House Of Leaves - House of Leaves Part 26
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House of Leaves Part 26

Indeed, by continuing to build on Bachelard, Slocum treats the snail in Navidson's dream as a "remarkable inversion" of the house's Spiral Staircase: "Robinet believed that it was by roiling over and over that the snail built its 'staircase.' Thus, the snail's entire house would be a stairwell. With each contortion, this limp animal adds a step to its spiral staircase. It contorts itself in order to advance and grow" (Page 122; The Poetics of Space). [385-Original text: Robinet a pense que c'est en roularn sur lui-meme que Ic limacon a fabrique son "esca.Lier." Ainsi, toute la maison de l'escargot serait une cage d'escalier. A chaque contorsion, l'animal mou fait une marche de son escalier en colimacon. II se contorsionne pour avancer et grandfr.

And of course who can forget Derrida's remarks on this subject in footnote 5 in "Tympan" in Marges de Ia philosophie (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1972), p. xi-xii: Tympanon. dionysie, labyrinthe, fils d'Ariane. Nous parcourons rnaintenant (debout, marchant, dansant), compris et enveloppes pour n'en jamais sortir, Ia forme d'une oreille construite autour d'un barrage, tournant autour de sa paroi interne, une yule, donc (labyrinthe, canaux semi-.circulaires-on vous previent que les rampes ne tiennent pas) enroulee comme un limacon autour d'une vanne, d'une digue (dam) et tendue vers Ia mer; fennee sur elle-meme et ouverte sur Ia voie de Ia mer. Pleine et vide de son eau, l'anainnese de Ia conque resonne seule sur une plage. Comment une fIure pourrait-elle s'y produire, entre terre et mer? [386-Tympanum, Dionyslanism, labyrinth, Ariadne's thread. We are now traveling through (upright, walking, dancing), included and enveloped within it, never to emerge, the form of an ear constructed around a barrier, going round its inner walls, a city, therefore (labyrinth, semicircular canals-warning: the spiral walkways do not hold) circling around like a stairway winding around a lock, a dike (dam) stretched out toward the sea; closed In on itself and open to the sea's path. Full and empty of its water, the anamnesis of the choncha resonates alone on the beach." As translated by Alan Bass. - Ed.]

In his own note buried within the already existing footnote, in this case nor 5 but enlarged now to 9, Alan Bass (-Trans for Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)) further illuminates the above by making the following comments here below: "There is an elaborate play on the words Iimacon and conque here. Limo con (aside from meaning snail) means spiral staircase and the spiral canal that is part of the inner ear. Conque means both conch and concha, the largest cavity of the external ear."]

Still more remarkable than even this marvelous coincidence is the poem Bachelard chooses to quote by Rene Rouquier: C'est un escargot enorme Qui descend de Ia montagne Et le ruisseau l'accompagne De sa bave blanche Tres vieu, ii n 'a plus qu 'une come C'est son court clocher carre.

[387-Rene Rouquier's L boule de verre (Paris: Seghers), p. 12.] [388- "A giant snail comes down from the mountain followed by a stream of its white slime. So very old, it has only one horn left, short and square like a church tower." - Ed.]

Navidson is not the first to envision a snail as large as a village, but what fascinates Slocum more than anything else is the lack of threat in the dream.

"Unlike the dread lying in wait at the bottom of the wishing well," Slocum comments. "The snail provides nourishment. Its shell offers the redemption of beauty, and despite Navidson's dying candle, its curves still hold out the promise of even greater illumination. All of which is in stark contrast to the house. There the walls are black, in the dream of the snail they are white; there you starve, in the dream the town is fed for a lifetime; there the maze is threatening, in the dream the spiral is pleasing; there you descend, in the dream you ascend and so on."

Slocum argues that what makes the dream so particularly resonant is its inherent balance: "Town, country. Inside, outside. Society, individual. Light, dark. Night, day. Etc., etc. Pleasure is derived from the detection of these elements. They create harmonies and out of harmonies comes a balm for the soul. Of course the more extensive the symmetry, the greater and more lasting the pleasure."

