Welcome to Night Vale - 250 - Father Kevin

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

There is no Night Vale. There is Mother Lauren’s Brood. We are loved. Weather: “Cutting Teeth“ by Priscilla Snow Original episode art by Jessica Hayworth Read episode transcripts Patreon is how we exist! If you can, please help us keep making this show. Music: Disparition Logo: Rob Wilson Written by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor & Brie Williams Narrated by Cecil Baldwin Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Check out our books, live shows, store, membership program, and official recap show at welcometonightvale.com A production of Night Vale Presents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Nightville, it is Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from April of 2026 with a couple of cool things coming up. First off, we're going to be in Europe touring our newest Nightville live show, Murder Night in Blood Forest. We're going to be in Edinburgh, UK, on May 27th. We'll be in Manchester on the 28th. We will be in London on May 29th, and we will be in Amsterdam on May the 30th. You can get tickets for these shows at Welcome to Nightville.com slash live, and hopefully we'll have more. shows coming up later this year. Who knows? Just get on our newsletter. Go to Welcome to Nightville.com. Sign up for our newsletter. We will send you emails twice a month to let you know all of the news that you need to know about Welcome to Nightville. One of the big news things to tell you

right now is that our other hit podcast, Alice Isn't Dead, is coming back on April the 13th, written by Joseph Fink, produced by Disparition and starring Jacica Nicole. More episodes of Alice Isn't Dead return on April the 13th, so make sure you are still subscribed to that podcast. Finally, do you want some cool Nightville merch? Go to Welcome to Nightville.com, click on store, and we have all kinds of cool t-shirts, things for the summer, tank tops, beach towels, and if you like coffee mugs, if you want calendars, if you want backpacks, all kinds of cool stuff there. So check out Welcome to Nightville.com And click on store, click on live. If you want to see our live shows, we will see you in Europe. And hey, thanks.

It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scary as 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. I don't make the rules. I just gleefully enforce them even though I don't have to. Welcome to Night Vale. There is no Ralph's. There is Mother Lauren's pantry. There is no hole out back of the Ralph's. There is Mother Lauren's soil embrace. There is no Night Vale. There is Mother Lauren's brood. We are loved. We are loved. We We are loved.

We are... Sorry. It is difficult to break free of the malign influence of Mother Lauren. We live in two realities, one in which all is well, and one in which we are teetering over an edge from which we cannot return. I speak from both realities. I speak from both sides of my mouth. The conflict that roiled Nightvale continues, but in a strange, slow way.

Mother Lauren stands on a podium in what once was Grove Park, her tendrils snaking through every part of the town and through many of the people. The buildings expand and contract like lungs. The trees are melting. The people of Nightvale still bravely fight, but like people fighting in a painting, smudgy and two-dimensional. The boy, who is the younger version of Kevin from Desert Bluffs, stands next to Mother Lauren holding her hand.

His face shows exertion, as if the greatest battle is inside his body. But he cannot move. The last time Lauren came to Night Vale, she came as a representative of StrexCorp, here to conquer us in the name of capitalism. This time is different. This time she fights with stranger, stronger stuff. I don't think she is turning us into another desert bluffs.

I think, if anything, she is making all of us part of her body. She is transcending, and we are fodder for her change. Mother Lauren speaks, and her voice rings out from every part of her body, which is the entire city. I am bored already of this, she says. It was too easy to defeat you. Your loss is not as delicious to me as I had hoped. But all is not yet lost.

There is a plan. Our future lies with Alejandra Nunez, Ronnie Sharma, and Nanico Barnes of Mr. Prescott's fifth period AP English class. otherwise known as the library tweens. These brave children have followed into Mika Flynn's footsteps coming face to face with a librarian and emerging victorious. Now they must come face to face with something maybe 15% more horrifying than a librarian, a twisted cosmic god. The kids told me they could not give me the specifics of the plan,

only that it involved using ropes and grappling hooks to cross the dame. dangerous city streets through the air, guerrilla-style strikes on Mother Lauren's weak points, capturing Kevin, and finally attacking Mother Lauren when she least suspects it. At noon today, she'll never see it coming. As part of the plan, I have been asked to create a distraction so that Mother Lauren and Kevin won't notice what they are doing until it is too late. They told me it is vitally important that no one notice until the point. plan has been completed, and so I have been sworn to secrecy. A secrecy I will break for no one.

Except, of course, you, my listeners. I could never keep anything from you. I thought a lot about what a good distraction would be. And here's what I've come up with. Hey, look over there! So, sorry. A little out of breath. We'll see if that worked. Despite what some might say is the best distraction anyone has done in the history of getting people to look away from something important, it appears that Mother Lauren somehow got wind of the plan. She flinched and the world flinched with her. She glared and the world swooned.

