House of Leaves (44 page)

Karen has begun
to
deconstruct her various mechanisms of denial. She does not continue to insist on the ineffectual science of Feng Shui. She recognizes that the key to her misery lies in the still unexplored fissure between herself and Navidson. Without knowing it she has already begun her slow turn to face the meaning, or at least one meaning, of the darkness dwelling in the depths of her
house.
[
262—Gai1 Kalt’s “The Loss of Fajth—(Thank God!)”
Grand Street,
v. 54, fall 1195, p. 118.]

Certainly Karen’s step away from denial is made more evident when right after her talk with Tom she gathers up any remaining items having to do with Feng Shui and throws them in a box. David N. Braer in his thesis “House Cleaning” notes how Karen not only adds to this collection the books already mentioned in Chapter V but also includes the Bible, several New Age manuals, her tarot cards, and strangest of all a small hand mirror. [
263—David N. Braer’s “House Cleaning” Diss. University of
Tennessee,
1996, p. 104.]
Then after depositing the box in the garage, she looks in on her children one more time, comforting them with an open invitation to sleep in the living room with her if they like. They do not join her but the grateful tone of their murmurs seems to suggest they will now sleep better.

Helen Agaliway asserts that by “Monday, October 8th, Karen has made up her mind to depart. When Tom reappears in the living room and informs her that Navidson is only hours away from getting back, she keeps the children home from school because she has every intention of leaving for New York that day.”
[264—Helen Agaliway’s “The Process of
Leaving”
Diss. Indiana University, 1995, p. 241.]

Upon returning from town with bundles of rope, the pulleys, and several trolley wheels, Karen begins packing and orders the children to try to do the same. She is in fact in the middle of frantically removing several winter coats and shoes from the foyer closet when Tom races out of the hallway, pushing the gurney in front of him, tears gushing from his eyes.

4.

When Karen sees Wax her hand flies to her mouth, though it hardly prevents the cry.
[265—Many have complained that The Holloway Tape as well as the two untitled sequences frequently identified as “The Wait” and “The Evacuation” are incomprehensible. Poor resolution, focus,
and
sound (with the exception of the interviews shot
afterward
in 16mm)
further
exacerbate the difficulties
posed
by so many jarring
cuts
and a general chronological
jumble.
That said, it is
crucial
to
recognize
how
poor
quality
and general incoherence is not a reflection of the creator’s
state
of
mind. Quite
the
contrary, Navidson
brilliantly used these stylistic discrepancies to further drive home the overwhelming horror and dislocation experienced by his family during “The Evacuation.” For other books devoted specifically to
reconstructing
the narrative
see
The Navidson Record
:
The
Novelization
(Los Angeles: Goal Gothum Publication, 1994): Thorton
3.
Cannon Jr.’s
The Navidson Record
: Action
and
Chronologies
(Portland: Penny Brook Press, 1996);
and
Esther Hartline’s
Thru Lines
(New York: Dutton, 1995).]
Reston emerges from the hallway next, the growl growing louder behind him, threatening to follow him into the living room. Frantically, he slams the door and bolts all four locks, which no doubt thanks to the door’s acoustic rating actually seems to keep that terrible sound at bay.

Karen, however, starts shouting: “What are you doing? Billy? What about Navy? Where’s Navy?”

Even though he is still crying, Tom tries to pull her away from the door, “We lost him.”

“He’s dead?” Karen’s voice cracks.

“I don’t think so,” Tom shakes his head.” But he’s still down there. Way down.”

“Well then go in and get him! Go in and get your brother!” Then starting to shriek, “You can’t just leave him there.”

But Tom remains motionless, and when Karen finally looks him in the face and beholds the measure of his fear and grief, she crumples into a fit of sobs. Reston goes to the foyer and calls an ambulance.

Meanwhile, Wax, who has been temporarily left alone in the kitchen, quietly groans on the stretcher. Next to him lies Jed’s body. Unfortunately Tom did not realize how much blood had soaked into Jed’s clothes. Blind with his own sorrow, he unknowingly covered the linoleum with a smear of red when he set the corpse down. He even stepped in the blood and tracked footprints across the carpet as he lurched back
to
the living room to console Karen.

Perhaps inevitably, all the commotion draws the children out of their room.

Chad catches sight of the body first. There is something particularly disquieting about watching the way he and Daisy walk slowly toward Jed and then over to Wax’s side. They both seem so removed. Almost in a daze.

“Where’s our daddy?” Chad finally asks him. But Wax is delirious.

“What. I need what-er.”

Together Chad and Daisy fill a glass from the sink. Wax, however, is far too weak to sit up let alone drink. They end up dribbling small drops of water on his cracked lips.

A few seconds later there is a loud banging on the front door. Reston wheels over and opens it. He expects to see the paramedics but finds instead a woman in her late 40s with almost perfectly grey hair. Chad and Daisy retreat to the staircase. They too step in the blood, their feet leaving small red imprints on the floor. Chad’s teacher fails to utter even one word or offer any sort of assistance. Tom continues to sit with Karen, until eventually her muted cries join the wall of sirens rapidly approaching their house on Ash Tree Lane.

5.

