Juft an hour ago, I found a flyer under the wiper of my car: WANTED.
50 People We'll pay you to lofe weight!
I actually had a good laugh over that one. You want to lofe weight, I thought to myfeif, well boy do I have something for you to read.
I threw some old clothes in the back and slipped the rifle and the two guns under the seats. Moft of the ammo I hid in socks which I tucked infide the spare tire.
The laft week has been particularly funny, though not at all, I affure you, funny. Everywhere the jacarandas are bloffoming. People go around faying how beautiful they are. Me, they only unsettle, filling me with dread and now, strangely enough, a faint sense of fury. As foon as I finifh this note, I plan to load the book and everything elfe into that old black trunk and drag it down to a ftorage unit I rented in Culver city for a couple hundred bucks. Then I'm gone. I'm sorry I didn't get farther than this. Who knows what I'll find back eaft, maybe fleep, maybe a calm, hopefully the path to quiet the fea, this fea, my fea.
Likewife we muft also believe or elfe in the name of the Lorde take charge of the Knowledge that we are all dead men.
20 Janiuere, 1610 More fnow. Bitter cold. This is a terrible Place we have stumbled on. It has been a Week fince we haue fpied one living thing. Were it not for the ftorm we would have abandoned it. Verm was plagued by many bad Dreames last night.
21 Janiuere, 1610 The ftorm will not break. Verm went out to hunt but returned within the houre. The Wind makes a wicked found in the Woods. Ftrange as it muft feem, Tiggs, Verm, and I take comfort in the found. I fear much more the filence here. Verm tellf me he dreamt of Bones last night. I dreame of the Sunne.
22 Janiuere, 1610 We are dying. No food. No theker. Tiggs dreamt he faw all fnow about us turn Red with blood.
And then the last entry: 23 Janiuere, 1610 Ftaires! We haue found ftaires! [400-Jamestown Colony Papers: The Tiggs, Verm & I Diary (Lacuna Library founded by The National Heritage Society) v. xxiii. n. 139, January 1610, p. 18-25.]
Nowhere in Lord De la Waif's personal journals is there a mention of stairs or any clue about what might have happened to the third body. Warr, however, does refer to the journal as a clear example of death's madness and in a separate letter consigns the delicate relic to the flames. Fortunately the order, for whatever reason, was not carried out and the journal survived, winding up in a Boston book store with only Warr's name to link the fragile yellow pages to this continent's heritage.
Nevertheless, while the journal may offer some proof that NavIdson's extraordinary property existed almost four hundred years ago, why that particular location [401-The exact location of the house has been subject to a great deal of speculation. Many feel it belongs somewhere in the environs of Richmond. However Ray X. Lawlor, English professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, places Ash Tree Lane "closer to California Crossroads. Certainly not far from Colonial Williamsburg and the original Jamestown colony. South of Lake Powell but most assuredly northwest of Bacons Castle." See Lawlor's "Which Side of the James?" in Zyzzyva, fall 1996, p. 187.] proved so significant remains unanswered. In 1995, parapsychologist Lucinda S. Hausmaninger claimed that Navidson's place was analogous to the blind spot created by the optic nerve in the retina: "It is a place of processing, of sense-making, of seeing." [402-Lucinda S. Hausmaninger's "Oh Say Can You See" in The Richmond Lag Zine, v. 119, April 1995, p. 33.] However, she soon altered this supposition, describing it as "the omphalos of all e are." [403-Lucinda S. Hausmaninger's "The Navy Navel" in San Clemente Prang Vibe, v. 4, winter 1996, p. vii.] It did not matter that the house existed in Virginia, only that it existed in one place: "One place, one (eventual) meaning." [404-Ibid., p. viii.] Of course recent discoveries shatter both of Hausmaninger's theories. [405-See Appendix C. - Ed.]
As everyone knows, instead of delving into the question of location or the history of the Jamestown Colony, The Navidson Record focuses on Alicia Rosenbaum in her dingy little office talking to Karen about her troubles. It may very well be the best response of all: tea, comfort, and social intercourse. Perhaps Rosenbaum's conclusion is even the best: "lord knows why but no one ever seems comfortable staying there," as if to imply in a larger way that there are some places in this world which no one will ever possess or inhabit.
Karen may hate the house but she needs Navidson. When the video tape flickers back to life, it is 9:30 P.M. and Ash Tree Lane is dark. Alicia Rosenbaum waits in her car, engine idling, headlights plastering the front door.
