The photo in Diane’s hand was old, yellowing and cracked, and bending at the edges. In it, there was a man who was definitely Troy. He could not have been anyone else. He had his arm around a little girl. They were posed in the middle of downtown Night Vale, but a downtown that had not existed for probably more than a hundred years.

Diane studied the face, blandly handsome, smiling blandly. Definitely Troy.

“Maybe we should talk to Leann Hart,” Jackie said.

“Yeah.” There was a lot she could add to that, but she didn’t have the energy. So Diane just said it again. “Yeah.”

She thought she might throw up. If not right then, later. At some point in her life she would. It was a statistical thing.

30

Diane and Jackie quietly read the clippings on the wall, displayed around a large, well-used hatchet. It was one of many hatchets Leann Hart kept as part of her business. It was a failing business, but Leann kept it alive.

The clippings showcased some of Night Vale Daily Journal’s most famous headlines:

Glow Cloud Threatens Farms:

Dead Animals Falling from Sky

City Council Approves Humming:

Private Residences Only, Max 50 Decibels

Everything Is Fine

Totally Fine

Carry On

Feral Dogs Actually Just Plastic Bags, Says Mayor

Scientists Announce “Relax. Sun Is Not Real.”

WORMS!

All Hail the Glow Cloud!

Wheat-Free Night Vale

Wheat and Its By-Products Turn into Snakes, Cause Deaths

Street-Cleaning Day: Run for Your Lives. Run! Run!

As editor of the Night Vale Daily Journal for the past three decades, Leann had been present for the steady popularity and then sudden decline of print news.

Many of her ideas were cost-effective (cutting back to four issues a week). Some seemed like good ideas but failed for unexpected reasons (replacing newspapers in street kiosks with 2 percent milk, which apparently spoils quickly in sunlight). And some were hugely successful (attacking independent news bloggers with hatchets).

The last was a controversial decision, as attacking a person with a hatchet (with anything really) is technically a crime. But Leann made it work by engaging in semiotic arguments with law enforcement about what is assault and what is a business plan. One of her degrees is an MBA, she often told law enforcement officers. Few officers have an MBA, so they rarely argued with her.

Leann’s office featured an entire wall of hatchets, held up at angles by screws drilled into the faux wood paneling. Most of them were new and shiny. There were five in the center that were old, with curved gray wood handles. Their heads were smaller than those of the other hatchets. They were flinty, dull, with inscriptions depicting each of the five Ws of Journalism (What? What! What!? What. Why?).

On another wall were her college diplomas, both of which were handwritten in Cyrillic. Neither could have been her MBA, as, since the early 1960s, all MBA degrees have been issued via subdermal microchip.