Alice Isn't Dead Ep 3: Nothing to See

Hey, y'all, it is Jeffrey Kraner speaking to you from the year 2025.

And did you know that Welcome to Night Vale is back out on tour?

We are.

We're going to be up in the northeast in the Boston, New York City area, going all the way over to the upper Midwest in Minnesota.

That's in July.

You kind of draw a line through there and you'll kind of see the towns we'll be hitting.

We'll also be doing Philly down to Florida in September.

And we'll be going from Austin all the way up through the middle of the country into Toronto, Canada in October.

And then we'll be doing the West Coast plus the Southwest plus Colorado in January of 2026.

You can find all of the show dates at welcome to nightvale.com/slash live.

Listen, this brand new live show is so much fun.

It is called Murder Night in Blood Forest, and it stars Cecil Baldwin, of course, Symphony Sanders, me, and live original music by Disparition, and who knows what other special guests may come along for the ride.

These tours are always so much fun, and they are for you, the Die Hard fan, and you, the Night Vale new kid alike.

So, feel comfortable bringing your family, your partner, your coworkers, your cat, whatever.

They don't got to know what a night veil is to like the show.

Tickets to all of these live shows are on sale now at welcometonightvale.com/slash live.

Don't let time slip away and miss us when we are in your town because otherwise we will all be sad.

Get your tickets to our live US plus Toronto tours right now at welcometonightveld.com slash live.

And hey, see you soon.

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This is episode three of 10 episodes we are putting out this year of our new show, Alice Isn't Dead.

This is the last of those episodes that we will put on the Nightville feed.

There will be seven more episodes.

To hear the rest of the story, please subscribe directly to Alice Isn't Dead, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Also, please note that this episode contains a fairly intense description of being physically attacked.

Well, I'm not in Kansas anymore.

I'm in Kansas is what I mean.

Sorry, Alice, you know I can't resist a bad joke.

You used to like that.

Maybe you still do.

Oh man, remember, remember that time when we drove down the coast and there was that taco stand called.

What was that?

What the hell was that?

Something just moved in the trailer.

I could hear it all the way up where I'm sitting.

Something just shifted shifted in the trailer.

What in the hell was

Alice Isn't Dead by Joseph Fink.

Performed by Jessica Nicole.

Produced by Disperation.

Part 1, Chapter 3.

Nothing to See.

This episode is brought to you by Harper Perennial, publishers of the New York Times best-selling novel Welcome to Night Vale, and coming in September, the Welcome to Night Vale episode collections volumes 1 and 2, now available for pre-order.

Every episode from the first two years of the show, illustrated and with behind-the-scenes intros.

Welcome to Nightvale.com to find out more.

Also, we now have t-shirts and posters of the Alice Isn't Dead truck skull logo.

Go to nightvalepresents.com to see them.

And of course, stay tuned after the show to find out the answer to the riddle we decided to go with today, which is, why did the chicken cross the road?

I pulled over and opened up the back.

Boxes of, I think, paper napkins or rolls of paper towels, I'm not sure which.

Shadows between the boxes, lots of places to hide.

You would have been so surprised.

But there's no one else to take over when I get scared, so I grabbed the heavy flashlight, the one like a club, and I went right in.

Pulled myself up and went through every inch of the trailer.

Just boxes of paper whatevers, nothing else.

I was imagining it.

Or maybe I hit something on the road and it bounced off the bottom.

Who knows?

I closed it back up and I'm moving on.

Kansas looks exactly like I thought it would.

There's something satisfying about that.

Grass forever.

Occasionally a metal windmill right out of the Wizard of Oz.

There were metal windmills in that, right?

In my memory there are, but it's been years.

Strip malls, of course, but that's everywhere.

Nothing to see, no matter where you look.

There's a relief in that.

And fuck.

I swear I heard it again.

How can I hear it so loudly?

So clearly.

There's someone pacing in my trailer.

I know there isn't, but I also know there is.

I can hear the footsteps as clearly as if someone were walking on the next floor up at a hotel, or in the hallway of my house when no one else was supposed to be home.

Loud and wrong and unwelcome.

I'm pulling over.

I'm.

I'm pulling over.

Yeah.

Nothing again.

Boxes and darkness and empty corners.

I'm not imagining anything, though.

I heard those noises loud as life.

Alice, I'm scared.

You know that I get scared.

It doesn't stop me from doing what I need to get done, but I'm scared pretty much all the time just of living

life,

of going on with a day-to-day.

And now I've got invisible monsters hiding behind me.

I'm all alone out here.

Grassland out to the end of it, nothing to see.

I'll keep driving.

What else is there?

A McDonald's in the middle of nowhere with a historical plaque next to it.

Some sort of school founded on that spot, a place of great import, but now a McDonald's where I peed.

I didn't even buy any food there at the historical McDonald's.

