Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 15

“What are you looking for?” Dawn asked to the back of Diane’s head.

Diane stopped. She had felt fine a second ago, but now a sharpness of nerves hit her chest. She knew how this looked, crouched low, lifting up the trash can in the custodial closet near the office elevator.

“I lost something last week, a slip of paper.”

“They’d have already taken last week’s trash.”

“I know. I just thought maybe it had fallen out. Loose paper. Never mind.” Diane stood.

She was significantly taller than Dawn. At least five inches taller. Diane did not see herself as taller.

“What did you lose? Maybe I can help.”

Diane hadn’t exactly avoided Dawn since their conversation at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner, but she had allowed the natural processes of work to wear away any bridge that might have been formed between them. She was okay with distance. She was okay with being a stranger. And thinking about that day at the diner brought back the nausea; the egg on Dawn’s lip, the two realities in Dawn’s stories, and the blood dripping from Laura’s branches. Dawn’s face made her dizzy with memory.

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine. It was a small piece of paper.”

“Like a receipt?”

“Yeah, but with handwriting, I think.”

“So a note?”

“Yeah, a note.”

“What did the note say?”

Diane was unintentionally not breathing. When she noticed, she started breathing again.

“It’s fine. You don’t have to tell me.”

“KING CITY,” Diane said without knowing how she knew to say it.

“King City.”

“I think it said ‘KING CITY,’ in pencil, all caps.”

“That’s all it said?”

“Yes. It just said ‘KING CITY.’”

Dawn stared at her, and Diane didn’t know what else to say.

“I don’t know how to help you, Diane,” Dawn said, a perfect mix of confused and disappointed, and went back to her desk.

Diane stayed at work, not working on work, as everyone else left—Dawn, Catharine, the men (all named Shawn) who worked in sales, Piotr, Celia, Maya, Martellus, Ricardo, and Tina.

Once everyone was gone, she logged on to Tina’s computer (as something of a party trick, she was excellent at guessing passwords based on a person’s personality, and had long ago correctly guessed that Tina’s password was “WhoAmIReally” followed by nineteen question marks), and looked up the office phone records.

She glanced up every few moments, to make sure no one was coming back for a forgotten jacket, or to use the Bloodstone Circle at the office so they didn’t have to wait until home to use one. But the office was silent. She felt the silence more than heard it. In her tension it had become tactile.

There was no record of people who called in to the office, only outgoing calls, so that was no good. She then searched the payroll folders for all staff lists. Any sign of someone named…

Diane could not remember who she was looking for.

Evan. She was looking for Evan. Diane grabbed blank paper from Tina’s printer and wrote “EVAN” in pencil, all caps, and slid it into a new manila folder.

A search of Tina’s computer came back with no Evans. It found some usage of “griEVANces” in a folder titled “HR” and several usages of “relEVANt” in Tina’s e-mail program. No “Evan.”

Diane walked around the empty office again, to reassure herself that it was empty. She imagined being watched.

At Dawn’s computer (password “A11isL0ss”), Diane opened the web browser and typed in the address of every phone provider she could think of. Two letters into her third guess, the browser autofilled the address of a log-in screen. When she hit enter, the browser had already filled in a user name and password.

Diane logged into Dawn’s phone account as Dawn.

She looked up recent call history and found the four dates Dawn was gone but no record of her calling the office.

Of course, this did not mean Dawn did not have another phone at home. Diane tried looking up more phone and cable providers. There were no other autofills.

Outside Catharine’s office, Diane gripped the doorknob, but it did not turn. She stared at the brushed-nickel knob.

She was not at all the type of person to break into her boss’s office. Or rather, as it turned out, she was that type of person, but she had never considered herself that type of person. The type to do anything that anyone might consider wrong or that anyone might report to a local government agency or amateur surveillance club. She was responsible and quiet, she thought, as she quietly started on the responsibility of getting through the door.

She first imagined the old trick from television where a detective pops a lock with a credit card. Then she imagined having the power to walk through walls and, by extension, doors.

Then she imagined being a professional locksmith, with a small backpack full of short wires that she would shove carefully into a standard lock, grease smudges on her knuckles and face, a cold, concentrated look in her eye and a plastic-handled screwdriver hanging by its flat-headed tip from her teeth.

