House of Leaves (16 page)

As Navidson takes his
first
step through that immense arch, he is suddenly a long way away from the warm light of the living room. In fact his creep into that place resembles the eerie faith required for any deep sea exploration, the beam of his flashlight scratching at nothing but the invariant blackness.

Navidson keeps his attention focused on the floor ahead of him, and no doubt because he keeps looking down, the floor begins to assume a new meaning. It can no longer be taken for granted. Perhaps something lies beneath it. Perhaps it will open up into some deep fissure.

Suddenly immutable silence rushes in to replace what had momentarily shattered it.

Navidson freezes, unsure whether or not he really just heard something growl.

“I better be able to find my way back,” he finally whispers, which though probably muttered in jest suddenly catches him off guard.

Navidson swiftly turns around. Much to his horror, he can no longer see the arch let alone the wall. He has walked beyond the range of his light. In fact, no matter where he points the flashlight, the only thing he can perceive is oily darkness. Even worse, his panicked turn and the subsequent absence of any landmarks has made it impossible for him to remember which direction he just came from.

“Oh god” he blurts, creating odd repeats in the distance.

He twists around again.

“Hey!” he shouts, spawning a multitude of a’s, then rotates forty- five degrees and yells “Balls!” a long moment of silence follows before he hears the faint halls racing back through the dark. After several more such turns, he discovers a loud “easy” returns a z with the least amount of delay. This is the direction he decides on, and within less than a minute the beam from his flashlight finds something more than darkness.

Quickening his pace slightly, Navidson reaches the wall and the safety he perceives there. He now faces another decision: left or right. This time, before going anywhere, he reaches into his pocket and places a penny at his feet. Relying on this marker, he heads left for a while. When a minute passes and he has still failed to find the entrance, he returns to the penny. Now he moves off to the right and very quickly comes across a doorway, only this one, as we can see, is much smaller and has a different shape than the one he originally came through. He decides to keep walking. When a minute passes and he still has not found the arch, he stops.

“Think, Navy, think,” he whispers to himself, his voice edged slightly with fear.

Again that faint growl returns, rolling through the darkness like thunder.

Navidson quickly does an about face and returns to the doorway. Only now he discovers that the penny he left behind, which should have been at least a hundred feet further, lies directly before him. Even stranger, the doorway is no longer the doorway but the arch he had been looking for all along.

Unfortunately as he steps through it, he immediately sees how drastically everything has changed. The corridor is now much narrower and ends very quickly in a T. He has no idea which way to go, and when a third growl ripples through that place, this time significantly louder, Navidson panics and starts to run.

His sprint, however, lasts only a few seconds. He realizes quickly enough that it is a useless, even dangerous, course of action. Catching his breath and doing his best to calm his frayed nerves, he tries to come up with a better plan.

“Karen!” he finally shouts, a flurry of air-in’s almost instantly swallowed in front of him. “Tom!” he tries, briefly catching hold of the -om’s as they too start to vanish, though before doing so completely, Navidson momentarily detects in the last -om a slightly higher pitch entwined in his own voice.

He waits a moment, and not hearing anything else, shouts again:

“I’m in here!” giving rise to tripping nn-ear’s reverberating and fading, until in the next to last instant a sharp cry comes back to him, a child’s
cry,
calling out for him, drawing him to the right.

By shouting “I’m here” and following the add-ee’s singing off the walls, Navidson slowly begins to make his way through an incredibly complex and frequently disorienting series of turns. Eventually after backtracking several times and making numerous wrong choices, occasionally descending into disturbing territories of silence, the voice begins to grow noticeably louder, until finally Navidson slips around a corner, certain he has found his way out. Instead though, he encounters only more darkness and this time greater quiet. His breathing quickens. He is uncertain which way to go. Obviously he is afraid. And then quite abruptly he steps to the right through a low passageway and discovers a corridor terminating in warm yellow light, lamp light, with a tiny silhouette standing in the doorway, tugging her daddy home with a cry.

Emerging into the safety of his own living room, Navidson immediately scoops Daisy up in his arms and gives her a big hug.

“I had a nightmare,” she says with a very serious nod.

Similar to the Khumbu Icefall at the base of Mount Everest where blue seracs and chasms change unexpectedly throughout the day and night, Navidson is the first one to discover how that place also seems to constantly change. Unlike the Icefall, however, not even a single hairline fracture appears in those walls. Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one.

[
77—”nothing visible to the eye provides a reason”
—a fitting phrase for what’s happened.

And to think my day actually started off pretty well.

I woke up having had an almost wet-dream about Thumper. She was doing this crazy Margaretha Geertruida Zelle dance, veil after colored veil thrown aside, though oddly enough never landing, rather flying around her as if she were in the middle of some kind of gentle twister, these sheer sheets of fabric continuing to encircle her, even as she removes more and more of them, allowing me only momentary glimpses of her body, her smooth skin, her mouth, her waist, her—ah yes, I get a glimpse of that too, and I’m moving towards her, moving past all that interference, certain that with every step I take I’ll soon have her, after all she’s almost taken everything off, no she
h
taken everything off, her knees are spreading apart, just a few more veils to get past and I’ll be able to see her, not just bits & pieces of her, but all of her, no longer molested by all this nonsense, in fact I’m there already which means I’m about to enter her which apparently is enough to blow the circuit, hit the switch, prohibit that sublime and much anticipated conclusion, leaving me blind in the daylight stream pouring through my window.

Fuck.

I go off to cuff in the shower. At least the water’s hot and there’s enough steam to fog the mirror. Afterwards, I pack my pipe and light up. Wake & Bake. More like Wash & Bake. Half a bowl of cereal and a shot of bourbon later, I’m there, my friendly haze having finally arrived. I’m ready for work.

