Chapter Text
Chapter 1
2013
Carlos (the Scientist) never thought he would have an experience in Night Vale that he could tell no one about. Of course, before he had a lot more “never thought I would”’s on his list, but at least he could talk about them – to his colleagues, to the volunteer scientists who only qualified for the position in that they owned their own lab coats, to someone on Skype, to his recording device, and eventually to Cecil. Maybe everyone (except Cecil) wouldn’t believe them, but he could talk about it.
But that changed.
He could not remember how the night started exactly, only that Cecil was at a PTA meaning and therefore busy and Carlos went out for some drinks the newest volunteers for the scientific community. Playful ribbing about his refusal to open the door to the House That Did Not Exist was followed by downed shot after shot and next thing he knew he was sitting on the lawn that probably did not exist of the House That Did Not Exist, a half-empty bottle of bourbon in one hand and his camcorder in the other.
It was dark now and the evening chill set in. The ground beneath him was cold and it made his butt cold and he didn’t like it. “Fuck you,” he said to the house. It was the house’s fault he was out here, alone, publicly intoxicated (if that was a crime in Night Vale, and he wasn’t sure it was) and without a ride home. “What have you got that I haven’t got?”
Which was a ridiculous thing to ask a house, really. Any house. It didn’t even make sense.
No one was awoken by his shouting. The houses on either side weren’t occupied; even Night Valians knew better than to live next to a House That Did Not Exist. It lowered property values. The House That Did Not Exist had no one to take care of the overgrown scrubs in front of it. And what if it had bedbugs and it spread to the whole neighborhood? There was no one to complain to.
The bourbon burned his throat and he knew he was wasting a good bottle, too drunk to appreciate it. “I can take whatever you throw at me.”
To which the door responded with what Carlos first thought was a trick of the light off the street lamps – the shiny brass doorknob turned slowly until there was an audible ‘click’ and the door slowly opened with an elongated creak as it swung back into the house in a rather clear invitation.
A logical, reasonable man like Carlos would have done something sane then, like called for backup, or the police, or at the very least, Cecil. But he didn’t. He abandoned the bottle after a single fortifying sip and climbed the front steps, camcorder in hand.
A cold blast hit him as he stepped inside, but it was a different kind of chill than the weather outside. It seemed to go right through him, unhampered by the clothes it blew back as if someone was passing through. He checked the functions on his camcorder and saw that they were all still functioning. “Okay. This is Professor Carlos Men – the Scientist.” He didn’t know how he’d slipped into that habit, but he noted the date and time, basic atmospheric conditions, and continued to narrate as he put one foot in front of another.
“There seems to be no electricity in the house.” He flipped the light switch for good measure, and was proven correct. “Despite Dana’s assertions in her message to Cecil, there is a good deal of furniture in the house.” It almost would have looked lived in if it hadn’t all been covered in white sheeting. “Appears to be a one-family style house or a boarding house, and has not been divided up into apartments like other houses in town.” He could only see from the camera light that there were doors upstairs, but the central stairway looked too rickety and termite-eaten for his tastes. “Unable to determine in the stairs are a safety hazard.”
He reached the kitchen and ran the sink, but nothing came up. “The water’s shut off or the pipes are blocked.” He was not eager to open an unplugged refrigerator, but there was nothing inside except a box of baking soda. “Someone was very thorough in closing up this house. No signs of recent habitation.” There were remains of character, though. The fridge still had magnets on it, one holding up a now-illegible faded report card from Night Vale High School. “Residents were probably citizens, at least one teenager. Current whereabouts unknown.”
He found paintings on the walls – family members looking severe both in oil and in old daguerreotypes. “Evidence of a long family history in the house, possibly the same family.” There were several more modern wall hangings, but they were empty. “Recent photography has obviously been removed, possibly to prevent people from discovering the identifies of the last residents.”
Carlos ran a finger along the bookshelves, clearing away dust and spider webs to reveal the titles on the spine. “Fairly ordinary collection of books. All municipally approved at first glance.” Cecil had similar titles in his home. Carlos circled around the main staircase again, giving the rooms he was willing to go into another sweep. It all seemed rather ... ordinary. Spooky, but ordinary. He went to check the book case again for more interesting reads when his camcorder-cum-flashlight hit the wall and he saw the top of something he couldn’t make out. “Hello.” It seems to be the top of a door frame. A door frame behind a book case.
