Chapter Two

The radio station, which had seemed smaller from afar, loomed in front of Leon. It was a large gray building, with the broadcasting tower reaching out high above it. The purple light blinked at the top of it, casting a hue around it, even in the hot sun that beat down on the town.

A sign next to the door boasted "Night Vale Community Radio," and in smaller lettering, as if in ammendum, "A Division of Strexcorp," and a Smart Car with the radio station's name was parked out front. It had all sorts of antennae coming from the back side of it, for broadcasting on the go. Leon walked up the couple of steps to the door of the radio station, but then he noticed something. The radio station had its signs, both on the building and on the car, but neither of the signs boasted a radio frequency that they could be heard on. He figured it was nothing, that the people in this town just knew the frequency of their radio station, and he opened the door.

The inside of the radio station was very dark, and Leon's eyes had to take a minute to adjust to the loss of light. Once they did adjust, he could see a long, narrow hallway stretching out in front of him. He crept down it quietly, and found that it was notably cooler in the building than it was outside.

There were a few unlabeled wooden doors that were on both sides of the hallway, and when Leon tried opening them, he found that they were locked. One of them held a small combination lock underneath the door handle, though the rest of them held plain keyholes. He walked to the end of the hallway, and found himself facing a door that was slightly more ornate than the other, plain doors that were throughout the hallway. A small plaque on the door indicated that it was the office of the station management. Leon tried the doorknob, but found that this door, too, was locked.

Leon let out a sigh of frustration, and turned to the door directly to the right of the station management's door, on the right side of the hallway. He was sure that it would be locked, too, just like the rest of the doors, but to his surprise, it swung open easily. He stepped inside only to find it was even darker in there. He groped the wall next to the door for a light switch until he found one, and flipped it on.

The room was illuminated by a single ornate lamp on a small table at the opposite wall. The rest of the room was not like anything Leon would have expected to find inside of a radio station. It was a very old, very ornate living room. There was a very painstakingly upholstered couch that stood on clawed feet, an overstuffed straight-backed chair, and a once-polished oval coffee table. A fireplace was against the back wall, and a couple of bookshelves were placed against the walls in different parts of the room. A couple of paintings, in large gold frames hung on the walls, all with paintings in a dark reddish tone.

It took Leon a moment before he realized what bothered him about this room, other than the fact that it seemed very out of place in a radio station: there was no dust. The entire room was, although it did seem unused and old, immaculately clean. Leon walked slowly around the room, and inspected the furniture. It all seemed to be in good shape, apart from its age. He turned to the nearest painting on the wall.

The painting seemed to be a bloody religious painting, with the image of a cross superimposed in the background. In the foreground, a mass of people were bludgeoning a man with rocks and spears. The man had two heads, and eyes not only on his head, but on his chest, arms, and the rest of his body. A couple of the eyes seemed to blink at him, and Leon took a step back. He turned away from the painting, and went to the fireplace instead.

The hearth was completely clean, with no indication that a fire had been made there in a very long time. There was nothing on the mantle of the fireplace, but above it was a large portrait of not someone, but something. It was a large, dark mass, with tentacles and limbs that seemed to sprout out of nowhere in particular. In the center of the being was a large purple eye, an eye that seemed to be the same color as the light that lit up the top of the broadcasting tower. The monster in the portrait must have had some meaning to the people of the radio station, for it to have such a renowned place in the room, over the fireplace.

Upon closer inspection, Leon could see that the eye was not simply an eye. The pupil, a round black dot in the center of the purple ellipse, was raised slightly above the rest of the painting. This either meant that there was a bit of pain that stuck there in a lump when the painting was created, or…

"It's a button," Leon muttered to himself. He pushed his thumb against it, and felt it depress, and something behind it click. The fireplace lit up in flames, and Leon took a startled step backward.

It was a gas stove, without any sort of protection around it. It must have been installed a while ago, for it to not have any sort of enclosure for safety. Leon could feel the room heating up already, and he turned around. The light of the fire danced off of the glossy surfaces of the other paintings in the room, and Leon returned to the painting of the man underneath the cross. The eyes on his body seemed to glint in the light, and Leon could now see red eyes on the faces of the attackers.

Leon went on to look at another of the paintings, and saw that there was a crowd in this one, too. It seemed to be citizens of an early Night Vale or a similar desert town, gathered at some sort of town meeting. Almost every single person in the picture seemed angry, and the backdrop to the picture was an almost comic portrayal of a gold town in the old West. A church stood in the back of the painting, two gold crosses adorning its steeple.

Leon decided that, as he was already looking at the paintings, that he would check out the last one in the room. There was a smaller painting with a painting of a farm scene, in what could have been a New England valley. There were a couple of animals in the scene, but all of them seemed to be turned away. There was an enclosure around the animals, penning them in. Upon closer inspection, Leon could see that the fence was actually made up of three crosses, with ropes or chains between them. The crosses were illuminated by the flickering fire.

Leon took a step back and looked at the paintings. He looked around the edges for any sort of hidden switches, but he could find none. He got down on his hands and knees and checked underneath the furniture—there was no trapdoor or hidden anything. He looked again at the paintings, and except for the creepy eyes that seemed to blink in the pictures, he could really tell nothing that was out of place. And yet, why would this room be here, be like this?

Then, he thought of the stories that Claire had told him, of the tricks and traps that she had gone through on Rockfort Island. The crazy man that ran the prison had laid traps and set up puzzles inside of his mansion, and that was the only way to find the way through it. And Chris had experienced the same thing, back at the Spencer Mansion, before the Raccoon City catastrophe. This could be like that—there could be a hidden puzzle that lay directly in front of his eyes.

Leon thought back to the doors in the hallway. They had required keys, and he was, so far, unable to find one. But not all of them had required keys—one of them had a combination, with three spots for numbers to be entered. Since there was really nothing in the hallway, and the door to the living room that he was currently in seemed to be the only one unlocked, he had to guess that the clues must be in here.

He looked to the paintings on the wall, and the eyes in the first painting blinked at him again. A chill ran down his spine, despite the fire going in the room. That was when it hit him.

Leon walked up to the painting and quickly counted the eyes that were on the many-eyed man who was being beaten. He moved to the next painting and counted the eyes in the angry mob of people. There were no eyes in the third painting, as the animals were facing away from the frame.

He went back out into the hallway, and down to the door with the combination lock. He thumbed in the numbers, the number of crosses in each picture telling him the order in which they should go. 9-7-0. He took a breath, felt for his gun in its holster, to make sure that he had it ready, just in case, and turned the doorknob. He could feel it click as the lock opened, and the door swung inward.