Alice Isn't Dead Ep 2: Alice

Hey hey, Jeffrey Kraner from welcome to Night Vale here.

Apart from Night Vale, we make other podcasts.

If you're already a big Night Vale fan, check out Good Morning Night Vale, where cast members Meg Bashwiner, Symphony Sanders, and Hal Lublin break down each and every episode.

Or if you're looking for more weird fiction, there's Within the Wires, an immersive fiction podcast written by me and novelist Janina Mathewson.

Each season is a standalone tale told in the guise of found audio.

Finally, maybe you like horror movies or are scared of horror movies but are horror curious, check out Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number 9, where me and the voice of Night Vale Cecil Baldwin talk about a randomly drawn horror film.

We have new episodes every single week.

So that's Good Morning Nightvale Within the Wires and Random Horror 9.

Go to nightvalepresents.com for more or get those podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.

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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.

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.

Alice Isn't Dead by Joseph Fink.

Performed by Jasika Nicole.

Produced by Disparition.

Part 1, Chapter 2.

Alice.

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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.

Sign says a town is called Charlatan.

What kind of name for a town is that?

Nice enough.

Breakfast slash lunch restaurant called the Fernfeld.

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 Winds 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 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.

Charlatan.

The Fair and Field, Tradewinds, Tiki Motel.

But something's different.

It's darker now, obviously, later in the day, edging onto evening, but that's not it.

There's still a white Ford pickup truck 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 crossing.

He's turned away from me too.

His face pressed into the pole of a streetlight.

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 Charlatan.

Okay, Green, I'm going.

Going.

I'm putting my foot on the gas hard.

There's a deep black mud splashing against my tires.

It's running me in 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 of Tacoma.

A landslide in Thousand Oaks, a hostage situation in St.

Joseph.

Earnest 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 don't know.

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 Meryl's office, told her I didn't see a future between myself and prepaid debit cards.

She didn't say much in return.

It's all so clean now.

So

expected.

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 and its own spatial language.

And then there's desert that just...

isn't.

Flatlands.

It is the absence of everything else.

I suppose that this too has its 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 Charlatan again.

It's hours and miles away and again down the road.

Am I going in circles?

I know, I'm not.

All the other towns are passing along the way they say on the map.

Charlatan 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 see something burning at the gas station.

I think it might have been a person.

I don't want to think about which person.

I.

Oh, God.

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 insides 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 you are.

Maybe I'm chasing a ghost in a truck that says Bay and Creek Shipping.

Your 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?

Charlatan 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.

Everyone is crying.

The woman and her son are leaving room 204 at the Trade Winds 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.

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 brake.

I'm leaving Charlatan.

The man is gone.

In my mirror, I can see him crossing the crosswalk.

I'm leaving Charlatan 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 of flat land.

The loop is broken.

I don't think I'm going to see Charlatan 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.

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And now, the answer to our riddle.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Because on one side was everything 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.

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And check out nightvalepresents.com for our new Alice Isn't Dead t-shirts and posters.

This has been a production of Night Vale Presents.

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

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

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 Dude 2 is overrated.

It is.

Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unschooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-season, and 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.

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 welcometonightvale.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 diehard fan, and you, the Night Vale new kid alike.

So, feel comfortable bringing your family, your partner, your co-workers, 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 U.S.

plus Toronto tours right now at welcometonightvale.com/slash live.

And hey, see you soon.