He had to set the camcorder down. It took both hands and most of his body weight to push the book case to the side by three feet, where he could see it more obviously fit into the décor. Someone had shoved it over to hide the door.
With considerably more tension he took a deep breath and opened it, shining the light down the wooden steps that led into some kind of basement. He tested one step, and then another. They seemed to hold relatively well under his full weight, so he proceeded slowly.
Halfway down, the visual on his camera cut to static. He couldn’t say he was surprised. As long as he still had the light, he was good to go. He paused and ran it across the entire room that he could see from his angle, which wasn’t much. There was less dust, possibly from being spared from the elements that might make their way into the house, but it was just as musty and the air was even staler. He found the idea that no one had been breathing it in a long time comforting, a clear indicator that he was alone.
It had been, at some time in the relatively recent past (maybe a decade or two before, from the décor) converted into a rec room instead of a more traditional storage location. The carpet was an ugly maroon, the walls were paneled over with wood except for locations where the paneling had broken or come down and the concrete foundation was exposed. There were much cheaper bookshelves piled with books and an uncovered, rotting sofa against one wall.
He set one foot on the ground before being hit with the smell. It made him choke, and he dropped his camera, but the light did not go out. It was not the scent of a dead body – he knew that smell well enough – but it was just as bad, nearly un-breathable, and it tickled his brain as he failed to remember what it reminded him of. Eventually he found a piece of scrap cloth for wiping down tables that made its way into his back pocket during cleaning day at the lab and covered his mouth with it, and then he could manage and let his eyes adjust to the room, half-lit as it was. The camcorder was still just playing static on the view screen, but that wasn’t where the humming was coming from. He picked it up and held it to his ear to be sure.
There was no body, either, but there were bones. Carlos had recently gained some expertise in recognizing the bones of small animals and larger mammals, There was a large collection of them stacked up in the corner, with others scattered about and crunching beneath his feet. He almost tripped and finally swung his camera’s light down to get a good inspection of the door. It was harder for a layman to tell what was just carpet stains and what was blood stains, but he wasn’t a layman in this, either. There was a lot of blood on the floor, interspersed with broken length of chain. Some still led back to the wall where they were nailed in, others looked like they had been pulled straight out of the concrete, taking the paneling with them. There were bike chains and dog chains and what looked like shackles. There were other assorted items, too – a pail, a torn shoe, scraps of clothing. Obviously, no one had bothered to clean up this part of the house before abandoning it.
The humming was becoming more persistent and more irritating. Carlos’s light finally fell over a possible source – the altar at the end of the long room. It was made of sculpted stone and higher than most altars in Night Vale, with a shelf next to it for ritual implements, which were missing except for an empty bowl. The blood stones were placed around the altar in pairs – twice the necessary amount and with alternating shapes and shades, as if they were different sets of bloodstones that were combined into one. In the center, painted in white chalk stained with red, was something that looked like a leaf at first. One long tem, two diagonal strokes –
An Elder sign.
Carlos’s body lurched back before his mind fully processed the information, kicking over the shelf and black tapestry that must have adorned the wall originally in its clumsiness. The ringing sound became louder, hiding far-off chanting, and the smell hit his nostrils with particular severity. He could not hear his own movements, or his labored breathing, or the camcorder’s various noises. He could only hear the humming and he recognized it now. He knew its source.
A mere two feet away from him was the book. Carlos had seen many magical or damned things in his life, having briefly been junior librarian at the main archives of Miskatonic University, and there was still only one book that earned the designation of ‘the book.’
And it was sitting right there. Laying, actually. It was open, but overturned long ago and its pages were probably warping and creasing as a result. Carlos did not linger, or check the edition, or even right it. He turned and fled the house, something he should have done hours ago or whenever he had entered, and flung himself on the cool dirty of the sandy lawn, almost trying to bury his head in the sand so he would see nothing and hear nothing except maybe the door slamming shut behind him, which he did make sure to do.
He lay there for an indeterminate amount of time. He did not want to move, or even turn over and look up at the stars, which would only be terrifying to him now. His body was clenched in raw, primal terror that there was no way to fight – not that he had the energy to do so. His breathing was as ragged as if he’d been running for a week, and his chest pounded into the ground and he played the words back in Night Vale back in Night Vale back in Night Vale over and over again in his mind like a chant, because Night Vale was safe compared to where he’d just been.