Slocum contends that the dream planted the seed in Navidson's mind to try a different path, which was exactly what he did do in Exploration #5. Or more accurately:" The dream was the flowering of a seed previously planted by the house in his unconsciousness." When bringing to a conclusion "At A Snail's Place," Slocum further opens up his analysis to the notion that both dreams, "The Wishing Well" and "The Snail," suggested to Navidson the possibility that he could locate either within himself or" within that vast missing" some emancipatory sense to put to rest his confusions and troubles, even put to rest the confusions and troubles of others, a curative symmetry to last the ages.

For the more troubling and by far most terrifying Dream #3, Mia Haven and Lance Slocum team up together to ply the curvatures of that strange stretch of imaginings. Unlike #1 and #2, this dream is particularly difficult to recount and requires that careful attention be paid to the various temporal and even tonal shifts.

[2 pages missing]

[389- ____________________________] [390 - 3:19 AM I woke up, slick with sweat. And I'm not talking wet in the pits or wet on the brow. I'm talking scalp wet, sheet wet, and at that hour, an hour already lost in a new year-shivering wet. I'm so cold my temples hurt but before I can really focus on the question of temperature I realize I've remembered my first dream.

Only later after I find some candles, stomp around my room, splash water on the old face, micturate, light a Sterno can and put the kettle on, only then can I respond to my cold head and my general physical misery, which I do, relishing every bit of it in fact. Anything is better than that unexpected and awful dream, made all the more unsettling because now for some reason I can recall it. Nor do I have an inkling why. I cannot imagine what has changed in my life to bring this thing to the surface.

The guns sure as hell were useless, instantly confiscated at sleep's border, even if I did manage to pick up the Weatherby before my credit ran out.

An hour passes. I'm blinking in the light, boiling more water for more coffee, ramming my head into another wool hat, sneezing again though all I can see is the fucking dream, torn straight out of the old raphe nuclei care of the very brainstem I thought had been soundly severed.

This is how it starts: I'm deep in the hull of some enormous vessel, wandering its narrow passages of black steel and rust. Something tells me I've been here a long time, endlessly descending into dead ends, turning around to find other ways which in the end lead only to still more ends. This, however, does not bother me. Memories seem to suggest I've at one point lingered in the engine room, the container holds, scrambled up a ladder to find myself alone in a deserted kitchen, the only place still shimmering in the mirror magic of stainless steel. But those visits took place many years ago, and even though I could go back there at any time, I choose instead to wander these cramped routes which in spite of their ability to lose me still retain in every turn an almost indiscreet sense of familiarity. It's as if I know the way perfectly but I walk them to forget.

And then something changes. Suddenly I sense for the first time ever, the presence of another. I quicken my pace, not quite running but close. I am either glad, startled or terrified, but before I can figure out which I complete two quick turns and there he is, this drunken frat boy wearing a plum-colored Topha Beta sweatshirt, carrying the lid of a garbage can in his right hand and a large fireman's ax in his left. He burps, sways, and then with a lurch starts to approach me, raising his weapon. I'm scared alright but I'm also confused. "Excuse me, mind explaining why you're coming after mg?" which I actually try to say except the words don't come out right. More like grunts and clouds, big clouds of steam.

That's when I notice my hands. They look melted, as if they were made of plastic and had been dipped in boiling oil, only they're not plastic, they're the thin effects of skin which have in fact been dipped in boiling oil. I know this and I even know the story. I'm just unable to resurrect it there in my dream Stiff hair sprouts up all over the fingers and around the long, yellow fingernails. Even worse, this awful scarring does not end at my wrists, but continues down my arms, making the scars I know I have when I'm not dreaming seem childish in comparison. These ones reach over my shoulders, down my back, extend even across my chest, where I know ribs still protrude like violet bows.