Slowly Karen makes her way up the walk, her shadow falling across the door step. For a moment she fumbles with her keys. There is the brief click of teeth on pins in the heart of the dead bolt and then the door swings open. In the foyer, we can see almost six months of mail strewn on the floor, surrounded by wisps of dust.
Karen's breathing increases: "I don't know if I can do this" (then shouting) "Navy! Navy, are you in there?!" But when she finally locates the light switch and discovers the power has been turned off- "Oh shit. No way - " - she backs out of the house and into a jarring jump cut which returns us again to the front of the house, this time without Alicia Rosenbaum, evening now replaced by beady sunlight. April 10th, 11:27 PM. Everything is green, pleasant, and starting to bloom. Karen has avoided the B-movie cliche of choosing evening as the time to explore a dangerous house. Of course real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night.
Once again Karen unlocks the front door and tries the switch. This time a flood of electric light indicates all is well with the power company. "Thank you Edison," Karen murmurs, sunshine and electricity steeling her resolve.
The first thing she points the Hi 8 at are the infamous bookshelves upstairs. They are flush with the walls. Furthermore, as Reston also reported, the closet space has vanished. Finally, she goes back down to the living room, preparing to face the horror which we might imagine still reaches out of her past like a claw. She approaches the door on the north wall. Perhaps she hopes Reston has locked it and taken the keys, but as she discovers soon enough, the door opens effortlessly.
Still, there is no infernal corridor. No lightless and lifeless place. There is only a closet barely a foot and a half deep with white walls, a strip of molding, and all of it slashed from ceiling to floor with daylight streaming in through the windows behind her.
Karen actually laughs but her laughter comes up short. Her only hope of finding Navidson had been to confront what terrified her most. Now without a reason to be afraid, Karen suddenly finds herself without a reason to hope.
After spending the first few nights at the Days Inn, Karen decides to move back into the house. Reston visits her periodically, and each time he comes they go over every alcove and corner looking for some sign of Navidson. They never find anything. Reston offers to stay there with her but Karen says she actually wants to be alone. He looks noticeably relieved when she insists on seeing him to his van.
The following week, Alicia Rosenbaum starts bringing by prospective buyers. A couple of newlyweds seems especially taken by the place. "It's so cute" responds the pregnant wife." Small but especially charming," adds the husband. After they leave, Karen tells Rosenbaum she has changed her mind and will at least for the time being still hold onto the house.
Every morning and evening, she calls Daisy and Chad on her cellular phone. At first they want to know if she is with their father, but soon they stop asking. Karen spends the rest of her day writing in a journal. As she has turned back on all the wall mounted Hi 8s and kept them resupplied with fresh tapes, there is ample footage of her hard at work at this task, filling page after page, just as she sometimes fills the house with peals of laughter or now and then the broken notes of a cry.
Though she eventually uses up the entire volume, not one word is ever visible in The Navidson Record. To this day the contents of her journal remain a mystery. Professor Cora Minehart M.S., Ph.D. argues that the actual words are irrelevant: "process outweighs product." [406-Cora Minehart's Recovery: Methods and Manner with an introduction by Patricia B. Nesseiroade (New York: AMACOM Books, 1994), p. 11.] Others, however, have gone to great lengths to suggest a miraculous and secret history enfolded within those pages. [407-See Darren Meen's GatherEd God (New York Hyperion, I 995) and Lynn Rembold's Stations of Eleven (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996).] Katherine Dunn is rumoured to have invented her own version of Karen's journal.
Karen, however, does not restrict her activities to just writing. She frequently retreats outside where she works on the garden, weeding, clipping, and even planting. We often find her singing quietly to herself, anything from popular tunes, old Slavic lullabies, to a song about how many ways her life has changed and how she would like to get her feet back on the ground.
It seems that the most significant observations concerning this segment concern Karen's smile. There is no question it has changed. Lester T. Ochs has traced its evolving shape from Karen's days as a cover girl, through the months spent living at the house, the prolonged separation in New York, to her eventual return to the house: Whether on the cover of Glamour or Vogue, Karen never failed to form her lips into those faultlessly symmetrical curves, parted just enough to coyly remark on her barely hidden teeth, so perfectly poised between shadow and light, always guaranteed to spark fantasies of further interiority. No matter which magazine she appeared in, she always produced the same creation over and over again. Even after they moved to Ash Tree Lane, Karen still offered up the same art to whomever she encountered. The house, however, changed that. It deconstructed her smile until by the time they had escaped she had no smile at all.
