pointing out the absent tiger, the absent marble horses, and even the absent vase. Karen is shocked. In the kitchen, she has to sit down, on the verge of a panic attack. Her breathing has quickened, her face is covered in sweat. Fortunately, the episode only lasts a couple of minutes.
Along with several other critics, Gail Kalt dwells on Karen's choice of words during her conversation with Tom on the radio when she refers to Feng Shui as "some such shit."
Karen has begun to deconstruct her various mechanisms of denial. She does not continue to insist on the ineffectual science of Feng Shui. She recognizes that the key to her misery lies in the still unexplored fissure between herself and Navidson. Without knowing it she has already begun her slow turn to face the meaning, or at least one meaning, of the darkness dwelling in the depths of her house. 262
Certainly Karen's step away from denial is made more evident when right after her talk with Tom she gathers up any remaining items having to do with Feng Shui and throws them in a box. David N. Braer in his thesis "House Cleaning" notes how Karen not only adds to this collection the books already mentioned in Chapter V but also includes the Bible, several New Age manuals, her tarot cards, and strangest of all a small hand mirror. 263 Then after depositing the box in the garage, she looks in on her children one more time, comforting them with an open invitation to sleep in the living room with her if they like. They do not join her but the grateful tone of their murmurs seems to suggest they will now sleep better.
Helen Agallway asserts that by "Monday, October 8 th , Karen has made up her mind to depart. When Tom reappears in the living room and informs her that Navidson is only hours away from getting back, she keeps the children home from school because she has every intention of leaving for New York that day." [119]
Upon returning from town with bundles of rope, the pulleys, and several trolley wheels, Karen begins packing and orders the children to try to do the same. She is in fact in the middle of frantically removing several winter coats and shoes from the foyer closet when Tom races out of the hallway, pushing the gurney in front of him, tears gushing from his eyes.
4.
When Karen sees Wax her hand flies to her mouth, though it hardly prevents the cry. [120] Reston emerges from the hallway next, the growl
growing louder behind him, threatening to follow him into the living room. Frantically, he slams the door and bolts all four locks, which no doubt thanks to the door's acoustic rating actually seems to keep that terrible sound at bay.
Karen, however, starts shouting: "What are you doing? Billy? What about Navy? Where's Navy?"
Even though he is still crying, Tom tries to pull her away from the door, "We lost him."
"He's dead?" Karen's voice cracks.
"I don't think so," Tom shakes his head."But he's still down there. Way down."
"Well then go in and get him! Go in and get your brother!" Then starting to shriek, "You can't just leave him there."
But Tom remains motionless, and when Karen finally looks him in the face and beholds the measure of his fear and grief, she crumples into a fit of sobs. Reston goes to the foyer and calls an ambulance.
Meanwhile, Wax, who has been temporarily left alone in the kitchen, quietly groans on the stretcher. Next to him lies Jed's body. Unfortunately Tom did not realize how much blood had soaked into Jed's clothes. Blind with his own sorrow, he unknowingly covered the linoleum with a smear of red when he set the corpse down. He even stepped in the blood and tracked footprints across the carpet as he lurched back to the living room to console Karen.
Perhaps inevitably, all the commotion draws the children out of their
room.
Chad catches sight of the body first. There is something particularly disquieting about watching the way he and Daisy walk slowly toward Jed and then over to Wax's side. They both seem so removed. Almost in a daze.
"Where's our daddy?" Chad finally asks him. But Wax is delirious.
"What. I need what-er."
Together Chad and Daisy fill a glass from the sink. Wax, however, is far too weak to sit up let alone drink. They end up dribbling small drops of water on his cracked lips.
A few seconds later there is a loud banging on the front door. Reston wheels over and opens it. He expects to see the paramedics but finds instead a woman in her late 40s with almost perfectly grey hair. Chad and Daisy retreat to the staircase. They too step in the blood, their feet leaving small red imprints on the floor. Chad's teacher fails to utter even one word or offer any sort of assistance. Tom continues to sit with Karen, until eventually her muted cries join the wail of sirens rapidly approaching their house on Ash Tree Lane.
