at his feet. Relying on this marker, he heads left for a while. When a minute passes and he has still failed to find the entrance, he returns to the penny. Now he moves off to the right and very quickly comes across a doorway, only this one, as we can see, is much smaller and has a different shape than the one he originally came through. He decides to keep walking. When a minute passes and he still has not found the arch, he stops.
"Think, Navy, think," he whispers to himself, his voice edged slightly with fear.
Again that faint growl returns, rolling through the darkness like thunder.
Navidson quickly does an about face and returns to the doorway. Only now he discovers that the penny he left behind, which should have been at least a hundred feet further, lies directly before him. Even stranger, the doorway is no longer the doorway but the arch he had been looking for all along.
Unfortunately as he steps through it, he immediately sees how drastically everything has changed. The corridor is now much narrower and ends very quickly in a T. He has no idea which way to go, and when a third growl ripples through that place, this time significantly louder, Navidson panics and starts to run.
His sprint, however, lasts only a few seconds. He realizes quickly enough that it is a useless, even dangerous, course of action. Catching his breath and doing his best to calm his frayed nerves, he tries to come up with a better plan.
"Karen!" he finally shouts, a flurry of air-in's almost instantly swallowed in front of him. "Tom!" he tries, briefly catching hold of the -om's as they too start to vanish, though before doing so completely, Navidson momentarily detects in the last -om a slightly higher pitch entwined in his own voice.
He waits a moment, and not hearing anything else, shouts again: "I'm in here!" giving rise to tripping nn-ear's reverberating and fading, until in the next to last instant a sharp cry comes back to him, a child's cry, calling out for him, drawing him to the right.
By shouting "I'm here" and following the add-ee's singing off the walls, Navidson slowly begins to make his way through an incredibly complex and frequently disorienting series of turns. Eventually after backtracking several times and making numerous wrong choices, occasionally descending into disturbing territories of silence, the voice begins to grow noticeably louder, until finally Navidson slips around a comer, certain he has found his way out. Instead though, he encounters only more darkness and this time greater quiet. His breathing quickens. He is uncertain which way to go. Obviously he is afraid. And then quite abruptly he steps to the right through a low passageway and discovers a corridor terminating in warm yellow light, lamp light, with a tiny silhouette standing in the doorway, tugging her daddy home with a cry.
Emerging into the safety of his own living room, Navidson immediately scoops Daisy up in his arms and gives her a big hug.
"I had a nightmare," she says with a very serious nod.
Similar to the Khumbu Icefall at the base of Mount Everest where blue seracs and chasms change unexpectedly throughout the day and night, Navidson is the first one to discover how that place also seems to constantly change. Unlike the Icefall, however, not even a single hairline fracture appears in those walls. Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a