Welcome to Night Vale - 40 - The Deft Bowman

Episode Date: February 1, 2014

The Telephone Service finally fixes the only telephone booth in town, and a submarine arrives from faraway Nulogorsk. Plus, a new campaign from the Tourism Board, we meet our station's newest program director, and strange texts from a mountaintop, if you can believe that. This episode was co-written with Zack Parsons. The voice of Lauren Mallard was Lauren Sharpe. Weather: "Offering" by Black City Lights. blackcitylights.bandcamp.com Music: Disparition, disparition.info. Logo: Rob Wilson, robwilsonwork.com Produced by Night Vale Presents. Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin. More Info: welcometonightvale.com, and follow @NightValeRadio on Twitter or Facebook. 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 subscribe to that podcast. Finally, do you want some cool nightbale 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. She knows How? Did you blouse? No. The Devil Wares Prada 2. He's the movie event 20 years in the making. Honestly, can't with the secrets anymore,

so I think we just should tell her. Will you two please spit it out already? This Friday, be the first to experience it only in theaters. In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. Oh, because we're a team now. That's a nice story.

The Devil Wares Prada 2 in Theaters Friday. The Riddles says, He walks on four legs in the morning, he walks on two legs at midday, and at night he slithers from dream to dream effortlessly like the air we breathe, and we love him. Welcome to Night Vale. In response to our town's steadily declining tourism industry, the Night Vale Tourism Board, addressed our town's complete lack of appealing destinations, like uncensored art museums, hotels with door locks, and snake-free restaurants.

NVTB executive director Madeline LaFleur said some travelers think they need to see things like monuments, or the majesty of nature, or spectacular musicals, or eat regional, slash cultural foods in order to have a good time on vacation. But they don't. You don't need attractions to have a good time, she added. Just use your imagination. In fact, come to Night Vale, where we will show you fun in a handful of dust. As the new NVTB slogan says,

LeFleur then became transfixed. by the midday sun. There it is again, she whispered to a confused crowd. It's beautiful, so beautiful. Why do you think it keeps circling back like that? Good news, listeners. The telephone service has finally fixed the telephone booth behind the Taco Bell. The telephone that was always ringing and never had a dial tone,

You know the one. When you picked it up, it clicked and hissed, and sometimes played notes that seemed to come from a music box. You did not recognize the tune, but it was familiar, as if from another time and place. Since no one uses telephone booths anymore, I'm not entirely sure why they did this, but the telephone booth is working. The telephone service dispatched a crew of men who would not be missed. They wore wooden suits, climbed up the nearby pole, and clattered around like so many bamboo wind chimes filled with hamburger. After several hours, they climbed down, furtively smoking cigarettes, and departed in their

unmarked black van, removing the out-of-order sign from the booth shortly before the leaving. Some say they've seen strangers of varying heights and aura magnitudes speaking into the telephone in a hushed tone, in words that might have been Russian, staring at the horizon with cold determination. And as the strangers all departed quickly, all in separate pedicabs, witnesses reported a detached human hand crawling up the inside of the booth. Was this lone visitor to the phone booth, the young Megan Wallaby? Megan was born as a detached hand of an adult man, so it seems like this was probably she who slowly, but desperately picked up the telephone as the sun began to set.

We may never know for certain, but at least we know the telephone you'll never bother to use is working again. Ah, speaking of telecommunication, listeners, I've been receiving some odd text messages. My phone claims they are from former intern Dana, who was trapped in the Forbidden Dog Park several months ago and is now traversing an unknown plane of space and or time. Here are some recent texts from her. Found a mountain. Mountains not real? Huh. Log those.

Dang it, lighthouse. Sorry, stupid auto-correct. There's a lighthouse up on the mountain, and atop the lighthouse a blinking red light. And then no more texts, and it's been several days. I tried texting back, but my touchscreen just displayed a photograph of my face

that began to slowly rot, the eyes deepening until they were sunken holes, long white hair growing rapidly, insects crawling from my slacken, decayed maw, and then the words, undelivered text in all caps below it. I decided, maybe this conversation was one not meant to be.

More good news, listeners. A submarine has arrived from Nulgorsk, a tiny fishing village in Russia. Nulgorsk was a longtime sister city of Nightvale. We shared pen-pal letters and gifts for many years, but beginning in 1983, Nulgorsk stopped changing the dates on their letters. By 1997, it became apparent that Nulgorsk would never stop existing in 1983, and without being able to to openly discuss the complexities of Michael Jackson's career arc,

Night Vale stopped corresponding. So, for this single reason, and no other, the arrival of a Nulgorskian submarine in our desert was unexpected. The Nightvale PTA and the management of the local Pinkberry released a joint statement, saying the arrival of the submarine from Nulgorsk may represent a renewal of long-ago international hostilities caused by simple misunderstandings over how to use a calendar properly. Seeking to allay these concerns, the Sheriff's Secret Police's

genderless spokesbeing, with the smoothly beautiful features, explained in that voice that calms animals. Decades ago, when you were a child and lived beside the sea, you would go down in the afternoon and stand in the water, warm as blood, and pluck clams from between the rocks. Your grandfather would cook them over his stove until they opened, and you would listen to the radio together. The ships would come in the afternoon, piled high with cod and herring, surrounded by seagulls, carrying tales of adventure and peril in the sloshing boots of every fisherman. Some things don't come back. The spokesbeing continued, they can only travel in one direction, like mountains travel through the central. Yes, mountains.