While The Navidson Record clearly states that Wax Hook survived, it does not dwell on any of the details following his departure. Numerous articles published after the film's release, however, reveal that he was almost immediately rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Washington, D.C. where he was placed in an I.C.U. There doctors discovered that fragments from the coracoid process and scapula spine had turned his trapezius, delta
and infraspinous muscles to hamburger. Miraculously though, the bullet and bone shrapnel had only grazed the subclavian artery. Wax eventually recovered and after a long period of rehabilitation returned to a life of outdoor activities, even though it is doubtful he will ever climb Everest now let alone attempt to solo the North Face. By his own admission, Wax also keeps clear of caves not to mention his own closet. [121]
Even as Wax was loaded into the ambulance, police began an investigation into Jed Leeder's death. Reston provided them with a copy of the tape from his Hi 8 showing Holloway shooting Wax and Jed. To the police, the murder appeared to have taken place in nothing more than a dark hallway. As APBs went out, patrolmen began a statewide search which would ultimately last several weeks. That afternoon, Karen also insisted on introducing the authorities to that all consuming ash-walled maze. Perhaps she thought they would attempt to locate Navidson. The results were hardly satisfying.
In The Reston Interview, Billy shakes his head and even laughs
softly:
It wasn't a bad idea. Tom and I'd had enough too. Karen just expected too much, especially from a town that has one sheriff and a handful of deputies. When the sheriff came over, Karen immediately dragged him over to the hallway, handed him a flashlight and the end of a spool of Monel fishing line. He looked at her like she was nuts, but then I think he got a little spooked too. At that point in time, no one was about to go in there with him. Karen because of her claustrophobia. Tom, well he was already going to the bottom of a bottle. And me, I was trying to fix my wheelchair. It was all bent from when I came up on the pulley. Even so though, I mean even if my chair had been fine, going back would have been hard. Anyway Sheriff Oxy, Ax- ard, Axnard, I think that was his name, Sheriff Axnard went in there by himself. He walked ten feet in and then walked straight back out, thanked us and left. He never said a word about where he'd been and he never came back. He spent a good amount of time looking for Holloway everywhere else but never in the house.
Right after the release of The Navidson Record , Sheriff Josiah Axnard was accosted by numerous reporters. One clip captures the Sheriff in the process of climbing into his squad car: "For once and for all, that house was completely searched and Holloway Roberts was not in it." Six months later the Sheriff consented to an interview on National Public Radio (April 18, 1994) where he told a slightly different story. He confessed to
walking down "an unfamiliar hallway." "It's not there no more," he continued. "I checked. Nothing unusual there now but . . . but back then there was . . . there was a corridor on the south wall. Cold, no lights and goin' on into nowhere. It creeped me like I never been creeped before, like I was standing in a gigantic grave and I remember then, clearly, like it was yesterday, thinking to myself 'If Holloway's in here I don't need to worry. He's gone. He's long gone.'" [122]
That night Karen stays in the living room, crying off and on, leaving the hallway door open, even though, as she explains to Reston, standing a foot too close will cause her to experience heart palpitations and tremors. Reston, however, badly in need of some shut eye almost immediately falls into a deep sleep on the couch.
There is one particularly horrible moment when the phone rings and Karen answers on speaker. It is Jed Leeder's fiancee calling from Seattle, still unaware of what has happened. At first Karen tries to keep the news to herself but when the woman begins to detect the lie, Karen tells her the truth. A panicked shout cracks over the speaker phone and then decays into terrified cries. Abruptly the line goes dead. Karen waits for the woman to call back but the phone does not ring again.
Of course during all this, the children are once again abandoned, left to look after each other, with no one around to help translate the horror of the afternoon. They hide in their room, rarely saying a thing. Not even Tom makes an appearance to even temporarily contest their fears with the soothing lyric of a bedtime story about otters, eagles, and the occasional tiger.
When Tom had returned from the grave, he was convinced he had lost his brother. Both he and Reston had heard the great Spiral Staircase yawn beneath them, and Reston's Hi 8 had even caught a glimpse of Navidson's light sinking, finally vanishing into the deep like a failing star.