When I touch my face, I can instantly tell there's something wrong there too. I feel plenty of hair covering strange lumps of flesh on my chin, my nose and along the ridge of my cheeks. On my forehead there's an enormous bulge harder than stone. And even though I have no idea how I got to be so deformed, I do know. And this knowledge comes suddenly. I'm here because I am deformed, because when I speak my words come out in cracks and groans, and what's more I've been put here by an old man, a dead man, by one who called me son though he was not my father.

Which is when this frat boy, swaying back and forth before me like an idiot, raises his ax even higher above his head. His plan I see is not too complicated: he intends to drive that heavy blade into my skull, across the bridge of my nose, cleave the roof of my mouth, the core of my brain, split apart the very vertebrae in my neck, and he won't stop there either. He'll hack my hands from my wrists, my thighs from my knees, pry out my sternum and hammer it into tiny fragments. He'll do the same to my toes and my fingers and he'll even pop my eyes with the butt of the handle and then with the heal of the blade attempt to crush my teeth, despite the fact that they're long, serrated and unusually strong. At least in this effort, he will fail; give up finally; collect a few. Where my internal organs are concerned, these too he'll treat with the same respect, hewing, smashing and slicing until he's too tired and too covered with blood to finish, even though of course he really finished awhile ago, and then he'll slouch exhausted, panting like some stupid dog, drunk on his beer, this killing, this victory, while I lie strewn about that bleak place, der absoluten Zerrissenheit (as it turned out I ran into Kyrie at the supermarket this last November. She was buying a 14.75 ounce can of Alaskan salmon. I tried to slip away but she spotted me and said hello, collecting me then in the gentle coils of her voice. We talked for a while. She knew I was no longer working at the Shop. She'd been by to get a tattoo. Apparently a stripper had gotten a little catty with her. Probably Thumper. In fact maybe that's why Thumper had called me, because this exquisite looking woman had out of the blue spoken my name. Anyway Kyrie had gotten the BMW logo tattooed between her shoulder blades, encircled by the phrase "The Ultimate Driving Machine." This apparently had been Gdansk Man's idea. The $85,000 car it turns out is his. Kyrie didn't mention any ire on his part or history on our part, so I just nodded my approval and then right there in the canned food aisle, asked her for the translation of that German phrase which I should have amended, could even do it now, but, well, Fuck 'em Hoss. [391-See footnote 310 and corresponding reference. - Ed.] And so voil it appears here instead: "utter dismemberment" the same as "dejected member" which I thought she said though she wrote it down a little differently, explaining while she did that she had decided to marry Gdansk Man and would soon actually be living, instead of just driving, up on that windy edge known to some as Mullholland. As I conjure this particular memory I can see more clearly her expression, how appalled she was by the way I looked: so pale and weak, clothes hanging on me like curtains on a curtain rod, sunglasses teetering on bone, my slender hands frequently shaking beyond my control and of course the stench I continued to emanate. What was happening to me, she probably wanted to know, but didn't ask. Then again maybe I'm wrong, maybe she didn't notice. Or if she did, maybe she didn't care. When I started to say goodbye, things took an abrupt turn for the weird. She asked me if I wanted to go for another drive. "Aren't you getting married?" I asked her, trying, but probably failing, to conceal my exasperation. She just waited for my answer. I declined, attempting to be as polite as possible, though something hard still closed over her. She crossed her arms, a surge of anger suddenly igniting the tissue beneath her lips and finger tips. Then as I walked back down the aisle, I heard a crash off to my left. Bottles of ketchup toppled from the shelf, a few even shattered as they hit the floor. The thrown can of salmon rolled near my feet. I twisted around but Kyrie was already gone.) Anyway back to the dream, me chopped up into tiny pieces, spread and splattered in the bowels of that ship, and all at the hands of a drunken f rat boy who upon beholding his heroic deed pukes all over what's left of me. Except before he achieves any of this, I realize that now, for some reason, for the first time, I have a choice: I don't have to die, I can kill him instead. Not only are my teeth and nails long, sharp and strong, I too am strong, remarkably strong and remarkably fast. I can rip that fucking ax out of his hands before he even swings it once, shatter it with one jerk of my wrist, and then I can watch the terror seep into his eyes as I grab him by the throat, carve out his insides and tear h.im to pieces.

