Note: I am not a scientist like Carlos. I do brief Google searches on scientific things. Sorry. Also, there will be more of this, and the pace should pick up a bit in the future.

Until then, dear readers, welcome... and enjoy.

Radio Man . 1

I am writing this to gather my thoughts, to try to bring about some kind of order in this madness they call Night Vale.

This – this place is insane. There's no other word for it. Insane. Helicopters swooping all over, hooded figures lurking around… A forbidden dog park!? Really?

But the strangest part of this whole mess is the people of Night Vale. They're friendly enough. Well, some of them are. That old woman out by the car lot always smiles at me, and baked me cookies when I arrived.

To be clear, she was waiting at the door to my apartment when I moved in, holding the plate. She said she'd known I was coming. That the angels told her. I wasn't sure what to say to that, but she does seem very sweet, and the cookies were quite good. Gluten-free, she said. It's a shame how the mind deteriorates with age. I hope she has grandchildren, or a helpful neighbor, to look out for her.

You've got the odd ones who will stare with his eyes a little too wide, and speak just a little too loud, and afterwards you have to brush spit off your face… but that kind of person turns up anywhere, really. It's a small town. They're just a part of life.

And that… northern European man who dresses like an Indian chief from an old Western… I'm not sure what exactly he's going for, but he's not succeeding.

Still, this would be a fascinating environment for a psychologist. I saw something about a psychological association on a flyer at one point, but I can't imagine they're doing their job, if they even exist. I never spent much time in that field of study, but I have to admit I'm becoming intrigued.

The most interesting one has to be the radio host… I didn't catch his name at first, but he soon introduced himself as Cecil. With a long 'e.' The way I pronounced it when I was a boy, and had only ever read the word in books, before someone told me it wasn't pronounced that way. But his name is.

Anyway, this Cecil is on the radio at odd times, and I can't see any rhyme or reason to his show. He categorizes everything under normal headings, but then rambles on about monsters and horrors and impending doom… Or he plays a song. Or shares town gossip. Or humiliates me on air.

All right, I don't know what his problem is. Maybe it's a tradition, and he harasses every newcomer to town. He's barely acknowledged the existence of the rest of my lab team, though. The things he says… Openly mocking the way I look…

Well. I'm a grown man; a man of science. I am ABOVE such… childish games. I don't have to listen to that.

Except that I can't get the damn radio to turn off during his broadcasts. Not even when I unplug it.

And his voice… it's so hypnotic, so smooth and soothing. It always worms its way into my head, no matter how I try to ignore it.

I tried to just… just keep my head down and collect data. Soil samples, water samples, electromagnetic readings… Which are wholly fascinating themselves, and I could probably spend a lifetime researching these things alone. But there are so many unexplained lights in the sky, or in the earth, earthquakes, strange people that… that make me doubt their humanity… beings I can't… And whole periods of time that I can't remember, events lost to me forever…

I finally called a town meeting. The mayor wasn't hard to find, and she said I could do what I want as long as it didn't violate any of their laws or procedures. Sometimes, with all I've seen and heard, I'm not sure… but I haven't been taken by any of these hooded figures yet (ridiculous, really), so I managed to gather the town in the meeting hall.

For such a small town, their local news reporting is quite… extensive. There were reporters from the newspaper, the TV station, and of course, Cecil from the radio, sitting off to the left in the front row, his eyes never leaving me. From time to time he made a note. I wasn't trying to watch him, in fact quite the opposite, but he… I don't know, he's just one of those people who draws the attention of everyone in the room without even trying. I could have sworn his eyes changed color multiple times while I was speaking. Sometimes the shadows around him seemed to shift.

I should mention that I'm not much of a public speaker. I generally report my findings on paper, to avoid stumbling over my words and losing my place. But sometimes there's no way around it, and we all have to endure things we would rather not. Especially here. Still, with no one else here to document all these strange occurrences to the scientific community, it would be selfish of me not to perform extensive research on the single most scientifically interesting community in the US.

That's a phrase I used in the meeting. As I said, I'm not much of a speaker, but I was pleased with it.

And then Cecil, that… oh, I don't know what to call him. He made all these vague, menacing statements on the radio later that week. I think he's trying to drive me away. To scare me. Well it won't work. I'm onto his game, and I will not be intimidated. There might be all manner of terrors lurking in Night Vale, but I'll be damned if I'll let one weird guy bully me.

In the course of my investigations, I also discovered a house that seems to not actually exist. It looks perfectly normal on the outside, just like all the others in the Desert Creek subdivision. But it doesn't show up on any readings. None of our instruments can pick it up. Oh, it shows up in photographs. It's even tangible. But we tested it with the EMF meter and various EMF sensors, the electro static meter, ion counter, K-2 meter, thermal imager, UV meter, we even pulled out the sonar, just to see what would happen. Nothing. The one thing that DID detect something was the wind meter, which should have been absolutely silent when placed right up next to the building. But it read the wind blowing from the other side, and I could feel it on me, straight through the house. And the people who had come to gawk just nodded politely and wandered off.

I don't know what to make of any of this. The whole town goes against everything I know about our world.

It was my own fault for staying out in the sand wastes too long. All the seismic monitoring equipment was shrieking up a storm. The earth should have been leaping ten feet in the air, but it wasn't moving at all. I got so caught up in the anomaly that I didn't notice that it was getting dark. By the time I looked up, the stars were coming out.