How much unpaid-for piss passes through the toilets of McDonald's worldwide?

Imagine it all.

I am.

Oh God, I can't stop.

Are they more restaurant or public toilet, numbers-wise?

I don't know.

It's gross, but also kind of interesting.

Some of these towns are so small.

A few houses, a bingo hall, a church, and a huge adult store.

They are very open about their adult stores out here.

Big billboards, huge barn-like structures, packed packed parking lots in the middle of the day, and across the way the churches.

Two gathering places to service all your needs.

And the bingo hall for recreation.

It's not a bad setup.

Every access of life.

And beyond that grass, on and on and on, until not.

Oh, God, am I being condescending?

I am, aren't I?

Shit.

Another sound.

There's someone in my trailer, I know there is.

I can hear them moving.

Shifting boxes around.

I am not okay about this.

Heavy boots on the floor.

Who is back there?

Why aren't they back there when I stop to look?

I'm not gonna stop this time.

I'm gonna keep on driving.

There's no way from there to here, anyway.

Even if someone was in there, no way for them to get out of there and into my cab.

I'm fine.

I'm okay.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

Right, Alice?

Getting dark.

And when it gets dark over the grass, it really gets dark.

Like being on an ocean.

The distant lights of towns out there like ships.

There's only a last, lingering orange on the horizon, and it's just me on this road.

The movement and footsteps have continued.

It's like they're trying to provoke me, get me to stop and look again, but I won't fall for it.

I'll keep driving until

until I don't know.

I'll have to stop driving eventually, and when I look next time, I don't think I will see nothing.

I think I finally will see.

Oh, Alice.

I'm so scared.

That's between you and me, though.

Don't need to tell our friend in the back.

Heavy boots on the trailer floor.

I don't hear it.

I don't hear it.

I do.

Alright, I'm stopping.

I'm going to look again.

I'm bringing the flashlight, heavy as a club.

I really need it now.

It's so dark out.

Haven't seen that many cars on this road.

Just me.

Great.

Okay, I'm stopping.

Here I go.

Okay.

I'll just tell like it happened.

That's what I'll do.

I don't know what it means.

What it means for me, what it means for you.

I'll...

Jesus.

Okay.

I pulled off in the parking lot of a target.

I figured if nothing else, I'd have the protection of crowds, of the public.

If nothing else, the lights.

It would keep me calm after the long empty of the grassland.

I opened opened up the back, and there was no need to look around, no searching, because there he was, the source of the noise.

The thistle man, from the gas station a couple months ago.

A yellow baseball hat, yellow fingernails, skin that didn't fit right, that stretched in grotesque ways over a skeleton that didn't seem human.

Sharp teeth, and not sharp enough to be fangs, but not not fangs.

Eyes that were yellow and pink right to the dark center of them.

Polo shirt dirty, just the word thistle on the right breast.

You miss me?

He asked.

He sounded like he was having fun.

The boxes of paper towels were torn to shreds like they'd been attacked by a huge cat.

Giant claw marks.

He hopped down onto the asphalt and I backed up.

Suddenly, crowds didn't feel like much protection.

He smelled like decay.

Not bad, but like fruit decomposing into soil.

Like mulch.

Where do you think you're going?

He said.

I mean, where would you even go that I couldn't follow?

Don't you know who I work for?

He indicated the thistle on his pit-stained shirt.

He was sweating a thick, pungent mildew.

There are people all over this parking lot.

Hundreds of them, I said.

I was exaggerating.

It was a target parking lot, but it was also very late and in the middle of nowhere.

There were cars, yes, and people, yes, they were there, but not in great numbers.

Certainly not hundreds.

Still enough, I hoped.

Enough.

He laughed.

People, he said, people won't help you.

There's not a person in this world who would help you.

Is he right, Alice?

Is there not a person in this world who would help me?

I hope not.

I hope not.

He took my arm.

I don't know how he got that close, but he was there.

And he did not grab, he took, like a dance partner, gentle but insistent, and then he pushed me up against the truck.

The smell was overpowering.

Up close, his skin writhed like there were insects crawling back and forth just under it.

His teeth were rotten.

His tongue was swollen and covered in a white film.

He had me.

That was all there was to it.

His arm was against my throat, and he was pushing just enough to let me know that he could do it, but not enough to cut off air.

I drew and released frightened breaths against the weight of him.

I kicked for the crotch, of course, but it was like he felt nothing.

And then I just flailed at him.

I still had that flashlight, and though my swing was restricted, I gave him a few good ones.

His body dented with the blows, but he didn't stop smiling, didn't even grunt, pushed just a little harder on my throat.

The flashlight, heavy as a club, dropped out of my hand and rolled uselessly away.

And now my breath was truly shallow because of the pressure.

He said, I could take a big bite of you right now and it would be over.

