[CLICK]
[ZIP OF A SUITCASE ZIPPER]
[SQUEAK OF BEDSPRINGS]
ARCHIVIST
Jon?
JON
Hmm?
ARCHIVIST
What aren’t you two telling me?
I don’t expect Charlie to notice, he’s still wrapped up in the…novelty of it all. And he’s nine. But Martin’s been awfully quiet since you all got back from the lab. I mean, quiet even for Martin. It might fool Carlos and…
It’s not fooling me. Something’s wrong.
JON
I know. But I don’t know what it is either.
Nothing happened, Tim. Charlie told you everything. He didn’t even leave my sight long enough to go to the bathroom, let alone…for anything to happen. I’m worried, too, but…
[DOOR CREAKS OPEN, THEN CLOSES]
ARCHIVIST
Martin. You good?
MARTIN
(Obviously not good) Yeah, I’m good.
[SOUND OF LIGHT SWITCH BEING FLICKED]
[FOOTSTEPS ACROSS FLOOR]
[SQUEAK OF BEDSPRINGS, SOUND OF SHEETS AND BLANKETS RUSTLING AS THE THREE OF THEM GET COMFORTABLE]
ARCHIVIST
(Murmuring) I don’t want to make you tell me, Martin. Please.
MARTIN
…
It’s nothing bad. It’s just—it’s just me. I’m fine.
ARCHIVIST/JON
Martin.
MARTIN
Okay, okay, just—I’m, I’m sorry.
That one scientist, the one whose job it is to keep Carlos from working too hard—um, Nilanjana? She…she said something in passing while we were there. Not to us. She was talking to one of the other scientists, and…she was talking about putting something away, and she said to keep it away from the notes on “the old oak doors”.
ARCHIVIST
(Interested) She did?
MARTIN
Yeah. I didn’t know what it meant, but…
Well, Carlos got this…look. You know the kind of look I’m talking about. It was just for a second, and then he put on a smile and everything was fine, but…there’s something about those old oak doors, o-or the experiment, or maybe both. Whatever it is, it’s…it’s hurting him.
ARCHIVIST
And you want to poke at it.
MARTIN
Not—Christ. It’s not like that.
I just…i-it’s hurting me not to…not to dig for it, you know? I wasn’t going to do that in front of Charlie, or strangers, and I’m not…I’m trying not to do that. We promised the Primes we wouldn’t.
JON
You don’t…Martin, if you need it…
MARTIN
I don’t, that’s the thing. It’s not…it’s not a hunger. Not exactly. It’s just that I can tell it’s hurting him to keep it bottled up inside, and there’s something about it that…
ARCHIVIST
Martin. Martin, it’s okay. It’s okay.
Listen to me, okay? I need you to listen. Please.
MARTIN
…I’m listening.
ARCHIVIST
I know why you want it, even if you don’t. And I am telling you—and I need you to trust me on this—that it won’t help either of you if you take it. It’s just going to hurt you both more.
MARTIN
I—I know. I know it’s not…I know I shouldn’t. Not just because it’s—wrong—but it’s Jon’s cousin and—and I don’t—
ARCHIVIST
Martin, no, that’s not what I mean at all.
Remember when Martin Prime gave his statement about his journey back in time? Remember how before you started having the Archives dreams, you used to wake up shaking because you’d been dreaming about what it was like?
MARTIN
Y-yeah…
ARCHIVIST
That’s what I mean. Whatever Carlos went through is going to hurt you badly. The Ceaseless Watcher isn’t pushing you to take it because you need the energy. It’s because it wants both of you to suffer. It can’t get you through dreams anymore, but it can still watch you suffer.
I don’t want that for you, babe. I can’t watch you in that kind of pain.
MARTIN
…How do you know that?
ARCHIVIST
You really have to ask at this point?
JON
Maybe we just want to hear you say it.
[THE ARCHIVIST SIGHS]
ARCHIVIST
There are two kinds of knowledge. The kind that causes more pain and fear when it’s revealed, and the kind that causes more pain and fear when it’s kept hidden. And sometimes the same knowledge affects different people differently.
I can’t always tell what it is people are hiding, exactly, but I can usually tell which way it’s going to hurt worse. In Carlos’ case, keeping it a secret is hurting him, you’re right. But telling it would also hurt him, because he’s afraid of what will happen if he does. And learning it would hurt you. It would also hurt us, because Jon and I would have to watch you suffer and know that we can’t stop it—and also know that it’s fueling us. Or at least fueling me.
