House Of Leaves - House of Leaves Part 7
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House of Leaves Part 7

And to think my day actually started off pretty well.

I woke up having had an almost wet-dream about Thumper. She was doing this crazy Margaretha Geertruida Zelle dance, veil after colored veil thrown aside, though oddly enough never landing, rather flying around her as if she were in the middle of some kind of gentle twister, these sheer sheets of fabric continuing to encircle her, even as she removes more and more of them, allowing me only momentary glimpses of her body, her smooth skin, her mouth, her waist, her-ah yes, I get a glimpse of that too, and I'm moving towards her, moving past all that interference, certain that with every step I take I'll soon have her, after all she's almost taken everything off, no she h taken everything off, her knees are spreading apart, just a few more veils to get past and I'll be able to see her, not just bits & pieces of her, but all of her, no longer molested by all this nonsense, in fact I'm there already which means I'm about to enter her which apparently is enough to blow the circuit, hit the switch, prohibit that sublime and much anticipated conclusion, leaving me blind in the daylight stream pouring through my window.

Fuck.

I go off to cuff in the shower. At least the water's hot and there's enough steam to fog the mirror. Afterwards, I pack my pipe and light up. Wake & Bake. More like Wash & Bake. Half a bowl of cereal and a shot of bourbon later, I'm there, my friendly haze having finally arrived. I'm ready for work.

Parking's easy to find. On Vista. I jog up to Sunset, even jog up the stairs, practically skipping past the By Appointment Only sign. Why skipping? Because as I step into the Shop I know I'm not even one minute late, which is not usually the case for me. The expression on my boss's face reveals just how astonishing an achievement this is. I couldn't care less about him. I want to see Thumper. I want to find out if she's really wearing any of that diaphanous rainbow fabric I was dreaming about.

Of course she's not there, but that doesn't get me down. I'm still optimistic she'll arrive. And if not today, why fuck, tomorrow's just another day away.

A sentiment I could almost sing.

I immediately sit down at the side counter and start working, mainly because I don't want to deal with my boss which could mean jeopardizing my good mood. Of course he couldn't care less about me or my mood. He approaches, clearing his throat. He will talk, he will ruin everything, except it suddenly penetrates that chalky material he actually insists on calling his brain, that I'm building his precious points, and sure enough this insight prohibits his trap from opening and he leaves me alone.

Points are basically clusters of needles used to shade the skin. They are necessary because a single point amounts to a prick not much bigger than this period ".". Okay, maybe a little bigger. Anyway, five needles go into what's called a 5, seven for 7's and so on-all soldered together towards the base.

I actually enjoy making them. There's something pleasant about concentrating on the subtle details, the precision required, constantly checking and re-checking to assure yourself that yes indeed the sharps are level, in the correct arrangement, ready at last to be fixed in place with dots of hot solder. Then I re-check all my re-checking: the points must not be too close nor too far apart nor skewed in any way, and only then, if I'm satisfied, which I usually am-though take heed "usually" does not always mean "always"-will I scrub the shafts and put them aside to be sterilized later in the ultrasound or Autoclave.

My boss may think I can't draw worth shit but he knows I build needles better than anyone. He calls me all the time on my tardiness, my tendency to drift & moither and of course the odds that I'll ever get to tattoo anything-"Johnny, nothing you do, (shaking his head) no one's ever gonna wanna make permanent, unless they're crazy, and let me tell you something Johnny, crazies never pay"-but about my needle making I've never heard him complain once.

Anyway, a couple of hours whiz by. I'm finishing up a batch of 5's-my boss's cluster of choice-when he finally speaks, telling me to pull some bottles of black and purple ink and fill a few caps while I'm at it. We keep the stuff in a storeroom in back. It's a sizable space, big enough to fit a small work table in. You have to climb eight pretty steep steps to reach it. That's where we stock all the extras, and we have extras for almost everything, except light bulbs. For some reason my boss hasn't picked up any extra light bulbs in a while. Today, of course, I flick the switch, and FLASH! BLAMI POP!, okay scratch the blam, the storeroom bulb burns out. I recommence flicking, as if such insistent, highly repetitive and at this point pointless action could actually resurrect the light. It doesn't. The switch has been rendered meaningless, forcing me to feel my way around in the dark. I keep the door open so I can see okay, but it still takes me awhile to negotiate the shadows before I can locate the caps and ink.

