Welcome to Night Vale - Alice Isn't Dead Ep 2: Alice

Episode Date: March 22, 2016

What is happening in the town of Charlatan? Thanks to Squarespace for supporting our podcast. Get a free 2-week trial & 10% off at squarespace.com (offer code: DEAD). Alice Isn't Dead t-shirts & posters now available in our store. To continue listening to Alice Isn't Dead, subscribe now via iTunes, Libsyn, YouTube, Stitcher, or via RSS on your favorite podcatcher. Music & Production: Disparition, disparition.info. Written by Joseph Fink. Narrated by Jasika Nicole. Logo by Rob Wilson, robwilsonwork.com. Part of the Night Vale Presents network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the second episode of our new serial fiction podcast, Alice Isn't Dead. To hear the rest of the story, please subscribe to Alice Isn't Dead on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. The bottle of Stevens awakens ancient feeling. I thought you were dead, Alice. I really did. I know that there was no evidence for it, but I couldn't think. I really couldn't. I couldn't think of another reason you would vanish like that. Just gone. Just, not you next to me in the mornings or coughing before bed.

The halo of warmth you made in the air around you. Just air now. I mourned you, Alice. I've never loved anyone so hard. From my goddamn gut. So, screw you for that. I mean, really. by Joseph Fink, performed by Jaseka Nicole, produced by Dysperition.

Part 1, Chapter 2, Alice. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the simplest way for anyone to create a beautiful landing page website or online store. With easy to use tools and templates, Squarespace helps you to create an instant presence online. For a free two-week trial and 10% off, go to Squarespace.com and use offer code dead. Also, we now have Alice Isn't Dead t-shirts and posters. Go to nightfailpresents.com to see them. And of course, stay tuned after the show to find out the answer to the riddle. Why did the chicken cross the road? Once you go north of Salt Lake, the landscape starts winding it down real quick, doesn't it? It's all majestic mountains before that. And as you move down to the flats, it's like you forget the

grandeur ever existed. I don't think the landscape is that bad, really. Just, Anything's a let down from the mountains. At a stoplight in a town right now. Signs says a town is called Charlotton. What kind of name for a town is that? Nice enough. Breakfast slash lunch restaurant called the Ferenfield. Gas station.

No name on the gas station. White Ford pickup truck at the pump. Teenage girl pumping gas into it. Little neighborhood beyond that. tracked homes, well-kept yards. The Trade Wins Tiki Motel. A woman with what looks like probably her son, leaving room 204. She looks like she's scolding him, but in a loving way.

An elderly man in a flannel shirt crossing the crosswalk. He gives me a long eye, but not in an unfriendly way. I don't think the world passes through here. I don't think the world has been to this town in a long time. I went to groups. I sat in circles and talked about you. That's what we do now, right? As a civilization, we sit in a circle and we describe the shape of the monster that is devouring us.

We hope, like a talisman, that our description will provide some shelter against it. It won't, though. We are helpless. I'm sorry. This is hour nine of driving, so that might be getting. to me a little. The circle was fine. It was good, actually. I talked about you, how you were always a little strange, but Alice, I never thought. I never thought. I never. So instead, I thought you were dead. And then it was the news. I had to see it on the news, a murder, brutal somewhere in the Midwest.

not a city I knew. A city no one knew except those that lived there. Somewhere in the heart of somewhere else. And bystanders gawking, standing in a circle and trying to describe with just their faces the shape of the monster they had seen, trying to get a handle on it, trying to get by. And there you were, right among them,

looking like you knew exactly what was going on. looking like nothing was a surprise to you. Nothing ever was a surprise to you, was it? You always knew everything. A few more hours down the highway, to Boise almost, and I know this sounds crazy, but I'm at a stoplight in the same town I was in earlier. Charlotton.

The fair and field, trade winds, Tiki Motel. But something's different. It's darker now, obvious. later in the day, edging onto evening, but that's not it. There's still a white Ford pickup truck at the pump. It's covered in mud and dirt. Everything here is covered in mud. Black silt on the windows of the restaurant.

Wed murk in the front yards of the homes. Like a swamp, like a bog? There's a teenage girl. She's turned away from me. Her face pressed into the side of the truck. There's an elderly man on the corner, but he's not cross. He's turned away from me too. His face pressed into the pole of a street light. Room 204 of the motel, the woman and her son. Faces pressed into the outside of the door.

No one is moving. I want this light to change. I want to leave Charlotton. Okay, Green. I'm going. I'm going. I'm putting my foot on the gas hard. There was a deep black mud splashing against my tires. It's running into the street. It's running into the street. You know I never watched the news much, but after that I tried not to miss a minute of it. Multiple channels of 24-hour news, it devoured me. And I started to see a fire outside a Tacoma, a landslide in Thousand Oaks, a hostage situation in St. Joseph.

Ernest folks speaking earnestly, describing only the bad parts of the world. And in the background, you. Just for a moment sometimes or sometimes long and staring. You over and over. I made a list of every place I saw you on the news, and that list became a map of America. So my wife wasn't dead. That's good to know.

