Welcome to Night Vale - 138 - Harvest Time

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

It is a time of reaping, sowing, and rebirth. This episode was co-written with Brie Williams. Weather: “Friend or Foe” by Low Power https://soundcloud.com/lowpowermusic Podcon 2 is coming back to Seattle next January! Don’t miss this incredible weekend for podcast listeners, makers, and fans. (And if you’re coming to Podcon, check out our live shows at the Neptune Theater that Friday!) https://www.podcon.com Need a gift for the Night Vale fan in your life, or for someone who appreciates cool and creepy stuff? Check out our store for super cool and creepy stuff by some super cool and not creepy artists! https://topatoco.com/collections/wtnv Music: Disparition http://disparition.info Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin.  http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter @NightValeRadio or Facebook. Produced by Night Vale Presents.  http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howdy y'all. It is Jeffrey Craneer. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Nightville you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026. And I'm here to tell you we're going to be in Europe. If you want to see Nightville live and you're going to be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May. We're going to be in Edinburgh on May the 27th. We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to Welcome to Nightville.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is. our newest Nightville live show Murder Night in Blood Forest. It is so much fun. Please come check it out. Also, coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead, brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by disparition and starring Jacique and Nicole. So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, Do you want to hear us talk about other things? We have three other really great chat shows.

First of all, there's Good Morning Nightvale for all of your Nightville needs. You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single episode in order of Welcome to Nightvail. Also, we have Random Horror Number Nine. That is me and Nightville star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do best worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on a IMDB, the worst rated on IMDB, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middlest rated on IMDB. So check out all of those at Nightvillepresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks.

Everything old will be new again, except for when it's so old it disintegrates that your touch and scatters into oblivion. Welcome to Nightfall. It's harvest time, a time of reaping, glowing and rebirth, a time of turning over old soil, and doing something with crops, maybe. No one really knows. All we know is that every night for the past week, we've heard the air raid siren blasting in the town square and a sepricral voice chanting, behold, despair, rejoice, harvest time approaches. There has never been a harvest time before, so it should prove to be an exciting event, or phenomenon, or period of forced manual labor.

No one currently has any guesses as to what exactly will be harvested, since the land surrounding Nightvale is barren sand wastes, as noted on the new tourism billboard, out on Route 800, which reads, Now Entering Night Vale, if you lived here, you'd be dead. by now. John Peters, you know, the farmer, remarked with pride that he's never encountered a single visible crop in all his years of farming, and then remarked with suspicion that he doesn't believe in roots, and if anyone tries to tell you different, they're a filthy liar. He then opened a tobacco tin, pulled a wad of feathers from inside, and ate them. A big congratulations to former Nightfail Community

Radio Intern Moraine, who has just received her heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, or HVAC certification. It's apparently one of the only certifications one can receive from the community college that does not require internship credits. She isn't sure if she's passionate about the ventilation sciences yet, but it at least makes for a lucrative side hustle, especially in this current heat wave. According to our friends at the Unusual, that the Unleasing at the Unavoidable Casualties Bureau, the current heatwave will statistically take eight lives by morning. Who will they be? I don't have the answers, of course. And there certainly isn't a betting pool laying seven to one odds on Susan Wilman or anything like that, but it's a fun

thought experiment, right? Former intern Maureen has also expressed the need for an income boost so she can help her girlfriend Michelle's store, Dark Hour Records, out of financial difficulties. Dark Hour Records has been on hard times since they took a stance against free market capitalism by ceasing use of actual currency. We have here a testimonial from one of Maureen's satisfied customers. Gladys R from Old Town says, Our air conditioner was making a terrible sound, and Maureen came in and installed new insolid. insulation and coolant pipes, and even fix the motor. It works great now. The insulation she used

was made of premium wolf spider eggs, which she explained are particularly energy efficient, since they are made to withstand the extreme desert heat and keep all those tiny wolf spider embryos nice and cool. Millions of matured wolf spiders did begin pouring out of every vent in our house after a few weeks, but the air quality remained crisp and cool. An exterminator came in and sprayed for the spiders, which totally killed them, so that's not an issue anymore. But the poison that was used to kill that particular species did cause small benign tumors to form along my underarms, as well as my husbands, and the tumors began pulsating, and the doctors later discovered heartbeats inside the tumors, but they did stress the fact that these tumors are totally benign.

The doctors advised a wait-and-see approach and put my husband and I on a course of prenatal vitamins. Unfortunately, the vitamins gave both of us a rash, which is slightly itchy, so we stopped taking them. There's no specialist in town to help us with this, and no ointment or home remedy that seems to work. That's a little frustrating, but the air is still very crisp and cool. And the unit doesn't make that terrible sound anymore. Thanks, Maureen. Five stars. Would suffer sentient tumors again. Wow. What a nice review from Gladys. Personally, I love it when it's this hot out. It feels like everything is just moments away from catching fire. It's exhilarating. Now the community calendar.

Let's see. It's all just notations in a childlike scroll about how harvest time is coming. Oh, wait, here's something else. There's a spaghetti feed tonight at the Elks Lodge. If you've never been to the spaghetti feed before, you're really missing out. It's all about folks in the community coming together and eating and eating and not knowing when it's over because the spaghetti just keeps coming.