Then further on: By the time she returned to Virginia, some expression of joy and relief, albeit rare, was also returning. The big difference though was that now her smile was completely unmannered. The curve of each lip no longer mirrored the other. The interplay was harmonic, enacting a ceaseless dance of comment and compliment, revealing or entirely concealing her teeth, one smile often containing a hundred. Her expression was no longer a frozen structure but a melody which for the first time accurately reflected how she was feeling inside. [408-Lester T. Ochs' Smile (Middletown, CT: University Press of New England' Wesleyan University Press, 1996), p. 87-91.]
This of course responds to the extraordinary moment on the evening of May 4th, when surrounded by candles, Karen suddenly beams brighter than she has before, running her hands through her hair, almost laughing, only to cover her face a few moments later, her shoulders shaking as she starts to weep. Her reactions seem entirely unmotivated until the following morning when she offers a startling revelation.
"He's still alive," she tells Reston over the phone. "I heard him last night. I couldn't understand what he said. But I know I heard his voice."
Reston arrives the next day and stays until midnight, never hearing a thing. He seems more than a little concerned about Karen's mental health.
"If he is still in there Karen," Reston says quietly. "He's been there for over a month. I can't see how there's any way he could survive."
But a few hours after Reston leaves, Karen smiles again, apparently catching somewhere inside her the faint voice of Navidson. This happens over and over again, whether late at night or in the middle of the day. Sometimes Karen calls out to him, sometimes she just wanders from room to room, pushing her ear against walls or floors. Then on the afternoon of May lOw, she finds in the children's bedroom, born out of nowhere, Navidson's clothes, remnants of his pack and sleeping bag, and scattered across the floor, from corner to corner, cartridges of film, boxes of 16mm, and easily a dozen video tapes.
She immediately calls Reston and tells him what has happened, asking him to drive over as soon as he can. Then she locates an AC adapter, plugs in a Hi 8 and begins rewinding one of the newly discovered tapes.
The angle from the room mounted camcorder does not provide a view of her Hi 8 screen. Only Karen's face is visible. Unfortunately, for some reason, she is also slightly out of focus. In fact the only thing in focus is the wall behind her where some of Daisy and Chad's drawings still hang. The shot lasts an uncomfortable fifteen seconds, until abruptly that immutable surface disappears. In less than a blink, the white wall along with the drawings secured with yellowing scotch tape vanishes into an inky black.
Since Karen faces the opposite direction, she fails to notice the change. Instead her attention remains fixed on the Hi 8 which has just finished rewinding the tape. But even as she pushes play, the yawn of dark does not waver. In fact it almost seems to be waiting for her, for the moment when she will finally divert her attention from the tiny screen and catch sight of the hoffor looming up behind her, which of course is exactly what she does do when she fmds out that the video tape shows.
XIX.
Contrary to what Weston asserts, the habit of photographic seeing-of looking at reality as an array of potential photographs-creates estrangement from, rather than union with, nature.
- Susan Sontag On Photography "Nothing of consequence" was how Navidson described the quality of the film and tapes rescued from the house.
"That was early on," Reston adds." When he had just started staying with me in Charlottesville. He reviewed every piece of footage there was, edited some parts of it and then just shipped everything off to Karen. He was really unsatisfied." [409-The Reston Interview.]
In the eyes of many, the footage from Exploration A offered an exemplary first-look at what lay down the hallway. To Navidson, however, the venture was spoiled by the limited resolution of the Hi 8 and "ridiculous lighting." Film taken during Exploration #4 was much more successful in capturing the size of that place, though due to the urgency of the mission Navidson only had time for a few shots.
One of the things The Kellog-Antwerk Claim, The Bister-FriedenJosephson Criteria, and The Haven-Slocum Theory never consider is Navidson's aesthetic dissatisfaction. Granted all three schools of thought would say Navidson's eye for perfection was directly influenced by his internal struggles, whether possession, self-obliteration, or the social good implicit in any deeply pursued venture. But as Deacon Lookner smugly commented: "We mustn't forget the most obvious reason Navidson went back to the house: he wanted to get a better picture." [410-Deacon Lookner's Artistic Peril (Jackson, Mississippi: Group Home Publications, 1994), p. 14.]
