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Did you know that Nightfall is not just a podcast, it's also books?

That's right.

It's like movies for your ears, but in written word form.

We have four script collections that are fully illustrated with behind-the-scenes intros for every single episode.

And then we have three novels.

The first Welcome to Nightfall novel, in which two women have their lives turned upside down by a mysterious man in a tan jacket.

We reveal the origin of that, the man man in the tan jacket in that one.

Then the New York Times best-selling thriller, It Devours, in which we really try to get to the bottom of a certain smiling god.

Finally, my favorite, the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home.

Part Pirate Adventure, Part Haunted House, all Faceless Old Woman.

Find the three novels and four script books wherever you get books.

Okay,

enjoy this episode of a podcast.

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Our moral compass has been demagnetized.

Welcome to Nightvale.

Night Vale.

Carlos and I went to see a new play the other night.

It's been ages since we went to the theater.

I think the last show we saw was Hamilton, which is a Tony and Pulitzer-winning hip-hop musical about figure skater Scott Hamilton, who died in a duel to fellow Olympian Katarina Witt.

Hamilton was wonderful, but live theater is so expensive.

It's a rare treat for us to get out of the house, what with the cost of tickets, plus dinner, parking, a babysitter, tuxedo rentals, and all that time spent watching YouTube makeup tutorials for jamming facial recognition cameras.

But my friend Charles Rayner invited us as his special guests to watch the premiere of a new play at the Nightvale Asylum, where Charles is the warden.

The play was called The Disappearance and Cover-Up of Flight 18713 as performed by the inmates of the Asylum of Nightvale under the direction of undercover agents from the National Safety and Transportation Bureau.

Or 1-8713 backslash NTSB for short.

I'm used to seeing plays at the new old opera house or in the high school auditorium.

There's also the Black Box Theater, which presents some of Nightvale's most experimental drama from young performance artists.

No one has seen any of these shows, or if they have, they've never emerged from that doorless black box, its walls perfectly smooth and faintly warm.

But this particular play was at the asylum itself.

The Night Vale Asylum perches atop a craggy peak in the sand wastes, its brutalist concrete walls intermittently slashed with slivers of windows.

I do not personally know anyone inside this intimidating institute other than Warden Rayner himself.

And I'll admit to being a bit nervous venturing out at night to a heavily guarded home for the criminally insane.

But Carlos put me at ease by rolling his eyes.

He said it was neurotypical ableism that makes us think this way.

That movies and TV shows often play up harmful tropes about psychopaths and lunatics planning daring escapes so that they can return to a life of criminal misdeeds.

Carlos explained that asylums are merely places where we hide away the people who most remind us of the inexplicable fragility of the human brain.

Driving out past the scrublands under an indigo sky, the full moon low over the horizon, backlighting the nightvale asylum atop its jagged, rocky ridge, my nerves returned.

I thought I heard coyotes howling in the distance, but it was the car stereo.

Carlos had had put on his favorite new Frank Ocean album called Various Animals Screaming.

When we arrived, Warden Raynor greeted us at the gates.

Two guards wearing Army-style green dress uniforms flanked him.

Their right breasts were laden with medals, chevrons, and stripes.

They each were armed with billy clubs, tasers, and slingshots.

And one of them was wearing an eye patch, but it was positioned in the middle of his forehead.

The warden escorted Carlos and me to our seats, which were simple wood chairs.

There were only 10 seats total, all in a single row along the rear wall.

There was no standard stage to speak of, no curtain.

The actors were all in costume in the center of the room, already in character.

The other seats were already filled.

Warden Rayner, Sheriff Sam, three of Sam's secret police officers, two of Sam's overt police officers, and an angel I had never met before, but who introduced themselves to me as Erica.

With a K, they added.

Nice to meet you, Erica, I said.

You got 10 bucks?

Erica asked.

Uh, sure, I said.

What for?

Not everyone gets to know everything, they said.

You either got it or you don't, man.

So I handed them 10 bucks, and minutes later, my lower back pain which has plagued me for the last six months was gone.

I looked back at Erika and I saw them wink at me or I think they winked.