It's about commitment and dedication. It's about not being a quitter. Remember when they called you a quitter growing up? Quitter, they said, pointing at you and you're half-eaten sack of pasta. Don't you want to prove them wrong? Keep feeding. Feeding isn't about nourishment. Not anymore.

It's about quantity. mass, volume, and proving you're no quitter. It's about commitment. Tonight at the Elks Lodge, this has been the community calendar. And now, traffic. When you were 12 years old, you sat in the passenger seat waiting for your mother to come out of a clothing store called Don's that used to be on Main Street. You turned the ignition to the battery-only setting so you could listen to the radio. You were reading a fictional tabloid newspaper and eating candy.

The window was halfway down. A crisp breeze ruffled the newsprint in your hands. You were perfectly content. A feeling you won't experience again until well into your 30s. The car that was parked next to you began to back away. You saw it from the corner of your eye, and you were overcome with the panicky vertigo sensation that your own car was moving forward,

that it was picking up speed and rolling right into the dons, through the display window, through the mannequins and wrangler jeans that hung loosely around their plastic hips, and, oh God, your mother, she would be mangled among heaps of bloody denim and plastic body parts, and it would all be your fault somehow.

Yes, he'd probably turn the ignition too far and somehow put the car into gear. We were only trying to listen to the radio. Your hands slammed onto the glove compartment, and you waited for the deafening impact of plate glass, and you squeezed your eyes shut. This has been. Did it just get dark out suddenly?

No. Wait. There's something covering the windows of the studio. It looks like someone has plastered flyers all over the building. Wait, let me peel one of these on. plastered all over other nearby buildings as well. They say, harvest time is nigh. All will be cleansed.

Huh. I just got a text alert saying the same thing. Did you guys get that? Wait, is that smoke outside? Hang on a second. Yes. The Nightfell Fire Department is assuring me now that the air is filled with black acrid smoke. But there's no fire to a cancel.

count for its origins. So the fire department says it's not actually smoke. It's perfectly normal dark air. Breathe deeply. Go for a jog. Let the little ones run free in the park. Fire chief Ramona Incarnacion announced from inside her airtight bunker. The dark air is coming from all directions at once, Incarnation explained. So there's no point in avoiding any particular areas. Just go about your business, folks. Visibility is hovering right around zero, so please stick to the posted speed limits when driving. You will not be able to see the posted speed limits, so just try to remember what they are. We're on the honor system here, okay? The fire department recommends trying memory games to help sharpen your skills, like Look Look, or Fruit Flip, or get

yourself a Simon. You guys remember Simon. The toy that flashed different colors in a certain order and you're supposed to correctly mimic their patterns, if you do it right, they tell you a secret. Sometimes it's a secret about someone else, maybe a stranger, maybe someone you know, probably your girlfriend, it's a secret about you, something she would never tell you, and certainly something you don't want to know. The only way to make sure that secrets stay safe is to get the pattern right. Blue, blue, red, green, blue, yellow, ochre, persimmon, cornflower, chartrus, charreuse, ecru.

It helps to sing it. Remember, if you fail at this or anything, In Carnassion added, it's because you didn't try hard enough. Everything is a pure meritocracy. Speaking of remembering, my niece Janice has been practically knocking herself out studying for the pre-SATs. I know a lot of other kids at Nightvale High School are doing the same right now. So, we're going to run through a few practice questions to help them prepare. First, basic analogies. Scavenger is to Carian as love is to A, car accident,

B, quitting your job, C, cooking for friends, or D, cooking friends. Wait, I lost the answers for the verbal. section. Here, let's try math. How much would you have to be paid to pull out your own fingernails? The correct answer is $450. How much would you have to be paid to pull out your own fingernails in the year 1979? The correct answer is $1,520 adjusting for inflation. How many box turtles would it take to eat a common raven? Hmm. Think about that while we go to the weather.

Bitch, I love you. You and me will out here just in time. Got you up or run them up. You're just going to keep I fucking up. This lesson. This is my depression telling me you're all the same. Get your head up in the cage. But you know I've been mind I'm hiding from the line

Stold me all this happened no fake ass bitching Never let me take a sec to get this right Everyone you know is disposable Well all the others have them was such a shame Something new From exclusively on Paramount Plus It's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell

Everything here is impossible But it's also real sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now we're running out of time and we still don't know the rules don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch saving those children is how we all go home from binge all episodes exclusively on paramount plus breaking news a giant statue has been erected in the town square

a post minimalist anthropod the size of a suburban rant style house It's made of Italian marble with tasteful touches of bronze, but also concrete, scraps of paper, chicken feet, and plastic hubcaps from a 1997 Nissan Ultima for eyes. Scratched into the dirt around the statue are the words, harvest time is now. Theories vary on what this means, but seem largely to fall into three categories. Religious leaders believe harvest time may finally signify the onset of the end of the world. end times, which they can't deny will give them a certain smug satisfaction. There have been more than a few human sacrifices so far, which some are saying is a bit preemptive,

but as John F. Kennedy famously said, sacrifices are going to sacrifice. Others are claiming this is all a viral marketing campaign for a new vegan restaurant. A voice was heard echoing the smoke-filled streets, it's a chain, isn't it? I've eaten at one. It's a buffet thing, the voices shouted. The restaurant is inside the statue. Others still prepared a public demonstration by standing around holding blank signs, knowing they will feel strongly about something soon.

