House of Leaves (49 page)

right one more time which closed the gap to a few feet from where Reston was hanging.

Just as I made my jump, I heard the first hinge and then the second hinge tear free of

the frame. That sound stretched the seconds into hours.

[Pause]

Once I made it though, everything sped up again. The next thing I knew we were both out on the front lawn getting soaked by the rain.

You know when I finally went back to the house to retrieve the Hi 8s, I couldn’t believe

how quickly it had all happened. My leap looks so easy and that darkness doesn’t seem dark at all. You can’t see the hollowness in it, the cold. Funny how incompetent images can sometimes be.

Those last words in particular may sound a bit glib, especially coming from such an esteemed photographer. Nevertheless, in spite of numerous Hi 8s mounted all over the house, Navidson is right: all the images recorded during this segment are inadequate.

Too bad Navidson never holds a camera. The entire sequence covering the escape from the house is reminiscent of something taken off of a cheap surveillance system in a local bank or 7-Eleven. The clips are impartial renderings of a space. If the action slips past the frame, the camera does not care enough to adjust its perspective. It cannot see what matters. It cannot follow.

Only the interviews inform these events. They alone show us how the moments bruise and bleed.

12.

Outside rain overwhelms everything, drenching the street, filling the gutters, stripping trees of fall leaves. Reston sits on the grass, soaked to the bone but refusing to take shelter. Karen is still unconscious, lying in the car exactly where Navidson put her.

Daisy and Chad, however, are still missing.

So for that matter is Tom.

Navidson is trying to decide how he should reenter the house when the sound of shattering glass draws him to the backyard. “It was definitely a window breaking” Reston remembers. “And when Navy heard it, he just took off running.”

Reston recalls watching Navidson disappear around the house. He had no idea what would happen next. It was bad enough that he was without his wheelchair. Then he heard Daisy scream, a high-pitched burst bright enough to pierce the hard patter of the storm, followed by shouts, and then something Reston had never heard before: “It was like an immense gasp, only very, very loud.”

Reston was squinting in the rain, when he suddenly saw a shadow separate from the tree line: “By then dawn had begun to creep in but the storm clouds were still keeping the day pretty dark.” Reston immediately assumed it was Navidson but then as the figure got closer he could see it was much smaller than his friend. “A strange walk too. Not fast at all but very deliberate. There was even something threatening about it.”

Chad just nodded at Reston as he passed by him and climbed into the car. He never said a thing either, just sat down next to his mother and waited for her to wake up.

Chad had seen what had happened but had no words to describe it. Reston knew if he wanted to find out, he would have to drag himself toward the back of the house, which is exactly what he started to do.

Daisy had stopped screaming because of Tom.

Somehow Tom had managed to make his way through the heaving house to the upstairs hallway where he began to close in on the cries of the terrified five year old. What no one knew then was that Chad had already snuck outside, preferring the solitude of the early morning to all the packing and panic curdling inside.

As we can see, Tom finally finds Daisy frozen in the shadows. Without a word, he sweeps her up in his arms and races back down to the first
floor,
avoiding the precipitous drop into the living room—the way Navidson had gone—by dashing instead toward the rear of the house.

The whole place keeps shuddering and shaking, walls cracking only to melt back together again, floors fragmenting and buckling, the ceiling suddenly rent by invisible claws, causing moldings to splinter, water pipes to rupture, electrical wires
to
spit and short out. Worse, the black ash of below, spreads like printer’s ink over everything, transforming each corner, closet, and corridor into that awful dark. Then Tom and Daisy’s breath begins to frost.

In the kitchen, Tom throws a stool through the window. We hear Tom saying:
“Okay
Daisy girl, make it through here and you’re home free.” Which might have been just that simple had the floor not taken on the characteristics of giant conveyor belt, suddenly drawing them away from their only escape.

Cradling Daisy in his arms, Tom starts running as fast as he can, trying to out race the shock of the void yawning up behind them. Ahead, Navidson appears in the window.

Tom pushes harder, edging closer and closer, until finally as he gets within reach, he holds Daisy out to Navidson who despite the fragments of glass scratching long bloody lines along his forearms, immediately rips her free of the house and into safety.

Tom, however, has found his limit. Badly out of breath, he stops running and drops to his knees, clutching his sides and heaving for air. The floor carries him backwards ten or fifteen feet more and then for no apparent reason stops. Only the walls and ceiling continue their drunken dance around him, stretching, bending, even tilting.

When Navidson returns to the window, he cannot believe his brother is standing still. Unfortunately, as Tom demonstrates, whenever he takes one step forward, the floor drags him two steps back. Navidson quickly begins to crawl through the window, and oddly enough the walls and ceiling almost instantly cease their oscillations.

