Let that be a lesson for you. Specifically a piano lesson. Remember to do your scales every morning. Welcome to Night Vale

Listeners, what a situation we find ourselves in, as a community.

Who could have seen it coming? After a year of investigating the murders of Marcus Vanston and Jalen Rutherford, we had the solution. Jalen killed Marcus with the help of his ghost accomplice who locked the room from the inside, thus providing the locked room part of the locked room mystery.

As for Jalen, he was murdered by Harrison Kip and replaced by a double Jalen, who is now in jail awaiting trial for his double’s crimes. So far, simple murder mystery stuff, like you’d read in any Nicholas Sparks novel.

But then Dana called me with a frankly confusing message. She told me that we got the murder all wrong. That she had discovered new information that turned everything on its head. I rushed down to the jail to meet her, but by the time I got there, she had vanished, and no one knew where she went.

What if she was right? What if there was more to this murder than we understood? And what if she has been silenced so she couldn’t tell us the truth of the situation?

Unfortunately, the Jalen who is in jail knows nothing, as he is from a different version of our universe, one where Marcus Vanston was still murdered but in a normal way on the street, instead of in a weird way in a locked room.

In the absence of Dana, I have no choice but to take the mantle of the investigation into my own hands. After all, I am a journalist, and what is a journalist but a detective with better fashion sense?

Don’t worry Dana. I will not disappoint you. I will find out who the real murderer is, and I will find where you have been taken. Or my name is not Cecil Palmer.

Which it is.

DANA

This is Dana Cardinal, reporting. I know who is responsible for this murder, and I must go confront them directly. I carefully search every inch of the floor. There must be something here, and sure enough, under a carpet in the corner, there is a trapdoor. Painted a rich purple. It is unlocked. It opens with a loud groan. Inside there is a staircase. I take the staircase.

The stairs start wooden and simple. Stairs to any basement. And then I reach a marble stair, and from then on, the stairs become wide, decorated on the railings with gold, hung with ornate lamps. I keep going. One thousand steps. Two thousand. The stairs become simple again. Clay. There is no light now. I pull out the flashlight I had thought to bring. I brought no other supplies. I’m not sure supplies matter where I’m going. I continue to descend.

CECIL

If we were wrong about the conclusion, then we must start over from the beginning, because we have no idea where in the course of the investigation the mistake was made.

So let’s look at the evidence. The room was locked from the inside. Marcus Vanston was found dead, although no cause of death was ever deduced, and no one even knew it was possible to kill an angel.

Now, the locked room element would seem to have been solved. Jalen Rutherford, the one from our world, worked closely with Marcus Vanston and so had a key to the private library. And he was colluding with Maisie Cross, a ghost from Pine Cliff with a long record in extortion, blackmail, and poltergeisting. A simple plan. Using Jalen’s key, she locked the door from the inside. And then wafted, ghostily, through the walls. Job done.

But that makes two assumptions. The first is that the key Jalen possessed was used to lock that door. But looking at the crime scene photos and reports, I am seeing something startling that we all had missed. The door to the room was locked on the inside, yes, but not with the lock in the door. No, instead there was a small red padlock, of a design that I have never seen before. In fact, it has no keyhole or combination wheel, no visible way of unlocking at all. So there goes the key.

And then there is the question of ghosts. Even if the key had been used, could Maisie Cross have been the one to use it? For that, I bring in an expert witness, who is not a ghost, but shares much of Maisie’s physical properties. Deb, the Sentient Patch of Haze.

DEB

Hiya Cecil. So yeah so. We creatures of non-corporeal bodies do have a number of advantages over you disgusting meat sacks. One might even say we are vastly superior creatures. But in terms of physical interactions with the world, our fine motor skills are about the same as a cat's. We're pretty much limited to scratching on walls and knocking stuff over. It is of my opinion that a ghost could not hold a key, lock a door, or murder a billionaire angel. As much as being able to do those things would be cool as heck.

So no, Maisie Cross is innocent. Of murder. She is still very guilty of extortion, blackmail, and many many counts of poltergeisting.

CECIL

Thank you Deb. And that’s where we’re left. Jalen and Maisie could not have sealed that door from the inside, which means they could not have killed Marcus Vanston. The question remains: who did?

DANA

The stairs end and I am in a small cave. Just tall enough for me to stand, just wide enough for me to walk. Looking back, I cannot see the top of the stairs. But no matter, I am going forward for now. I walk along the dry sandy floor of the cave. It turns and twists, but there is only ever one passage, and so I cannot get lost. It is the only consolation I have.

Finally I reach the end of the cave. There is a room that smells like cinnamon and a little bit like char. Like many things have been burned in this room. The walls are covered in drawings. They are old, perhaps older than humanity, but preserved by this lightless, airless chamber. They depict every possible manner of dying. And there are so many ways. They are illustrated with loving realism by a true talent. I feel dizzy looking at them. I want to flee. I will not flee.