Eventually his chest was raw but his heart stopped beating so hard it hurt, and he felt like might think about moving again. His phone had buzzed – probably Cecil finishing the show – and he had ignored it. He still didn’t want to answer it, but he at least acknowledged its existence. Cecil was not only real but Cecil was a comforting voice, and Carlos needed to hear a comforting voice. Just not here – so close to it all. He got to his feet, found the camcorder, and smashed it on a rock before stumbling to a main street. Most of the shops were closed, but Rico’s was open all night in case people needed a last-minute emergency slice and Carlos sat down on the sidewalk edge in front of it. “Cecil? Hey. Can you pick me up?”
He was happy that they were far enough in their relationship that Cecil didn’t have to ask him any further questions and knew where he wanted to go. The fact that he smelled of beer, smoke, and bourbon probably helped as he climbed into Cecil’s car, which was ancient and purring.
“Doing science?”
“Yes.”
Cecil was unnaturally good at reading people’s moods, something that freaked Carlos out on occasion because he felt like he could hide nothing from him, but it just gave him solace because he knew the ride would be silent and he could lean his cheek against the window and look out while trying not to see anything.
“You did have me a little worried,” Cecil admitted when they were back at the house, and Carlos was so tired he was tossing his clothing around the room instead of properly depositing it somewhere. “You usually answer if you’re not in the lab, and I knew you weren’t in the lab. Are you okay?”
He didn’t feel like lying to Cecil, so he paused and thought very carefully about his answer. “I just need to get some sleep.”
Cecil kissed him on the cheek (could he smell that awful smell? Was there residue from that haunted basement?) and helped him into bed. Carlos didn’t know why he expected to fall asleep with so much tension in the core of his body, but he succeeded in at least nodding off before the nightmares arrived.
There were so many of them, and so unspecified. He hadn’t read the book, so he didn’t know why anything was manifesting. It had to all be from his imagination, and Night Vale had given him plenty of nightmare fuel. He woke in brief starts, clamoring for air. Cecil still seemed to be asleep, for which he was grateful, though Carlos must have stolen all the sheets by halfway through the night by tossing and turning until he was in a little, sweaty cocoon, and once he awoke to them all peacefully straightened out and Cecil’s arm over his chest, gently tugging him closer. Carlos didn’t want to be that close if he was going to be so active in his sleep, but it was nice to feel Cecil’s hand against his skin.
He overslept but felt like he hadn’t slept at all, and was nursing more of a fear hangover than the actual hangover he should have been nursing. Cecil was making eggs. “How do you feel?”
“Still tired.” Carlos yawned. He felt Cecil deserved something for his patience. “An experiment went badly. I don’t want to talk about.”
“Okay,” Cecil replied in that very understanding and very soothing tone of his, and Carlos decided he had the best boyfriend ever.
****************************************
The next night was little better, but over the week the nightmares decreased, and Carlos could stay awake during the day and concentrate on work again, which he threw himself into after locating the most mundane project he could find, which was tracking mesquite tree pollination cycles. He was aware that the Sheriff’s Secret Police were making an extra effort to follow him, with two bushes outside his lab instead of one, and an occasionally cough or snort on his phone line, but they otherwise kept their distance. It was probably because he didn’t tell anyone what had happened through any means of communication. He didn’t text about it, write about it, talk about it, Skype about it, leave voicemails about it, or Google more information on the subject. The only person he would really even contemplate emailing was Professor Henry Armitage (the Third) at Miskatonic, but he was still unsure if that was even a good idea. He wasn’t sure how to Professor would feel compelled to react to a new copy of the Necronomicon being discovered in the Southwest, of unknown origin and edition. He would probably ask Carlos to go back for more information. He certainly wouldn’t want him to sit on it, unless sitting on it meant pouring a ton of concrete into the foundation of the building, waiting for it dry, and then sitting on that.
Carlos didn’t succeed in putting it out of his mind, but he could make room for other things – until Sunday, when he had dinner with someone who was the last person on earth who should be told about Carlos’s discovery.
