House of Leaves (43 page)

(Considering this
was a
7/16”
dynamic
kernmantle cord it is not difficult to imagine the sort of force acting upon
jt.) [250—
Breaks
at
6,000
to 7,000 pounds.
—
Ed.]

Above
him,
Navidson hears a
faint cry and
then nothing. Not even the tiniest hole of light.

In The Reston Interview, we learn from Billy how the pulley at the top was torn from the banister. Luckily, Tom managed to grab him as well as the rope before “the whole kit and caboodle” plummeted back down the shaft. “It took us a few minutes to get our bearings,” Reston tells the camera. “We still weren’t sure what happened”

For the final shot of this section, Navidson loads his Affiflex with a 100ft of
high-speed
tungsten, uses a five
minute
ultra high
intensity
lightstick to illuminate the area,
and
rolls
his
Hi 8 to record sound.

“For almost an hour,” he begins. “I waited, rested, kept hoping something would change. It didn’t. Eventually I started going over my stuff, trying to figure out what exactly to do next. Then all of a sudden I heard something clatter behind me. I turned around and there lying on the floor, just off to the side here, was the third quarter. [He holds up the coin] If Tom dropped it say a few minutes after Reston reached the top, then it’s been falling for at least fifty minutes. I’m too muddled to do the math but it doesn’t take a genius to realize I’m an impossible distance down. [251—If D
_ft
= 16t
²
where time is calculated in seconds,
the quarter would have to have fallen 27,273 miles
exceeding
even the
earth’s circumference
at the
equator by 2,371 miles. Calculating at 32 ft/sec
²
the number
climbs even
higher
to
54.545
miles. An “impossible distance” indeed.
[
252—This formula isn’t
entirely
accurate.
A
more precise calculation can be made by [fill in later]
[253—Mr.
Truant
never completed this note.
— Ed.
]

“I don’t know how I’m going to get back. The radio’s dead. If I can find my pack and Jed’s, I’ll have water and food for at least three days with maybe four days worth of batteries. But what will that do?
Non gratum anus rodentum.
[254—“Not worth a rat’s ass.”
—
Ed.]
Hell.”

The
film runs
out here,

leaving nothing else behind but an unremarkable

white

screen

XIII

The Minotaur

Alarga en la pradera una pauso4a

Sombra, pero ya el hecho de nombrarlo

Y de conjecturar su circunstancia

Lo haceficción del arte y no criatura

Viviente de las que andan por Ia tierra.

— Jorge Luis Borges

[255— … a slow shadow spreads across the prairie,! but still, the act of naming
it, of guessing! what
Is its
nature
and its circumstances!
creates a
fiction,
not a living creature,/not one of those who wander on the
earth.”
As translated by
Alastair
Reid.
—
Ed.]

THE
WAIT

1.

Teppet
C. Brookes had seen plenty of children’s drawings in her life. Having taught all grades from kindergarten through sixth grade, she was familiar with a vast array of stick figures, objects, and plots. This was not the first time she had seen a wolf, a tiger, or a dragon. The problem was that these wolves did not just stalk quietly through cadmium woods; their teeth drew madder and rose from each other’s throats. The tigers did not just sleep on clover; they clawed Sunday red and indigo from celadon hills. And the dragon with its terrible emerald tail and ruby glare did not merely threaten; it incinerated everything around it with a happy blossom of heliotrope and gamboge.

And yet even these violent fantasies were nothing compared to what lay in wait at the centre of the drawing.

The week before Navidson set out on the rescue attempt, Brookes had asked her third grade class to draw a picture of their house. The one Chad handed in had no chimney, windows, or even a door. In fact,
it
was nothing more than a black square filling ninety percent of the page. Furthermore, several layers of black crayon and pencil had been applied so that not even a speck of the paper beneath could show through. In the thin margins, Chad had added the marauding creatures.

It was an extremely odd image and stuck with Brookes. She knew Chad had recently moved to Virginia and had already been involved in several scuffles in the school playground. Though she was hardly satisfied with her conclusion, she decided the picture reflected the stress caused by the move and the new surroundings. But she also made a note to keep an eye on him as the year progressed.

She would not have to wait that long.

Brookes usually went straight home after school, but that Friday, quite by chance, she wandered into the kindergarten classroom. A number of drawings hung on the wall. One in particular caught her eye. The same wolves, the same tigers, the same dragon, and at the centre, though this time only two-thirds the size of the page, an impenetrable square, composed of several layers of black and cobalt blue crayon, with not even the slightest speck of white showing through.

That picture had been drawn by Daisy.

Though Brookes lacked a formal degree in psychology, two decades of teaching, nearly half of it at Sawatch Elementary, had exposed her to enough child abuse to last a lifetime. She was familiar with the signs and not just the obvious ones like malnutrition, abrasion, or unnatural shyness. She had learned to read behavior patterns, eating habits, and even drawings. That said, she still had never encountered such a striking similarity between a five year old girl and her eight year old brother. The collective artistry was appalling. “Now heck, I’ve survived two bad marriages and seen my share of evil along the way. I don’t get fazed by much, but let me tell you just seeing those pictures gave me the willies.” [256—Teppet
C.
Brookes’
The Places I’ve Seen
as told to Emily Lucy Gates (San Francisco: Russian Hill Press, 1996), p. 37-69.]