While the narrative events up till now have proved an easy enough thread to follow, they have also usurped the focus of the film. Until Exploration #5 there was never a true visual meditation on the house itself, its terrifying proportions and the palpable darkness inhabiting it. The few fragments of usable 16mm and video tape incensed Navidson. In his opinion, very few of the images-even those he was personally responsible for-retained any of those fantastic dimensions intrinsic to that place. All of which begins to explain why in February and March Navidson began to order high speed film, magnesium flares, powerful flashes, and even arranged to rent a thermal video camera. He intentionally kept Reston in the dark, assuming his friend would try to stop him or endanger himself by insisting on going along.
Throughout his career, Navidson had almost without exception worked alone. He was used to entering areas of conflict by himself He preferred the dictates of survival when, faced with enthralling danger, he was forced to rely on nothing else but his own keenly tuned instincts. Under those conditions, he consistently produced his best work.
Photojournalism has frequently been lambasted for being the product of circumstance. In fact rarely are any of these images considered in terms of their composition and semantic intent. They are merely news, a happy intersection of event and opportunity. It hardly helps that photographs in general also take only a fraction of a second to acquire.
It is incredible how so many people can constantly misread speed to mean ease. This is certainly most common where photography is concerned. However simply because anyone can buy a camera, shutter away, and then with a slightly prejudiced eye justify the product does not validate the achievement. Shooting a target with a rifle is accomplished with similar speed and yet because the results are so objective no one suggests that marksmanship is easy.
In photojournalism the celerity with which a moment of history is seized testifies to the extraordinary skill required. Even with the help of computerized settings and high-speed films, an enormous amount of technical information must still be accounted for in very little time in order to take a successful shot.
A photojournalist is very much like an athlete. Similar to hockey players or bodyboarders, they have learned and practiced over and over again very specific movements. But great photographers must not only commit to reflex those physical demands crucial to handling a camera, they must also refine and internalize aesthetic sensibilities. There is no time to think through what is valuable to a frame and what is not. Their actions must be entirely instinctual, immediate, and the result of years and years of study, hard work and of course talent.
As New York City gallery owner Timothy K. Thuan once said: Will Navidson is one of this century's finest photographers, but because his work defines him as a "photojournalist" he suffers to this day that most lamentable of critical denunciations: "Hey, he just shoots what happens. Anyone can do that, if they're there." And so it goes. Buy that guy a beer and sock him in the eye. [411-Personal interview with Timothy K. Thuan, August 29. 1996.]
Only very recently has the detection of a formidable understanding and use of frame balance inherent in all of Navidson's work begun to breach the bias against his profession.
Consider for the last time the image that won him the Pulitzer Prize. Not even taking into account the courage necessary to travel to Sudan, walk the violent, disease-infested streets, and finally discover this child on some rocky patch of earth-all of which some consider a major part of photography and even art [412-See Cassandra Rissman LaRue' s The Architecture of Art (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1971), p. 139 where she defines her frequently touted "seven stages to accomplishment": There are seven incarnations (and six correlates) necessary to becoming an Artist: 1. Explorer (Courage) 2. Surveyor (Vision) 3. Miner (Strength) 4, Refiner (Patience) 5. Designer (Intelligence) 6. Maker (Experience) 7. Artist. First, you must leave the safety of your home and go into the dangers of the world, whether to an actual territory or some unexamined aspect of the psyche. This is what is meant by 'Explorer.' I Next, you must have the vision to recognize your destination once you arrive there. Note that a destination may sometimes also be the journey. This is what is meant by 'Surveyor.' Third, you must be strong enough to dig up facts, follow veins of history, unearth telling details. This is what is meant by 'Miner.' Fourth, you must have the patience to winnow and process your material into something rare. This may take months or even years. And this is what is meant by 'Refiner.' Fifth, you must use your intellect to conceive of your material as something meaning more than its origins. This is what is meant by 'Designer.' Six, you must fashion a work independent of everything that has gone before it including yourself. This is accomplished through experience and is what is meant by 'Maker.' At this stage, the work is acceptable. You will be fortunate to have progressed so far. It is unlikely, however, that you will go any farther. Most do not. But let us assume you are exceptional. Let us assume you are rare. What then does it mean to reach the final incarnation? Only this: at every stage, from 1 thru 6, you will risk more, see more, gather mote, process more, fashion more, consider moie, love more, suffer more, imagine more and in the end know why less means more and leave what doesn't and keep what implies and create what matters. This is what is meant by 'Artist.'