Sunday nights were now family dinners with Isaac, usually in Cecil’s apartment because Cecil was a town celebrity (as was Carlos) and Isaac didn’t like crowds. Carlos got along with Isaac, but they also didn’t talk a whole lot, and Carlos mainly found out what he was up to either from the dinners themselves or from Cecil. While Isaac seemed to be settling into Night Vale, he was a rough character to get along with even at his most polite, and seemed less at ease with Carlos than Carlos with Isaac, if that was possible. Unlike the rest of the town, who were under Cecil’s spell, Carlos still found Isaac’s appearance unsettling, even if it was now only in a way he couldn’t describe (or if Isaac was clearly making use out of the eye at the end of his tail. Which was creepy.)
Mostly out of habit, Isaac did try to pass as human most of the time, which meant keeping his tentacles retracted back into his hump and not letting his tail just whip around. He had given up wearing shoes, and where his pants ended you could clearly see the fur and hooves, one of them normal and the other smaller and twisted and usually hanging limp, the very tip of it maybe resting on the floor. While Carlos was staring at his gluten-free noodles and trying not to think about the Necronomicon, a book Isaac had broken into the Kremlin to try to steal, Cecil and Isaac were discussing Isaac’s visit to the reconstructive surgeon.
“He says he think he can do it, but it would be a major operation,” Isaac said, stabbing at his plate with unnecessary force. Carlos winced but Cecil did not. “The bone is all twisted so he would have to reshape it and hope the muscles build up around it. And there would be a lot of metal pins. If it even worked that’s still a lot of metal going into me.” It was still less metal than his crutches, but he was clearly unnerved by the concept. “I would be a robot.”
“Cyborg,” Carlos corrected.
“As long as you’re not in any pain as you are,” Cecil said, showing great concern, “then you don’t have to change anything about yourself. Oh, and how did that job go?”
“Pretty well, actually.” Isaac smiled mischievously. So, evilly. “If another job comes along, I’m sure they’ll hire me back.”
Isaac had some kind of contract work that was very sporadic. Cecil wouldn’t say anything about because, he told Carlos, he didn’t officially know anything about it, except something about it involving “corporate arson.” Carlos decided to just think of it on the level of corporate espionage and stop thinking about it. Maybe Isaac was finding a place for himself in Night Vale, and it made Cecil happy, so Carlos decided it made him happy, too.
“So, Carlos – what have you been up to?” Isaac said, and because of the way he said almost everything, Carlos immediately jumped to wild conclusions about telepathy or just having the smell still around him. Then he reminded himself to stop doing that.
“A lot of work. Some projects going well, some not.”
“Nothing to write home about?”
“University boards like data, not conclusions,” he said wistfully, which seemed to satisfy Isaac. For the time being.
****************************************
Time passed. That was the best way to describe things; time was funny in Night Vale. Carlos was aware that calendar-wise, he hadn’t been dating Cecil for very long, certainly not long enough to be living in his apartment, but yet nothing felt rushed. He didn’t forget about the House That Did Not Exist, certainly, but he found reasons not to investigate it any further, and the Secret Police stopped their extra tails and surveillance. The issue would never leave Carlos’s mind, but he knew there was nothing to do about it now, both because he was being watched and because he didn’t know what to do if given the chance. He would probably speak to Armitage about it during his next trip to Massachusetts, but that was it. It seemed as good a plan as any.
His concerns shifted to Cecil, who was coming home extremely tired and seemed to be called to HR retraining a lot, if only for brief periods. He wasn’t doing anything exceptional on the show, like going on too much about Carlos, or mentioning unmentionable things, or talking about his contract. But he did explain while smoking a rare cigarette on the back porch that Station Management seemed to be a bad mood. “They just get like this sometimes. Moody. If they were mad about a particular thing, they would make it clear.”
“I assume you’ve tried talking to them – if that’s possible?”
Cecil shrugged tiredly. “I tried yesterday, but I’ve never had much success with them, and they vaporize anyone else who comes near.”
“Can they – I don’t know, leave? Take a vacation?”
“No, Carlos. Dear Carlos. They’re as trapped in the station as I am. If anything, even more so.” He actually sounded sympathetic, and Carlos dropped it. He was less sympathetic as the week drew on and the situation didn’t change. Cecil looked paler, thinner even, and he was avoiding time spent in the studio, writing a lot of material from home and doing intern reporting work himself to delay his arrival. Management was not calming down and their mood was not passing, and while they were clearly upset about something, Cecil couldn’t make out what it was, only that it probably wasn’t his work, which was usually the only thing they cared about. His shows were just fine – cautious, even. He just couldn’t talk to them directly, even if he wanted to.
