Chapter Text
[Tape clicks on]
MARTIN
You know, I’m starting to see why Getrude never did anything with these. Here’s one: “Statement of Joshua Crayton, regarding his experiences as a waterfall.”
BASIRA
Are you sure that’s not a typo? It wasn’t meant to be “at” a waterfall?
MARTIN
It’s handwritten. And… yep, he goes on to describe what it’s like to be a waterfall.
BASIRA
That doesn’t sound helpful.
MARTIN
Not in the slightest.
[Papers shuffling]
MARTIN
[Scoffs] “Statement of John Peters”—and then he’s actually written you know, the farmer— “regarding crop circles.” It starts off with “I grow invisible corn.”
BASIRA
I’ll do you one better. “Statement of Josefina Ortiz, regarding the tiered heavens and the hierarchy of angels.”
MARTIN
How about the statement of Telly Barber, about—what else? A bad haircut.
BASIRA
[Chuckles] Seriously? A haircut?
MARTIN
I mean, what else would someone who goes by “Telly Barber” talk about?
[Both laugh]
BASIRA
God, these are all ridiculous.
MARTIN
Tell me about it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was Gertrude’s idea of a joke.
[More papers shuffling]
BASIRA
Huh.
Say, Martin, have you ever heard of a little Russian village called… [slowly, unfamiliar with the pronunciation] Nulogorsk?
MARTIN
I don’t think so, but I’m hardly an expert. Why do you ask?
BASIRA
Because if this says what I think it does, it got obliterated by a bomb back in the early eighties.
MARTIN
Christ, that’s awful.
BASIRA
A nuclear bomb.
MARTIN
Wait, what? That would have started World War Three!
BASIRA
Yep.
MARTIN
Which would have been bad. Like, end of humanity bad!
BASIRA
Yep.
Hand me that tape recorder, will you? I want to get this one down.
[Clears throat] Statement of Natalya Ustinova, regarding the destruction of the town of Nulogorsk in September of 1983. Statement number 0032508, 25th August, 2003. Basira Hussain recording.
BASIRA (STATEMENT)
I grew up in a little seaside village called Nulogorsk. Don’t bother looking it up—you won’t find anything. It’s not on any maps, even from before the end. There are no mentions of it in any news articles, no records of anyone who ever lived there. No evidence it ever existed at all. But I lived there.
It was beautiful. Idyllic, even—and isolated. To the east, the sea spread out over the horizon, sparkling under the most spectacular sunrises I’ve ever seen. To the west, mountains rose in towering peaks, throwing their shadows like warm blankets over the village at dusk, and shielding us from everything that lay beyond. My grandfather likened it to being nestled in the hand of God. Nulogorsk might as well have been the whole world.
Not that we didn’t have contact with other places. The crews of the fishing boats that came in every afternoon often had tales of far-distant lands and their customs and peoples. Those sailors would regale us with tales of adventure and danger and romance out in the wide world beyond, and while I’m sure many of them were exaggerated for dramatic effect, I was enthralled. Even my grandfather, always so stoic and practical, enjoyed them.
We had trade, too, and occasional visitors. And though it never really occurred to me, as I was a child when I lived there, I’m sure we must have fallen under some larger government. It would have been the Soviet Union at the time, I suppose.
We even had a “sister city” on the other side of the world: a desert town called Night Vale, somewhere in America. We would trade gifts and share local news, and residents would sometimes write to each other. I even had a pen pal in Night Vale—a little girl named Annie, I think, or Abby. Something like that.
But for the first nine years of my life, I never left Nulogorsk. I’m sure I must have gone to school. There must have been winters, and springs, and autumns. Christmases and Easters. All I can remember, though, are the summers.
I remember spending bright, hot days on the beach with my grandfather. We would wade in the tide pools, and the water would be just that perfect temperature where you could barely tell you were standing in it, until you lifted your foot out and the breeze blew cool over your wet skin. Warm as blood, Grandfather called it. I would hop from rock to rock, splashing and slipping and giggling, and we would gather up the clams that nestled in the pools, and take them home in buckets and cook them up for dinner.