I know the Eye wants you to take his statement and suffer because it’s pushing me to get you to do it, but it can fuck off.
MARTIN
Oh, Tim…
[FABRIC RUSTLES]
ARCHIVIST
Shh. Both of you. It’s okay. It’s okay. I won’t let it hurt you. I swear.
JON
We won’t let it hurt you, either. You know that, right?
ARCHIVIST
…I know.
[CLICK]
[CLICK]
[SOUNDS OF NIGHT TIME IN THE DESERT—BUZZING INSECTS, CALLING BIRDS, DISTANT TRAFFIC, AND A MYSTERIOUS, VAGUELY ANIMALISTIC NOISE]
[SOUND OF A SLIDING GLASS DOOR OPENING, THEN CLOSING AND CLICKING INTO PLACE]
ARCHIVIST
Can’t sleep?
CARLOS
Too many things going around in my mind.
ARCHIVIST
Science never sleeps, eh?
CARLOS
…Sometimes it does.
No, this is…for personal reasons. I think a few…things…got stirred up that I wasn’t expecting.
I’ll just let them settle and then I’ll be able to sleep. It will be fine.
ARCHIVIST
Are you afraid of me, Carlos?
CARLOS
…
I don’t think I’m afraid of you. But I am afraid of you. That makes no sense, but it’s true.
ARCHIVIST
Sometimes truth doesn’t make much sense.
CARLOS
Can you sleep?
ARCHIVIST
Not yet.
Would you rather pretend this is entirely voluntary, or pretend I entirely forced you?
CARLOS
(Startled and nervous) What? I’m—
[STATIC RISES SHARPLY OUT OF THE INSECTS’ BUZZING]
ARCHIVIST
Tell me your story about the old oak doors.
CARLOS (statement)
An avalanche begins with a single snowflake. A landslide begins with a single pebble. A flood begins with a single raindrop. A wildfire begins with a single spark. Of such small, seemingly insignificant moments are the catastrophes of utter destruction created, even if the person who sees the first cloud doesn’t recognize the impending hurricane.
Night Vale was already in a bad place when the first old oak door appeared. StrexCorp had bought…most of the town, and Desert Bluffs was trying to take over, and Night Vale was fighting back. I remember the way Cecil spoke to our town, and the encouragement he gave, and how afraid he was. It’s funny that I remember the fear, isn’t it? After all, our whole town is fear, and Cecil always seems above it, reporting on it with calmness and competence. But this…of this he was afraid. And that made me afraid, although I tried not to show it.
When the old oak doors with brass fittings, doors that were only on one side and could not be seen from the other, began appearing, of course I had to investigate. I had to know what they meant, where they came from, where they led. Why they only appeared on one side and not the other. I never questioned that these things were true. I would not have questioned if they were true before I came to Night Vale, either, but instead I would have insisted that they were not true. There was never a question for me about the old oak doors. But in Night Vale, I knew that everything that had been reported about them was true, and my only job was to find out the why.
There is a house in the Desert Creek Housing Development that does not exist. It is between two houses on either side that do exist, and it should be there, but it is not. When you look through the windows of the house that does not exist, you see an empty building, but when you knock on the door, a woman named Cynthia answers and is very annoyed at being disturbed, and her house is fully furnished. But on that day, the old oak doors suddenly replaced all of the composite fiberglass doors, and when we opened one, we could finally get to the empty house that we saw through those windows. My team of researchers and I decided to run tests. Rochelle went through, and we thought it was for ten minutes, but when she came out she said it had been several hours. I called Cecil at the radio station and told him what was going on. I promised I would be careful.
Promises are so easy to set aside in the face of knowledge.
The revolution failed, because everyone thought someone else would fight for them. Cecil was imprisoned. And my team was arrested a week later, which meant they could no longer hold the door open for me. I was trapped on the other side of the old oak door, along with many other citizens of Night Vale who had at one time or another gone there, either through the doors or through being trapped in the dog park. Many things happened in the next few weeks, many things that were very important to Night Vale. John Peters, you know, the farmer? Figured out how to open the doors and get through them, and Dana Cardinal befriended an army of masked warriors who agreed to fight for Night Vale, and Old Woman Josie and her angel friends came to help, even if we were not allowed to acknowledge that they were angels then. Cecil was rescued from the company picnic, and then he rescued the radio station, and then his words led Night Vale to rescue itself. And in the end, everyone returned to the side of the doors to which they belonged.