On the drive back to my little apartment, the night darkened and Cecil came on the car radio (it won't pick up anything else anymore), and made some snide comment about submitting an insurance claim for the earthquakes that my equipment had been recording. I think he said something about my hair again, too. I was so mad, I could hardly see straight.

That's when the shapes started whizzing past me on both sides. Cars, I think. But going much faster than any car on the road. Their lights shone brightly as they sped this way and that around me. I jerked in surprise, pulling my feet off the pedals accidentally, and my car died. At first it wouldn't start back up, and I swear I had a minor heart attack as headlights came right at me. But finally the ignition caught. Ahead of me I could see the Arby's sign, the red-framed cowboy hat rising high into the night. And above that…

"Lights, seen in the sky above the Arby's," Cecil's deep, sonorous voice intoned, and I could feel the horror churning in my stomach as the lights above the sign swirled and pulsed. "Not the glowing sign of Arby's. Something higher, and beyond that. We know the difference. We've caught on to their game. We understand the 'lights above Arby's' game. Invaders from another world. Ladies and gentlemen, the future is here, and it's about a hundred feet above the Arby's."

That was the last straw. Science is my life, but I won't let it be my death. I made a sharp U-turn, driving straight through the spectral cars around me, panic rising, and roared off into the desert.

Try as I might to leave the lights behind, a phantom car would roar past me now and then. I couldn't see anyone driving them, but to be fair, I was trying to watch the road. The engine strained in protest, and the whole car began to shake. This job was supposed to pay for a new car, but I doubted that would ever happen at this point. On the radio, Cecil's voice seemed to be going in and out, as if rolling in a circle, far, then near, then far, over and over again.

The desert was dark, but at last I saw lights on the horizon. Almost drunk with relief, I headed straight for the city. I hadn't driven out that way before, but I thought it might be Desert Bluffs… Cecil's voice kept spinning near and far on the radio, like it was circling, like it was on a reel…

I almost didn't notice at first, but when I saw the Arby's sign and the lights above it, I slammed on the breaks so hard that if I hadn't been wearing my seat belt, I would have flown into the windshield. Again, I turned around and drove off into the night. The road must be a loop or… or something. But this time I watched the compass on my dashboard closely. The road kept true, and yet as soon as I had left Night Vale completely behind me, there it was in front of me again. For hours I tried to get out, getting more and more desperate.

Finally my car stopped accelerating, slowed, and then rolled to a stop, the fuel meter showing an empty tank. Right in front of me was the Arby's.

There was nothing else I could do. I pushed the car to the side of the road and trudged back to my little apartment.

In the morning we had a lot to discuss. One of my colleagues brought up the fact that the sun had not set at the appropriate time. I wasn't entirely surprised, though a part of me says that I should be. A young man was hanging around – he had a press tag that had 'JERRY' scribbled on it, and a Night Vale Radio pen… I ignored him. I couldn't decide whether I was furious or grateful that Cecil had sent his… minion… to do his dirty work. I am SO tired of that man.

However, my scientific duties led me back to him later in the afternoon. He does seem to be the town's hub of information. I was investigating the EMF detector. These are mainly used by the deluded, the superstitious, and the con artist to hunt 'ghosts,' but they do have actual, real-world uses in the scientific community as well. Particularly here.

I suppose saying it was odd is a moot point. But the numbers were all over the place, one minute zero, then off the charts, bouncing back and forth and everywhere in between. The strongest, most consistent readings, however, emanated from the radio station.

That didn't surprise me much.

When I came in, Cecil was in the booth with his big noise-cancelling headphones draped around his neck, leaning back in his chair. When he saw me, though, he quickly straightened up and gestured for me to come inside. I didn't want to. I don't have to put up with the likes of him. But the meter was beeping and whirring as it struggled to process all the data it was taking in, and I knew that, for the sake of science, I really had no choice.

"Carlos!" The radio host leaned forward, flushing slightly. "What brings you to our humble little broadcast station?" It wasn't his deep radio voice, but more rushed, more… eager, though for what, I couldn't say. He flashed an odd, sharp grin.

"I'm just here on business," I said curtly, keeping my tone as even as possible and not meeting his eyes.

"Oh come now! I'll get you some coffee, and when the weather's finished, you can stay for an interview!" His smile widened, and he leaned just a bit closer.

"No." Best to cut that kind of thing off as soon as it came up. "I'm testing for… materials." It was too complicated to explain in a hurry, and I wasn't about to get roped into an interview of any kind.

His face faltered a little, but then his smile returned. "That's an interesting contraption you've got there. Care to tell me about it?"

I could feel my forehead wrinkle up as I passed the meter quickly by the microphone. It chirped and squealed so loudly that I paused, then went back and held it closer. The closer I brought it, the closer Cecil leaned on the other side.

"That sounds just like a nest full of baby birds waking up," the other man said, his voice distant and dreamy.

I didn't know what to make of that. All I could do for a moment was swallow a couple of times.

"Y-you need to evacuate the building," I stammered, taking a shaky breath and stepping back. "It isn't safe here."

His smile turned just a touch smug. "But then who would be here to read the news?"

There's no arguing with those who will not hear. I took a second to gather myself, then immediately turned and walked out as fast as I could.

"Come back again some time," his smooth voice floated out after me. "Soon, I hope."

I spent that night looking for bus or train schedules online. There was a train that passed nearby, but it didn't stop. There were some very out-of-date bus schedules, and I have seen a bus station, even if I've never seen an actual bus coming or going… but there must be a way out of this place, and I will find it. I will NOT be consumed by the madness around me, nor will I give in to the threats of a… a radio man.