Chapter Text
He spent the past year and a half perfecting the art of writing with quills after an intense back and forth debate about the legality of their usage with a member of the secret police via the condensation that appeared on his bathroom mirror randomly throughout the day. Carlos insisted that since the quills were made from the primary flight feathers of dead turkeys that were conveniently dropped on and around the laboratory by the glow cloud, that it was a sign from an unknowable and omnipotent god that his choice of an alternative for the banned pens and pencils was A-Okay. He was joking, the secret police were not. The following day he found each of his quills stamped with Approved by the Secret Police in red ink and neatly arranged in his bathtub in a circular fashion. In his living room he found Oh good, we’re glad that you got the message scrawled out on the wall just above his futon in black ooze.
His calligraphy has improved by leaps and bounds in the time since Carlos discovered that the unidentifiable black substance on his wall did not contain any elements known to mankind. The art form lends his half formed bits of thought, erratic scribbles, and occasional mildly scientific musings a certain air of credibility beyond being those little fiddly bits he just has to write down. This isn’t even taking into account his fully thought out rambles about his latest scientific query, those look downright distinguished. He’s in the middle of transcribing one such document onto his computer when a segment on the radio catches his attention.
“Breaking news today dear listeners, a lake appeared overnight near the Night Vale Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area. Yes our own humble desert hamlet has been graced with the sudden appearance of a body of water. I have not yet had the pleasure of visiting the lake, but I relish the opportunity to gaze upon its sublime placid surface and dip my toes in its cool refreshing waters. The Night Vale business association would like to inform you that boat rentals are half off for this historic occasion. Come on down and enjoy a stroll along the boardwalk. And now a word from our sponsors…”
Carlos is not surprised at Cecil’s lack of surprise at this new development or of his own for that matter. This is Night Vale after all. Instead of staring at the radio with wide-eyed astonishment as he had done for nearly every scrap of new he heard during his first few months at Night Vale while his colleagues muttered variations of ‘oh mother of god I wonder if this is what kills us all’, he finishes typing out his report while a couple of the remaining scientists lurk around the coffee maker waiting out the few minutes until eight o’ clock when it would be legal once again. The thoughts that percolate in his mind as he checks for typos center on the location of his dredging equipment so he can collect both sediment and water samples to test from the lake. He saves the report when he’s satisfied and spends the short jaunt to the coffee maker musing over whether or not Cecil would enjoy a picnic by the lake. If Cecil would, then he needs to call him soon to make plans for the fast approaching weekend since no one knows how long the lake would be sticking around for, and if someone does then they wouldn’t be likely to share that information anyway.
The next day Carlos loads the trunk of his car to the brim with equipment and sets off to the lake alone. None of his fellow colleagues are interested in joining him, due to being engrossed in their own work and quote ‘not wanting to die by the cold slimy tentacles of an unspeakable horror’ end quote. The lab interns are especially wary of anything new, mildly exciting, or particularly banal for all of those could spell their most certain death, disappearance, or dismemberment, which peculiarly enough does not always result in death. Carlos believes that the lab interns have every right to be cautious given that interns in general do not seem to last long in Night Vale no matter where they are employed.
He pulls into the Waterfront Recreation Area parking lot and lingers in the relative safety of his car as he takes in the sight before him. The lake is not a lake. Or it doesn’t seem so at first. What lies before him confined only by the gentle rolling contours of the desert basin is a mirror that reflects the void. The still waters are vast and dark and seem to stretch to the distant horizon. Carlos being the practical man that he is tamps down the part of his brain that decides that this is a splendid time to unearth memories of ancient Greek texts that he read in high school English class. He is not Odysseus. The body of water that has spontaneously appeared overnight is not a siren, though he would not rule out the possibility that it might be home to one. And his car is not a metaphorical mast that he needs to lash himself to for protection against his all but assured doom. He notes the hypnotic pull of the dark water and the feeling welling up inside of him that can best be described as an intense longing for a home that he has never lived in. He considers that the lake might possess properties similar to the Whispering Forest and throws in several sets of latex gloves into his bag of equipment for good measure.
Carlos finishes gathering up his equipment and rents a small aluminum fishing boat at the docks. He loads his equipment into the boat and rows out to his first sampling site without incident. No encounters with the horrors of the deep so far. At his first site he collects five two hundred milliliter canisters of water, seals and labels them with the appropriate series and sampling site number. He examines the fifth sample before placing it in the Styrofoam cooler. The water is black and opaque, blocking all light from passing through the clear plastic container. Black water is not necessarily an indicator of supernatural activity, just a result of an unusual high concentration of fulvic and humic acids along with corresponding trace minerals. He finishes collecting sediment samples for the site before moving on to the others.