You were with Grandfather when the voice on the radio rose an alarm. Grandfather stood up. There was fear upon the monument of his face. This was not supposed to happen. Not here. Do you remember the light so bright you could see it through the wall? Then nothing. Then dark.

And a ringing telephone. But we are here, and now, and this is not there, and then, concluded the sheriff's spokesbeing. The spokesbeing responded to follow-up questions by cocking their head and slowly blinking their milk-glass eyes, like an animal, watching an insect crawl across the floor. Further inquiries were directed to the jade, statue of a cat who hums almost inaudibly in the sheriff's secret police's secret garden.

The secret police plan to open the hatches of the submarine and look inside at any moment. We'll report back as we learn more. Listeners, many of you know I have a bit of a delicate relationship with our new station management. and recent events have caused some concern for many of you. But, rest assured, while management and artists are often at odds about how to run a business, here at the station we all have one thing in common. We love radio. I just met our new program director, Lauren Mallard.

And you know, she's a delight. In fact, she's joining me in the studio, right now. I thought it would be a good time to introduce you to the kindest, most gentle manager we have ever had at this station. Lauren, it's great to have you here. It's great to have you here. I know change is difficult, both for the talent and for the listeners, but our focus is always on good radio. And Cecil, you are the best at good radio. Oh, thank you. Listeners, please know that I really do think things are looking up. I'm really excited about the new direction we're under with Lauren. Well, I can't wait to be more involved. And I just love your show. I've loved every moment of it.

I love your informative reports. I love your beautiful voice. I love the way you talk about the town. You clearly love your city, Cecil. It shows in your work. I even love your scientist boyfriend. What's his name again? With his perfect hair and teeth like a military cemetery? He's always looking into the scientific mysteries of Nightvale. He even broke the story, as you reporters might say, about the trans-dimensional oranges our farmers had developed. Well, that sure was a good thing he was looking into our oranges, or we could have harmed a lot of people on our way to making a ton of money. So very much money. What's a few lives?

So much money! He's a good scientist you have there. What's his name again? Um, Carlos? Right. That's right. Carlos. Good talking to you.

Gotta go. Bye. Oh, uh, okay. Well, thank you, Lauren. Goodbye. And now a public service announcement from the Night Vale Marine Biologists Association. The ocean is full of things that would like to kill you. and other things that would ignore or not understand you

and then eventually kill you because they do not have the same understanding or valuation of life and death as humans. There are still other things that you would probably kill simply because you think they are beautiful and you want to possess beautiful things because you believe that beauty and sentience are mutually exclusive. Never go to the ocean.

It is a confounding place. It is full of death and strife and terror. We're marine biologists, and we won't even go to an ocean, so you know it's bad. The PSA reads, Maybe just take a nap and think about clouds until they find your body. This has been a message from the Marine Biologists Association.

The Sheriff's Secret Police have opened the hatch of the submarine from Nulgorsk. Onlookers describe a curious crack of pressure, as if peeling back the pop-top of a can of old soda and a smell of something regurgitated. Whips of steam were observed to rise from the open submarine. The sheriff's secret police drew their daggers, and a junior secret detective was encouraged to volunteer to be the first to explore the vessel. There was silence as she climbed through the hatch. Gentle listeners, the screaming began almost immediately. It was described as a sort of high-pitched shriek that deepened moment of,

by moment until it was only an agonized moan, then rising back up and pitch again, then falling. Onlookers remarked that they had never quite heard a scream like that before, not even that time in the barn. The junior secret detective reappeared after those few harrowing moments, but she was not the woman who went inside the submarine. Her hair was long and gray, and her limbs were withered with age. She tumbled out of the hatch and was taken off to the hospital where she is listed in ancient condition, though expected to fully recover. Further volunteers discovered the body of an enormous, bald-headed man, with some faded flower tattoos and a left arm that stopped in a rough stump just above his wrist. The sheriff's secret police also discovered a postcard,

depicting the painted houses and beautiful clear water of Nulgorsk. Written on the back was a message in Russian. One adult man, missing hand. and the other items, it read, according to Google Translate. The other items in question included a rotary dial phone with no receiver cord, a large tin full of hard tack, a wrapped parcel, which was carried away by a man who was not tall, a thick book, which was carried away by a man who was not short, and a front-page article from the September 24th, 1983 issue of the Night Vale Daily Journal,

written by foreign correspondent Leanne Hart. The headline of this article was, Sister City, Nulgorsk, decimated by nuclear attack. No known survivors. Listeners, This is simply not true. I had Interns V pull up that very issue, and the front page article is by City Beat reporter Leanne Hart,

and the headline reads, City Council OK's book ownership for randomly selected students. Which is the truth, listeners? I cannot comprehend what has happened to our old pen pals from Nulgorsk. Who were we talking to? for all those years? Were they destroyed in 1983? I'm going to get Sviz article to the secret police. The correct historical truth must be validated and all false histories brutally repressed. And until that time, the only truth we will have is the weather.