By now, the sweet effects of my dream, to say nothing of the soft thrumming delivered care of alcohol and Oregon bud, have worn of f, though I still continue to think about Thumper, slowly coming to grips with the fact that she won't be visiting today. This causes my spirits to drop substantially, until I realize I have no way of knowing that for certain. After all, there's still half a day left. No, she's not coming. I know it. I can feel it in my gut. That's okay.

Tomorrow's- aw, fuck that.

I start filling caps with purple, concentrating on its texture, the strange hue, imagining I can actually observe the rapid pulse of its bandwidth. These are stupid thoughts, and as if to confirm that sentiment, darkness pushes in on me. Suddenly the slash of light on my hands looks sharp enough to cut me. Real sharp. Move and it will cut me. I do move and guess what? I start to bleed. The laceration isn't deep but important stuff has been struck, leaking over the table and floor. Lost.

I don't have long.

Except I'm not bleeding though I am breathing hard. Real hard. don't need to touch my face to know there are now beads of sweat slipping off my forehead, flicking off my eyelids, streaming down the back of my neck. Cold as hands. Hands of the dead. Something terrible is going on here. Going extremely wrong. Get out, I think. I want to get out. But I can't move.

Then as if this were nothing but a grim prelude, shit really starts to happen.

There's that awful taste again, sharp as rust, wrapping around my tongue.

Worse, I'm no longer alone.

Impossible.

Not impossible.

This time it's human.

Maybe not.

Extremely long fingers.

A sucking sound too. Sucking on teeth, teeth already torn from the gums.

I don't know how I know this.

But it's already too late, I've seen the eyes. The eyes. They have no whites. I haven't seen this. The way they glisten they glisten red. Then it begins reaching for me, slowly unfolding itself out of its corner, mad meat all of it, but I understand. These eyes are full of blood.

Except I'm only looking at shadows and shelves.

Of course, I'm alone.

And then behind me, the door closes.

The rest is in pieces. A scream, a howl, a roar. All's warping, or splintering. That makes no sense. There's a terrible banging. The air's rank with stench. At least that's not a mystery. I know the source. Boy, do I ever. I've shit myself. Pissed myself too. I can't believe it. Urine soaking into my pants, fecal matter running down the back of my legs, I'm caught in it, must run and hide from it, but I still can't move. In fact, the more I try to escape, the less I can breathe. The more I try to hold on, the less I can focus. Something's leaving me. Parts of me.

Everything falls apart.

Stories heard but not recalled.

Letters too.

Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp. Cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad perhaps even irreparable way.

Known.

Some.

Call.

Is.

Air.

Am?

Incoherent-yes.

Without meaning-I'm afraid not.

The shape of a shape of a shape of a face dis(as)sembling right before my eyes. What wail embattled break. Like a hawk. Another Maldon or no Maldon at all, on snowy days, or not snowy at all, far beyond the edge of any reasonable awareness. This is what it feels like to be really afraid. Though of course it doesn't. None of this can truly approach the reality of that fear, there in the midst of all that bedlam, like the sound of a heart or some other unholy blast, desperate & dying, slamming, no banging into the thin wall of my inner ear, paper thin in fact, attempting to shatter inside what had already been shattered long ago.

I should be dead.

Why am I still here?

And as that question appears-concise, in order, properly accented-I see I'm holding onto the tray loaded with all those caps and bottles of black and purple ink. Not only that but I'm already walking as fast as I can through the doorway. The door is open though I did not open it. I stub my toe. I'm falling down the stairs, tripping over myself, hurling the tray in the air, the caps, the ink, all of it, floating now above me, as my hands, independent of anything I might have thought to suggest, reach up to protect my head. Something hisses and slashes out at the back of my neck. It doesn't matter. Down I go, head first, somersaulting down those eight pretty steep steps, a wild blur, leaving me to passively note the pain spots as they happen: shoulders, hip, elbows, even as I also, at the same time, remain dimly aware of so much ink coming down like a bad rain, splattering around me, everywhere, covering me, even the tray hitting me, though that doesn't hurt, the caps scattering across the floor, and of course the accompanying racket, telling my boss, telling them all, whoever else was there- What? not that it was over, it wasn't, not yet.