Parking’s easy to find. On Vista. I jog up to Sunset, even jog up the stairs, practically skipping past the By Appointment Only sign. Why skipping? Because as I step into the Shop I know I’m not even one minute late, which is not usually the case for me. The expression on my boss’s face reveals just how astonishing an achievement this is. I couldn’t care less about him. I want to see Thumper. I want to find out if she’s really wearing any of that diaphanous rainbow fabric I was dreaming about.

Of course she’s not there, but that doesn’t get me down. I’m still optimistic she’ll arrive. And if not today, why fuck, tomorrow’s just another day away.

A sentiment I could almost sing.

I immediately sit down at the side counter and start working, mainly because I don’t want to deal with my boss which could mean jeopardizing my good mood. Of course he couldn’t care less about me or my mood. He approaches, clearing his throat. He will talk, he will ruin everything, except it suddenly penetrates that chalky material he actually insists on calling his brain, that I’m building his precious points, and sure enough this insight prohibits his trap from opening and he leaves me alone.

Points are basically clusters of needles used to shade the skin. They are necessary because a single point amounts to a prick not much bigger than this period
“.“.
Okay, maybe a little bigger. Anyway, five needles go into what’s called a 5, seven for 7’s and so on—all soldered together towards the base.

I actually enjoy making them. There’s something pleasant about concentrating on the subtle details, the precision required, constantly checking and re—checking to assure yourself that yes indeed the sharps are level, in the correct arrangement, ready at last to be fixed in place with dots of hot solder. Then I re—check all my re—checking: the points must not be too close nor too far apart nor skewed in any way, and only then, if I’m satisfied, which I usually am—though take heed “usually” does not always mean “always”—will I scrub the shafts and put them aside to be sterilized later in the ultrasound or Autoclave.

My boss may think I can’t draw worth shit but he knows I build needles better than anyone. He calls me all the time on my tardiness, my tendency to drift & moither and of course the odds that I’ll ever get to tattoo anything—”Johnny, nothing you do, (shaking his head) no one’s ever gonna wanna make permanent, unless they’re crazy, and let me tell you something Johnny, crazies never pay”—but about my needle making I’ve never heard him complain once.

Anyway, a couple of hours whiz by. I’m finishing up a batch of 5’s—my boss’s cluster of choice—when he finally speaks, telling me to pull some bottles of black and purple ink and fill a few caps while I’m at it. We keep the stuff in a storeroom in back. It’s a sizable space, big enough to fit a small work table in. You have to climb eight pretty steep steps to reach it. That’s where we stock all the extras, and we have extras for almost everything, except light bulbs. For some reason my boss hasn’t picked up any extra light bulbs in a while. Today, of course, I flick the switch, and FLASH! BLAMI POP!, okay scratch the blam, the storeroom bulb burns out. I recommence flicking, as if such insistent, highly repetitive and at this point pointless action could actually resurrect the light. It doesn’t. The switch has been rendered meaningless, forcing me to feel my way around in the dark. I keep the door open so I can see okay, but it still takes me awhile to negotiate the shadows before I can locate the caps and ink.

By now, the sweet effects of my dream, to say nothing of the soft thrumming delivered care of alcohol and Oregon bud, have worn of f, though I still continue to think about Thumper, slowly coming to grips with the fact that she won’t be visiting today. This causes my spirits to drop substantially, until I realize I have no way of knowing that for certain. After all, there’s still half a day left. No, she’s not coming. I know it. I can feel it in my gut. That’s okay.

Tomorrow’s— aw, fuck that.

I start filling caps with purple, concentrating on its texture, the strange hue, imagining I can actually observe the rapid pulse of its bandwidth. These are stupid thoughts, and as if to confirm that sentiment, darkness pushes in on me. Suddenly the slash of light on my hands looks sharp enough to cut me. Real sharp. Move and it will cut me. I do move and guess what? I start to bleed. The laceration isn’t deep but important stuff has been struck, leaking over the table and floor. Lost.

I don’t have long.

Except I’m not bleeding though I am breathing hard. Real hard. don’t need to touch my face to know there are now beads of sweat slipping off my forehead, flicking off my eyelids, streaming down the back of my neck. Cold as hands. Hands of the dead. Something terrible is going on here. Going extremely wrong. Get out, I think. I want to get out. But I can’t move.

Then as if this were nothing but a grim prelude, shit really starts to happen.

There’s that awful taste again, sharp as rust, wrapping around my tongue.

Worse, I’m no longer alone.

Impossible.

Not impossible.

This time it’s human.

Maybe not.

Extremely long fingers.

A sucking sound too. Sucking on teeth, teeth already torn from the gums.

I don’t know how I know this.

But it’s already too late, I’ve seen the eyes. The eyes. They have no whites. I haven’t seen this. The way they glisten they glisten red. Then it begins reaching for me, slowly unfolding itself out of its corner, mad meat all of it, but I understand. These eyes are full of blood.

Except I’m only looking at shadows and shelves.

Of course, I’m alone.

And then behind me, the door closes.

The rest is in pieces. A scream, a howl, a roar. All’s warping, or splintering. That makes no sense. There’s a terrible banging. The air’s rank with stench. At least that’s not a mystery. I know the source. Boy, do I ever. I’ve shit myself. Pissed myself too. I can’t believe it. Urine soaking into my pants, fecal matter running down the back of my legs, I’m caught in it, must run and hide from it, but I still can’t move. In fact, the more I try to escape, the less I can breathe. The more I try to hold on, the less I can focus. Something’s leaving me. Parts of me.