House Of Leaves - House of Leaves Part 17
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House of Leaves Part 17

"What do I say?" I yelled/whispered. Bewildered.

"Ask her how big they are."

I did go up and talk to her and we talked for a while though never about her tits which constantly drew my eyes into their orbit no matter how hard I tried to resist-moon and sea tied together. Turned out she liked to listen to country music or Pantera, depending on her mood, which at that moment was completely unreadable, her bloodshot eyes flashing out at me from beneath all that liner, sad? drunk? dry? or just permanently red? After a good twenty minutes of talk, talk interpolated with countless conversation ends, huge uncomfortable gaps where I always expected her to cough and excuse herself which for whatever reason she never did, waiting for me to continue our conversation-could anyone call that a conversation? "What kind of music do you like?" "Country." LLong pause] "Really, country? hmmm?" [Long pause] "And Pantera."

"Country and Pantera? Really? hmnimm?"-on and on like that until finally, after twenty minutes, the club started closing down and bouncers began herding people towards the exits. And we walked out together. She'd come with a girlfriend who she waved goodbye to outside, ignoring me, though after the wave, suddenly returning to me, asking me to escort her to her truck.

As we waited for the light to change, she told me her name was Johnnie, though some people called her Sled, though her real name was Rachel. This is a simple telling of a much more difficult series of questions, the answers to which, in retrospect, were more than likely all made up. Then as the light changed and we crossed to the east side of Vine, we found on the corner a black bug-eyed Pekinese without tags. It was dirty, scared and obviously without owner, snot pouring out of its pug nose, every part of it trembling as it cowered on that grimy sidewalk, motionless, finally, after how many hours, how many days, at a loss where to go. All directions leading to the same place anyway. Its own end.

"Oh my poor baby" Johnnie cooed, those cold and indifferent spaces in our talk suddenly full of affection and concern, though the notes seemed wrong, not dissonant or flat or played at an improper tempo, just wrong, the melody somehow robbed of itself, meaning not another melody either, just something else. At least that's how it sounds now. Back then I hardly noticed.

Still, I was the one who picked up the frightened thing, cradling its small head in the crook of my arm, wiping some of the snot off on the sleeve of my buttonless corduroy coat, deciding as I did this-making a mess of myself-to take it home with me. To hell with the cramped space. I wasn't going to let this animal die. Not after it had snotted on my coat and sighed in my arms. But Johnnie wanted the poor thing.

"What kind of place do you have?" she asked. "A studio," I replied. "No way," she said, growing increasingly more emphatic and insistent, even if all this was spoken in that strange melody, not exactly atonal, I don't know, just wrong. So despite my instincts I relented. After all, she had a home in the valley, a yard, the kind of place dogs are meant to have. "A happy pet land," she called it, and really, considering the hole I inhabited, there was no argument. I handed Johnnie the poor Pekinese and together we placed it in the truck.

"Call me the momma to all strays," she said and gave me a weird smile.

Johnnie ended up giving me a lift back to my place. Oddly enough, when we pulled up in front of my building, I didn't ask her in She seemed grateful. But I hadn't ducked the invitation on her behalf. Something seemed wrong, very wrong. Maybe it was the vacancy I had begun to taste, brought on by November-Novem ovum nine and all mine. Or maybe it was her, the salt full breasts, the deformed mouth, the fresco of makeup, her entire figure so perfect(ly grotesque) and all at the age of twenty-four, or so she had told me, though she probably was closer to six thousand years old.

Something about her frightened me. The knotted fingers. That blank stare, permanently fixed on some strange slate bare continent lost deep beneath ancient seas, her seas, dark, red, dead. Maybe not. Maybe it was that Pekinese pup, hungry and abandoned, suddenly rescued, suddenly with hope; a projection of myself? my own place in the way of straydom? Maybe. Who knows the real answer, but I'll tell you this, I sure as hell wasn't thinking then about Johnnie's tits or her lips or the positions, the absurd positions, we could have made together. I was thinking only about the Pekinese, its safety, its future. The Pekinese and me: a contract of concern. I rubbed the top of its ears, stroked its back and then I climbed out of the truck and said goodbye.