But as I take a step forward, everything changes. The f rat boy I realize is not the f rat boy anymore but someone else. At first I think it's Kyrie, until I realize it's not Kyrie but Ashley, which is when I realize it's neither Kyrie nor Ashley but Thumper, though something tells me that even that's not exactly right. Either way, her face glows with adoration and warmth and her eyes communicate in a blink an understanding of all the gestures I've ever made, all the thoughts I've ever had. So extraordinary is this gaze, in fact, that I suddenly realize I'm unable to move. I just stand there, every sinew and nerve easing me into a world of relief, my breath slowing, arms dangling at my sides, my jaw slack, legs melting me into ancient waters, until suddenly my eyes on their own accord, commanded by instincts darker and older than empathy or anything resembling emotional need, dart from her beautiful and strangely familiar face to the ax she still holds, the ax she is now lifting, the smile she is still making even as she starts to shake, suddenly swinging the ax down on me, at my head, though she will miss my head, barely, the ax floating down instead towards my shoulder, finally cutting into the bone and lodging there, producing shrieks of blood, so much blood, and pain, so much pain, and instantly I understand I'm dying, though I'm not dead yet, even if I am beyond repair, and she has started to cry, even as she dislodges the ax and raises it again, to swing again, again at my head, though she is crying harder and she is much weaker than I thought, and she needs more time than I thought, to get ready, to swing again, while I'm bleeding and dying, which now doesn't compare at all to the feeling inside, also so familiar, as the atriums of my heart on their own accord suddenly rupture, like my father's ruptured. So this, I suddenly muse in a peculiarly detached way, was this how he felt?

I've made a terrible mistake, but it's too late and I'm now too full of fury & hate to do anything but look up as the blade slices down with appalling force, this time the right arc, not too far left, not too far right, but right center, descending forever it seems, though it's not forever, not even close, and I realize with a shade of citric joy, that at least, at last, it will put an end to the far more terrible ache inside me, born decades ago, long before I finally beheld in a dream the face and meaning of my horror.]

As they start to sum up The Haven-Slocum Theory, the couple quotes from Johanne Scefing's posthumously published journal: At this late hour I'm unable to put aside thoughts of God's great sleeper whose history filled my imagination and dreams when I was a boy. I cannot recall how many times I read and re-read the story of Jonah, and now as I dwell on Navidson's decision to return to the house alone I turn to my Bible and find among those thin pages these lines: So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.

(Jonah 1: 15) [392-Johanne Scefing's The Navidson Record, trans. Gertrude Rebsamen (Oslo Press, May 1996), p. 52.]

It seems a somewhat bizarre reference, until Haven and Slocum produce a second PEER table documenting what happened once Navidson entered the house on Ash Tree Lane: POST-EXPOSURE EFFECTS RATING.

0: Alicia Rosenbaum: headaches stopped.

0: Audrie McCullogh: no more anxiety.

1: Teppet C. Brookes: improved sleeping.

1: Sheriff Axnard: end of nausea.

2: Billy Reston: decreased sensation of cold.

3: Daisy: end of fever; arms healing; occasional echolalia.

1: Kirby "Wax" Hook: return of energy and potency.

4: Chad: better goal-directed flow of ideas and logical sequences; decreased aggression and wandering.

1: Karen Green: improved sleeping; no more unmotivated panic attacks [Dark enclosed places will still initiate a response.]; decreased melancholia; cessation of cough.

1: Will Navidson: no more night terrors; cessation of mutism. [Evidenced by Navidson's use of the Hi 8 to record his thoughts.]

The Haven-Slocum Theory - 2 Even more peculiar, the house became a house again.