The wind's knocked out of me. It's not coming back. Here's where I die, I think. And it's true, I'm possessed by the premonition of what will be, what has to be, my inevitable asphyxiation. At least that's what they see, my boss and crew, as they come running to the back, called there by all that clatter & mess. What they can't see though is the omen seen in a fall, my fall, as I'm doused in black ink, my hands now completely covered, and see the floor is black, and-have you anticipated this or should I be more explicit?-jet on jet; for a blinding instant I have watched my hand vanish, in fact all of me has vanished, one hell of a disappearing act too, the already foreseen dissolution of the self, lost without contrast, slipping into oblivion, until mid-gasp I catch sight of my reflection in the back of the tray, the ghost in the way: seems I'm not gone, not quite. My face has been splattered with purple, as have my arms, granting contrast, and thus defining me, marking me, and at least for the moment, preserving me.

Suddenly I can breathe and with each breath the terror rapidly dissipates.

My boss, however, is scared shitless.

"Jesus Christ Johnny," he says. "Are you okay? What happened?"

Can't you see I've shit myself, I think to shout. But now I see that i haven't. Except for the ink blotting my threads, my pants are bone dry.

I mumble something about how much my toe hurts.

He takes that to mean I'm alright and won't try to sue him from a wheelchair.

Later a patron points out the long, bloody scratch on the back of my neck.

I'm unable to respond.

Now though, I realize what I should of said-in the spirit of the dark; in the spirit of the staircase - "Known some call is air am."

Which is to say - "I am not what I used to be."]

[78-Although Mr. Truant's asides may often seem impenetrable, they are not without rhyme or reason. The reader who wishes to interpret Mr. Truant on his or her own may disregard this note. Those, however, who feel they would profit from a better understanding of his past may wish to proceed ahead and read his father's obituary in Appendix IT-i) as well as those letters written by his institutionalized mother in Appendix II-E. - Ed.

After putting his daughter back to bed, Navidson finds Karen standing in the entrance to their room.

"What's the matter," she murmurs, still half-asleep.

"Go back to sleep. Daisy just had a bad dream."

Navidson starts to go back downstairs.

"I'm sorry Navy," Karen says quietly. " I'm sorry I got so mad. It's not your fault. That thing just scares me. Come back to bed."

And as they later confide in separate video entries, that night, for the first time in weeks, they made love again, their descriptions running the gamut of anything from " gentle" and " comforting" to "familiar" and "very satisfying." Their bodies had repaired what words never tried to, and at least for a little while they felt close again.

The next morning, with harmony now restored, Navidson cannot bring himself to tell Karen about his visit. Fortunately having nearly gotten lost inside his own house has for the moment diminished his appetite for its darkness. He promises to turn over the initial investigation to Billy Reston: "Then we'll call The New York Times, Larry King, whoever, and we'll move. End of story." Karen responds to his offer with kisses, clinging to his hand, a stability of sorts once again returning to their lives.

Still the compromise is far from satisfying. As Karen records on her Hi 8: "I told Navy I'll stay for the first look in there but I've also called Mom. I want to get out of here as soon as possible."

Navidson admits in his: "I feel lousy about lying to Karen. But I think it's unreasonable of her to expect me not to investigate. She knows who I am. I think -"

At which point, the study door suddenly swings open and Daisy, wearing a red and gold dress, barges in and begins tugging on her father's sleeve.

"Come play with me Daddy."

Navidson lifts his daughter onto his lap.

"Okay. What do you want to play?"

"I don't know," she shrugs. "Always."

"What's always?"

But before she can answer, he starts tickling her around the neck and Daisy dissolves into bursts of delight.

Despite the tremendous amount of material generated by Exploration A, no one has ever commented on the game Daisy wants to play with her father, perhaps because everyone assumes it is either a request "to play always" or just a childish neologism.

Then again, "always" slightly mispronounces "hallways."

It also echoes it.

VI.

[Animals] lack a symbolic identity and the self- consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. . . The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days-that's something else.

- Ernest Becker While the pragmatic space of animals is a function of inborn instincts, man has to learn what orientation he needs in order to act.