We would listen to the radio while we ate: news, music, sports, whatever he felt like. I never really paid attention to anything that wasn’t music. I didn’t understand sports, nor did I really care, and the news was grown-up stuff that I couldn’t be bothered to worry about. It was just background noise to me, a pleasant set dressing for our lazy, lovely summer evenings.
Until one day… it wasn’t.
It was September of 1983. The summer was drawing near to autumn, and the evening had grown chilly. Music played on the radio, a big orchestral piece with the strings and woodwinds taking off like a flock of fluttering birds while the brasses declaimed a triumphant fanfare. We had finished our dinner and cleared away the dishes. I was writing a letter to Abby—yes, that was her name, Abby Palmer—while Grandfather sat across from me, reading the paper and tapping his foot in time with the orchestra. But just as the music swelled and slowed to a solemn, stately hymn, I began to hear something else. Something strident and piercing, coming not from the radio, but from outside. Sirens, erupting all over town.
The music stopped suddenly, and Grandfather shot to his feet, his newspaper falling to the floor and the pages scattering. I remember watching it fall, as if in slow-motion. The sound it made as it hit the tiles startled me.
On the radio, a voice began to speak, calmly at first, then rising in steadily increasing urgency. I can’t remember the words, but only the rising tone of that voice as he spoke faster and faster, urgency becoming alarm becoming panic. Grandfather turned slowly toward the window, that same terror written, plain and stark, across his face.
I think that was what scared me the most. My grandfather was my rock, my sanctuary, a monument of calm and reason in the chaotically emotional world of my childhood. If I was sad or scared or hurt, he was always there to comfort me and make me smile again. I could always count on him to be steady and strong. He made all the bad things better. Seeing him show fear… well, in my mind, that could only mean it was the end of the world.
In a way, I guess, it was.
Have you ever been near a lightning strike? Maybe it hit a tree just outside your window, or the utility pole across the street. There’s that impossibly bright flash, and at the same instant, the crack of thunder, higher-pitched than you think it should be, that sounds like the whole world is splitting apart. For the blink of an eye, there is nothing but light and noise.
Now imagine that a thousand, thousand, thousand of those lightning bolts struck at once. The flash was so searingly bright that walls became windows, wood and plaster and bricks just insufficient to stop the sheer barrage of light. And the sound! That blinding, deafening, annihilating roar that seemed to shake the foundations of reality itself. It ripped through me like a blazing wind. And after an eternal and agonizing instant, everything went dark again, and quiet.
I thought I was dead. I should have been dead. There is no possible way I could have survived that blast.
But the next thing I knew, I was floating in darkness. No, not floating. Lying. I was lying down, in a bed, and I could hear a telephone ringing somewhere. I opened my eyes, and found myself in a hospital room. Nobody could tell me where my grandfather was, or any of my family. They asked me where I was from, over and over again, but they never believed me.
There’s no such place as Nulogorsk, they said. There never has been.
BASIRA
[Pages shuffling, flipping over and back] Um, statement ends? There’s no record of any sort of follow-up. Just a note from Gertrude that says “Nulogorsk = Zeroville? Likely fraudulent.”
MARTIN
Great. So how, exactly, does this help us get John back?
BASIRA
Well, Night Vale supposedly doesn’t exist, either, right? So however this… [flips page] Natalya Ustinova made it here from Nulogorsk, maybe we start there. Do the research Gertrude never bothered with.
MARTIN
[Dubiously] It’s more than we had to go on before, I guess.
BASIRA
Look, I’ll see if I can track her down, maybe get a follow-up interview. You can keep digging through these statements in case there’s anything else we can use. I’ll keep you updated.
MARTIN
Righto.
[Door opens, closes]
[A beat, then a mobile phone dialling. It goes straight to voicemail without ringing.]
ARCHIVIST (RECORDING)
You have reached Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Mag—
[Faint beep as Martin hangs up]
MARTIN
[Near tears] Damn it, John.
[Tape clicks off]