What happens next happens so fast it is impossible
to
realize just how brutal the closure was before it is already over. Only the after-effects create an image commensurate with the shutter like speed with which those walls snapped shut and shattered all the fingers in both of Tom’s outstretched hands. Bones “like bread sticks” (Reston’s words)
[308—Due to the darkness and insufferable limitations of the Hi 8s, the chaotic bits of tape representing these events must be supplemented with Billy’s narration. Navidson, however, does not discuss any of these horrific moments in
The Last Interview
. Instead he makes Reston the sequence’s sole authority. This is odd, especially since Reston saw none of it. He is only recounting what Navidson told him himself. The general consensus has always been that the memory is simply too painful for Navidson to revisit. But there is another possibility: Navidson refuses to abandon the more perspicacious portion of his audience. By relying on Reston as the sole narrative voice, he subtly draws attention once again to the question of inadequacies in representation, no matter the medium, no matter how flawless. Here in particular, he mockingly emphasizes the fallen nature of any
history by purposefully
concocting an absurd number of generations.
Consider: 1. Tom’s broken
hands –—
> 2.
Navidson’s
perception
of Tom’s hurt –— >
3. Navidson’s description of Tom’s hurt to Reston –—> 4. Reston’s re-telling of Navidson’s description based on Navidson’s recollection and perception of Tom’s actual hurt. A pointed reminder that representation does not replace. It only offers distance and in rare cases perspective.] now jut out through the flesh. Blood covers his arms, as well as pours from his nose and ears.

For a moment, Tom looks like he is going to slip into shock as he stares at his mutilated body.

“Goddamn it Tom, run!” Navidson shouts.

And Tom tries, though his effort only sweeps him farther away from his brother. This time when he stops, he knows he has no chance.

“Hang on, I’m coming to get you,” Navidson yells, as he squeezes himself all the way onto the kitchen counter.

“Aw Christ,” Tom mutters.

Navidson looks up.

“What?”

Whereupon Tom disappears.

In less time than it takes for a single frame of film to flash upon a screen, the linoleum floor dissolves, turning the kitchen into a vertical shaft. Tom tumbles into the blackness, not even a scream flung up behind him to mark his fall, Navidson’s own scream ineffectually scratching after him, his twin, stolen and finally mocked in silence, not even the sound of Tom hitting the bottom, which is how it might have remained had not some strange and unexpected intrusion, out of the blue, returned Tom’s end in the shape of an awful gasp, heard by Reston, perhaps by Karen who suddenly groaned, and certainly by Chad who crouched among the trees, listening and finally watching over the sobs of his father and little sister until something dark and unknown told him to find his mother.

XIV

“Let you be stripped of your purple dyes, for

I too once in the wilderness with my wife had

all the treasure I wished.”

—
Erikidu

Toward the end of October, Navidson went up to Lowell to take care of his brother’s things. He assured Karen he would join her and the children by the first of November. Instead he flew straight back down to Charlottesville. When Thanksgiving came and went and Navidson still had not made it to New York, Karen called Fowler.

Following the release of
The Navidson Record
,
Audrie McCullogh, who helped Karen build the bookshelf, briefly discussed the Navidsons’ relationship in a radio interview (a transcript can be obtained by writing to KCRW in Los Angeles). In it Audrie claimed the decision not to get married always came from Karen: “Navy would have married her in a second. She was always the one against it. She wanted her freedom and then would go berserk when he was away. Her whole affair with Fowler was about that. Seeing someone else but not.
. .
agh, I shouldn’t get into that.” [309—Audrie
McCullogh interviewed by Liza Richardson on “Bare Facts,” KCRW,
Los Angeles,
June 16, 1993.]

After Navidson had vanished down the Spiral Staircase, Karen found herself trapped between two thresholds: one leading
into
the house, the other leading
out
of it. Even though she finally did succeed in leaving Ash Tree Lane and in some respects Navidson, she was still incapable of entering any sort of dark enclosed place. Even in New York she refused to take subways and always avoided elevators.

The reasons are not at all obvious. The leading theory now depends on a history given by Karen’s estranged older sister Linda. Earlier this year, she went on a public access “talk show” and described how they had been sexually abused by their stepfather. According to her, one fall weekend while their mother was away, he took both girls to an old farmhouse where he forced Karen (age fourteen) down into a well and left her there while he raped Linda. Later, he forced Linda down the well and did the same to Karen.

The pharmacotherapy study Karen participated in never mentions any history of sexual abuse (see footnote 69). However it does not seem unreasonable to consider a traumatic adolescent experience, whether a fantasy or real, as a possible source for Karen’s fears. Unfortunately when asked by various reporters to confirm her sister’s claim, Karen refused to comment.