As Billy explains in The Reston Interview: "Tom felt like a part of him had been ripped away. I'd never seen him act like that. He started shaking and tears just kept welling up in his eyes. I tried to tell him the stairway could shrink just like it had stretched, and he kept agreeing with me, and nodding, but that didn't stop the tears. It was terrifying to watch. He loved his brother that much."
After watching the paramedics take Wax away, we follow Tom's , retreat to the study where he manages to locate among his things the last bit of a joint. Smoking it, however, offers absolutely no relief. He is no longer crying but his hands still shake. He takes several deep breaths and then as
Karen is getting ready to show Sheriff Axnard the hallway, he steals a sip of bourbon. [123]
Regrettably, Tom fails to stop at a sip. A few hours later he has finished off the whole fifth as well as half a bottle of wine. He might have spent all night drinking had exhaustion not caught up with me. Of course, the following morning does nothing to erase yesterday's events. Tom attempts to recover lost ground by accompanying Reston back to the Great Hall. Much to their surprise, however, they discover the hallway now terminates thirty feet in, nor are there any doors or alternate hallways branching off it. Karen returns to her room when she sees Tom and Reston reappear only five minutes later.
Even though he too is suffering from Navidson's disappearance, Reston still does his best to counsel Tom, and at least for a few hours Tom successfully resists drinking anything more. Chad apparently had escaped from the house at dawn and now refuses to come in or say a word to his mother. Tom eventually finds him among the branches of a tree just past the edge of the property line. Nevertheless, no amount of coaxing will induce the eight year old to come back in.
In Billy's words (The Reston Interview again): "Tom told me Chad was happy in his tree and Tom was hard pressed to start telling him inside was a better place. However, there was something else. The kid apparently bolted from the house when he heard some kind of murmuring, something about a walker in darkness, then a bang, like a gun shot, and the sound of a man dying. Woke him right up, he said. Back then I assumed he'd just been dreaming."
Judging from the house footage, what seems to really push Tom over the edge that second day is when he reenters the house and finds Daisy—her forearms acrawl with strange scratches—swaying in front of the hallway screaming "Daddy!" despite the absence of a reply, the absence of even an echo. When Karen finally comes downstairs and carries her daughter outside to help her find Chad, Tom takes the car and goes into town. An hour later he returns with groceries, unnecessary medical supplies, magazines and the reason for the excursion in the first place—a case of bourbon.
On the third and fourth day, Tom does not emerge once from the study, attempting to drink his grief into submission.
Karen, on the other hand, begins to deal with the consequences of Navidson's disappearance. She rapidly starts paying more attention to her children, finally luring Chad back into the house where she can oversee his (and Daisy's) packing efforts. In a brief clip we catch Karen on the phone, presumably with her mother, discussing their imminent departure from Virginia.
Reston remains in the living room, frequently attempting to raise Navidson on the radio, though never hearing more than static and white noise. Outside a thunder storm begins to crack and spit rain at the windows. Lightning builds shadows. A wind howls like the wounded, filling everyone with cold, bone weary dread.
Toward midnight, Tom emerges from the study, steals a slice of lemon meringue pie and then whips up some hot chocolate for everyone. Whole milk, unsweetened cocoa, sugar, and a splash of vanilla extract all brought to a careful simmer. Billy and Karen appreciate the gesture. Tom has not stopped drinking, and even doses his cup with a shot of Jack Daniels, but he does seem to have leveled out, not exactly achieving some sublime moment of clarity but at least attaining a certain degree of self- control.
Then Tom, though he is only wearing a t-shirt, takes a deep breath and marches into the hallway again. A minute later he returns.
"It's no more than ten feet deep now," Tom grunts. "And Navy's been gone over four days."
"There's still a chance," Reston grumbles.
Tom tries to shrug off the certitude that his brother is dead. "You know," he continues very quiedy, still staring at the hallway. "There once was this guy who went to Madrid. He was in the mood for something new so he decided to try out this small restaurant and order—sight unseen—the house specialty.
"Soon a plate arrived loaded with rice pilaf and two large meaty objects.
" 'What's this?' he asked his waiter.
"'Cojones, Senor.'
" 'What are cojones?'
" 'Cojones' the waiter answered, 'are the testicles of the bull that lost in the arena today.'