Teppet C. Brookes could have contacted the Department of Children’s Services. She could have even called the Navidsons and requested a consultation. That Monday, however, when neither Chad nor Daisy showed up at school, she decided to pay the Navidsons a little visit herself. Willies or not, curiosity got the best of her: “Truth be told, I just had to take a gander at the place that had inspired those drawings.” [257— Ibid. p.
38.258]
[
258—A1so
refer back to footnote 212 dealing with Françoise Minkowska.]

2.

During her lunch break, Brookes climbed into her Ford Bronco and made the fifteen minute drive to Ash Tree Lane. “I thought the house was nice and quaint on the outside. I was expecting something else I guess. To tell you the truth, I almost drove off but since I’d made the drive, I decided I should at least introduce myself. I had a good excuse. I wanted to know why both kids were not in school. And heck, if it was Chicken Pox, I’ve had mine, so that was no matter.”
[
259—Teppet
C.
Brookes’
The
Places I’ve Seen,
p. 142.]

Brookes recalls looking at her watch as she walked toward the front door: “It was close to one. I knocked or rang the door bell, I don’t remember. Then I heard the screams. Wails. I’ve heard that kind of grief before. I started banging real hard. A second later an Afro-American man in a wheelchair opened the door. He seemed surprised to see me, like he was expecting someone else. I could tell he was in pretty bad shape, his hands all ripped up and bleeding. I didn’t know what to say so I told him I was from the school. He just nodded and told me he was waiting for the ambulance and would I mind giving him a hand.”

Brookes was hardly prepared for the slaughterhouse she was about to enter: a woman sobbing in the living room, a big man holding her, two bodies in the kitchen surrounded by blood, and on the staircase Chad sitting next to his little sister Daisy who kept quietly singing to no one in particular words no one else could understand— “ba. dah. ba-ba.”

Brookes lasted five minutes, crossing herself too many times to help anyone. Fortunately the sheriff, the paramedics, and an ambulance soon arrived. “I had entered a war zone and I have to be honest, it overwhelmed me. I could tell my blood pressure was rising. You know sometimes you go into something thinking you’re going to make all the difference. You’re going to save the situation. Make it right. But that was too much for me. It was real humbling. [Starts to cry] I never saw the kids after that. Though I still have their drawings.” [
260—”The Navidson Legacy”
Winter’s Grave,
PBS,
September 8,
1996.]

3.

In some respects, the distillate of crayon and colour traced out by the hands of two children captures the awfulness at the heart of that house better than anything caught on film or tape, those shallow lines and imperfect shapes narrating the light seeping away from their lives. Brookes, however, is not the only one to have seen those drawings. Chad and Daisy’s room is full of them, the monstrous black square getting progressively larger and darker, until in Chad’s case, not even the barest margin survives.

Karen knows her kids are in trouble. A clip of Hi 8 catches her telling them that as soon as their father returns she will take them all to “grandma’ s.”

Unfortunately, when Navidson, Tom and Reston disappear down that hallway early Saturday morning, Karen is put in an impossible situation: torn between monitoring the radios and looking after Chad and Daisy. In the end, separation from Navidson proves more painful. Karen keeps by the radios.

For a while Daisy and Chad try to coax their mother to even briefly abandon her post. When that fails, they hang around the living room. Karen’s inability to concentrate on them, however, soon drives both children away. A few times, Karen asks them to at least keep together. Daisy, however, insists on hiding in her room where she can play endlessly with her prized Spanish doll and the doll house Tom finally finished for her, while Chad prefers to escape outside, disappearing into the summoning woods, sometimes with Hillary, often now without, always well beyond the range of any camera, his adventures and anger passing away unobserved.

That Saturday night Chad and Daisy have to put themselves to sleep. Then around ten o’clock, we watch as both children come racing down into the living room, claiming to have heard voices. Karen, however, has heard nothing more than the ever present hiss of the radios, occasionally interrupted by Tom calling in from the Great Hall. Even after she checks out their bedroom, she is unable to detect any unusual sounds. At least Chad and Daisy’s obvious fear momentarily snaps Karen out of her obsession. She leaves the radios and spends an hour tucking her children into bed.

Dr. Lon Lew believes the house enabled Karen to slowly break down her reliance on Navidson, allowing her a greater and more permanent distance: “Her children’s fear coupled with their need for her further separated Karen from Navidson. Sadly, it’s not the healthiest way to proceed. She merely replaced one dependency for another without confronting what lay at the heart of both.”
[261—Dr.
Lon
Lew’s “Adding In to Dependent”
Psychology Today,
v. 27, March/April 1994, p. 32.]

Then on Sunday evening, both children ask her what happened to all her Feng Shui objects. We watch as they lead her from room to room, pointing out the absent tiger, the absent marble horses, and even the absent vase. Karen is shocked. In the kitchen, she has to sit down, on the verge of a panic attack. Her breathing has quickened, her face is covered m sweat. Fortunately, the episode only lasts a couple of minutes.

Along with several other critics, Gail Kalt dwells on Karen’s choice of words during her conversation with Tom on the radio when she refers to Feng Shui as “some such shit.”