- Christian Norberg-Schulz When Hillary, the grey coated Siberian husky, appears at the end of The Navidson Record, he is no longer a puppy. A couple of years have passed. Something forever watchful has taken up residence in his eyes. He may be playful with those he knows but whenever strangers wander too close they invariably hear a growl rising from somewhere deep in his throat, a little like distant thunder, warning them away. [79-See Selwyn Hyrkas' "The End of City Life" in IntervIew, v. 25 October 1995, p. 54.]

Mallory, the tabby cat, vanishes completely, and no mention is made about what happened to him. His disappearance remains a mystery.

One thing however is certain: the house played a very small part in both their histories.

The incident took place on August 11th, 1990 a week after Will Navidson's secret exploration of the hallway. Saturday morning cartoons blare from the kitchen television, Chad and Daisy munch down their breakfast, and Karen stands outside smoking a cigarette, talking on the phone with Audrie McCullogh, her shelf building accomplice. The topic of the moment is Feng Shui and all it has failed to do. "No matter how many ceramic turtles or wooden ducks, goldfish, celestial dragons, or bronze lions I put in this goddamn house," she rants. "It still keeps throwing off this awful energy. I need to find a psychic. Or an exorcist. Or a really good real-estate agent." Meanwhile in the living room, Tom helps Navidson take some still shots of the hallway using a strobe.

Suddenly, somewhere in the house, there is a loud yowl and bark. An instant later Mallory comes screaming into the living room with Hillary nipping at his tail. It is not the first time they have involved themselves in such a routine. The only exception is that on this occasion, after dashing up and over the sofa, both puppy and cat head straight down the hallway and disappear into the darkness. Navidson probably would have gone in after them had he not instantly heard barks outside followed by Karen's shouts accusing him of letting the animals out when on that day they were supposed to stay in.

"What the hell?" we hear Navidson mutter loudly.

Sure enough Hillary and Mallory are in the backyard. Mallory up a tree, Hillary howling grandly over his achievement.

For something so startling, it seems surprising how little has been made of this event. Bernard Porch in his four thousand page treatise on The Navidson Record devotes only a third of a sentence to the subject: ", (strange how the house won't support the presence of animals)." [80-Bemard Porch's All In All (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 1,302.] Mary Widmunt leaves us with just one terse question: "So what's the deal with the pets?" [81-Mary Widmunt's "The Echo of Dark" in Gotta Go (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), p. 59.] Even Navidson himself, the consummate investigator, never revisits the subject.

Who knows what might have been discovered if he had.

Regardless, Holloway soon arrives and any understanding that might have been gained by further analyzing the strange relationship between animals and the house is passed over in favor of human exploration.

Endnotes [82-Strange how Zampano also fails to comment on the inability of animals to wander those corridors. I believe there's a great deal of significance in this discovery. Unfortunately, Zampano never returns to the matter and while I would like to offer you my own interpretation I am a little high and alot drunk, trying to determine what set me off in the first place on this private little home-bound binge.

For one thing, Thumper came into the Shop today.

Ever since I fell down the stairs, things have changed there. My boss kind of tiptoes around me, playing all low key and far of f, his demeanor probably matching his old junkie days. Even his friends keep their distance, everyone for the most part just leaving me alone to sketch and solder, though I'm sketching far less these days, I mean, with all this writing. Anyway, Thumper's actually been by a few times but my incomprehensible shyness persists, forbidding me to ever summon up more than an occasional intelligible sentence. Recently though I did get this crazy idea: I decided to go out on a limb and show her that sappy little bit I wrote about her-you know with all that coastal norths and August-sun scent-of-pine-trees stuff, even the Lucy part. just put it in an envelope and carried it around with me until she dropped by and then handed it to her without a word.

I don't know what I expected, but she opened it right on the spot and read it and then laughed and then my boss grabbed it and he sort of winced-"Now look who's the dumb mutant" he shuddered-and that was that. Thumper handed me her flip flops and Adidas sweat pants and stretched out on the chair. I felt like such an idiot. Lude had warned me I'd be certifiable if I showed it to her. Maybe I am. I actually believed it would touch her in some absurd way. But to hear her laugh like that really fucked me up. I should of stayed away from such flights of fancy, stuck to my regular made-up stories.

I did my best to hide in the back, though I was too scared to go too far back because of the storeroom.

Then right before she left, Thumper came over and handed me her card.

"Call me some time," she said with a wink. "You're cute."

My life instantly changed.