Navidson also refuses to comment, stating only that Karen’s already natural fear of that place was worsened by her severe “claustrophobia.” In
The Navidson Record
,
Karen describes her anxiety in veiy simple terms:

“Green lawns in the afternoon, warm 100 watt bulbs, sunny beaches, all of them, heaven. But get me near an elevator or a poorly lit basement and I’ll freak. A blackout can paralyze me. It’s clinical. I was once part of a study but the drugs they gave me made me fat.”

More than likely no one will ever learn whether or not the stories about the well and Karen’s stepfather are true.

After a decade of distance, the house was supposed to be a new beginning. Navidson gave up assignments abroad and Karen vowed to concentrate on raising their family. They both wanted and for that matter needed what neither one could really handle. Navidson quickly took refuge in his documentary. Regrettably for Karen, his work was still at home. He played more with the children, and every day filled the rooms with his substantial energy and natural authority. Karen was not strong enough to define her own space. She needed help.

Except in those objects housing evidence of her adultery, Karen’s affair with Fowler barely exists in
The Navidson Record
.
It was not until the film began to succeed that details concerning this relationship, however spurious, began to emerge.

Fowler was an actor living in New York. He worked at a Fifth Avenue clothing store, specializing in Italian cuts for women. He was considered consummately attractive and spent his evenings talking about acting down at the Bowery Bar, Naked Lunch, or Odelay-la. Apparently he picked up Karen on the street.

Literally.

Rushing to meet her mother for dinner, Karen had stepped off the curb and turned her ankle. For a dazed instant she lay on the asphalt amid the scattered contents of her
bag—der absoluten Zerrissenheit.
[
310—A line for Kyrie, though these days she’s a little unapproachable as Gdansk Man is now officially on some kind of Halloween rampage. He apparently cornered Lude at Dragonfly intending to exact some kind of serious physical retribution. Lude smiled and kicked him hard in the balls. The bouncers there, all friends of Lude’s, quickly threw the
madman
into the street. Gdansk
Man
in turn, being one of this century’s truly great logicians, left some yelling message on my machine. A powerful bit of articulation on his part, frequently juxtaposing murder and my name with just the right amount of grunting incoherence.
Who
cares? Fuck him. As if he’s really going to change any of this, which also applies to that scrap of
German
up there, as if a tranlation will somehow decrease the shattering effect this whole thing has had on me. It won’t. I know that now. There’s little else I can do now but copy it all down.
And
fast.]
An instant later, Fowler reached down and lifted her back onto the sidewalk. He gathered up her things and paid attention to her. By the time he was gone, she had given him her number and two days later when he called she had agreed to a drink.

After all, he was consummately attractive, and even more appealing to Karen, he was stupid.

This had taken place when Navidson and Karen were still living in New York City, a year before they bought the house in Virginia. Navidson was off taking aerial pictures of barges off the Norwegian coast. Once again, Karen resented
being
left alone with the children. Audrie claimed she was “desperate for a way out.” [311—Interview with Audrie McCullogh. KCRW, Los Angeles, June 16, 1993.] Fowler’s timing could not have been better.

Audrie stopped short of revealing much about the affair, but Karen’s sister, Linda, offered a pornographic recounting which many took seriously until they realized she had been out of touch with Karen for at least three years. The only source for this story comes by way of Fowler. No doubt the attention he received from the media was too much for a struggling actor to give up. Nor is there any question that he embellished to keep the media interested.

“She’s a great lady” Fowler first told reporters.” And it wouldn’t be cool to talk about it, about us, I mean.” [312— Jerry Lieberman’s “Fowl Play” in
People,
v. 40, July 26, 1993, p. 44.] And then a little later to some tabloid reporters, “What we had was special. Ours. You know what I mean. I don’t have to explain what we did or where we did it. We went to the park, had a drink, talked. I tried to show her some fun. We’re friends now. I wish her well, I do.” And still later, “She wanted a divorce. [313—Karen had told Fowler she was married. She even wore one of her mother’s old wedding bands to prove
it.
(See
New York,
v. 27, October
31,
1994, p. 92-93).] That guy didn’t treat her well. She fell down in the street and I picked her up. She’d never had anyone do that for her before.” [314—
The
Star,
January 24,
1995,
p. 18.]

Fowler probably never realized how wrong he was. Not only had Navidson carried Karen out of that house, he had picked her up a hundred times over the course of eleven years and carried her fear, her torment and her distance. In a rare moment, Reston called in on a late-night radio show and lambasted the host for promoting such ridiculous gossip: “Let me tell you this, Will Navidson did everything for that woman. He was solid. Once, for a thirteen month stretch, she wouldn’t let him touch her. But he never budged. Loved her just the same. I doubt that punk would have lasted a week. So give it a rest @$$hole” and before the subject could turn to the house or anything else, Reston hung up. [315—Cahill Jones’ “Night Life,” KPRO, Riverside, September 11, 1995.]

Eventually Fowler moved on to other things. He married a pornstar and disappeared into a very disagreeable world.

