him drive faster in his nice car, even as he did not know why.
He was in a desert. He kept looking at the mirror, which only showed him where he had already been. He wasn’t sure why he was doing that either.
Looking at the sky, he saw, much closer now, a planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. Or he didn’t see it anymore. It was there, and it wasn’t. It was some ratio of literal and metaphorical. He drove faster. How fast can a nice car drive? How much longer could he keep driving faster before he was driving the fastest?
There seemed to be a city up ahead. There definitely was a city up ahead. It was a definite city, and at the speed he was going, it would not be up ahead much longer. He looked again in the mirror. Only a landscape unmarked by his passing. Only a road going back. Nothing he didn’t already know. He knew nothing already.
This has been traffic.
An update on the flamingo situation. The flamingos are extremely dangerous and appear to put you completely out of sync with reality if touched. You think it’ll be fun being out of sync with reality? It won’t be. You’re wrong about that, person who I just imagined disagreeing with me.
Old Woman Josie said that she and her non-angelic friends named Erika who live with her are trying to track down all the flamingos scattered all over Night Vale. She had put some in the pawnshop earlier, but she has been unable to reach pawnshop owner Jackie Fierro. Since the pawnshop’s doors are removed and buried whenever the shop is closed, Josie and her not-at-all heavenly friends were able to easily walk in and reclaim the flamingos even with Jackie not around.
Meanwhile the City Council announced that the flamingos sure seem like a serious situation, and probably they’d look into it someday.
“Yeah, definitely,” they said in a monotone unison, swarming out of the shadows of the council chambers with eyes like flames, and mouths like flames, and bodies like flames, basically they were just giant flames. “We’ll get RIGHT on that. Haha sure. It’s a big thing for us and we’re taking it superseriously. It’s just that, ugh, we hate to bring this up. But today is the day where a human sacrifice is made in our honor. And, while the flamingo situation seems dire, it would be superdire to interrupt something so important as the sacrifice to the City Council. So yeah…” the monotone univoice concluded.
We will update you with more news about the flamingo situation as we know things and feel compelled to speak those things aloud.
Sheila, the woman who marks people down on her clipboard at the Moonlite All-Nite, came by the studio. She is now sitting outside my booth, looking at nothing in particular, and doodling listlessly on her clipboard. I asked her why she came here.
“I just needed to do something different,” she said. “Even one different thing will end this cycle I’m in. I can’t go back through my life again. I don’t even remember what a life is like. I only remember a series of scripted events. I don’t remember ever coming to this station before though. I think maybe if I just quietly sit here long enough, not doing what I’m supposed to do, then finally I will be free.”