It is interesting to note that despite the appeal of this description and the wide-spread popularity of The Architecture of Art, especially during the 70s and early 80s, out of all of LaRue's followers not one has produced anything of consequence let alone merit. In his article "Where have all the children gone?" in American Heritage, v. 17, January 1994, p. 43, Evan Sharp snapped: "LaRue fanatics would do well to trade in their seven stages for twelve steps."] -Navidson also had to contend with the infinite number of ways he could photograph her (angles, filters, exposure, focus, framing, lighting etc., etc.) He could have used up a dozen rolls exploring these possibilities, but he did not. He shot her once and in only one way.
In the photograph, the vulture sits behind Delial, frame left, slightly out of focus, primary feathers beginning to feel the air as it prepares for flight. Near the centre, in crisp focus, squats Delia!, bone dangling in her tawny almost inhuman fingers, her lips a crawl of insects, her eyes swollen with sand. Illness and hunger are on her but Death is still a few paces behind, perched on a rocky mound, talons fully extended, black eyes focused on Famine's daughter.
Had Delial been framed far right with the vulture far left, the photographer as well as the viewer would feel as if they were sitting on a sofa chair. Or as associate UCLA professor Rudy Snyder speculated: "We would be turned into an impartial audience plunked down in front of history's glass covered proscenium." [413-Rudy Snyder's "In Accordance With Limited Space" in Art News, v. 93, October 1994, p. 24-27.] Instead Navidson kept the vulture to the left and Delial toward the middle, thus purposefully leaving the entire right portion of the frame empty.
When Rouhollah W. Leffler reacquainted himself with Navidson's picture in a recent retrospective, he wistfully commented: It seems people should complain more about this empty space but to my knowledge no one ever has. I think there's a very simple reason too: people understand, consciously or unconsciously, that it really isn't empty at all. [414-Rouholl W. Leffler's "Art Times" in Sight and Sound, November 1996. p. 39.]
Leffler's point is simply that while Navidson does not physically appear in the frame he still occupies the right side of the photograph. The emptiness there is merely a gnomonic representation of both his presence and influence, challenging the predator for a helpless prize epitomized by the flightless wings of a dying child's shoulder blades.
Perhaps this is why any observer will feel a slight adrenal rush when pondering the picture. Though they probably assume subject matter is the key to their reaction, the real cause is the way the balance of objects within the frame involves the beholder. It instantly makes a participant out of any witness.
Though this is still all dark work, at least one aspect of the photograph's composition may have had direct political consequences: Delial is not exactly in the centre. She is closer to Navidson, and hence to the observer, by a hair. Many experts attribute this slight imbalance to the large outpouring of national support and the creation of several relief programs which followed the publication of the photograph. As Susan Sontag sadly mused many years later: "Her proximity suggested to us that Delial was still within our reach." [415-Susan Sontag's On Photography: The Revised Edition (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), p. 394.]
See diagram: [ ].
[416-Presumably Zampano's blindness prevented him from providing an actual diagram of the Delial photograph. - Ed.]
Opposing mortality is a theme which persists throughout Navidson's work. As photo critic M. G. Cafiso maintained back in 1985: Navidson's all consuming interest in people-and usually people caught in terrible circumstances-always puts him in direct conflict with death. [417-M. O. Cafiso's Mortality and Morality in Photography (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1985), p. xxiii. Interestingly enough in one of his early footnotes, Cafiso broaches a troubling but highly provocative aesthetic concern when he observes how even "the finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of i2 seeing something else." Regrettably he takes this matter no further nor applies it later on to the photographic challenges Navidson ultimately had to face.]
As previously mentioned in Chapter XV, Navidson never photographed scenery, but he also never photographed the threat of death without interposing someone else between himself and it.
Returning to Ash Tree Lane meant removing the other. It meant photographing something unlike anything he had ever encountered before, even in previous visits to the house, a place without population, without participants, a place that would threaten no one else's existence but his own.
XX.
No one should brave the underworld alone.
-Poe [-> "The walls are endlessly bare. Nothing hangs on them, nothing defines them. They are without texture. Even to the keenest eye or most sentient fingertip, they remain unreadable. You will never find a mark there. No trace survives. The walls obliterate everything. They are permanently absolved of all record. Oblique, forever obscure and unwritten. Behold the perfect pantheon of absence." - [Illegible] - Ed.]
On the first day of April, Navidson set out on the last exploration of those strange hallways and rooms. The card introduces this sequence as nothing more than Exploration #5.
