The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

First in Flight - 10/12/04

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Found myself a little more time today, so I want to continue the story of what happened over the weekend. The saga, if you will.

Right now Rence is asking me why I feel this perverse urge to update strangers in cyberland about everything that happens in my life. But I'm shooing him away. Go. Go watch TV for a few minutes, or something. I don't want him to see this URL.

As I’ve said, I think keeping a record of these things might be useful for someone someday, not necessarily me. It’ll depend on whether I can decode all of this, figure out which parts I can believe, which parts I can throw out. I almost think some little piece of me, deep in my tinkered brain, knew that this was all coming… and that was why I started this journal in the first place. Could be wrong. Could be an insane thought. But...

Saturday morning we woke up at a decent time to prepare for some sightseeing. As we ate our cereal and drank our juice, Rence asked if I'd gotten up at some point during the night. He thought he'd heard something. 

It would have been the perfect time to open the discussion—about the purples, about the silvers, about everything. I didn’t have any of the excuses I’d given myself last night; I was wide awake, I was clearheaded, and I had the whole day ahead of me to unfurl the story to Rence. We could talk about it on the metro. We could continue the discussion as we roamed through museums and other Fine Cultural Institutions.

But Huntley the Unready, waffling prince, struck again. I swallowed and said that I’d had to take a piss at 2 a.m.—sorry if I’d kicked the futon by accident.

What can I say to excuse myself? Only that I’d heard that call of normal once again, and I couldn’t resist it. I just wanted to be a guy showing his friend around a great city. Just for a little while. I would start to tell him in the afternoon. I would definitely do it then.

And so our jampacked itinerary began. Plan for the day: art, history, culture, big hanging things on display. Intermission: tell Rence about my recently reemerged power to spot monsters and/or cultists surrounded by glowing auras, engaged in some sort of sinister conspiracy. Plan for the night: completely stupid, drunken antics.

First we climbed up in the Old Post Office to see the great view of D.C. from the bell tower. Then we walked down past the Mall to the World War II Memorial. Then, after the long trek back from there, on to various other monuments, and, you know, I'm really not going to bore you with a whole laundry list. Take a visit sometime, most of this stuff is free.

We’ll just skip to the late afternoon, when Rence said he wanted to swing through the Air & Space Museum. And your waffling prince had still not opened his trap about anything otherworldly whatsoever. 

Had I seen purples or silvers in the crowds that day? Oh, a fair amount. But I’d kept us at a healthy distance. I don’t think any of them wanted to get close to me anyway. Not out in public. So I thought.

We were up on the second floor deck, which gives you a nice view of the hanging planes and the upright shuttles and rockets in the front exhibition space. Rence had gone down for a second pass through the walk-through level of the space station. I stayed behind, as once was enough for me. 

I was content to take another look at the Lockheed F-104A Starfighter. It was like a larger version of a kid’s toy. Little dinky wings. Some used to call it the “Lawn Dart.” The Germans referred to it as the “Flying Coffin.” What a truly foolish and brave thing to put yourself in the air in a thing like that, I thought. 

That was when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned— and nearly fell over at the sight of the intimidating figure. A towering man, with flowing black hair to a little past his shoulders, and a droopy mustache and bit of beard, in a powder-blue button-down shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, with a big brass buckle on his belt. 

His size wasn't what intimidated me. The faint violet aura around him did. 

"Mark Huntley?" he growled.

I don’t know if my response definitively answered his question: "Holy shit!"

I scrambled backwards, ducking out of the way as he reached for me. So it had come to this. The purples had grown bold enough to snatch me in the middle of a crowd in one of the most popular museums in Washington. 

Maybe my symbol-drawing last night had told them something I hadn’t even realized I was telling. I wasn't about to stick around to ask my abductor. 

I spun around and saw Rence just emerging from the exit of the space station. "Run!" I hollered at him.

"What?" he said. All around us, people turned to stare at the idiot who'd just shouted in the middle of the museum. Some of them looked scared—did somebody say al Qaeda?

Rence's face folded into an annoyed expression: Is this another stupid joke?

I followed my own advice, pelting in Rence's direction. Behind me, the man in faint violet called out in a surprisingly soulful voice: "Wait, Mark! Hold on!"

Rence still stood there, staring at me. I shouted, "Run, now!"

This time, God love him, he realized that I was serious. As I passed him, he broke into a sprint to match mine.

It was just impossible to run through that crowd without smashing into people, so for the next couple of minutes, we pinballed right through, trying to aim away from little kids and anyone else who might suffer from being knocked over. On our right, a security guard looked up. Shouted, “Hey, no running!”

I dared a look back at the long-haired man. He hadn’t bothered to chase me. He’d taken a few steps forward; now he was just standing there, looking frustrated.

Nevertheless, we didn't let up until we'd reached the stairs. There, we slowed down a little. We didn’t want to draw the attention of any more security guards—hopefully the man with the faint purple aura wouldn’t want to, either. We walked briskly across the first floor to the exit.

Once we'd pounded down the front steps of the museum, we ran a little ways down the sidewalk and then stopped to catch our breath. Rence hadn't attempted a word to me during our flight from Air & Space. Now he turned to me, his face full of worry. "What... what happened? You okay?"

“Let's.... get farther away from this place," I panted. 

We walked across the Mall, through a sizable knot of people milling around and enjoying the day, while I kept an eye on the way we'd come. After a couple of minutes, the long-haired man came out of the museum, looked that way and that way but not this. Having lost our trail, he headed off in a different direction. But he’d find us some other time, some time soon. Or one of the others would.

I faked being out of breath a little longer than I actually was. I wanted to buy time to think, but I’d just run out of it. No more anemic excuses, no more noble procrastination. The Zone of Weird Crap had touched us both now. 

I was going to have to tell Rence the truth... or at least the teetering pile of oddities, horrors, dreams, gut feelings, and guesses that would have to pass for the truth.

He looked at me expectantly.

"I guess you've noticed I've been acting a bit... off lately," I began.

posted by Mark Huntley @ 6:27 PM

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