As Reston discovered, the space between the master bedroom and the children's bedroom had vanished. Karen's bookshelves were once again flush with the walls. And the hallway in the living room now resembled a shallow closet. Its walls were even white.

The sea, it seemed, had quieted.

"Was Navidson like Jonah?" The Haven-Slocum Theory asks. "Did he understand the house would calm if he entered it, just as Jonah understood the waters would calm if he were thrown into them?"

Perhaps strangest of all, the consequences of Navidson's journey are still being felt today. In what remains the most controversial aspect of The Haven-Slocum Theory, the concluding paragraphs claim that people not even directly associated with the events on Ash Tree Lane have been affected. The Theory, however, is careful to distinguish between those who have merely seen The Navidson Record and those who have read and written, in some cases extensively, about the film.

Apparently, the former group shows very little evidence of any sort of emotional or mental change:" At most, temporary." While the latter group seems to have been more radically influenced: "As evidence continues to come in, it appears that a portion of those who have not only meditated on the house's perfectly dark and empty corridors but articulated how its pathways have murmured within them have discovered a decrease in their own anxieties. People suffering anything from sleep disturbances to sexual dysfunction to poor rapport with others seem to have enjoyed some improvement." [393-Of course as Patricia B. Nesseiroade, M.D. noted in her widely regarded self-help book Tamper With This (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1994), P. 687: "If one invests some interest in, for example, a tree and begins to form some thoughts about this tree and then writes these thoughts down, further examining the meanings that surface, allowing for unconscious associations to take place, writing all this down as well, until the subject of the tree branches off into the subject of the self, that person will enjoy immense psychological benefits."]

However, The Haven-Slocum Theory also points out that this course is not without risk. An even greater number of people dwelling on The Navidson Record have shown an increase in obsessiveness, insomnia, and incoherence: "Most of those who chose to abandon their interest soon recovered. A few, however, required counseling and in some instances medication and hospitalization. Three cases resulted in suicide."

XVIII.

Ashe, good for caske hoopes: and fneede require, plow worke, as alfo for many things els.

- A briefe and true report of the newfound land of Virginia by Thomas Harlot servant to Sir Walter Raleigh - "a member of the Colony, and there imployed in difcouering."

Though Karen and Navidson both went back to Ash Tree Lane, Karen did not go there for the house. As she explains in a video entry: "I'm going because of Navy."

During the first week of April, she stayed in close contact with Reston who made the long drive from Charlottesville more than a few times. As we can see for ourselves, Navidson's car never moves from the driveway and the house continues to remain empty. In the living room a closet still stands in place of the hallway, while upstairs the space between the master bedroom and the children's bedroom is lost to a wall.

At the start of the second week of April, Karen realizes she will have to leave New York. Daisy and Chad seem to have shaken off the debilitating effects of the house and their grandmother is more than happy to look after them while Karen is gone, believing her daughter's trip will take her one step closer toward selling the house and suing Navidson.

On April 9th, Karen heads south to Virginia. She checks into a Days Inn but instead of going directly to the house makes an appointment with Alicia Rosenbaum. The real estate agent is more than happy to see Karen and discuss the prospects of putting the house on the market.

"Oh lord" she exclaims when she sees the Hi 8 in Karen's hands. "Don't point that at me. I'm not at all photogenic." Karen sets the camera down on a file cabinet but leaves it on, thus providing a high-angle view of the office and both women.

Karen probably planned to have a short discussion with Alicia Rosenbaum about the sale of the house, but the real estate agent's uncensored shock changes everything. "You look terrible" she says abruptly. "Are you alright, honey?" And so with that, what was supposed to have been a business meeting instantly becomes something else, something otherly, a sisterly get together where one woman reads in another signs of strain invisible to a man and sometimes even a mother.

Rosenbaum fills a mug with hot water and hunts around in a cabinet for some tea bags. Slowly but surely Karen begins to talk about the separation. "I don't know," Karen fmally says as she stirs her chamomile tea. "I haven't seen him in almost six months."

