Mark Z Danielewski
Page 26
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
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,
260"The Navidson Legacy" Winter's Grave, PBS, September 8, 1996.
26,Dr. Lon Lew's "Adding In to Dependent" Psychology Today, v. 27, March/April 1994, p. 32.
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 in 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."
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
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 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 Agallway 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."[119]
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.[120] 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 wail of sirens rapidly approaching their house on Ash Tree Lane.
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.[121]
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 fine, going back would have been hard. Anyway Sheriff Oxy, Ax- ard, 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 I 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.'"[122]
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 fiancee 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.[123]
Regrettably, Tom fails to stop at a sip. A few hours later he has finished off the whole fifth as well as half a bottle of wine. He might have spent all night drinking had exhaustion not caught up with me. Of course, the following morning does nothing to erase yesterday's events. Tom attempts to recover lost ground by accompanying Reston back to the Great Hall. Much to their surprise, however, they discover the hallway now terminates thirty feet in, nor are there any doors or alternate hallways branching off it. Karen returns to her room when she sees Tom and Reston reappear only five minutes later.
Even though he too is suffering from Navidson's disappearance, Reston still does his best to counsel Tom, and at least for a few hours Tom successfully resists drinking anything more. Chad apparently had escaped from the house at dawn and now refuses to come in or say a word to his mother. Tom eventually finds him among the branches of a tree just past the edge of the property line. Nevertheless, no amount of coaxing will induce the eight year old to come back in.
In Billy's words (The Reston Interview again): "Tom told me Chad was happy in his tree and Tom was hard pressed to start telling him inside was a better place. However, there was something else. The kid apparently bolted from the house when he heard some kind of murmuring, something about a walker in darkness, then a bang, like a gun shot, and the sound of a man dying. Woke him right up, he said. Back then I assumed he'd just been dreaming."
Judging from the house footage, what seems to really push Tom over the edge that second day is when he reenters the house and finds Daisy—her forearms acrawl with strange scratches—swaying in front of the hallway screaming "Daddy!" despite the absence of a reply, the absence of even an echo. When Karen finally comes downstairs and carries her daughter outside to help her find Chad, Tom takes the car and goes into town. An hour later he returns with groceries, unnecessary medical supplies, magazines and the reason for the excursion in the first place—a case of bourbon.
On the third and fourth day, Tom does not emerge once from the study, attempting to drink his grief into submission.
Karen, on the other hand, begins to deal with the consequences of Navidson's disappearance. She rapidly starts paying more attention to her children, finally luring Chad back into the house where she can oversee his (and Daisy's) packing efforts. In a brief clip we catch Karen on the phone, presumably with her mother, discussing their imminent departure from Virginia.
Reston remains in the living room, frequently attempting to raise Navidson on the radio, though never hearing more than static and white noise. Outside a thunder storm begins to crack and spit rain at the windows. Lightning builds shadows. A wind howls like the wounded, filling everyone with cold, bone weary dread.
Toward midnight, Tom emerges from the study, steals a slice of lemon meringue pie and then whips up some hot chocolate for everyone. Whole milk, unsweetened cocoa, sugar, and a splash of vanilla extract all brought to a careful simmer. Billy and Karen appreciate the gesture. Tom has not stopped drinking, and even doses his cup with a shot of Jack Daniels, but he does seem to have leveled out, not exactly achieving some sublime moment of clarity but at least attaining a certain degree of self- control.
Then Tom, though he is only wearing a t-shirt, takes a deep breath and marches into the hallway again. A minute later he returns.
"It's no more than ten feet deep now," Tom grunts. "And Navy's been gone over four days."
"There's still a chance," Reston grumbles.
Tom tries to shrug off the certitude that his brother is dead. "You know," he continues very quiedy, still staring at the hallway. "There once was this guy who went to Madrid. He was in the mood for something new so he decided to try out this small restaurant and order—sight unseen—the house specialty.
"Soon a plate arrived loaded with rice pilaf and two large meaty objects.
" 'What's this?' he asked his waiter.
"'Cojones, Senor.'
" 'What are cojones?'
" 'Cojones' the waiter answered, 'are the testicles of the bull that lost in the arena today.'
"Though a little hesitant at first, the man still went ahead and tried them. Sure enough they were delicious.
"Well a week later,
he goes back to the same restaurant and orders the same thing. This time, when his dish arrives, the meaty objects are much smaller and don't taste nearly as good.
"He immediately calls the waiter over.
" 'Hey,' he says. 'What are these?'