She no longer even has to fight. Nightville is her thick, sludging heart, her pock-marked lungs. She has made us part of her disease. I am the universe itself, she howled, an air-raid siren of a voice coming from all places at once. To fight me is to fight the fabric of existence. A laughable effort. The library tweens were seized by Mother Lauren's drones, who once were our own citizens. But now are pink, spongy lumps with no eyes, constantly screaming,

Help me, I still feel all of it. there is some vital part of me that remains untainted. I still have a soul, as they lumber comically toward the tweens. The tweens put up a valiant fight, but they were captured and thrown into the town prison, which now is covered in a pale, flaky skin. The boy watched this all happen, holding on to Mother Lauren's hands, enfolded in her multitude of oil-slick wings. Something came over him.

And he turned and struck out at Mother Lauren. With the effort of his entire soul, he resisted her influence, and he stuck a knife into her side. Without bothering to look his way, she weaved her tendrils around him, and he was absorbed into her being. The boy now stands at her feet. The tendrils fused with his skin and pulsing sickeningly. His eyes are blank whites. His hands flap about like they are playing an invisible piano. Oh, Nightvale, this is the moment of greatest despair.

We have not only been defeated, but changed. We are no longer who we are. And to make matters worse, here comes Kevin, unfolding himself from the crowd, strutting up to the podium of his victory. He looks around at the city that he has finally driven under his thumb. After years of resisting him, we can resist no more. He sees the bowling alley enrobed in veins and arteries and malignant tumors.

He sees Town Hall turned into a tongue covered in white fuzz. He sees my own station, my beloved radio station, now entirely made. made of the same stuff as toenails. He sees all the evidence of his victory. And then he turns and looks at the boy, the boy that he came back for, the boy that is the younger version of himself, he looks at the helpless boy and he smiles. Here there is a heavy stillness. But somewhere

Thunder Somewhere Snow Somewhere far away Weather Put my tea On poetry Those first words I said

I didn't mean I felt I felt ill It was no good Don't know what to do here honestly usually when we go to the weather report, a great struggle or climactic event happens concurrently with it, and we come back to a problem solved. With my perspective now shifted to the past, I can then fill you in on how we made it through yet another dangerous day in our fair town.

Now, some people mistake this for the weather actually fixing the problem, but that's not the case. The weather usually just happens at the same time as what fixes the problem, and then I, utilizing my expert narrative skills, tell you how that happened. This time, however, everything is more or less how we left it. The boy, still captive. Mother Lauren, still ascendant. And Kevin, still smiling. There will be no victorious shift in perspective, only a terrifying march through the ceaseless

present. And in that present moment, Kevin turns to the boy. He kneels down, still smiling, and takes the boy's hand. Gently, he untangles Mother Lauren's tendrils from the boy's skin. He guides the boy down from the podium. Mother Lauren, her eyes to the cosmos, is seemingly impassive to the final meager death throes of our little town. The boy looks at Kevin. Kevin smiles at the boy.

I do not like that smile, but then I have never liked Kevin's smile. The last time I was here, Kevin says, I said that this was a situation I would not be able to handle alone. And I was right, and I was wrong, because I can handle it with just me, but I cannot handle it with only one of me. I'm sorry, the boy says, but I don't know who you are. It seems that his encounter with the body and mind of Mother Lauren has left him without his memories. He stares blankly at the world like it was a book in a language he took a few classes back in high school, like he should know it, but he doesn't. That's okay, Kevin says,

because I remember enough for the both of us. I've never talked much about my father. He was a jovial man, but a stern man. He was a fair man, but with priorities I did not always understand. I think he did the best job he could. In fact, I know he did, because in this moment, I understand him better than anyone has ever understood their own father.

Okay, the boy says. He clearly doesn't know why this man is telling him this. He says, I don't have a father. He doesn't say this tragically, but like he was telling the time to someone who asked. Ah, says Kevin, but you do. My childhood was a strange riddle I never could quite solve. And here you are, a neat. solution to the question of my life. Listeners, I am starting to understand what Kevin is

getting at here and I'm not sure I like it but it does have a certain symmetry to it. Life is rarely fair but it is often balanced. What are you saying? The boy says. Your name is Kevin and I am your father says Kevin who is Kevin's father. I am? You are? says the boy who is Kevin. Yes, says Kevin's father. I will raise you well, or well enough, or well enough, you know, I will see you through. He looks up at Mother Lauren. She finally looks down. Her tendrils weave through the earth and the bricks and the flesh of Nightbale, her sunny smile clouds over. I thought I was through with you, she says.

You were wrong, says Kevin and Kevin's father simultaneously. Kevin's father stands tall, and Kevin stands as tall as he can, which is not nearly as tall as his father. Not yet. Dead wrong, calls a voice from the crowd. And here steps forward, Alejandra Nunez, Ronnie Sharma, and Nonico Barnes of Mr. Prescott's Fifth Period AP English class, otherwise known as the library tweens.

I thought you were in jail, I say, from my radio booth, because this is all happening in the present moment, so it just now occurred to me that I could be an active part of these events. We were, says Ronnie, but then this nice old lady busted us out. I am not old, I'm in my early 20s for God's sake, says Tamika Flynn. She did a real daring and action-pack jailbreak, says Naniko. I wouldn't have known someone that ancient had it in her. Ugh, says Tamika. But she does look exhilarated about having once again taken part in an adventure.