As Johnnie pulled away, she smiled again, that weird all wrong smile. For a moment, I watched her tail lights trail down the Street, still feeling uncertain but a little relieved, until as I turned to go inside, I heard the thump. The one I remember even now, so clearly, an eerie and awful sound. Not too loud. Slightly hollow in fact, amounting to just that-a thump. Like that. Thump. I looked down the street. Her truck was gone but behind it, in its wake, something dark rolled into the light of a street lamp. Something Johnnie had thrown out her window as she passed the parked cars. I jogged down the block, feeling more than a little uneasy, until as I approached that clump of something on the side of the road, I discovered much to my dismay all my uneasiness confirmed.

To this day I don't know why she did it: my abandoned Pekinese, found on Vine, bug eyed, with snot pouring out of its pug nose, re-found not too far from my front door, that very same night, lying next to a car with half its head caved in, an eye broken and oozing vitreous jelly, tongue caught (and partially severed) in its snapped jaws. She must have thrown it with tremendous force too. In truth an almost unimaginable amount of force.

I tried to picture those claw like hands grabbing this poor creature by the neck and hurling it out her window. Had she even looked at what she held? Had she even glanced back?

Later in the week Lude told me he'd been wrong. She wasn't a porn star. She was someone else. Someone he didn't know. Did I know? I don't know why I didn't tell him. Probably because his real question was had I fucked her, and what could have been further from the truth? Me, staring down at that lifeless dog, not a speck of blood mind you, just a shadow looking alot like some kind of a charcoal drawing, featureless & still, floating in a pool of yellow lamp light. I couldn't even say anything, not a cry, a shout or a word. I couldn't feel anything either, shock alone possessing me, depriving me of any emotional meaning, finally leaving me in a mad debate over what to do with the body: bury it, take it to the pound, throw the thing in a garbage can. I couldn't decide anything. So I just crouched there, my knees burning, finally filling with enough of that distant pain that tells all of us, especially in our sleep, that the time has come to move. But I wanted to give this dog a name first and lists skipped through my mind, endless lists, which in the end ran out. There was no name. I was too late. And so I just stood up and left. Call me an asshole (and fuck you too) my Pekinese friend was gone. Ant food now. At the very least-I reasoned-the body was close enough to the curb. The street sweeper would get it in the morning.

Another mother to all strays.]

Day 2: 19:04 [Outside tent; smoking another joint]

Enough. I've had enough. Man, this is just not fair.

Day 2: 20:03 [Outside tent]

Radio (Navidson): [Static] We hear something [Noise] going [Noise] -ter it.

Tom: Good luck bro'.

[Silence]

Day 2: 21:54 [Outside tent]

Radio (Karen): I'm scared Tom.

Tom: What's the matter? Are the kids alright?

Radio (Karen): No, they're okay. I mean I think they're okay. Daisy, stays In her room. Chad prefers being outside. Who can argue with that. It's something else.

Tom: What?

Radio (Karen): All my Feng Shui- Oh Christ, this whole thing doesn't make any sense. How are Navy and Billy doing? Have they found anything? When are they coming back?

Tom: They heard someone crying. I didn't get it all 'cause the reception was so poor. From what I can gather, they're fine.

Radio (Karen): Well, I'm not. I don't like being here alone, Tom. In fact I'm fucking fed up with being alone. [She starts crying] I don't like being scared all the time. Wondering If he's going to be alright, then wondering if I'm going to be alright if he's not, knowing I won't be. I'm so tired of being frightened like this. I've had enough Tom. I really have. After this, I'm leaving. I'm taking the kids and I'm going. This wasn't necessary. It could have been avoided. We didn't need to go through all this.

Tom: [Gently] Karen, Karen, wait a minute. Just back up for a second. First, tell me what you were saying about your Feng Shui stuff.

Radio (Karen): [Pause] The objects. I put all these objects around the house. You remember, to improve the energy, or some such shit.

Tom: Sure. Crystals and bullfrogs, goldfish and dragons.

Radio (Karen): Tom, they're all gone.

Tom: What do you mean?

Radio (Karen): [Crying harder] They disappeared.

Tom: Hey Karen. Come on. Did you ask Daisy and Chad? Maybe they took them?

Radio (Karen): Tom, they're the ones who told me. They wanted to know why I'd gotten rid of it all.

Day 2: 22:19 [Outside tent]

Radio (Navidson): How's Karen [Static]?

Tom: Not so good, Navy. She's pretty scared. You should get back here.

Radio (Navidson): Wh [Static]? [Static]

[Static] [Static] [Static]ear you.

Tom: Navy'? Navy'?

[Static]

Day 2: 23:07 [Outside tent]

This is such bullshit. You hear me Mr. Monster BULLSHIT!