"Oh dear, I'm so sorry."

Karen keeps turning the spoon in small circles but cannot quite stop the tears. Rosenbaum comes around the desk and gives Karen a hug. Then pulling up a chair tries her best to offer some consolation: "Well at the very least, don't worry about the house. It always sells."

Karen stops stirring the tea.

"Always?" she asks.

"After you came to me with that whole mysterious closet bit," Rosenbaum continues, ignoring the phone as it starts to ring. "I did a little research. I mean I'm as new to this town as you all were, though I am southern born. Truth be told, I hoped to find some kind of ghostliness. [She laughs] All I found was a pretty comprehensive list of owners. A lot of 'em. Four in the last eleven years. Almost twenty in the last fifty. No one seems to stay there for more than a few years. Some died, heart attacks that sort of thing and the rest just disappeared. I mean we lost track of 'em. One man said the place was too roomy, another one called it 'unstable.' I went ahead and checked if the house was built on an old Indian burial ground."

"And?"

"Nope. In fact, definitely not. It's all too marshy with winter rains and the James River nearby. Not a good place for a cemetery. So I looked for some murder or witch burning-though I knew, of course, that had all been Massachusetts folk. Nothing."

"Oh well."

"Did you ever see any ghosts?"

"Never."

"Too bad. Virginia, you know, has a tradition of ghosts-though I've never seen one."

"Virginia does?" Karen asks softly.

"Oh my yes. The curse tree, the ghost of Miss Evelyn Byrd, Lady Ann Skipwith, ghost alley, and lord knows a whole handful more. [394-See L. B. Taylor, Jr.'s The Ghosts of Virginia (Progress Printing Co., Inc., 1993) For a more international look at hauntings consider E. T. Bennett's Apparitions & Haunted Houses: A Survey of Evidence (London; Faber & Faber, 1939); Commander R. T. Gould, R. N.'s Oddities; A Book of Unexplained Facts (1928); Walter F. Prince's The Psychic in the House (Boston: Boston Society for Psychical Research, 1926); and Suzy Smith's Haunted Houses for the Million (Bell Publishing Co., 1967).] Unfortunately, the only thing distinguished about your home's past, but I guess it's part of everybody's past around here, and it's no mystery either, would be the colony, the Jamestown Colony."

It is not surprising The Navidson Record does not pause to consider this reference, especially considering that Karen is far more concerned about the house and Navidson's whereabouts than she is with 17th century history. However having some familiarity with the bloody and painful origins of that particular toe hold in the new world reveals just how old the roots of that house really are.

Thanks to The London Company, on May 2, 1607, 105 colonists were deposited on a marshy peninsula where they established what soon became known as the Jamestown Colony. Despite pestilence, starvation, and frequent massacres carried out by native Indians, John Smith effectively held the village together until an injury forced him to return to England. The ensuing winter of 1609-1610 almost killed everyone and had it not been for Lord De Ia Wart's timely arrival with supplies those still living would have fled. [395-Consider the interesting mention in Rupert L. Everett's Gallantrie and Hardship in the Newfoundland (London: Samson & Sons Publishing Company, Inc., 1673), where a colonist remarked how "Waif in Fray sure was all tabled Balls, full with much Delight and of course strange Veering Spirit."]

With the help of John Rolfe's tobacco industry, the marriage of Pocahontas, and the naming of Jamestown as the Virginia capital, the colony survived. However Nathaniel Bacon's fierce battle with the tidewater aristocrat Sir William Berkeley soon left the village in flames. Eventually the capital of Virginia was moved to Williamsburg and the settlement quickly decayed. In 1934 when park excavations began, very little remained of the site. As Park Warden Davis Manatok reported, "The marsh land has obscured if not completely consumed the monuments of the colony." [396- Virginia State Park Report (Virginia State Press, v. 12, April 1975), P. 1,173.]