In one hand she holds a rope, and in her other hand she holds a copy of the novel Autumn by Ali Smith. It's the British First Edition, the one that was printed on a working blowtorch. Point is, says Alejandra to Mother Lauren, you'll have to stand against us. And me, says Tamika, shooting a menacing jet of fire from Ali Smith's elliptical portrait of Brexit era Britain. And me, says Kevin's father. Kevin, the young boy that he is, looks around, unsure. This is all a lot of new information all at once.

But he makes his decision. And me, he says. Mother Lauren laughs, and the mountains laugh with her. Hollow booms in canyons and passes. She swats at Kevin, but Kevin dodges. Mother Lauren's face flickers with concern. She swats again. Nothing connects.

The streets royal. I knew you before, Kevin's father says. I know that somewhere. In there is human vulnerability. Laffable, screams Mother Lauren. She is not laughing. Mother Lauren's drones advance. But a few stop.

And then, human faces start to come out of their pink, fleshy lumps. We could neither breathe, nor could we die. The people inside the drones say, we were trapped in the moment between breaths. It was torture without end. Other nightfall citizens give them thumbs up, indicating empathy. No, I am a god, shouts Mother Lauren. Yes, says Kevin's father, and like any God,

you are defined by the belief of your worshippers. Mother Lauren's face screws up in fury, and then she scowls up again at the cosmos. Yeah, okay. Screw it, she says. This universe was getting too small for me anyway. And with that, she floats into the sky. The stars open like a door for her. She steps through.

She glances back for a moment at the sky. city below her one day I will return she says or I won't TBD and then the stars swing shut behind her and she is gone gradually the city comes back to itself the people shake off the influence of Mother Lauren the buildings and the earth and the trees return to themselves all is as it was minus those who are dead or injured or missing, which is a good amount of people. At the center of all this is a boy and his father. The boy is holding his father's hand.

The boy is holding his own hand. Kevin is holding Kevin's hand. And together, Kevin walks back to his home to live, if not always happily, then at the very least, ever after. After the Kevin's pass through it, Carlos pulls the plug on the portal, deciding that science, while worth some cost, is not worth every cost. Science must be in the service of humanity, never the other way around. It is a tool, not a goal.

Oh, he says that the portal made a real cool zap sound, as it turned off. The library tweens, as they wish to be called, have declared the creation of a new teen militia to protect Nightvale from any further incursions from Desert Bluffs to and anyone else who might want to mess with them. Tamika Flynn, who knows a thing or two about leading a teen militia, offered to be a mentor. But the library tweens put out a statement saying,

Uh, that's okay. No thanks, ma'am. What lies ahead for Night Vale? I cannot say. Our future is an unwritten slate. Our past is a diary scribbled in handwriting none of us can read, and our present is the view through a dirty window. Specifically, for me, the dirty window in this studio. Through which I can see Amber Akini teaching her son how to ride a bike.

I can see Michelle Winn and Maureen Johnson taking their poodle earwig mix or poo wig out for a walk. I can see A mysterious van With the symbol of a labyrinth on it With a man who is not tall And a man who is not short inside Driving some unknown cargo Out into the scrublands

Short I see the day to day of a town That has been through a lot But remained through it all Very much itself I see Night Vale And I love it

Good night. My favorite town. Good night. Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Kraner, and Bree Williams, and produced by Dysperition. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Disparition. All of it can be found at dispirition.bancamp.com. This episode's weather was Cutting Teeth by Priscilla Snow. Find out more at goolnoise.bancamp.com. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightbail.com, or follow us on Instagram and Tumblr at Nightvale Official. We now have a TikTok at Nightvail Official as well. If you like watching short videos. Most importantly, check out Welcome to Nightveal.com,

where we have a twice monthly mailing list that is the best way to keep up to date directly from us to you. This is the most reliable way to hear about new stuff we're doing. Today's proverb, hit me with your best shot. Ow! Okay, actually that sucked. Please hit me with one of your worst shots instead. Thank you. Hey, it's Jeffrey Craneer speaking to you from spring of 26,

and did you know we are on tour in Europe? Welcome to Nightville. We'll be live on stage in Edinburgh on May 27th, Manchester on May 28th, London on May 29th, and Amsterdam on May 30th. This brand new live show is called Murder Night in Blood Forest, starring Cecil Baldwin, Symphony Sanders, me, and live original music by disparition. These tours are so much fun, and they're for the diehard fan and the Nightvale new kid alike. So bring your family, your partner, your co-workers, your cat, whatever. They don't got to know what Nightville is to like the show.

Tickets to these shows are on sale now at welcome to nightvail.com slash live. Don't let time slip away. Get your tickets. Don't miss us when we're in your town because otherwise we'll all be sad. get your tickets to our Europe Live tour right now at Welcome to Nightvelle.com slash live. And hey, thanks.