The two of them pushed their way back outside, nearly falling over one another.
“This is all wrong,” said Diane. “This is not a safe place for Josh to be.”
“It’s not like we haven’t been in stores where clerks bleed a lot,” said Jackie, “but—” She trailed off, her gaze focused on no fixed point.
Most any bath gel or greeting card store in Night Vale has a full staff of bleeding salesclerks, struggling to maintain consciousness and constantly mopping the floors. But somehow in King City, it felt incorrect, like the people were not supposed to be bleeding constantly. Like they had once been normal, whatever that meant outside of the only context she had ever known.
In her mind, Diane saw a different man than the one covered in glass shards, or it was the same man, but he was running a store in which he did not bleed, in which nothing exploded, in which he sold supplies for fishing and at night went home to his family, watched old television shows, one episode right after the other, and then slept, one episode right after the other. She saw that man and this man at the same time. He was multiple, and becoming less with each iteration.
“We can’t hear the freeway,” said Jackie.
“What?”
Jackie pointed at the 101, so close they could see the writing on the big trucks carrying things from the north of California to the south.
“There’s no sound.”
She was right. It was completely silent. Even their footsteps seemed to be absorbed by the sidewalk. The loud hum from the sky was gone. They walked in silence past planters teeming with drought-resistant succulents blooming big purple flowers.
Diane felt herself carrying clothes from her dryer, organizing the warm cotton piles into manageable squares on her bed. She felt a King City street full of cars and shoppers, ordinary stores run ordinarily. She felt these things, and at the same time she felt Jackie against her, felt the empty horror of the silent city.
The next store had a sign saying GUITARS. An elderly woman sat in a folding chair at the back. The store was otherwise empty. No furniture, no merchandise, just walls that had been sloppily painted into streaks of different off-whites, and a hideous green carpet traversed by a pink, jagged line and speckled with yellow diamonds. The carpet was torn and fixed with silver duct tape here and there, the tape bright under bare fluorescents.
The woman looked up from what she was doing, which was staring at her hands. She now stared at Diane and Jackie.
“We’re looking for a boy about fifteen.”
The woman squinted.
“We’re looking for a boy who might have come here. He was—”
The woman opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. Her tongue and gums were gray. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and her mouth was as wide as she could make it. She started making a wet, huffing noise, like a drowned engine trying to start.
“Okay,” said Jackie. “We’re going to leave now. Thank you.”
Jackie turned Diane around and leaned on her to get her to leave the store. Diane’s eyes never left the clerk. She saw a wall full of acoustic guitars, a middle-aged woman behind a counter selling a set of strings to a customer. She saw blank walls and, as the door swung shut, an old woman, eyes squeezed shut, huffing and wheezing with that wide gray mouth. She saw both, equally real before her.
“What now?” said Jackie, wincing into the words as she leaned against the hot stucco of the guitar shop wall. Her ability to hide her pain was faltering.
“One more store. Then City Hall,” said Diane. Her ability to hide her despair was faltering.
“I’m worried we won’t make it out of the next store if we go in it.”
“That’s a worry, yes. Yes it is.”
The next store said CELLULAR in red letters. Inside were display cases full of the newest models of cell phones. There were signs explaining about contracts and data plans. A young woman in a baseball cap and gray polo smiled at them as they walked in.
“Hello!” she said.
“This isn’t what I expected,” said Diane.
“Oh, did you read our sign?” said the woman. “We’re a cell phone store.”
“We read it,” said Jackie.
“We also do repair. Do you need a phone repaired?”
“No,” said Diane. “I’m sorry. We’ve come a long way in a very short amount of time.”
“Dude, what’s up with your town?”
“King City?” said the woman. Concern passed briefly through her expression, and then it was bright again. “It’s a great place.”
“Great… how?”
“Not sure,” said the woman. “Not a lot sticks in my memory. First thing I remember is you guys coming in. Do you want a cell phone?”
“No,” said Jackie.
“We’re looking for my son. He’s about fifteen years old,” Diane said.
One of the phones in the case started ringing. Concern returned to the woman’s face, and stayed.
“Those don’t even have circuits in them,” she said. There were sweat rings on her shirt. “They’re cardboard boxes with stickers to simulate the display. All the real phones are in the back.”
“Do you mind if we try answering it?” said Diane.
“Just don’t tell me what you hear, okay?” She no longer looked at all happy to see them. She pulled a key from a green rubber belt loop and used it to unlock the case.
The phone that was ringing was an older touch-screen model. Diane picked it up. Definitely empty cardboard, and the display was a faded sticker. She pushed on the sticker where she would push to answer a cell phone, and then held the cardboard phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Stop being so obvious about yourselves,” said a man’s voice, one that she was familiar with although she could not place it.
“Obvious about ourselves?”
“Everyone knows you’re here. It’s not safe.” Diane pulled the cardboard phone away from her ear. Printed on the fake phone’s fake cardboard screen was a familiar-looking name.
“Evan?”
“No, it’s Evan.”
“That’s what I said. Evan.”
“Meet me at City Hall. Head straight back. Ignore what anyone tells you and ignore any signs. Just go down the hall from the front door and turn left when you see a door marked MAYOR. I’ll be waiting for you there.”
There was a click. She guessed he had hung up, but she didn’t know how he had called a cardboard phone in the first place.
“Evan,” she said to Jackie. “He asked us to meet him in the mayor’s office at City Hall.”
“Please. I don’t want to know what any of that was about,” said the woman. Her face was a grimace and her shivering arms were crossed over her chest. “Please just leave.”
“What is this town, really?” Jackie said tenderly, hoping to coax a memory out of her.
The woman relaxed and exhaled. Jackie felt a breakthrough, a confession or revelation coming, but there was only another, weaker “Please leave.” The woman’s face tightened back into sweat-drenched angst.
“I’m sorry,” said Diane. “Can you just tell me which direction down Pleasant Street to get to City Hall?”
The woman grunted and ran through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, slamming and locking it behind her. Her voice came muffled through the closed door: “We don’t even have a mayor. We haven’t had one in years.”
“So. City Hall?” Jackie said, once they were outside.
“That’s where he is, I guess,” said Diane. She shielded her eyes and looked down Pleasant Street. “Let’s just start walking this way and see if we can find it.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to find. City halls are always huge and ornate and topped with ancient volcanic stone towers. Or, I mean, the only city hall we’ve ever seen is like that.”