The sun is hanging low in the sky by the time Carlos wraps up the last of his sampling. He checks his watch. He missed Cecil’s program which is odd given that he had started in the morning. He had conducted similar sampling procedures at other lakes while assisting a fellow PhD candidate with their thesis research, those collections did not take up the entire day. However, they did have a small army of undergraduates to assist with the sampling, which made for a world of difference in the matters of time management and joint pain.
Carlos gives into the loud and clear message that his body is all but screaming at him as he shuts the lid of his stuffed trunk. He is not to pass go or to collect two hundred dollars. Dragging his equipment and considerable amount of samples back to his car from the dock had been the final nail in his coffin. His muscles burn from overexertion, his joints ache, and his back is in a full out revolt because a man sitting on the fence between his mid and late thirties should not collect dozens of sediment samples from a seemingly bottomless lake by himself. He curses the young interns safe in their apartments as he drives off to his own. He decides that the samples and equipment can survive staying in his car overnight. Carlos is a man on a mission for much needed sustenance, painkillers, and sleep.
When he arrives home he makes a beeline for his bathroom, dropping his well-worn leather bag stuffed full of notebooks, papers, quills, and other assorted sundries needed for the day on the floor and toes his shoes off along the way. He fishes out a few pills from a bottle in the medicine cabinet, chews them, and swallows them dry. It’s one of the few things that he knows he shouldn’t do but does anyways. He stares at his empty tub as he contemplates his life choices and how the seemingly unrelated convoluted series of events that plagued him with that habit eventually led him to standing in a bathroom staring at a tub contemplating those same events. He chews another pill as he turns on the water for the tub reveling in the ability to be spontaneous and toss aside long held routines. He’s going to take a bath, not a shower, and in the middle of the night.
Carlos strips with a smirk on his face smug with satisfaction. He groans as he lowers himself in and stretches out as far as the tub allows him, submerging as much of his tired body as possible until only his head remains dry. He rests it against the cool porcelain as the hot water soothes away the ache of his muscles, the pain in his joints, and the terrible dryness of his skin. Carlos is in utter bliss. He wonders why he preferred the expediency of showers over the miracles of baths as he drifts off guided by low consonant laden chanting emanating from his neighbor’s apartment. He hopes that they are chanting for rain. He always liked rain.
He rouses from his peaceful watery slumber when he feels something brush up against his leg. Carlos cracks an eye open the thinnest of possible slivers and immediately jolts upright in the tub. The water he’s soaking in has turned as black as the water from the lake. He yanks his arm out of his water. His shrieks wake everyone in the apartment building.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Click.
“Hello?” the voice is thick and groggy from sleep.
“Cecil. Cecil. I am calling for personal reasons,” he whispers fervently into the receiver as he clutches it tightly in his hands.
“Carlos?”
“Cecil this is important. I know that it is late but I need you to come to my apartment. Immediately.”
Click.
Cecil shuffles through the front door a few minutes later clad in a rumpled old t-shirt he ‘borrowed’ from Carlos weeks ago and pajama pants adorned with kittens. His hair is mussed. The eye on his forehead blinks out of synch with the other two on his face. The eyes nestled among the tattooed tendrils on his forearms however are wide open, each focusing on Carlos with rapt attention as he sprints into the living room. Carlos looks like a man possessed. His chest is heaving, his perfect hair is disheveled, his eyes are wide and blood shot, and his lab coat is hastily buttoned.
“Cecil. Good, I have to show you something.”
Cecil stares at him for a moment before asking, “Carlos are you only wearing a lab coat?” He takes a few tentative steps closer to the man whose bare hairy legs are quite visible.
“Just stay,” Carlos holds up a hand, “right there.” He bolts to the bathroom and returns with the spray bottle he uses to mist his cacti filled with water from the tub. He holds the spray bottle in the crook of his arm and starts to roll up the sleeve of the other as he rambles. “I listened to your show yesterday and I heard about the lake spontaneously appearing overnight so I decided to investigate it. I can’t just leave things not investigated. I’m a scientist I had to go, for science. So I went this morning to take samples for testing and when I got there I discovered that the lake was black. The water was black, which is not that unusual, it could be due to a high concentration of fluvic and humic acids and associated minerals that form when … That’s not important.” He stops frantically rolling up his sleeve and takes a deep breath. Carlos looks Cecil in the eye as he attempts to regain his composure. “What is important,” he swallows forcing himself to slow down. “Is that I lost time, and not in the normal way for Night Vale.” He pauses and holds his exposed arm out. Three thick black lines peek out from underneath the rolled up sleeve and extend midway down his forearm. “I lost time at the lake and I think that something happened to me.”