"Though a little hesitant at first, the man still went ahead and tried them. Sure enough they were delicious.
"Well a week later, he goes back to the same restaurant and orders the same thing. This time, when his dish arrives, the meaty objects are much smaller and don't taste nearly as good.
"He immediately calls the waiter over.
" 'Hey,' he says. 'What are these?'
" 'Cojones' the waiter replies.
" 'No, no,' he explains. 'I had them last week and they were much bigger.'
" 'Ah Senor,' the waiter sighs. 'The bull does not lose every time.'"
Tom's joke attempts to deflect some of the pain inherent in this protracted wait, but of course nothing can really diminish the growing knowledge that Navidson may have vanished for good.
Tom eventually returns to the study to try and sleep, but Karen remains in the living room, occasionally dozing off, often trying to reach Navidson on the radios, whispering his name like a lullaby or a prayer. [124]
In the 5:09 A.M. Hi 8 clip, Karen rests her head on her hands and starts to sleep. There is something eerie about the odd stillness that settles on the living room then, not even remotely affected by Reston's snoring on the couch. It is as if this scene has been impossibly fixed and will never change again, until out of the blue, presumably before the cameras can shut off—no longer ordered to run by the motion detectors—Navidson limps out of the hallway. He is clearly exhausted, dehydrated, and perhaps a little unable to believe he has actually escaped the maze. Seeing Karen, he immediately kneels beside her, attempting to wake her with the gentlest word. Karen, however, drawn so abruptly from her dreams, cannot arrest the shocked gasp summoned by the sound and sight of Navidson. Of course, the moment she realizes he is not a ghost, her terror dissolves into a hug and a flood of words, awakening everyone in the house.
Several essays have been written about this reunion and yet not one of them suggests Karen has reverted to her former state of dependency. Consider Anita Massine's comments:
Her initial embrace and happiness is not just about Navidson's return. Karen realizes she has fulfilled her end of the bargain. Her time in that place has come to an end. Navidson's arrival means she can leave. [125]
Or Garegin Thorndike Taylor's response:
Where previously Karen might have dissolved into tears and her typical clutching, this time she is clearly more reserved, even terse, relying on her smile for defense. [126]
Or finally Professor Lyle Macdonough:
The reason Karen cries out when Navidson wakes her has nothing to do with the inherent terror of that hallway or some other cauche- mar. It has only to do with Navidson. Deep down inside, she really does fear him. She fears he will try to keep her there. She fears he will threaten her slowly forming independence. Only once the reins of consciousness slip into place does she resort to expected modes of welcome. [127]
Karen clearly refuses to allow Navidson's appearance to alter her plans. She does not accept that merely his presence entitles him to authority. Her mind is made up. Even before he can begin to recount his desperate flight up those stairs or how he found Holloway's equipment, [128] Karen announces her intention to leave for New York City that night.
Of course by the time they had all sat down and watched The Holloway Tape, Navidson was the only one who had second thoughts about abandoning the cold lure of those halls.
HOLLOWAY
More than a handful of people have tried to[ ] [129] explain Holloway's madness.
the center of everything, all of it just another way to finally say: no- no, no junk at all.
"Throw it away, hoss" Lude said and started to cross to my desk for a closer look. X sprung forward, ordered by instinct, like some animal defending its pride, interposing myself between him and my work, those papers, this thing.
Lude backed away—in fact that was the first time he'd ever backed away; ever—just a step, but retreating just the same, calling me "weird", calling me "scary."
I quickly apologized and incoherently tried to explain how I was just sorting some stuff out. Which is true.
"Bullshit," Lude grunted, perhaps a little angry that I'd frightened him. "For godsake, just look at what you're drawing?" He pointed at all the pictures tacked to my wall, sketched on napkins, the backs of envelopes, anything handy. "Empty rooms, hundreds of black, empty fucking rooms!"
I don't remember what I mumbled next. Lude waved a bag of grass in front of me, said there was a party up Beachwood canyon, some castle loaded with hookers on X and a basement full of mead. It was interesting to see Lude still defending that line, but I just shook my head.