They have 10 eyes so it could have just been an asynchronous blink.

It's hard to even tell what they're ever looking at.

The play began with an introduction by Warden Rayner, who welcomed us all to this unusual night.

The first ever performance of an original play by inmates in his asylum.

He introduced the writers/slash directors of the piece.

There were three of them, each dressed in an electric blue jumpsuit.

One of them had a blister on his upper lip, another a swollen red lump along the cuticle of his right index finger.

One of them had an unceasing nosebleed.

I recognized them as the agents from the National Safety and Transportation Bureau in Washington who had come to Knowle two months ago to investigate the disappearance of Delta Flight 18713.

Sheriff Sam had placed these agents undercover in the asylum to try to meet with an inmate named Doug Biondi who claimed to have pertinent information about the missing aircraft.

Upon remembering this, I flipped quickly through my playbill to find the ensemble members' names.

And there on the title page was the name Doug Biondi, who was cast as airplane pilot.

As the warden returned to his seat and before the house lights dimmed, I leaned over to Sheriff Sam and asked, how is the undercover operation going, Sheriff?

Sam glared at me and said, I've no idea what you mean.

You know, with the NTSB officers here in the asylum trying to interview Doug Biondi, I asked perhaps a little loudly for a theater.

The NTSB officers are criminally insane, Cecil, the sheriff said unironically and with more than a touch of scold in their tone.

That is why they are here.

They are a danger to themselves and others.

I had many more questions, but before I could say anything, the lights faded to black, and I heard the first voice of the play.

Find us,

called the voice in the dark.

Find us,

it echoed again.

A faint glow coated like frost the wild-eyed faces of the inmates on stage.

Their frantic visages made all the more manic by deep eyeliner, rouge, and lipstick.

Most were dressed in common street clothes, slacks, jeans, buttoned-down shirts, mid-length patterned skirts.

Two were dressed as flight attendants and one as the pilot.

I can only presume a small budget, as the uniforms worn by the latter groups were largely suggested by navy blue hats and little plastic wings on their lapels.

The pilot wore anachronistic aviation goggles, and so it was difficult for me to see and remember the face of this actor, this inmate, Doug Biondi, but I could see his mouth, which was unusually wide, the corners of his lips extending well past the width of his eyes.

He had an unusual number of teeth in his harsh smile, a smile which never abated,

even in his most somber of scenes.

We

survive,

said Biondi's pilot character.

We live.

We cannot die.

Not here.

Not in no

where.

He said it not like the vague concept of in no place, but know where.

Two words capitalized like the name of a specific place.

Each actor was seated in short, tight rows of four, a narrow aisle in between mimicking the floor plan of a common fuselage.

At the front of the troop sat Doug Biondi as airline pilot.

How did we get here?

In

no where?

said one of the passengers.

And how shall we return?

said another.

Only, they said in unison, when you find

us.

This last line they said with a quick twist of their necks towards the audience.

Then the scene shifted, the chairs cleared, and all of the actors stood in the profile of a Greek chorus.

They explained the flight from Detroit, the view of Lake Erie.

They told stories of different passengers, one who had a job interview, one who was looking for an apartment, another who went to Palm Springs on vacation.

They told the story of a bright light and a loud pop.

And suddenly, the engines were silent.

The plane felt still, unmoving, and then the chorus all pantomimed the leaning, concerned gaze out airplane windows.

Instead of tops of clouds, or distant shapes of great lakes, though,

they looked out and saw

children.

In a gymnasium, they heard the squeak of sneakers and the joyful cries of playful exercise.

It felt like minutes.

Maybe...

a whole hour.

They could not understand what they were seeing.

They could not comprehend an elementary school gym six miles above southern Canada.

But they were not six miles above southern Canada.

They were only a few feet above the American southwest, inside an airplane, inside an elementary school gymnasium, in a town called Nightvale.

And as quickly as they had appeared there,

they disappeared.

Off the radar, Gone from the skies.

Out of known existence.

Throughout this chorus, the speakers filled our ears with the joyful shouts of children, the hollow metallic thumps of red rubber balls, and the collective panicked inhale of 143 passengers and crew of a displaced plane.