For recording the adventure, Navidson brought with him a 1962 H16 hand crank Bolex 16mm camera along with 16mm, 25mm, 75mm Kern-Paillard lenses and a Bogen tripod. He also carried a Sony microcassette recorder, Panasonic Hi 8, ample batteries, at least a dozen 120 minute Metal Evaporated (DLC) tapes, as well as a 35mm Nikon, flashes, and a USA Bobby Lee camera strap. For film, he packed 3000 feet of 7298 16mm Kodak in one hundred foot loads, 20 rolls of 35mm, including some 36 frame Konica 3200 speed, plus 10 rolls of assorted black and white film. Unfortunately the thermal video camera he had arranged to rent fell through in the last minute.
For survival gear, Navidson took with him a rated sleeping bag, a one man tent, rations for two weeks, 2 five-gallon containers of water, chemical heat packs, flares, high intensity as well as regular intensity lightsticks, plenty of neon markers, fishing line, three flashlights, one small pumper light, extra batteries, a carbide lamp, matches, toothbrush, stove, change of clothes, an extra sweater, extra socks, toilet paper, a small medical kit, and one book. All of which he carefully loaded into a two wheel trailer which he secured to an aluminum-frame mountain bike.
For light, he mounted a lamp on the bike's handlebars powered by a rechargeable battery connected to a small optional rear-wheel generator. He also installed an odometer.
As we can see, when Navidson first starts down the hallway he does not head for the Spiral Staircase. This time he chooses to explore the corridors.
Due to the weight of the trailer, he moves very slowly, but as we hear him note on his microcassette recorder: "I'm in no hurry."
Frequently, he stops to take stills and shoot a little film.
After two hours he has only managed to go seven miles. He stops for a sip of water, puts up a neon marker, and then after checking his watch begins pedaling again. Little does he understand the significance of his offhand remark: "It seems to be getting easier."
Soon, however, he realizes there is a definite decrease in resistance. After an hour, he no longer needs to pedal: "This hallway seems to be on a decline. In fact all I do now is brake." When he finally stops for the night, the odometer reads an incredible 163 miles.
As he sets up camp in a small room, Navidson already knows his trip is over: "After going downhill for eight hours at nearly 20 mph, it will probably take me six to seven days, maybe more, to get back to where I started from."
When Navidson wakes up the next morning, he eats a quick breakfast, points the bike home, and begins what he expects will be an appalling, perhaps impossible, effort.
However within a few minutes, he finds he no longer needs to pedal.
Once again he is heading downhill.
Assuming he has become disoriented, he turns around and begins pedaling in the opposite direction, which should be uphill. But within fifteen seconds, he is again coasting down a slope.
Confused, he pulls into a large room and tries to gather his thoughts: "It's as if I'm moving along a surface that always tilts downward no matter which direction I face."
Resigned to his fate, Navidson climbs back on the bike and soon enough finds himself clipping along at almost thirty miles an hour.
For the next five days Navidson covers anywhere from 240 to 300 miles at a time, though on the fifth day, in what amounts to an absurd fourteen hour marathon, Navidson logs 428 miles.
Nor does this endless corridor he travels remain the same size.
Sometimes the ceiling drops in on him, getting progressively lower and lower until it begins to graze his head, only to shift a few minutes later, rising higher and higher until it disappears altogether.
Sometimes the hallway widens, until at one point Navidson wears he is moving down some enormous plateau: "An infinitely large billiard table or the smooth face of some incredible mountain," he tells us hours later while preparing a modest meal. "One time I stopped and set out to the right on what I thought would be a traverse. Within seconds I was heading downhill again."
And then the walls reappear, along with the ceiling and numerous doorways; the shifts always accompanied by that inimitable, and by now very familiar, growl.
As the days pass, Navidson becomes more and more aware that he is running precariously low on water and food. Even worse, the sense of inevitable doom this causes him is compounded by the sense of immediate doom he feels whenever he begins riding his bike: "1 can't help thinking I'm going to reach an edge to this thing. I'll be going too fast to stop and just fly off into darkness."
Which is almost what happens.
On the twelfth or thirteenth day (it is very difficult to tell which), after sleeping for what Navidson estimates must have been well over 18 hours, he again sets off down the hallway.
Soon the walls and doorways recede and v a n i s h, then the ceilings lifts completely out of sight until it too is completely out of sight "direction no longer matters."
Navidson stops and lights four magnesium flares which he throws as far as he can to the right and left.
Then he bikes down a hundred yards and lights four more flares.