While
The Navidson Record
clearly states that Wax Hook survived, it does not dwell on any of the details following his departure. Numerous articles published after the film’s release, however, reveal that he was almost immediately rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Washington, D.C. where he was placed in an I.C.U. There doctors discovered that fragments from the coracoid process and scapula spine had turned his trapezius, delta and infraspinous muscles to hamburger. Miraculously though, the bullet and bone shrapnel had only grazed the subclavian artery. Wax eventually recovered and after a long period of rehabilitation returned to a life of outdoor activities, even though it is doubtful he will ever climb Everest now let alone attempt to solo the North Face. By his own admission, Wax also keeps clear of caves not to mention his own closet. [
266—See
U.S. News & World Report,
v. 121, December 30, 1996, p. 84;
Premiere,
v. 6, May 1993, P. 68-70;
Life,
v. 17, July 1994, p. 26-32;
Climbing,
November I,
1995, p.
44;
Details,
December
1995,
p. 118]

Even as Wax was loaded into the ambulance, police began an investigation into Jed Leeder’s death. Reston provided them with a copy of the tape from his Hi 8 showing Holloway shooting Wax and Jed. To the police, the murder appeared to have taken place in nothing more than a dark hallway. As APBs went out, patrolmen began a statewide search which would ultimately last several weeks. That afternoon, Karen also insisted on introducing the authorities to that all consuming ash-walled maze. Perhaps she thought they would attempt to locate Navidson. The results were hardly satisfying.

In The Reston Interview, Billy shakes his head and even laughs softly:

It wasn’t a bad idea. Tom and I’d had enough

too. Karen just expected too much, especially

from a town that has one sheriff and a handful

of deputies. When the sheriff came over,

Karen immediately dragged him over to the

hallway, handed him a flashlight and the end

of a spool of Monel fishing line. He looked at

her like she was nuts, but then I think he got

a little spooked too. At that point in time, no

one was about to go in there with him.

Karen because of her claustrophobia. Tom,

well he was already going to the bottom of a

bottle. And me, I was trying to fix my wheelchair.

It was all bent from when I came up on

the pulley. Even so though, I mean even if

my chair had been fme, going back would

have been hard. Anyway Sheriff Oxy, Axard,

Axnard, I think that was his name,

Sheriff Axnard went in there by himself. He

walked ten feet in and then walked straight

back out, thanked us and left. He never said a

word about where he’d been and he never

came back. He spent a good amount of time

looking for Holloway everywhere else but

never in the house.

Right after the release of
The Navidson Record
,
Sheriff Josiah Axnard was accosted by numerous reporters. One clip captures the Sheriff in the process of climbing into his squad car “For once and for all, that house was completely searched and Holloway Roberts was not in it.” Six months later the Sheriff consented to an interview on National Public Radio (April 18, 1994) where he told a slightly different story. He confessed to walking down “an unfamiliar hallway.” “It’s not there no more,” he continued. “I checked. Nothing unusual there now but.
. .
but back then there was..
.
there was a corridor on the south wall. Cold, no lights and goin’ on into nowhere. It creeped me like I never been creeped before, like I was standing in a gigantic grave and 1 remember then, clearly, like it was yesterday, thinking to myself ‘If Holloway’s in here I don’t need to worry. He’s gone. He’s long gone.” [267—Nor is that the first time the word “grave” appears in reference
to
the house
in
The Navidson Record
.
When Reston suggests Navidson use the Leica distance meter, he adds, “That should put this ghost in the grave fast.” Holloway in
Exploration #3
mutters: “Cold as a grave.” Also in the same segment Wax grunts a variation, “I feel like I’m in a coffin.” In one of her Hi 8 journal entries, Karen tries to make light of her situation when she remarks: “It’s like having a giant catacomb for a family room.” Tom in Tom’s Story tells the “grave-maker” joke, while Reston, during the rescue attempt, admits to Navidson: “You know, I feel like I’m in a grave.” To which Navidson responds, “Makes you wonder what gets buried here.” “Well judging by the size,” Reston replies. “It must be the giant from Jack and the fucking Beanstalk.” Giant indeed.]
[
268—0n several occasions, Zampanô also uses the word “grave.”]
[269—See Index.
—
Ed.]

6.

That night Karen stays in the living room, crying off and on, leaving the hallway door open, even though, as she explains to Reston, standing a foot too close will cause her to experience heart palpitations and tremors. Reston, however, badly in need of some shut eye almost immediately falls into a deep sleep on the couch.

There is one particularly horrible moment when the phone rings and Karen answers on speaker. It is Jed Leeder’s fiancée calling from Seattle, still unaware of what has happened. At first Karen tries to keep the news to herself but when the woman begins to detect the lie, Karen tells her the truth. A panicked shout cracks over the speaker phone and then decays into terrified cries. Abruptly the line goes dead. Karen waits for the woman to call back but the phone does not ring again.

Of course during all this, the children are once again abandoned, left to look after each other, with no one around to help translate the horror of the afternoon. They hide in their room, rarely saying a thing. Not even Tom makes an appearance to even temporarily contest their fears with the soothing lyric of a bedtime story about otters, eagles, and the occasional tiger.

When Tom had returned from the grave, he was convinced he had lost his brother. Both he and Reston had heard the great Spiral Staircase yawn beneath them, and Reston’s Hi 8 had even caught a glimpse of Navidson’s light sinking, finally vanishing into the deep like a failing star.

As Billy explains in The Reston Interview: “Tom felt like a part of him had been ripped away. I’d never seen him act like that. He started shaking and tears just kept welling up in his eyes. I tried to tell him the stairway could shrink just like it had stretched, and he kept agreeing with me, and nodding, but that didn’t stop the tears. It was terrifying to watch. He loved his brother that much.”

After watching the paramedics take Wax away, we follow Tom’s retreat to the study where he manages to locate among his things the last bit of a joint. Smoking it, however, offers absolutely no relief. He is no longer crying but his hands still shake. He takes several deep breaths and then as Karen is getting ready to show
Sheriff
Axnard the hallway, he steals a sip of bourbon. [270—See Harmon Frisch’s “Not Even Bill’s Acquaintance”
Twenty Years In The
Program
ed. Cynthia Huxley (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), P. 143-179.]