He turned to leave and then suddenly spun back around on his heels, producing from his pocket a flash of silver, cishlash-shhhhhhick, the wheel catching on the edge of his thumb, connecting sparks and kerosene . . . his old Zippo drawn like a .44 in some mythical western, drawn by the fella in the white hat, and as it turns out Lude was in fact dressed in white, a creamy linen jacket, which I guess means I would have to be wearing black, and come to think of it I was wearing black—black jeans, black t, black socks. This, however, was not a challenge. It was an offering, and yet one I knew I would not/could not accept.
Lude shrugged and blew out the flame, the immolating splash of brightness abruptly receding into a long gray thread climbing up to the ceiling before finally collapsing into invisible and untraceable corridors of chaos.
As he stepped out into the hall, a place with dull walls where a pink corpse occasionally referred to as a carpet stretches over and down the stairs, Lude told me why he'd come by in the first place: "Kyrie's boyfriend's back in town and he's looking for us, you in particular but since I'm the one who introduced you two, he's also after me. Be careful. The guy's a nut." Lude hesitated. He knew Gdansk Man was the least of my worries but I guess he wanted to help.
"I'll see you around Lude," I mumbled.
"Get rid of it Hoss, it's killing you."
Then he tossed me his lighter and padded away, the dim light quickly transforming him into a shadow, then a sound, and finally a silence.
Maybe he was right.
Fly from the path.
I remember the first time I hadn't and a rusty bar had taught me the taste of teeth. The second time I'd been smarter. I fled from the house, scrambled over the back brick wall like an alley cat, and sprinted across the overgrown lot. It took him awhile to find me but when he did, cornering me like some beast in the stairwell of a nearby shop, a chimney sweep business actually, Gallow Sons, something like that, his focus was gone. Time had interceded. Dulled his wrath.
Raymond still hit me, an open handed slap to my left ear, pain answering the deafening quiet that followed, a distant thump then as my forehead skidded into the concrete wall.
Raymond was yelling at me, going on about the fights, my fights, at school, about my attitude, my wanderings and how he would kill me if I didn't stop.
He had killed before, he explained. He could kill again.
I stopped seeing, something black and painful hissing into my head, gnawing at the bones in my cheeks, tears pouring down my face, though I wasn't crying, my nose was just bleeding, and he hadn't even broken it this time.
Raymond continued the lesson, his words ineffectually reverberating around me. He was trying to sound like one of his western heroes, doling out profound advice, telling me how I was only "cannon fodder" though he pronounced it like "father" and in a way that seemed to imply he was really referring to himself. I kept nodding and agreeing, while inside I began to uncover a different lesson. X recognized just how much a little fear had helped me—after all I wasn't going to the hospital this time. All along I'd misread my contentious postures as something brave, my willingness to indulge in head-to-head confrontation as noble, even if I was only thirteen and this monster was a marine. I failed to see anger as just another way to cover fear. The bravest thing would be to accept my fear and fear him, really fear him, then heeding that instruction make a much more courageous choice: fly once and for all from his mad blister rage, away from the black convolution of violence he would never untangle, and into the arms of some unknown tomorrow.
The next morning I told everyone my injuries had come from another schoolyard fight. I started to befriend guile, doped Raymond with compliments and self-deprecating stories. Made-up stories. I dodged, ducked, acquired a whole new vocabulary for bending, for hiding, all while beyond the gaze of them all, I meticulously planned my flight. Of course, I admit now that even though I tested well, I still would never have succeeded had I not received that September, only weeks later, words to find me, my mother's words, tenderly catching my history in the gaps, encouraging and focusing my direction, a voice powerful enough to finally lift my wing and give me the strength to go.
Little did I know that by the time I managed to flee to Alaska and then to a boarding school, Raymond was already through. Coincidence gave an improbable curse new resonance. Cancer had settled on Raymond's bones, riddling his liver and pancreas with holes. He had nowhere to run and it literally ate him alive. He was dead by the time I turned sixteen.
