The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

In the Court of the Purple King - 11/29/04

Monday, November 29, 2004

It’s done.

Little as I can believe it, it’s done. But that was only a part. This job is bigger than we ever realized.

I guess I should be grateful, to be alive and all, buuuuut there are times right here and then that I really wouldn’t have minded if fate swung in the other direction. We’re overwhelmed. And we have nothing to fight with, nothing at all.

I only have a tiny clue as to the way forward. And you? Can I count on you?

I’m going to have to. Because you—I need you. I’m not going to be around for the end of this. It’s just a little poison in me, but… it’s enough to get the job done, eventually.

So. I’ve told you, you know how the rest of our merry little band got to be just like Mark Huntley—and how Naomi lucked out in particular, becoming the equivalent of fifty Mark Huntleys. And I told you of our difficulties on the way down to Arizona—the bloodbath at Fast Jack’s, in the middle of nowhere, Utah.

We’ll pick the story up, then, in Flagstaff…

… and for Christ’s sake, I do need to hurry. Keep getting these twinges. Aches. Burning. Something is rotting in me.

Naomi and I came into town after dark, sometime in the early evening. I felt exhausted, not just from the drive that brought us further and further up in elevation (Flagstaff is a city on a mountain, basically), not just from my lack of good sleep, but from the constant worry over what was going on in Naomi’s head.

She’d started off fine. She’d been almost chipper as we left the den of the Unnameable, as if the power of the silvers were a great gift to her rather than a curse. Then, over time, I started to catch her talking to herself. Just a quiet babble, and one that she’d dismiss when I pointed it out. I thought she might have really taken a turn for the crazy at Fast Jack’s, but then that all turned out to be part of her strategy for keeping us alive… I think? Maybe it had been seeping in then, too. Or maybe the cold and the stress just exacerbated her state of mind. 

In any case, by the time we started to make our climb to Flagstaff, Naomi was exhibiting some pretty weird shit for behavior.

The obsessive tapping on the glove compartment, in something that seemed like a code. The catatonic phases in which she went absolutely still and wouldn’t respond to anything I said, or my prodding her shoulder. Tracing her finger in the air, in arcane patterns, as if she didn’t even need a drawing pad like I had, and could just practice the symbols in the empty space in front of her.

The laughing was probably the worst part. Even in the most extremely stressful situations that we’d been through, Naomi had always managed to keep a partial hold on her naturally cheerful, optimistic attitude. It was an attitude she’d been cultivating for over a decade, ever since she’d survived the brain tumor (however mysteriously the operation went) and gained a whole lot more life expectancy. The “Be, be, Buddha said” attitude. But this laughter was like… a parody of her genuine cheerful self. Loud, halting, and coming at the most inappropriate times.

Look, a gas station. Ha. Ha. Ha. Those clouds look like we’ll get some more snow. Ha. Ha. Ha. Radio reports bombings at Pike Place Market in Seattle. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha!

I kept picturing all those silvers that the Unnameable had obliterated to make Naomi’s vajra... kept picturing them crowded inside her, jockeying for a turn at seeing the world through her eyes. And then controlling her mouth, too, her tongue, her vocal cords. Her brain—making her do that horrible laugh, for their own amusement.