And then it was silent.

And then it was dark.

A single green light appeared on the far wall, a dot, a blip, a radar blinking on, then off.

And the voice of Doug Biondi said,

We

are not passengers on a plane.

We

are actors.

We

are inmates of the asylum of Night Vale, but we do not belong here.

We

are people people who know truths.

People who know more than is allowed.

And for that,

we

are kept

in cages.

We

are fed poisoned pills and circular logic.

And at this point in the play, I felt movement in our small audience.

The warden had stood up and was shouting, This is not in the script, Doug.

But Doug spoke louder, faster.

I

am not insane, I say.

Only the insane would say such a thing, they say.

Then I am insane, I say.

Yes, you are they say.

I am trapped, I am framed, I spit out your poisoned pills, I reject your propagandist blather.

I know what I know, I say.

Hold him down,

they say.

Warden Rayner had gone to the techboard and turned on all the lights.

He shouted code blue into a radio receiver.

And we saw half a dozen security officers in their green, metal-laden uniforms lurch from the corners of the room, penning the ensemble of inmates into a tight circle in the center.

Return them to their rooms, the warden called.

But as the guards encroached, the three men from the NTSB stepped to the perimeter of the mass of inmates.

They were holding little plastic wings just like those on the costumes of the actors playing flight attendants.

One of the NTSB agents, the one with an unceasing nosebleed, opened the back of the wings, revealing a long, sharp sharp pin,

and thrust it into the neck of a guard.

Simultaneously, the other NTSB agents and several other actors did the same, and the guards fell to the ground.

One of the NTSB agents, the one with a blister on his upper lip, grabbed the keys and weapons from an unconscious officer.

Dearest audience, he said in verse, we mean them no harm.

Tis but asleep.

A little pharmaceutical rest for a uniformed guard who kept us confined, made life hard for us low-level agents doing our jobs, trapped neath the lies of a warden who robs our freedom and murders our spirit.

At last we can go, approach the wall, and clear it, but heed my warning, as we this coop fly.

Every man for himself.

Better run

or die.

And upon this last line, the alarm bells of the asylum rattled my ears and my nerves, shaking Carlos and me from our seats.

The inmates scattered in every direction as Sheriff Sam and their officers gave chase.

Carlos was nearly stepped on by one of the escapees, and as I bent to help him up, I was knocked over by two officers in full sprint.

When the commotion died down, I looked up and saw Erica still sitting calmly in their chair, and I asked, Erica, what is happening?

Erica looked down at their playbill

and then back at me and said,

I think it's intermission.

And now the weather.

And that's just your balance beam.

No one's gonna take this away from me.

No one's taking this away from me.

From me.

Walking, talking, spinning fast,

slipping down the hourglass.

Running at sunrise,

running from what you don't recognize.

And the further you fall

away

from your fate,

the harder it hits you in the face.

And that is a guarantee.

No one's gonna take this away from me.

No one's taking this away from me.

No one's taking this away from me.

Other than love,

stories are all we've got

Stars are each points of thought Spread out into space

Other than love

Stories are all we make

We are ships on an endless lake.

A smile lines on your face.

No one's gonna take them away.

No one's taking them away.

No one's taking them away.

You wake up

next to the one you chose so well.

You got no idea where you are.

And the colors on the walls themselves

in this unfamiliar room.

Silent lighting on the skyline.

How far, how far,

how far, how far away?

One, one thousand,

two, one thousand,

three, one thousand

boo

Hey, it's Jeffrey Kraner with a word from our sponsor.

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Someone else is there.

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In the water, surrounding you lurks a mythical beast with two large eyes and many long arms.

You're just now hearing of this beast, but you're not afraid because you don't plan to swim.

Though that water looks nice, You're good at talking yourself into things and soon you are in the sea frolicking and splashing.

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You chose to hit play on this podcast today.

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After 15 minutes, Carlos and I returned to our seats, hoping, but not truly believing it really was an intermission.

We've seen immersive theater before, like Sleep No More, an interactive show in New York City where audience members are placed inside a huge warehouse of actors dancing out the plot to Macbeth.