I guess one obvious option now is to just get rid of this thing, which if Lude's right, should put an end to all my recent troubles. It's a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. Not all complex problems have easy solutions; so says Science (so warns Science); and so Trenton once warned me, both of us swilling beer in that idling hunk of rust and gold known simply as the Truck; but that had been in another time when there was still a truck and you could talk of solutions in peace without having any first hand knowledge of the problem; and Trenton is an old friend who doesn't live here and who I've not mentioned before. 277
My point being, what if my attacks are entirely unrelated, attributable in fact to something entirely else, perhaps for instance just warning shocks brought on by my own crumbling biology, tiny flakes
of unknown chemical origin already burning holes through the fabric of my mind, dismantling memories, undoing even the strongest powers of imagination and reason?
How then do you fly from that path?
As I recheck and rebolt the door—I've installed a number of extra locks—I feel with the turn of each latch a chill trying to crawl beneath the back of my skull. Putting on the chain only intensifies the feeling, hairs bristling, trying to escape the host because the host is stupid enough to stick around, missing the most obvious fact of all that what I hoped to lock out I've only locked in here with me.
And no, it hasn't gone away.
The elusive it is still here with me.
But there's very little I can do.
I wash the sweat off my face, do my best to suppress a shiver, can't, return to the body, spread out across the table like papers—and let me tell you there's more than just The Navidson Record lying there—bloodless and still but not at all dead, calling me to it, needing me now like a child, depending on me despite its age. After all, I'm its source, the one who feeds it, nurses it back to health—but not life, I fear—bones of bond paper, transfusions of ink, genetic encryption in xerox; monstrous, maybe inaccurate correlates, but nonetheless there. And necessary to animate it all? For is that not an ultimate, the ultimate goal? Not some heaven sent blast of electricity but me, and not me unto me, but me unto it, if those two things are really at all different, which is still to say—to state the obvious—without me it would perish.
Except these days nothing's obvious.
There's something else.
More and more often, I've been overcome by the strangest feeling that I've gotten it all turned around, by which I mean to say—to state the not-so-obvious—without it I would perish. A moment comes where suddenly everything seems impossibly far and confused, my sense of self derealized depersonalized, the disorientation so severe I actually believe—and let me tell you it is an intensely strange instance of belief—that this terrible sense of relatedness to Zampano's work implies something that just can't be, namely that this thing has created me; not me unto it, but now it unto me, where I am nothing more than the matter of some other voice, intruding through the folds of what even now lies there agape, possessing me with histories I should never recognize as my own; inventing me, defining me, directing me until finally every association I can claim as my own—from Raymond to Thumper, Kyrie to Ashley, all the women, even the Shop and my studio and everything else—is relegated to nothing; forcing me to face the most terrible suspicion of all, that all of this has just been made up and what's worse, not made up by me or even for that matter Zampano.
Though by whom I have no idea.
Tonight's candle number twelve has just started to die in a pool of its own wax, a few flickers away from blindness. Last week they turned off my electricity, leaving me to canned goods, daylight and wicks. (God knows why my phone still works.) Ants inhabit the corners.
One of the most excruciating and impudent works on the subject was written by Jeremy Flint. Regrettably this reprehensible concoction of speculation, fantasy, and repellent prose, also incl[ ]es or refers to primary documents not available anywhere else. Through hard work, luck, or theft, Hint managed to [ ] across some of the notes and summations made by psychiatrist Nancy Tobe who for a br[ ]f period treated Holloway for [ ] depression:
Spiders prepare a grave. I use Lude's Zippo to light another candle, the flame revealing what I'd missed before, on the front, etched in chrome, the all red melancholy King of Hearts—did Lude have any idea what he was really suggesting I do?—imagining then not one flame but a multitude, a million orange and blue tears cremating the body, this labor, and in that sudden burst of heat, more like an explosion, flinging the smoldering powder upon the room, a burning snow, falling everywhere, erasing everything, until finally it erases all evidence of itself and even me.
In the distance, I hear the roar, faint at first but getting louder, as if some super-heated billowing cloud has at last begun to descend from the peak of some invisible, impossibly high mountain peak, and rushing down at incredible speeds too, instantly enclosing and carbonizing everything and anyone in the way.
I consider retrieving it. What I recently bought. I may need it. Instead I recheck the measuring tapes. At least there's no change there. But the roar keeps growing, almost unbearable, and there's nowhere left to turn. Get it out of the trunk, I tell myself. Then the elusive "it" momentarily disappears.