Except for me.
I told Cecil when I called him that I did not belong in Night Vale, and that was not quite true. But I was not from Night Vale, and that was true. It is the best explanation for why the doors closed even though I was still beyond them that I can come up with. It is also the worst explanation for why the doors closed that I can come up with. It is, in fact, the only explanation I can come up with, then or since.
Beyond the old oak doors is the empty house, and in that empty house are nothing but photographs. In the basement, the photograph is of a mountain, but the rest of the house has photographs of people and places and moments. When I looked at them, they showed me everyone in Night Vale—where they were, what they were doing, and what they were looking at. I could see Cecil. And if I looked very hard, I could watch him move around. But I could not get to him, and I could not speak to him.
Outside the house is a desert, and when the door to the house closes, the door and the house both disappear, and it is only a vast, empty desert, with a single mountain in the distance, topped with a blinking red light. When I found myself in that desert, alone and afraid, I walked to that mountain, and to that light, and I found a lighthouse. Inside that lighthouse were more pictures, like in the house, but I could not stay in the lighthouse. Not for long. I did meet a race of tall masked warriors, who had returned safely after battling to free Night Vale, who helped me to get comfortable as best as I could. But I wanted to get back to Night Vale. And I could not.
I didn’t just want to get back to Night Vale. Yes, Night Vale was my town—I thought it was my town—and I missed it, but the one I missed most was Cecil. I had my cell phone, and it would sometimes allow me to make calls, and I would call him whenever I could, and we would talk. And usually he would tell everyone on the radio what we had talked about, and that was fine, because I knew that that was a consequence of talking to Cecil, and I also knew that if he said my name on the radio, I would not be forgotten. I hoped that I would still be part of Night Vale even if I could not be there.
But I could only hear his voice when I called. I did not get the radio broadcast, even when I tried to build the equipment. I could see his picture in the lighthouse sometimes, but I couldn’t touch him, and I couldn’t talk to him, and I couldn’t be near him. And it hurt very much.
I thought I was losing him. I called as often as I could, every few days or so, when my cell phone signal burst to life. And Cecil would listen, but he also always seemed so distracted, and sometimes annoyed. And one day he told me not to call so often, that we needed space, that there had to be boundaries. And that hurt. The only person Cecil ever set that kind of boundary with was Steve Carlsburg, and he hated Steve back then, so why wouldn’t he want to talk to me anymore? I knew I loved him, and I knew he loved me too, and those were the only two things I knew for sure anymore. And I was so very, very afraid that I was wrong about the second thing. I cried for so long, and I didn’t call him for almost a month after that, and it hurt so much.
Finally I picked up the phone and I dialed again, and I waited for him to answer. And he did. And he sounded happy, if a little stressed. I asked him how he was doing, and he said it had been a very busy three days, but that he was glad to hear my voice after them. I asked about the days before that, and he—laughed, like he thought I was joking.
And then he said, “I didn’t keep anything from you, Carlos. I promise. I told you everything that was going on the last time we talked.”
That was the moment I began to suspect. I began running cautious experiments. Then I began to be less cautious with my experiments. By the time I had been in that place for a year after I began to suspect, I knew. And yet, I did not tell Cecil when I called, because I did not want him to know. I was not sure what would happen if he did.
Time is weird. We have all said that many times. Time in Night Vale does not always work—or did not. It works now, sort of, but back then it worked when it wanted to and didn’t work when it did not want to. But time in the desert otherworld worked—works—in its own way. I had been in that place for three years, at least from my perspective. But from the perspective of Night Vale, I had only been in that place for four months. That was bad for Cecil, and he kept asking me when I was coming home. But it was worse for me, because I had spent so long away from the one person I wanted to see.
I found a way for Cecil to come visit me. And the desert otherworld let him go. But it did not let me follow. I had to stay behind, and that was a worse pain than having been trapped there in the first place. Because now I had seen what I was missing, and I knew I couldn’t have it, and I knew I didn’t deserve it. I pretended to Cecil that I did not want to leave, when the truth was that I could not leave, that when he saw the door to take him home, I did not. And I was so very afraid that when I let him go, I would never see him again.