That's new information. I stopped going to the groups. I stopped sitting in a circle. I started going, started moving, trying to understand, trying to get a grasp on the, You know, the, on the... I'm still sitting in a circle. Just telling the story over and over into this radio,

hoping that you will hear it and understand, hoping to ward off the monster by describing the shape of it. I quit that job. Oh, you would have been so proud of me, walked right into Merrill's office, told her I didn't see the future between myself and prepaid debit cards. She didn't say much in return. turn. It's also clean now. So every relationship, no matter how long, no matter the history,

is expected to be temporary. Separation is never a surprise. I started to look through your things. I had left them alone, didn't want to get tangled in the memories just yet. But now they weren't memories. They were evidence. Clues to a story you had failed to tell me. North from Boise, the landscape starts turning again. There are trees. Trees, thank God. There are different types of desert, you know? There is desert that is something.

It's mesas or it's sand. It has contours in its own spatial language. And then there's desert that just isn't. Flatlands. It's the absence of everything else. I suppose that this too has its own. own spatial language, but boy, am I glad to see trees again. Are you doing this? Are you doing this to me? I'm in Charlottetan again. It's hours and miles away and again down the road. Am I going in circles?

I know, I nod. All the other towns are passing along the way they say on the map. Charlotton isn't on the map. It's on fire. The whole city is on fire. The gas station, the trade winds, Tiki Motel. It's an inferno, but I don't feel any heat. I say something burning at the gas station. I think it might have been a person. I don't want to think about which person. Alice, the elderly man is crossing the street. He is on fire. He is turning and looking at me and his face is hollow and burning. What is underneath exposed as his skin melts away. He opens his mouth and there is fire within. His inside's burning. I'm going. I'm driving. I don't know what to do. I don't know what.

Again and again. On your laptop, on scraps of paper, on letters that you had hidden under piles of clothes, phrases I didn't understand. The Cumberland Project. Vector H. And more than any other, Bay and Creek Shipping. Over and over you had written about Bay and Creek shipping. And why, Alice? Why did this particular truck company interest you so much? What was there for me to find? So I took a job.

Bay and Creek shipping. They go anywhere good businesses need transportation services. I had to go to school to learn how to drive these things. It's not that bad once you get a hang of it. I guess there are lots of people who do it, so it couldn't be that hard, right? This job takes me all over, which is where you are, all over. A loyal employee of bay and creek shipping, moving what is in one place to another, every mile a few cents. I thought you were dead. Maybe I'm chasing a ghost.

In a truck that says bay and creek shipping. You're a friend in transportation. I've driven over many creeks. Not by that many bays. Mostly land. Mostly lots of land. Your gift to me, I suppose? Charlotton again.

Everything's back the way it was before. Everything is clean and new. Customers in the fair and field eating pancakes. The teenage girl filling her truck up at the gas station. She is crying. She looks at me furtively, and she is crying. I'm crying. Everyone is crying. The woman and her son are leaving room 204 at the Trade Wins Tiki Motel.

They are both crying. I know that behind every window on every one of these little tracked homes with their neat yards, there is someone watching me and crying. And where is the elder... Alice, he is inside the truck. He is sitting here with me. I'm afraid to move. He is also crying.

His face is eroded by the tears by what looks like years of weeping. He isn't saying anything. What do you want? He's raising his hand. He gestures toward the road out of town. He nods. I'm letting my foot off the break. I'm leaving Charlottin.

The man is gone. In my mirror I can see him crossing the crosswalk. I'm leaving Charlotton behind. I don't know what this meant. I only know that its meaning does not include me. I am not necessary to it. There are a lot of different types of freedom. We talk about freedom the same way we talk about art,

like it was a statement of quality rather than a description. Art doesn't mean good or bad. Art just means art. It can be terrible and still be art. Freedom can be good or bad too. There can be terrible freedom. You freed me, and I didn't ask you to. I didn't want you to.

I am more free now than I have ever been, and I am spiraling. I am spiraling across the country. Maybe you are, too. I want our lines to cross even one more time. Eastern Washington. The landscape is completely different. No more mile after mile a flat land. The loop is broken.

I don't think I'm going to see Charlotton again. I'm free of it. That's a good freedom. You owe me an explanation, and I am going to see that you make good on that. I'm going to hear whatever story you've got to tell, and I'm going to hear it from you direct. You may think you're free, Alice, but you're not. You are not free of me.

This episode of Alice Isn't Dead is brought to you by Squarespace, the simplest way to create a beautiful website. We used Squarespace to make a beautiful website. We used Squarespace to make. welcome to nightfail.com and nightvail presents.com, and I can't imagine going back to doing it any other way. True story, I once had an art teacher make me promise him that I would never do art again in my life, and even I am able to make sites that look beautiful and professionally designed using Squarespace. And it's all so inexpensive, including hosting, and if you sign up for a year, a free domain name.

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she had ever known, and on the other side was a future, maybe. And even though she was afraid to leave everything she had ever known, she also wanted a future, maybe. And so, hesitating, and then not, and then moving quickly, running, sprinting even, desperate, she crossed and found a future, maybe, and left behind everything she had ever known. And that is why the chicken crossed the road. That's Squarespace.com offer code dead. And check out Nightvale Presents.com for our new Alice Isn't Dead t-shirts and posters. This has been a production of Nightvale Presents.

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