AU of which is relevant only because of a strange set of pages currently held at the Lacuna Rare Books Library at Horenew College m South Carolina.

Supposedly the journal in question first turned up at The Wishart Bookstore in Boston. It had apparently been mixed in with several crates of books dropped off from a nearby estate. "Most of it was dreck" said owner Laurence Tack. "Old paperbacks, second rate volumes of Sidney Sheldon, Harold Robbins, and the like. No one here paid them much attention." [397-Personal interview with Laurence Tack, May 4, 1996.]

Eventually the journal was bought for a remarkable $48.00 when a Boston University student noticed "Wart" penciled inside the cover of the badly damaged volume. As she soon discovered, the book was not De la Wart's but one he had kept in his library. It seems that prior to Warr's arrival, during "the starving time" of the winter of 1610, three men had left the Jamestown Colony in search of game. As the journal reveals, they traveled for several days until they stumbled onto an icy field where they camped for the night. The following spring two of their thawing bodies were found along with this priceless document.

For the most part, the entries concern the quest for game, the severe weather and the inevitable understanding that cold and hunger were fast colluding into the singular sensation of death: 18 Janiuere, 1610 We fearch for deere or other Game and aiwayes there is nothing. Tiggs believef our luck will change.

[398-This sporadic "f" for "s" stuff mystifies me, [399-Mr. Truant has mistaken the long "S" for an "f." John Bell the publisher for British Theatre abolished the long S" back in 1775. In 1786. Benjamin Franklin indirectly approved of the decision when he wrote that "the Round s begins to be the Mode and In nice printing the Long S Is rejected entirely." - Ed.] but I don't care anymore. I'm getting the fuck out of here. Good thing too, fince I'm also being evicted from my apartment for failure to pay. It took them all of January, February and moft of March to do it but here it is the end of March and if I'm not out by tomorrow, people will come for me. My plan's to leave tonight and take a southern route all the way to Virginia, where I hope to find that place, or at the very least find some piece of reality that's at the root of that place, which might in turn-I hope; I do, do hope-help me addrefs some of the awful havoc always tearing through me.

Luckily, I've managed to put enough money together to get the hell away. My Vif a was canceled a month ago but I had some good fortune selling my mother's locket (though I kept the gold necklace).

It was that or the guns. Which may surprife you, but something about that dream I remembered changed me. Afterwards, juft looking at the dull silver made me feel like there was this horrendous weight around my neck, even though I wafn't even wearing it. In fact, the idea of getting rid of it was no longer enough, I had to hate it as I got rid of it.

At leaf t I didn't rush things. I found an appraifer, approached some ftores, never budged from my af king price. Apparently it was defigned by someone well known. I made $4,200. Though I will say this, as I was handing over that ftrange fhape-letter included-I felt an extraordinary amount of rage surge through me. For a moment I was sure the scars along my arms would catch fire and melt down to the bones. I pocketed the cafh and quickly ducked away, hurt, full of poifon and more than a little afraid I might try to inflict that hurt and poifon on someone elfe.

Maybe in some half-hearted attempt to tie up some loofe ends, I then dropped by the Fhop a couple of days later to say goodbye to everyone. Man, I muft look bad becaufe the woman who replaced me almoft screamed when she saw me walk through the door. Thumper wafn't around but my boff promifed to give her the envelope I handed him.

"If I find out you didn't give it her," I said with a smile full of rotting teeth. "I'm going to burn your life down."

We both laughed but I could tell he was glad to fee me go.

I had no doubt Thumper would get my gift.

