The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

Rence Hears a Story - 10/13/04

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Wow. I have a lot to say about my "appointment" last night, but that's getting ahead of myself. We’re still out of temporal whack here. Going back to Saturday.

I went through the whole story with Rence. The whole story. If I was going to tell him anything about the auras, the knife, the visit from my forgotten past—all the charming features of the Zone of Weird Crap—I couldn’t leave a single thing out.

Frankly, it was a relief to get it all off my chest. I mean, I appreciate the opportunity that I’ve had to share all of this with you, Reader. But you haven't exactly been much help to me so far. You even think my name is Mark Huntley. 

As I talked, Rence just nodded and asked clarifying questions. He chose to withhold judgment or opinion until I was finished. I don't know how long I went on. It was at least an hour, maybe closer to two. 

During that time, we walked out of the parks area and up back to the business district, passing Ford’s Theatre and then Metro Center. We took a meandering route, not heading directly back to Dupont, but winding up further north and east, almost into NE itself. Our legs were already worn out from all the walking earlier in the day, but we tromped on like machines, wrapped up in the story. I saw a silver along the way, coming out of a restaurant. He didn't give me a second look. 

Midway through all that talking, I started to crave water, so we stopped in at a CVS and I picked up a bottle of Dasani. Rence didn't get anything; he was eager for me to bring us back to the present time.

Finally, as we approached my neighborhood, I wrapped things up by explaining why I'd had us flee from the Air & Space Museum. I described the towering guy and his purple aura (which, as I thought back and mentioned to Rence, had been much weaker than the other auras I'd seen to that point). 

Rence sat down on a bench with a thoughtful look on his face. I sat down next to him, passed him my water. After a few seconds, I said, "Do you believe me at all?" 

"First," said Rence, "let me say that I'm a firm believer in proactively diagnosing and treating mental illness. I mean, you’ve met my family— early discovery could have gone a long way there." Then, as my face fell, he went on: "But I don't think that you have to worry about the nuthouse."

"Glad to hear it...?" I said. 

He patted me on the shoulder. Incredibly, he grinned. "I knew something weird, something truly outrageous, had to happen in this world sooner or later. I knew I was gonna be a part of it, too. People who’ve been reading their Heinlein, Bradbury, Lovecraft all these years, we’d be the best equipped to recognize that kind of shit—and to deal with it. So I believe you, muchacho." 

Well. That was easier than I thought. "So you don't think I'm going crazy?" 

Rence laughed. "Let's be empirical about this.... you may be going crazy, for all I know. But not because of any of the stuff you just told me about." 

He leaned back against the bench. "Mark, we can't possibly know all there is to know about the world we live in, much less the universe. What do we do? We comfort ourselves with supposedly unbreakable laws of science. We absorb all those laws, those observed patterns of what goes on in nature, and we think that's it, those are the answers. When that's really all just a covering over this scary void. This whole space of the unknown, of everything that we as humans are too damned stupid to see." He paused. "But you've seen something, Mark." 

I shivered. Somehow Rence had managed to make my experiences seem even creepier than they already were. "Not because I'm smarter than the rest of humanity. I certainly don't know what the hell I'm seeing."