What kind of house do you got here anyway? No lights, no central heating, not even any plumbing! I've been shitting in a corner and pissing on a wall for two days.

[Getting louder]

Doesn't that irk you a little, Mr. Monster? I've been shitting in your corner. I've been pissing on your wall.

[Then softer]

Of course, the piss has dried up. And the crap just vanishes. You gobble it all up don't you? Turtles, shit, It doesn't matter to you.

[Loud again]

Indiscriminate bastard! Doesn't it make you sick? It makes me sick. Makes me wanna retch.

[Long series of echoes]

Day 3: 00:49 [Outside tent; reaching Into his ziploc bag for the last joint]

And all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse. Not even you Mr. Monster. Just Tom, poor 01' Tom, who was doing plenty of stirring around this house until finally he went stir crazy wishing there was a creature any creature-even a mouse.

Day 3: 00:54 [Outside tent]

Radio (Navidson): [Bang] We're in shit now [Static]

Tom: Navy, what's happening? I can barely hear you.

Radio (Navidson): Jed's been shot, he's bleed [Static]

Tom: Shot? By who?!

Radio: [Pop-Pop-Pop]

Reston: I can't see a fiicking thing.

[crack... crack... crack ...cracK]

Reston: Awwwwww-wwwww shit!

[...cracK -BANG- craCK... craCK crACK.cRACK. cRACK. CRACK. CRACK.]

Tom: What the hell was that?!

Radio (Navidson): Tom [Static] [Static]. I'm gonna [Static] [Static] [Static] [Static] Wax. We have to-shit- [Static...]

Tom: I'm losing you Navy.

Radio (Navidson): [Static]

Tom: Navy, do you read me? Over.

Day 3: 01:28 [Outside tent]

Radio (Navidson): [Static] it's probably gonna take us a good eight hours to make it back to the stairs. Tom, I need you to meet me at the bottom [Static] We need help. We can't carry them up ourselves. Also, you're [Static] [Static] [Static] [Static] eed to [Static] a doctor [Static]

[Static... ]

Day 3: 07:39 [Outside tent]

[Tom looks down the Spiral Staircase, ignites a lightstick and drops it.]

Are you down there, Mr. Monster?

[Below, the lightstick flickers and dies. Tom recoils.]

No way. Not gonna happen, Navy. I've been alone in this shithole for almost three days and now you want me to go down there alone? No way.

[Tom descends a few steps, then quickly retreats]

No can do.

[Tom tries again, makes it dawn to the first flight]

There that's not so bad. Fuck you, Mr. Monster! Yeah, FUCK YOU!!!

[Then as Tom starts down the second flight, the stairs suddenly stretch and drop ten feet. Tom looks up and sees the circular shape of the stairwell bend into an ellipse before snapping back to a circle again.]

[Tom's breathing gets noticeably more rapid.]

You are here, aren't you Mr. Monster?

[A pause. And then out of nowhere comes that growl. More like a roar. Almost deafening. As if it originated right next to Tom.]

[Tom panics and sprints back up the stairs. The shot from the camcorder instantly becomes an incoherent blur of walls, banisters, and the dim light thrown by the halogen.]

[A minute later, Tom reaches the top.]

Day 3: 07:53 [Outside tent]

Tom: Karen...

Radio (Karen): Are you alright?

Tom: I'm coming in.

A Short Analysis of Tom's Story How does one approach this quirky sequence? What does it reveal about Tom? What does it say about The Navidson Record?

For one thing, Navidson edited this segment months later. No doubt, what would soon take place deeply influenced the way he treated the material. As Nietzsche wrote, "It is our future that lays down the law of our today."

All throughout Tom's Story, Navidson tenderly focuses on Tom's mirth and his ability to play in the halls of hell, those dolorous mansions of Isolation, Fear, and Doubt. He captures his brother trying to help Karen and him with their foundering relationship, and he reveals Tom's surprising strength in the face of such utter darkness and cold.

There is nothing hasty about Tom's Story. Navidson has clearly put an enormous amount of work into these few minutes. Despite obvious technological limitations, the cuts are clean and sound beautifully balanced with the rhythm and order of every shot only serving to intensify even the most ordinary moment.

This is a labor of love, a set piece sibling to Karen's short film on Navidson.

Perhaps because Tom's antics are so amusing and so completely permeated with warmth, we could easily miss how hand shadows, an abundance of bad jokes and the birth of "Mr. Monster" ultimately come to mean Sorrow.