Before the sheriff's secret police could respond to my news article, discrepancy, the unconnected rotary phone on the submarine began ringing. The unidentified man and the submarine answered the phone, speaking his first words, in Russian, of course. He still has yet to be identified, and no one is certain if he is a survivor or a ghost, but he spoke to someone on the other end. Trace the call, an officer shouted to a group of other officers in a nearby van. Listeners, they traced the call, and it was coming from the phone booth behind the Taco Bell. On the other end of the line was an adult man's detached hand named Megan, the daughter of Tok and Herschel Wallaby.

She was alone. All alone, except for the telephone booth, as forgotten technologies have been young Megan's only friends. This broke the heart of the sheriff's secret police. This broke the heart of the two men who had sculpted away from the submarine. This broke the heart of the unidentified man from Nulgorsk. And from this moment came wonderful news, listeners. The unidentified man told the secret police in stiff but practiced English. I am a gift from Nulgorsk,

in appreciation of Nightveil's many years of friendship. and kindness. And the unidentified man offered himself as an organ donor, or rather a body donor, for Night Vale's very own Megan Wallaby. The young girl, born with congenital hand bodiness, was rushed from the telephone booth behind the Taco Bell. The unidentified man has been rushed from the submarine in the sand wastes. Megan has been surgically attached to the wrist stump of the unidentified man, or rather, the unidentified man has been surgically attached to the single-hand body of Megan Wallaby. Megan's surgeons have declared the operation a quick and complete success. After emerging from recovery, Megan even rose from her bed, her face dower, and took a few

toneless steps, like a man balancing the weight of a wet overcoat on a failing hanger. Before collapsing onto the floor of her hospital room while nurses screamed and called for help, Megan has a long road of therapy ahead of her, learning how to everything. But we believe in her, don't we Night Vale? That little girl is going to enjoy the childhood she feels she has missed out on. We won't mind if she smashes through a few walls or crushes a few ribcages in hugs. If this is what she wants, we will support her because she is beautiful. And the unidentified man from Nulgorsk? Sadly, we will never see him again, nor may we ever learn why his truth was so different from our own. But Megan's truth is, she is finally happy, happy in the body she was born without.

Maybe one day we will see her, six foot ten and bald, shambling down the street. We will say, hello Megan! And maybe, with enough hard work, she will be able to answer back in the sing-song voice of a child, hello, Cecil, as she jauntily waves the hand that used to be her entire body. Yes, Night Vale, that sounds just about right. Stay tuned next for live coverage of college basketball, as two universities select a dozen students to perform unnatural physical tasks on a wooden rectangle inside a cavernous scream chamber.

Good night, Night Vale, good night. Welcome to Nightvale is a production of Commonplace Books. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craneer and produced by Joseph Fink. This episode was co-written with Zach Parsons. His books can be found anywhere you find books that you immediately buy, shouting, I can't wait to read this. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. The voice of Lauren Mallard was Lauren Sharp.

Original music by Dysperition. All of it can be found at dispersion. info or at disparition. bandcamp.com. This episode's weather was offering by Black City Lights. Find out more at blackcitylights.bancamp.com. Comments, questions, email us at nightvale at commonplacebooks.com or follow us on Twitter at Nightvale Radio. Check out Welcome to Nightvale.com for more information on this show, as well as all sorts

of cool night veil stuff you can own. And while you're there, consider clicking the donate link. That'd be cool of you. Today's proverb, you can't get blood from a turnup. Listen, you need some blood? I can totally get you some blood. Set that turnip down and follow me to the blood. There's a lot of blood.

Hey, Jeffrey Kraner here to tell you about another show from me and my Nightvale co-creator Joseph Fink. It's called Unlicensed, and it's an L.A. noir-style mystery set in the outskirts of present-day Los Angeles. Unlicensed follows two unlicensed private investigators who small jobs looking into insurance claims and missing property are only the tip of a conspiracy iceberg. There are already two seasons of Unlicensed for you to listen to now, with Season 3 dropping on May 15th. Unlicensed is available exclusively through Audible,

free if you already have that subscription. And if you don't, Audible has a trial membership. And if I know you, and I do, you can binge all that mystery goodness in a short window. And if you like it, if you liked Unlicensed, please, please rate and review each season. Our ability to keep making this show is predicated on audience engagement. So go check out Unlicensed, available now only at audible.com.