The worft was Lude. He was nowhere around. Firft I tried his apartment, which was kind of weird, to find myfelf after more than a year slipping acrofs that same awful courtyard where Zampano ufed to walk, and there's still not a cat in sight, juft a breeze rustling through a handful of dying weeds warning away the illufion of time in the same language of a cemetery. For some reafon juft being there filled me with guilt, voices converging from behind thofe gloomy curtains of afternoon light, almoft as if drawn out of the dull earth itfeif, still bitter with winter, and gathering together there to accufe me, indict me for abandoning the book, for selling that stupid fucking locket, for running away now like a goddamn coward. And though no clouds or kites marred a sun as yellow as corn, some invifible punifhment still hung above me there like a foul rain, caufing even more rage to dump abruptly into my syftem, though where this reaction came from I'm at a loff to know. It waf almoft more than I could handle. I forced myfeif to knock on Lude's door but when he didn't anfwer I ran from there as faft as I could.

Eventually a bouncer at one of his haunts told me he'd been tagged bad enough to land him in the hofpital. It took a little while to get paft the receptionift, but when I finally did Lude rewarded me with this huge smile. It made me want to cry.

"Hey Hoff, you came. Is this what it takes to get you out of your coffin?"

I couldn't believe how terrible he looked. Both his eyes were blacker than charcoal. Even his normally large nofe was bigger than ufual, stuffed now with pounds of gauze. His jaw was a deep purple and all over his face capillaries had been ruthlessly shattered. I tried pulling in deep breaths but the kind of anger I was feeling caufed my vif ion to blur.

"Hey, hey, eafy there, Hoff," Lude practically had to shout. "This is the beft thing that could of happened to me. I'm on my way to becoming a very rich man."

Which actually did help calm me down. I poured him a cup of water and one for myfeif and then I sat down by his bed. Lude seemed genuinely pleafed by his battered condition. He treated his broken ribs and the tube draining his fractured tibia with newfound refpect: "My summer bonus," he smiled, although the effort was somewhat warped.

The way Lude told it, he'd been delighting in the comforts of an idle hour fpent on Funset Plaza quaff ing his thirft with several falty margaritas when who should stroll by but Gdansk Man. He was still tweeked about the time Lude popped him in the nuts but he was even more fueled by something elfe. Apparently Kyrie had told him that I had accofted her in the supermarket and for some stupid reaf on she'd decided to add that Lude had been right there with me, maybe becaufe he was the one who introduced us in the first place. Anyway, bright enough not to make a public scene, that monfter known as Gdansk Man crept back to the parking lot and lay in wait for Lude. He had to wait for a long time but he was full of enough ill-conceived rage not to mind. Eventually Lude fucked down the laft drop of his drink, paid his bill and ambled away from Funset, back there, towards his mode of tranfportation, right past Gdansk Man.

Lude never had a chance, not even time for words, let alone one word, let alone a return ftrike. Gdansk Man didn't hold anything back either and when it was over they had to send for an ambulance.

Lude laughed as he finifhed the story and then promptly coughed up a chunk of something brown.

"I owe you Hoff."

I tried to act like I was following him but Lude knew me well enough to fee I wafn't getting the moft important part. One of his swollen eyes attempted a wink.

uAs soon as I'm out of here, I'm taking him straight to court. I've already been in touch with a few lawyers. It looks like Gdansk Man has quite a bit of money he's going to have to be ready to part with. Then you and I are going straight to Vegas to lofe it all on red."

Lude laughed again only thif time I waf relieved to fee he didn't cough.

"Will you need me to teftify?" I afked, prepared to cancel my trip.

aNot neceffary. Three kitchen workers saw the whole thing. Bef ides Hoff, you look like you juft got out of a concentration camp. You'd probably scare off the jury."

The hurt and ache eventually got the beft of Lude and he signaled the nurfe for more painkillers.

"Another perk," he whifpered to me with a fading leer. I gueff some things never change. Lude's chemical line of defenfe still seemed to be holding.

After he'd fallen afleep, I drove back to his apartment and slipped an envelope with $500 in it under his door. I figured he'd need a little something extra when he got out of there. Flaze paf fed me in the hail but pretended not to recognize me. I didn't care. On my way out, I caught one laft glimpfe of the courtyard. It was empty but I still couldn't fhake the feeling that something there was watching me.