In the center of the room is an ancient stone well. I know that who I am searching for is at the bottom of the well. I peer over the edge and see nothing in its darkness. My own flashlight only goes ten feet down. The air coming from the well smells sweet, but not in a good way. It is the sweet of fermenting fruit, of things going a little too far. I did not bring any sort of ladder or rope and so what else can I do? I swing one leg over, and then the other, I climb into the well, my fingers gripping painfully onto the rock.

CECIL

Without any clear direction, and with no new evidence, I must go to the only witness who saw the actual moment of murder. Dana’s brother, Ethan Cardinal.

I found him in Grove Park, feeding the ducks. He didn’t make eye contact with me, did not say hello.

“I’m sorry to do this,” I told him.

“Then don’t,” he said.

“I have to know who killed Marcus Vanston,” I said.

Ethan shrugged. “God knows who killed him. Leave me alone.”

“No, you know who killed him. Why won’t you tell anyone?”

Ethan turned to me. His eyes were heavy lidded and red. “Every time I try to sleep, I see the murder again. I see it over and over. It is the worst thing I have ever seen, that I ever could see. I wake up screaming but I’m not even asleep, I’m just screaming. I scream and scream instead of sleeping,” Ethan told me.

“Maybe if you helped catch the person, you would feel better,” I said.

He shook his head. But then he said. “If you want to know who killed Marcus Vanston, you need to start with the real question.”

I struggled to think what that could be. “Why he was killed?” I suggested.

“No, no,” Ethan said. “The why could not be more obvious. No Cecil, you must consider: how was Marcus Vanston killed? How do you kill an angel? Figure that out, and you’ll have solved the murder. Then you’ll know the same terrible truth that I do. Then you’ll scream. Scream and scream instead of sleeping.”

He turned away, stopped talking, and continued to feed the ducks.

DANA

The climb down the well is painful. My fingers slide on the rocks, my feet wedge awkwardly into cracks in the wall. My arms and legs are covered in friction burns. I clamp my teeth together, my jaw hurts, my whole body hurts.

And then: my feet find the bottom. There is no water in this well. I don’t think there ever was. It’s not that kind of well. The bottom is flat cobblestones. I flick my flashlight around and find a small hole in the wall against the floor. I would be crazy to try to crawl through there. I guess I’m crazy. I crawl through. Have you ever seen those caving videos where people are wedged sideways, faces distorted by the rock around them, and you think, who would ever do that? Well, I envy those people for how roomy their caves are. I hold my breath because I am too big to bring air filled lungs through this passage, and I pull myself frantically through the tiny crack. Fortunately, the passage is not long, and I emerge in my destination.

I am on a dark planet, lit by no sun. There is a dark ocean near me, waves like canyons, the roar of water like a wounded animal. The shore is scattered with rocks, grey and featureless. No sign of the well leading up, only a hole in one of the rocks from which I have just emerged. And hunched against one of the rocks, is what I have been looking for. Here is the murderer of Marcus Vanston.

CECIL

Listeners, I have it. I have it! I figured out how an angel could be killed. And Ethan is right. If this is how Marcus was killed, then there is literally only one culprit possible. I must get to the sheriff and have the double of Jalen freed right away. He is innocent. I am heading to the jail now. But first, it’s your daily weather report, sponsored by Date Shakes. Date Shakes: What if a milkshake had some dried fruit in it for some reason. Anyway, here’s the weather.

[WEATHER]

DANA

I walk hesitantly forward. The creature eyes me warily. It seems jittery, like it might bolt or attack at any moment. It is vaguely human shaped, with dark, smooth skin, large white eyes, no nose, a mouth that opens and shuts with little wet pops.

“Hello, my name is Dana Cardinal,” I tell it. I reach a hand out placatingly. “I’ve come to see you about an angel formerly named Marcus Vanston.”

The wet little pops get louder and closer together. Its long limbs swing back and forth. And it starts toward me.

CECIL

Listeners, I have retrieved Ethan Cardinal, witness to the crime, and brought him to the sheriff, so that he can explain why Jalen must be freed. Because to be sure, it was not the original Jalen who did this crime. He could not have. There is nothing he could have done that would have killed an angel.

“You must tell the Sheriff who killed Marcus Vanston,” I said to Ethan.

Ethan shook his head frantically and tried to wriggle out my grasp, but I did not let him go. “An innocent double’s life is at stake,” I said. “Ethan, who killed Marcus Vanston?”

“No,” he muttered. “I can’t. No. It is impossible for me to say.”

The Sheriff crossed their arms, bemused, not believing that there was anything to this. The first rule of being a cop is “the case is solved as soon as I stop thinking about it, and baby, I never think about a case”.

“Please,” I said to Ethan. “Who killed Marcus Vanston?”