“Oh Carlos,” Cecil whispers concerned as Carlos levels the spray bottle at the lines on his arm. He grits his teeth and turns his head as he pulls the trigger. A few spritzes later the dark lines slowly peel off the surface of his skin moving with the grace of a charmed snake. All the tension leaves Cecil with an exasperated sigh. “Carlos you had me worried,” he chides.
“Don’t you see,” Carlos jabs a finger towards the black swaying tentacles,” This?”
“Yes Carlos, I see it just fine,” Cecil huffs and folds his arms. The eye on his forehead narrows to a slit along with those on his arms. Carlos stares at him in shock. “What, you’ve never manifested before?”
“Manifested?” He squeaks.
“Carlos, you’re not from around here,” Cecil exclaims, throws his hands over his mouth, walks around the coffee table and plunks himself down on the futon. All of his eyes stare up at Carlos in horror for a moment until Cecil lets his arms fall loosely onto his legs. He glances down to the carpet before returning to Carlos with a quizzical look. “People are who they are in Night Vale.” He pauses. “They might grow new appendages but they never turn into something that they are not already.”
“What about the trees in the Whispering Forest? Or the oil slicks in the car lot? Or the…”
“So I wasn’t specific enough,” Cecil cuts him off. “How do I put this?” Carlos closes his mouth and waits while Cecil chews at his bottom lip as he collects his thoughts. “Carlos,” his voice is low and quiet. “People do not become pan-dimensional beings, they either are born as one or not.”
“Pan-dimensional,” Carlos murmurs as he digs his toes into the carpet. He glances back up to Cecil. “They can’t?” Cecil slowly shakes his head in response. “Do you have empirical evidence of this?”
“My dear sweet Carlos, I am one. Well, one sixteenth but the percentage doesn’t matter as much as the person.” Carlos trudges over to the futon and sits down beside him with a heavy sigh. Cecil takes Carlos’ hand in his. “Someone can be a descendant of the Old Ones and just not show it. Usually that sort of thing is figured out before their coming of age ceremony. But that doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you. You’re just so practical, and scientific, and…”
“I need to make a phone call,” Carlos croaks.
One phone call later…
“So this,” he motions to his exposed arm as he paces in front of the coffee table, “runs in the family. Both sides in fact.” Carlos chuckles. “My mother and father have it,” he looks down at a tentacle which swivels to face him, “in their family histories. My mother attributes that to her and my father meeting in the first place and falling in love. She said that people like us are drawn to each other.” Cecil smiles at him hopefully as Carlos continues frantically walking back and forth across the living room babbling. “They never told me because I wasn’t fond of water as a child. My mother said that her grandfather always complained about how dry things were here. He loved the water, spent as much time as he could in it. They thought that they had dodged the mythical bullet,” he cackles. “Neither of them showed symptoms, so they thought I wouldn’t as well.” He pauses. “Going to the lake must have triggered it somehow. Or maybe something else did,” he mutters.
“Symptoms? Triggered?” Cecil traces the tattoos on his arm. “It’s not a disease,” he mumbles. “I’m not sick and neither are you.” Carlos stops dead in his tracks and turns to Cecil who had pulled his knees up underneath his chin and wrapped his arms around them.
“Shit. Cecil…” He walks over and sits down beside him. “Cecil, I’m an idiot.” Carlos places a chaste kiss right below his scalp being careful of his eye. “You have me on such a high pillar that I know I don’t belong on. The words perfect and wonderful describe you so much better than me. I,” he sighs. “I shouldn’t be this freaked out about it. I’ve seen you. I know you. You have tattoos of eyes which are actual eyes attached to eyestalks. You have a third eye on your forehead that you don’t show to just anyone. Your teeth elongate and sharpen at the mere hint of you-know-who. And I feel myself being pulled deeper and deeper into some great unknown whenever I hear you speak.” He pauses. “Cecil I wouldn’t change anything about you. And you’re one, so I guess I’m saying that it can’t be all that bad. It’s just a lot for me to adjust to.”
Cecil sniffles. “You mean it? You think I’m perfect?”
“I think you’re neat.”
Cecil beams. “Oh Carlos you’re…” he yawns, “tremendous.” He curls up against Carlos. “And remarkably comfortable.”
“I’m taking comfortable is a positive descriptor.”
“Mhmmm…wonderful.”
Carlos silently watches as the tentacles on his arm manifest and start rubbing Cecil’s back. He focuses and gets them to rub circles over the knots in Cecil’s shoulders formed from countless hours spent over his sound board and curled around his microphone. Carlos finds his apprehension dissipating and being replaced with a burning curiosity. His shoulder feels damp. Carlos glances down, Cecil is drooling. Scientific inquiry can wait for another day. Now it’s time for some much needed sleep.