That very photograph hangs on Reston's office wall. It captures the mixture of fear and disbelief on Reston's face as he suddenly finds himself running for his life. One moment he was casually scanning the yard, thinking about lunch, and in the next he was about to die. His stride is stretched, back toes trying to push him out of the way, hands reaching for something, anything, to pull him out of the way. But he is too late. That serpentine shape surrounds him, moving much too fast for any last ditch effort at escape. As Fred de Stabenrath remarked in April 1954, "Les jeux sontfait. Nous sommes fuckedZ' [27]
Tom takes a hard look at this remarkable 11X14 black and white print. "That was the last time I had legs," Reston tells him. "Right before that ugly snake bit 'em off. I used to hate the picture and then I sort of became grateful for it. Now when anyone walks into my office they don't have to think about asking me how I ended up in this here chariot. They can see for themselves. Thank you Navy. You bastard. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi with a Nikon."
Eventually the chat subsides and the three men get down to business. Reston's response is simple, rational, and exactly what both brothers came to hear: "There's no question the problem's with your equipment. I'd have to check out Tom's stuff myself but I'm willing to bet university money there's something a little outta whack with it. I've got a few things you can borrow: a Stanley Beacon level and a laser distance meter." He grins at Navidson. "The meter's even a Leica. That should put this ghost in the grave fast. But if it doesn't, I'll come out and measure your place myself and I'll charge you for my time too."
Both Will and Tom chuckle, perhaps feeling a little foolish. Reston shakes his head.
"If you ask me Navy, you've got a little too much time on your hands. You'd probably be better off if you just took your family for a nice long drive."
On their way back, Navidson points the Hi 8 toward the darkening horizon.
For a while neither brother says a word.
Will breaks the silence first: "Funny how all it took was a fraction of an inch to get us in a car together."
"Pretty strange."
"Thanks for coming Tom."
"Like there was really a chance I'd say no."
A pause. Again Navidson speaks up.
"I almost wonder if I got tangled up in all this measuring stuff just so I'd have some pretext to call you."
Despite his best efforts, Tom cannot hold back a laugh: "You know I hate to tell you this but there are simpler reasons you could of come up with."
"You're telling me," Navidson says, shaking his head.
Rain starts splashing down on the windshield and lightning cracks across the sky. Another pause follows.
This time, Tom breaks the silence: "Did you hear the one about the guy on the tightrope?"
Navidson grins: "I'm glad to see some things never change."
"Hey this one's true. There was this twenty-five year old guy walking a tightrope across a deep river gorge while half way around the world another twenty-five year old guy was getting a blow job from a seventy year old woman, but get this, at the exact same moment both men were thinking the exact same thought. You know what it was?"
"No clue."
Tom gives his brother a wink.
"Don't look down."
And thus as one storm begins to ravage the Virginias, another one just as easily dissipates and vanishes in a flood of bad jokes and old stories.
When confronting the spatial disparity in the house, Karen set her mind on familiar things while Navidson went in search of a solution. The children, however, just accepted it. They raced through the closet. They played in it. They inhabited it. They denied the paradox by swallowing it whole. Paradox, after all, is two irreconcilable truths. But children do not know the laws of the world well enough yet to fear the ramifications of the irreconcilable. There are certainly no primal associations with spatial anomalies.
Similar to the ingenuous opening sequence of The Navidson Record , seeing these two giddy children romp around is an equally unsettling experience, perhaps because their state of naivete is so appealing to us, even seductive, offering such a simple resolution to an enigma. Unfortunately, denial also means ignoring the possibility of peril.
That possibility, however, seems at least momentarily irrelevant when we cut to Will and Tom hauling Billy Reston's equipment upstairs, the authority of their tools quickly subduing any sense of threat.
Just watching the two brothers use the Stanley Beacon level to establish the distance they will need to measure communicates comfort. When they then turn their attention to the Leica meter it is nearly impossible not to at last expect some kind of resolution to this confounding problem. In fact Tom's crossed fingers as the Class 2 laser finally fires a tiny red dot across the width of the house manages to succinctly represent our own sympathies.
As the results are not immediate, we wait along with the whole family as the internal computer calibrates the dimension. Navidson captures these seconds in 16mm. His Arriflex, already pre-focused and left running, spools in 24 frames per second as Daisy and Chad sit on their beds in the background, Hillary and Mallory linger in the foreground near Tom, while Karen and Audrie stand off to the right near the newly created bookshelves.
Suddenly Navidson lets out a hoot. It appears the discrepancy has finally been eliminated.
Tom peers over his shoulder, "Good-bye Mr. Fraction."
"One more time" Navidson says. "One more time. Just to make
sure."
Oddly enough, a slight draft keeps easing one of the closet doors shut. It has an eerie effect because each time the door closes we lose sight of the children.
" Hey would you mind propping that open with something?' Navidson asks his brother.
Tom turns to Karen's shelves and reaches for the largest volume he can find. A novel. Just as with Karen, its removal causes an immediate domino effect. Only this time, as the books topple into each other, the last few do not stop at the wall as they had previously done but fall instead to the floor, revealing at least a foot between the end of the shelf and the plaster.
Tom thinks nothing of it.
"Sorry," he mumbles and leans over to pick up the scattered books.
Which is exactly when Karen screams.