It showed at the next family dinner, though Cecil was hesitant to talk about it. Isaac swung by the lab the next day and Carlos’s assistants scattered, which Isaac pretended not to notice. “Who is Station Management? What are they?”
Carlos was briefly touched by Isaac’s concern for his brother, even if he was making it seem like an idle curiosity. “I don’t know. Cecil is the only one who can really get near the door.”
“You’ve never asked him directly?”
Carlos shrugged. “I did at one time, in so many words. I think Cecil knows more than he’s saying, but he doesn’t feel that it’s relevant to anyone but him. Or maybe he came by some information that he shouldn’t have. Cecil almost never refuses to answer a question, so when he does I’ve just respected it.”
“He says he’s never seen them.”
“That’s true. Cecil never lies. He definitely hasn’t looked at them directly.”
“I looked up the building plans for that station for my architecture class.” Isaac was now a full-time student at the community college, even if he wasn’t in a formal degree program. “They weren’t easy to get, but they are on record. That building’s not just a radio station. It wouldn’t have been designed like that, if it was just an ordinary radio station.”
“I figured as much,” Carlos replied. Architecture wasn’t his strong suite, especially in Night Vale. Cecil occasionally made fun of him for it. “Can you be more specific?”
“It’s seen drawings of structures like that – like how it looks in blue prints – in my dreams. In places that don’t exist here. The man who built it – Randolph Carter?”
“The first Voice of Night Vale, I think.”
“He knew some things an ordinary person shouldn’t have known.” Isaac smiled in that unsettling way of his. “That tower’s a trap. It’s a cage for something a normal cage wouldn’t hold. A tomb for a living thing.”
“Station Management.”
“Probably.” Isaac hopped over to the white board and began to draw obscure symbols within a square building surrounded by another square building turned on an angle, resembling an octagon. “I won’t draw it here. I’m not that stupid. You can’t really see it in the blue prints if you don’t know what you’re looking for, but the building is like one giant Elder Sign. It protects or imprisons, probably both.”
Carlos was relieved; he didn’t want Isaac drawing an Elder sign on his wall, even in illegal erasable marker. “I take it this is a sudden interest?”
“You’ve seen how Cecil looks. Something’s affecting him, and it’s affecting Management, too. But I don’t think it originates from the station. It would be too obvious; I would like to think I would notice a drastic change in something I already have some interest in.” He was fascinated with Cecil’s abilities to change the way the town thought. “I think it’s somewhere else, and they’re more sensitive to it because the station doesn’t just broadcast. It receives.”
Carlos did a mental calculation of how long since he noticed the signs in Cecil that this was going on, and he gave himself a lot of credit for not collapsing in terror right there. All of that suppressed fear hiding in his spine spread out like roots growing in fresh soil. He could not stay on his feet; he found a stool.
“So you know what it is.”
It was not an accusation. Isaac looked rather pleased with himself. Maybe he’d suspected all along, and the conversation was just to confirm it. Maybe he knew himself. No – he’d never have come to Carlos if he knew himself.
“I – I can’t tell you.” He didn’t want to tell anyone at all. Nor did he think he had it in him now. “I’m not going to.”
“Still don’t trust me, do you?”
“Not a chance.”
Isaac laughed. “I can’t say I blame you.” He repositioned his crutches and headed for the door.
“Isaac, wait!” Carlos grabbed his arm, and Isaac whipped back, unused to physical contact. “I’m doing this for your own safety.”
“Really.”
“Yes. Because I love Cecil, and Cecil loves you. And even if we didn’t have that connection ... you’re a person, and you don’t deserve to be hurt by something out of our control. Or in someone’s control. If you won’t be careful, I’ll be careful for you.”
Isaac did not have a witty retort to that. He stared at him blankly for a moment. His eyes flickered behind their double lids before he recovered. “Suit yourself.”
He saw himself out of the lab, and the air around him was subdued. Carlos didn’t stop him. Carlos had other things to do – like find out what he had accidentally unleashed on Night Vale.