And finally, through gritted teeth, Ethan managed: “God knows.” He looked up, met my eye. His eyes were bottomless. His eyes were windows to nowhere. “God knows,” He said. “God knows who killed him.” Then he started to scream it. His face was red and he was crying. “God knows! God knows who killed him!” His voice gave out. Still he gasped, the words barely audible. “God knows. God knows.”

DANA

There is nothing I can do if it wants to hurt me, and so I stand my ground. It gets close to me. So close that I can smell it. And it smells like everything. It smells like every smell at once. I can smell an entire universe and it’s so overwhelming that I almost faint, but I hold myself on my feet through sheer stubbornness.

“Ah,” it says. “Ahhh”. Of course, it does not have our language. It has the language of everything.

“You are god,” I say.

“Ahh,” it says.

“And one of your angels displeased you.”

“Ahhhh,” it swings its limbs furiously.

“And so you killed your angel.”

“Ahh,” it agrees. It flops back to the rock it had been leaning against. My heart is beating so fast it might burst. The sky is red now. So is the ocean.

“Murder isn’t right,” I say.

“Ahhhhhhhh,” it howls, spinning like a top, its body contorting and shifting, held up by something not so physical and rigid as bones.

“There is nothing I can do to hold you accountable,” I tell it. “But I needed to come. To look you in the face. And tell you it was wrong.”

It shuffles back over to me. “Ahh. Ahhh. Ahhhhhh.”

I close my eyes. I have no control over what will happen next.

CECIL

It started with a simple idea. Marcus Vanston had gone all in on the god that had made him an angel, sending regular donations to Our Lady of Temporary Salvation. But like any billionaire, he wanted to diversify his assets, and like any billionaire, he didn’t really know anything about money or anything else in the world, and so he went to his assistant Jalen for advice. Jalen’s archeology professor had been talking a lot about a new religion, and so Jalen suggested it might be spiritually prudent to make a donation to Harrison Kip’s religion, whatever it is.

Of course, we know much of what transpired from there. Harrison was only too happy to receive a donation but could not, for legal reasons, receive it directly. So Jalen helpfully ran the donation through the community college, and then Jalen stole the donation.

But this is where our understanding had gone wrong. The murder had nothing to do with the stolen money or with Harrison Kip’s anger at not receiving the promised donation. Instead the issue was with the offering of the donation in the first place. Marcus Vanston, being an angel, existed by the grace of God. And God was feeling threatened by the god of Harrison Kip, who has been rapidly amassing followers, both willing and unwilling.

Marcus was in his library, going through his private collections, such as his dead venomous snake menagerie and his collection of cool knots.

Anytime Marcus read poetry or novels, he would circle his favorite words. And when he was done reading a book, he would write "it is finished," so he could remember which ones he had already read.

Marcus had just picked up his favorite book of dirty limericks, and that's when God burst in, demanding to know why Marcus, one of God’s own angels, was giving donations to a rival god. There was a heated argument. And in that moment of furious passion, God did it. God revoked its grace from the angel that was Marcus Vanston, and Marcus crumpled dead to the floor. The only way to kill an angel is to remove its permission to exist, and the only one who can do that is God.

Having committed the murder, God summoned a padlock onto the door to seal the room and then vanished. The perfect crime. One might say, divinely perfect.

DANA

I am climbing back up from that dark planet, lit by no sun. I am still alive. Somehow I escaped uncleansed. Somehow I still have the bones and meat of my body, and the air and thought that keeps that body moving around. I climb up through rock and long hallways, and thousands of stairs. I walk until the library of Marcus Vanston comes into view. I step out of the trapdoor and carefully close it. God hadn’t disappeared from the library like a magic trick. God has a trapdoor. In every room in the entire universe, god has a secret trapdoor. If you look carefully enough in any room, you will find it. But you should never look. This was god’s trapdoor in this room, and god had slipped back through it when the murder was done.

I walk to the window and look outside. The sun is shining. I didn’t know if I was going to see it again. It’s so good and the sky is so blue and I start to cry. In my hands, there is something warm. Almost hot. Almost too hot to touch, but I hold it carefully against my body. Because after all, God, at the bottom of the well, had given it to me.

CECIL

And so ends the mystery of Marcus Vanston. Killed by his own God. Jalen Rutherford, killed by Harrison Kip in retribution for stealing the money meant for Kip’s religion. But speaking of, where is that money? There is no sign of it in Jalen’s accounts or hidden on his property. Jalen’s double does not know. It is a small fortune, lost to the wind. And what of Harrison’s god who broke through the sky a little over a month ago?

We have the answers we sought, and yet still so little is settled. Well.

Stay tuned next for the controversial new political chat show Hey, No You Shut Up Bozo!

And from one mystery solved to the next mystery beginning, good night, Night….

Listeners, oh no, listeners. Above me. In the studio, above me, I see: A figure. With a flickering face. Like a tv screen that has gone out of whack. It is Harrison Kip’s god, who broke through our sky. Harrison’s god is standing on the ceiling, looking down at me with its flickering face. It is reaching for me.

Oh! Oh!