And at the end, everyone is granted the ability to live out the rest of their lives without sleep.

It's expensive and not for everyone, but totally worth it if immersive theater is your thing.

But this show

was not that.

No.

18713 backslash NTSB

had gone wrong.

Or

perhaps it had gone right.

Under the strict critique of plot structure, character development, and production value, the play failed terribly.

But as a piece of political or agitprop theater,

it was a rousing success.

The sheriff's secret police have placed roadblocks around the entire city, hoping to keep these supposedly dangerous inmates from leaving the area.

It is bad optics, to say the least, for the entire population of the town's asylum to escape custody.

But as Carlos and I left the theater space, we walked down the long corridors, cells and rooms open,

no security detail in sight.

In one of the cells, below a cot, was a journal.

It was the journal of Doug Biondi.

Page after page was filled with monologues, narratives, and conversations from various people.

People who were on a plane.

People in transit between checkpoints of life, between relationships.

between homes, between jobs, between vacation and work.

These stories were written as verbatim dialogue, as if Doug Biondi had transcribed them himself,

as if he could hear the voices of those very people.

Like former air traffic controller, Amelia Ana Alfaro.

I wonder if Doug heard the same voices.

The same passengers of the missing plane.

I had my intern Seamus go down to the library and look up public records on Doug Beondi, hoping to find some connection between Doug and Amelia, but Seamus still has yet to return with that information.

I even double-checked my playbill looking for Amelia's name and the cast or crew, but she was not listed there.

She was likely never in the asylum.

One thing I did find, though, was a note in the back of Doug's journal.

This note seemed to be in Doug's own voice.

They

tell us we are kept here for our safety, but they keep us here for their safety.

They fear

what will happen when the people on that plane are found.

But

I think

they have already been found.

They

should be afraid of what happens when the people on the plane

find

us.

Night Vale is on lockdown, so stay home and stay safe, listeners.

I do not believe any of us to be in danger from those who escaped the asylum, but I do believe us to be in danger of most everything else.

Stay tuned next for a series of audio clicks, which is definitely not federal agents tapping your radio.

Don't worry about it.

Good night, Nightvale.

Good night.

Welcome to Night Vale is a production of Night Vale Presents.

It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Kraner and produced by Dispirition.

The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin.

Original music by Disparition.

All of it can be found at disparition.info or at disparition.bandcamp.com.

This episode's weather was One One Thousand by Raina Rose.

Find out more at renaroose.com.

Comments, questions, email us at info at welcometonightvale.com or follow us on Twitter at Night Vale Radio or decide that it's time for a new you with a new outlook on life and new teeth.

Check out WelcometonNightvale.com for info about our upcoming live tour, The Haunting of Night Vale, and info about our upcoming novel, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home.

Today's proverb, what if?

And hear me out.

What if someone made a printer that worked every time you needed it to work?

Martha listens to her favorite band all the time.

In the car,

gym,

even sleeping.

So when they finally went on tour, Martha bundled her flight and hotel on Expedia to see them live.

She saved so much, she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them.

Sort of.

You were made to scream from the front row.

We were made to quietly save you more.

Expedia, made to travel.

Savings vary and subject to availability, flight inclusive packages are at all protected.

I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.

And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director.

You might know me from the League Veep or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.

We love movies and we come at them from different perspectives.

Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't.

He's too old.

Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.

It is.

Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.

We're talking Parasite the Home Alone, From Greece to the Dark Knight.

We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks.

We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look.

And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of, like Kanja and Hess.

So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.

Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to hit the follow button.

Hi, we're Meg Bashmaner and Joseph Fink of Welcome to Night Vale.

And on our new show, The Best Worst, we explore the golden age of television.

To do that, we're watching the IMDb viewer-rated best and worst episodes of classic TV shows.

The episode of Star Trek, where Beverly Crusher has sex with a ghost, the episode of The X-Files, where Scully gets attacked by a vicious house cat, and also the really good episodes, too.

What can we learn from the best and worst of great television?

Like, for example, is it really a bad episode, or do people just hate women?

The best worst worst.

Available wherever you get your podcasts.