I could devour you.

And then what would become of Alice?

He knew about you.

I don't know what else he knew.

I gave up then.

I shouldn't have, but I was out of energy.

I'd been searching for you for so long.

All those miles upon me and now this monster.

And then.

And then I didn't give up.

I gathered myself.

Fuck the Thistleman.

I kicked and I screamed and I used every bit of energy and movement I had.

I wouldn't go down quiet.

I could see people all over the parking lot turning and looking.

Even if I couldn't fight him, I could get them to look, get them to see.

A family, a father and two kids, and the kids were pointing, and the father was on his phone.

He was talking urgently and gesturing towards me, and still I fought.

Right up until the siren, right up.

The police car pulled up.

The policeman got out.

No partner.

He was alone.

Big man, not big as in muscular or big as in fat, just big, towering.

The thistle man let me go.

I stumbled a few paces away where he wouldn't be able to easily grab me.

The policeman walked over, but he didn't seem in a hurry, didn't seem worried about the thistle man or that he had just been attacking me.

What seems to be the problem here?

He said, sounding bored.

I told him, in quick, gasping sentences about the noises and the stopping and the thistleman and the air, the lack of air, the struggle.

He frowned, didn't meet my eyes.

That true?

He said to the thistleman, who hadn't moved, hadn't interrupted, had leaned with cross arms on my truck.

The thistleman just laughed.

Doesn't sound like it's true, said the policeman.

I didn't know what to do.

On either side of me, the policeman and the thistleman, not a person in the world who would help me.

The policeman said, if he has to come talk to you, then you've been asking the wrong questions.

He lumbered back over to a squad car, opened the door.

My advice, he said, is stop asking the wrong questions.

He tipped his hat at the thistle man.

You have a nice night now.

The thistleman did a lazy wave in return.

I will, officer, he said.

You know I will.

And the police car drove away.

The thistle man made no move to attack me again.

The message had been delivered.

You see now, he said.

So go home.

Listen, he seemed suddenly concerned, worried for me even.

You can still go home.

Then the wolf grin returned.

Any trace of human emotion gone from him.

And he turned and walked away into the night.

To the lit edges of the target parking lot and into the thin landscaped border and the vacant grassland beyond.

And me, I'm alive.

I'm back on the road and I'm alive.

He's not right.

I can't go home.

Home isn't a place.

Home was a person.

I can't go home.

A police car has been following

Man, listen to me.

I sound crazy.

Or the world does.

The world sounds crazy.

I've made enemies today, and I think things will be getting more difficult for me from here on out.

There's noise again in my trailer.

Roaring and shifting like an enormous angry animal.

I'm not going to stop.

I can't go home, Alice.

I can only go.

I can only go on.

And on and on and on.

Until not.

The noise has stopped.

The police car is turning off the highway.

They let me off with a warning, I guess.

I guess it's a warning I'm going to ignore.

This episode was brought to you by Harper Perennial.

Coming in September from Harper Perennial are the first two episode collections of the Welcome to Nightfall podcast.

Volume 1, Mostly Void, Partially Stars, and Volume 2, The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe.

Along with every episode from the show's first two years, these books feature introductions by me, Joseph Fink, and my Nightvale co-writer Jeffrey Kraner, behind-the-scenes commentary by the people behind the show, like Cecil Baldwin and Dylan Marin, and original and truly surreal and beautiful illustrations by Jessica Hayworth.

These books are absolute must-haves, whether you're a fan of the podcast or just want to discover for the first time the wonderful world of Night Vale.

Available now for pre-order.

For more information, please visit welcometonightvale.com or just click on the link in this episode's description.

And now, the answer to our riddle.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Because when he woke up, he said, no, I would never cross that road.

He ate beans for breakfast and snorted at those who crossed.

And when noon came around, he said, I would never cross that road.

He ate leaves for lunch and laughed at those who crossed.

And when the evening came, he asked one of the crossers, say, what's so good about the other side?

And the crosser waved him away and said, what do you care?

Someone like you would never cross this road.

And that made him angry, so he crossed the road out of spite.

The other side was okay.

He ate beans for dinner.

And that's why the chicken crossed the road.

Pre-order the Nightville episodes collections at welcome to nightvale.com and check out nightvalepresents.com for Alice Isn't Dead t-shirts and posters.

This has been a production of Nightvale Presents.

Find out more about us and our shows at nightvalepresents.com.

Are you squeamish about horror movies, but kind of want to know what happens?

Or are you a horror lover who likes thoughtful conversation about your favorite genre?

Join me, Jeffrey Kraner, and my friend from Welcome to Nightville, Cecil Baldwin, for our weekly podcast, Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9, where we watch and discuss horror movies in a random order.

Find, here's the short version, Random Horror 9, wherever you get your podcasts.

Boo.