Rumours still insist Karen had other affairs. As beautiful as she was, it is not hard to believe she had suitors. Strangers were constantly writing her love letters, delivering expensive perfumes, sending her plane tickets to far off places. Supposedly she sometimes responded. There was someone in Dallas, someone in L.A. and several in London and Paris. Audrie, however, claims Karen only flirted and her indiscretions never went further than a coy drink or a curt meal. She maintains that Karen never slept with any of them. They were just a means to escape the closeness of any relationship, particularly the one with the man she loved most.

It is pretty certain Navidson knew about “the love letters Karen hid in her jewelry box.” [316—Audrie McCullogh. KCRW, Los Angeles, June 16, 1993.] But what intrigues many critics these days is the manner in which he chose to regard that curious object. As semiotician Clarence Sweeney wrote:

While Navidson refused to make her infidelities a ‘public’ part of the film, he seemed incapable of excluding them either. Consequently he symbolizes her transgressions in the sealed hand-carved ivory case containing Karen’s valuables, thus creating a ‘private’ aspect to his project, which in turn prompts yet another reevaluation of the meaning of interiority in
The Navidson Record
.
[317—See Clarence Sweeney’s
Privacy and Intrusion in the Twenty-First Century
(London: Apeneck Press, 1996), p. 140, as well as works already mentioned in footnote 15. Also reconsider the moment discussed in Chapter II (pages 10-11) where Navidson opens the jewelry box and then moments later throws out some of the hair he has just removed from Karen’s brush.]
[318—No matter whether you’re an electrician, scholar or dope addict, chances are that somewhere you’ve still got a letter, postcard or note that’s meaningful to you. Maybe only to you.

It’s amazing how many people save at least a few letters during their lifetime, leaves of feeling, tucked away in a guitar case, a safety deposit box, on a hard drive or even preserved in a pair of old boots no one will ever wear. Some letters keep. Some don’t. I have a few that haven’t spoiled. One in particular hides inside a locket shaped like a deer.

It’s actually a pretty clunky thing, supposedly over a hundred years old, made out of polished sterling silver with platinum plated antlers, emerald eyes, small diamonds on the fringe of its mane and a silver latch disguised as the tail. A thread of braided gold secures it to whoever wears it, which in this case has never been me. I just keep it by my bed, in the locked lower drawer of my nightstand.

My mother was the one who used to wear it. Whenever I saw her, from the time I was thirteen till I was almost eighteen, she always had it around her neck. I never knew what she kept inside. I saw it before I left for Alaska and I guess even back then there was something about its shape I resented. Most lockets I’d seen were small, round and warm. They made sense. Hers I didn’t get. It was awkward, ornate and most of all cold, every now and then blinking out odd bits of light, a warped mirror, attempting a reflection when she took care of it. For the most part only achieving a blur.

I saw it again before I left for Europe. An essay I’d written on the painter Paulus de Vos (1596-1678) had won me an all-paid summer abroad. I lasted two days in the program. By the third day I was heading for the station, looking for something, maybe someone, a bindle on my back, a Eurorail pass in hand, not more than three hundred bucks in traveler checks in my pocket. I ate very little, hustled from place to place, peeking into Czechoslovakia, Poland and Sweden before looping west so I could race all the way down from Denmark to Madrid where I stalked the halls of the Prado like a pack of hounds howling for a hart. Star stung chess games in Toledo soon gave way to a mad trek east for the littered lore of Naples and eventually a ferry ride to Greece where I made my way among Ionian islands before heading on towards

destinations even further south. Back in Rome, I spent almost a week at a whorehouse, talking to the women about the simplest stuff while they waited for their next turn—another story waiting on other days. In Paris I lived at the bistros during the night, occasionally splurging on beer and escargots, while during the
day I slept brokenhearted on the
guays of the Seine. I don’t know why I say brokenhearted. I guess it’s the way I felt, all emaciated and without company. Everything I saw in me somehow only reflecting my destitution. I often thought about the locket, dangling from her neck. Sometimes it made me hurt. Often it made me angry.

She once told me it was valuable. That thought never crossed my mind. Even today I won’t consider its monetary worth. I’m living off of tuna, rice and water, losing pounds faster than Lloyd’s of London, but I’d sell body parts before I’d consider taking cash for this relic.

When my mother died the locket was the only thing she left me. There’s an engraving on the back. It’s from my father
[
319—Mr. Truant is referring here to his biological father not Raymond, his foster father. — Ed.]
: “My heart for you, my love—March 5, 1966”—practically prophetic. For a long time, I didn’t flip the latch. I’m not sure why. Maybe I was afraid what I’d find inside. I think I expected it to be empty. It wasn’t. When I finally did crack the hinge, I discovered the carefully folded love letter disguised as a thank you letter, scrawled in the hand of an eleven year old boy.