Then Diane imagined that a custodian probably keeps keys.

Inside the unlocked custodial closet, Diane found a metal cabinet. Inside the unlocked metal cabinet, Diane found a cluster of keys, a jangling rat-king on a yellow rubber coil.

Outside Catharine’s office, Diane imagined that she would just know the right key, and it would be the first key.

Diane imagined the same thing with the second key, and the third through thirteenth keys. As she did, she imagined being watched. She looked up after every key, but there was no one. The Bloodstone Circle hummed a familiar melody in the corner.

On the thirteenth key, the knob turned. There was a moment, the door was open but unstepped-through, where Diane thought that she could still walk away and not become a person who had broken into anywhere in her life, but then she stepped forward and became that person forever. She shut the door, made sure the blinds were closed, and sat in the chair with wheels at Catharine’s desk.

Catharine’s computer didn’t have a password. It just had the question “Are you Catharine?” with yes and no buttons. Diane clicked the yes button, and the desktop blinked up.

She ran a search for the name Evan. She got similar results to what she’d gotten on Tina’s computer. She found no “Evan” as a name or former employee.

She searched for e-mails related to Dawn to see if there was any mention of Dawn’s absence, any unusual notes.

Diane imagined she was a hacker, not an actual master of programming languages and network security, but a hacker from a movie, wildly typing, every finger expertly leaping from key to key as a long string of important secrets streamed down the screen in old-fashioned computerized font, her eyes flicking left and right, taking in every number and letter and significant bit of information.

She imagined finding more than nothing.

She felt a light itch on the hand holding the mouse. In the mild glow of the computer screen was the tarantula, one leg up on her little finger. The tarantula paused as if it was hesitant to move farther into Diane’s physical space. She spasmed a bit out of shock, but then settled down when she was able to process it.

She would not have minded it, as Josh often appeared as any variety of arachnid, so she had no fear of spiders or most insects. She found it sweet that the animal appeared to be so shy or considerate.

In actuality, the tarantula saw large blocks of moving colors and shapes and sensed it had made contact with a creature much larger than itself. It felt great fear and was holding still out of the if-you-move-you-will-be-seen-and-if-you-are-seen-you-will-be-eaten instinct.

Diane continued looking up previous agendas and minutes from staff meetings. The tarantula took her movement as a threatening advance and scuttled away into the dark of the office.

Diane imagined finding great clues. She imagined film noir, dim but high-contrast light pressing through the blinds creating smoky, white slices across the pitch-black room. Diane imagined her face lit softly in blue by the computer monitor. She imagined not her own face but the face of a hardened detective wearing an archetypal hat.

She imagined being watched. She heard a soft thump from over her shoulder. She felt a warning zing up the back of her neck. She was being watched.

She did not turn her head. She did not move. She looked only with her eyes, pressed so far to the right it hurt her sinuses.

There was a shadow against the blinds. The blinds were closed. There was a person just on the other side.

The person was neither tall nor short. She did not know if the person could see her. They were not leaving.

If you are seen you will be eaten, the tarantula thought without human vocabulary.

Diane was unintentionally not breathing. When she noticed, she continued to hold her breath. Her hands stayed where they were.

There was a rapid clicking. The doorknob rattled back and forth. She couldn’t remember if she had locked it. She was eventually going to have to breathe. The doorknob rattled.

She breathed. Her breath sounded so loud. Was it always this loud?

The computer flashed to a screen saver. She did not know if this change in light was visible through the blinds.

Again the doorknob rattled. Then a knock. Another. Three hard taps on the door.

There was nothing she could do. She stayed where she was. Did nothing. The shadow returned to the window and stayed for a long moment. She didn’t know how long the moment was. It felt endless to her, motionless in the chair.

Then the shadow blurred as its source moved away from the window. Light began to come in around the blinds’ edges.

She heard a muffled creaking, like wheels. Wheels on a cart. A custodial cart. The sound moved away down the hall.

Diane imagined that custodians worked long hours, and would not be out of the office for some time. Hours maybe. She turned off the computer monitor and waited in Catharine’s office, quietly, alone, breathing.