Looking at the community calendar, I no longer see the notations for harvest time. The Elks Lodge Spaghetti Feed is still happening, though. Not too late to get down there and grab. a plate. I know that's where I'm headed right after this broadcast. I'm getting a report from the spaghetti feed that those in attendance felt painfully full only moments ago or abysmal with spaghetti, as one feeder put it, and now fall somewhere on the spectrum between ravenously hungry and the absence of any sensation at all. Sounds delicious. Okay, all right, I am getting quite a lot of reports all at once.

It appears some things have gone missing. Citizen Jeremy Godfrey, who has been experiencing symptoms of a midlife crisis for several months, reported a sudden and complete loss of the fear of death. My brother-in-law, Steve Carlsberg, reported his Christmas decorations are missing from his attic. Now, this includes the life-size Santa that sits in an aluminum boat and casts a fishing pole string made of lights. My niece Janice expressed a dissenting opinion that the loss of these decorations may actually be a gain for the family. Janice also reported her PSAT practice test

went completely blank after she spent hours filling it out. Fortunately, she enjoys standardized tests, so she just did it again. Professor Harrison Kipp is missing two toes, though luckily they were his two extras. Chavon Azdak has reported the loss. of a close acquaintance after inadvertently hurting their feelings online, but noted maybe it's better this way, if they're going to be such a crybaby about little things like all caps curse-filled insults. Little League coach Betty Lucero reported all of her baseball bats are missing. She found her garage filled instead with fruit bats, which are at the time of this report drowsily eating bananas. Ah, also, everyone in town reported their credit card numbers stolen and maxed out.

Hmm, the charges on the cards originated from the same places, a building supply company, a scrapyard, and the Michaels craft store next to the Staples. It appears all the stolen funds have gone to building the new statue in the town square. Now, there are mixed feelings about this, as it is a beautiful statue, But, you know, it's also credit fraud. And I have here an addendum to the testimonial I read earlier from former intern Morines' air conditioning client, Gladys R. It reads, The skin hangs loosely from our arms, where tumors once bulged with unknowing life.

They hang flat and empty with tiny open sores. perhaps where something emerged in the night while we slept. We slept so well, I can't emphasize that enough. The rhythmic sensations of those little heartbeats vibrating against the fat and bones of our arms lulled us into a state of complete relaxation, relaxation deeper than we have ever known. before. We missed that. We really missed that. We can't sleep anymore. We didn't fully appreciate what we had until it was gone. We acknowledged that and we repent. We want to find whatever it was inside of us and put it back. We don't know what to look for or where to begin.

If anyone has seen anything, please let us know. Thanks, Gladys R. We'll do. Wait, are you guys hearing that? There is a new sound coming from the town square. It sounds like the trumpeting of ram's horns. And the smoke has started clearing up. And now there remains only a great, dusty quiet. Is it over?

Did anything really happen? So many things are like that, aren't they? Anticipation and disappointment. Loss and abundance happening at the same moment. So that you end up with only the uneasy illusion of balance or meaning. I'm hearing now that there's an engraved placard on the Anthropod statue, previously unseen because it was slopped over with plaster and looked hastily scratched into the back of a license plate with a nail. It says,

ripeness is perfection, and perfection is the step before decay. That's sweet, right? Anyway, better get down to the spaghetti feed before it's over. Oh, and the answer is two. Two box turtles can completely devour a common raven. Stay tuned for the original 1972 folk rock ad jingle for the Simon Memory Game, entitled Never Forget to Remember, and Remember to Forget to Forget. Good night. Nightvale. Good night.

Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Bree Williams with Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Crane. and produced by Dysperition. The voice of Nightvale is Cecil Baldwin, original music by Dysperition. All of it can be found at dispersion. info or at disparition.bancamp.com. This episode's weather was friend or foe by low power.

Find out more at soundcloud.com slash low power music. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvail.com. Or follow us on Twitter at Nightvale Radio. Or think about what it's like for a dog, you know? Check out Welcome to Nightvale.com for more information on this show and our holiday selection of Nightvale Presents merch for the weird podcast person in your life. That person might be you.

Today's proverb. If you circle the letters in the Bible just right, you get the phrase, lightly dressed kale. So I don't know what that means, but it's direct from God. Are you squeamish about horror movies, but kind of want to know what happens?

Or are you a horror? lover who likes thoughtful conversation about your favorite genre. Join me, Jeffrey Kraner and my friend from Welcome to Nightville, Cecil Baldwin, for our weekly podcast, Random Number Generator, Horror Podcast Number Nine, where we watch and discuss horror movies in a random order. Find, here's the short version, Random Horror Nine, wherever you get your podcasts. Boo.