Even though he promised to come back to me.
Cecil never asked me how I found my way back to Night Vale. I think he assumes that I simply decided to finally try to use one of the old oak doors, but whatever the reason, he never asked. So I have never told him. I have told him about my research and the destruction of my lab, that I left a note telling Kevin I was leaving and that I had decided to rebuild my life and start over, but I have not told him that when I made that decision, I did not know that I would be able to make it back. I was willing to wander in the desert forever rather than spend another minute in the new town of Desert Bluffs. I would not allow that to be my new home, my new place. I would not allow it to pretend it was where I belonged. I knew I belonged in Night Vale. I knew I belonged to Night Vale, and to Cecil. And as afraid as I was that I would not find my way home, I was more afraid to stay where I was until I failed to look.
So I left. And I walked. I had gone into the desert and I was crying, and I was thinking of Cecil and how much I loved him and how much I missed him, and I heard a voice behind me, a voice that I did not know and did not recognize and should not trust, but I did. It was a warm voice, an old voice, a voice with an accent that did not belong in America but reminded me of Jonny for some reason.
It said, “You fear him more than me.”
I did not know what the voice meant, but I understood what it meant, and so I said, “Yes, I do.”
And then the voice said, “I can’t promise he’ll be waiting for you on the other side.”
And again, I did not know what the voice meant, but I understood, and I understood that the him who might not be waiting was not the him I was afraid of, and I also understood that in some ways I was also afraid of that him, but I was not more afraid of that him than the other him, and so I said, “Yes, I know.”
And the voice said, “If your cousin ever talks to you again, tell him not to blame his mother for the things she said when she was in my domain.”
I started to turn to see who the man was, but then a door appeared before me, an old oak door with brass fittings. And it wavered, and I knew I had only seconds. And I ran. I forgot everything else and I ran, and I grabbed that door, and I opened it.
And I found that I was standing on the streets of Night Vale, just in front of the radio station, and it was dark and the street was deserted. And a long black car pulled up in front of me and a voice ordered me to get in, and when I did, I found most of Night Vale there, and then the storm began. While we drove, I explained to Janice that I had come back, and that I would not make her uncle leave if he didn’t want to, but in the back of my mind I was so afraid that now that I was back, he would leave, because in spite of everything he no longer wanted to share the same time and space with me.
And then the car stopped, and Cecil got in, and I knew that, even if everything would not be all right forever, it was at least all right for now.
I was home.
[DEEP BREATH]
[WE BECOME AWARE THE NIGHT SOUNDS HAD STOPPED WHEN THEY START UP AGAIN]
ARCHIVIST
You’re still afraid of them. The old oak doors.
CARLOS
Yes.
I—I tried studying them. Not too long ago. I was trying to study it more and…it made things so very bad. I kept allowing the Smiling God—a giant carnivorous insect, really—to come to Night Vale and I caused so much destruction. People were trapped in that desert otherworld, and I could only bring so many of them back, once it was all over…
I thought if I understood why the doors had brought me through, I would understand how to prevent them from taking me again.
ARCHIVIST
You already did.
CARLOS
What?
ARCHIVIST
The loneliness of distance.
CARLOS
Yes. That’s exactly what it was.
I thought I enjoyed being alone, but that was before I found someone whose company I enjoyed more. I thought I didn’t need a home, but that was before I found it. And I was never so afraid as when I could see home, but not touch it.
ARCHIVIST
You don’t mean Night Vale.
CARLOS
No.
ARCHIVIST
You mean Cecil.
CARLOS
And Esteban, now. But back then, yes, Cecil was home. Cecil is home.
ARCHIVIST
And that’s why you don’t need to fear the doors.
They come for those who already have that fear, Carlos. The ones who worry they aren’t good enough, they aren’t wanted. The ones who can already sense the distance and are desperate to close it, or the ones who fear the potential for it.
You made it back to Night Vale because you know, deep down, that Cecil chose you. That he was willing to leave his town, his job, everything he has and everything he has ever known, for you. Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to, but for you, he’d have tried.
They won’t come to you anymore.
CARLOS
The desert otherworld is still there.
ARCHIVIST
Yes.
But if you ever do find yourself there, Carlos…you know the way home.
[CLICK]