"Get out," I scream.
There's no roar.
A neighbor's having a party.
People are laughing.
Luckily they haven't heard me or if they have they've sense enough to ignore me.
I wish I could ignore me.
There's only one choice now: finish what Zampano himself failed to finish. Re-inter this thing in a binding tomb. Make it only a book, and if that doesn't help . . . retrieve what I've been hiding in the trunk, something I ordered three weeks ago and finally picked up today, purchased in Culver city at Martin B. Retting (11029 Washington Blvd)—one Heckler Koch USP .45 ACP, kept for that moment when I'm certain nothing's left. The thread has snapped. No sound even to mark the breaking let alone the fall. That long anticipated disintegration, when the darkest angel of all, the horror beyond all horrors, sits at last upon my chest, permanently enfolding me in its great covering wings, black as ink, veined in Bees' purple. A creature without a voice. A voice without a name. As immortal as my life. Come here at long last to summon the wind. 277
Page one of Dr. Tobe's notes contains only two words, capitalized, written in pencil, dead center on a page torn from a legal pad:
CONSIDERING SUICIDE.
[ ]he next two pages are for the most part illegible, with words such as "family" " father" " loyalty" "the old home" appearing every now and then in an otherwise dark scribble of ink.
However, Tobe's typed summation following the first session offers a few [ ] details concerning Holloway's life: "Despite his own achievement [sic] which range from Scuba Diving expeditions in the G[
]Aqaba, leading climbers up the Matterhorn, organizing numerous [
] as well
as expeditions to the North and South Pole, Holloway feels inadequate and suffers from acute and chronic depression. Unable to see how much he has already accomplished, he constantly dwells on suicide. I am considering several anti-depressants [
] and have recommended daily counseling." [130]
Hint goes on to cover the second visit which [ ] much repeats his observations concerning the first. The third visit, however, gives up the first th[]rn.
In another series of notes Tobe describes Holloway's first love: "At seventeen, he met a young woman named Eliz[]beth who he described to me as 'Beautiful like a doe. Dark eyes. Brown hair. Pretty ankles, kinda skinny and weak.' A short courtship ensued and for a brief time they were a couple.[ ]In Holloway's XXXXXXX [131] , the relationship ended because he didn't [sic] the Varsity football squad. By his own admission he was never any good at 'team sports.' Her interest in him faded and she soon beg[ ] dating the starting tackle, leaving Holloway broken hearted with an increased sen[ ]e of [illegible] and inadequacy." [132]
Nancy Tobe was a fairly green therapist and took far too many notes. Perhaps she felt that by studying these pages later, she could synthesize the material and present her patient with a solution. She had not yet real[ ] that her notes or her solutions would mean absolutely no[ ]g. Patients must discover their peace for themselves. Tobe [ ] only a guide. The
solution is personal. It is ironic then that had it not been for Tobe's inexperience, the notes so intrinsic to achieving at least a fair understanding of Holloway's inner torment would never have come into existence. People always demand experts, though sometimes they are fortunate enough to find a beginner. [133]
On the fourth visit, Tobe [ ] transcribed Holloway's words
verbatim. It is i[]possible to tell from Flint's text whether Tobe actually record[]d Hollowf ] or just wrote down his words from memory:
" I had already been out there for two days and then that morning, before dawn, I [
] to the ridge and waited. I waited a long time and I didn't move. It was cold. Real cold. Up till then everyone had been talking about the big buck but no one had seen anything. Not even a rabbit. Even though I'd been deer hunting a few times, I'd never actually shot a deer, but with, well the football team [ ], Elizabeth gone like that, I was gonna set it right by dropping that big buck.
"When the sun finally came out, I couldn't believe my eyes. There he was, right across the valley, the [ ] buck tasting the air.[ ] I was a good shot. I knew what to do and I did it. I took my time, centered the reticule, let out my breath, squeezed slowly, and listened to that round as it cracked across the valley. I must have closed my eyes 'cause the next thing I saw the deer [ ] to the
ground.
"Everyone heard my shot and [ ] Funny thing was, because of where I'd been, I was the last one to get there. My dad was waiting for me, just shaking his head, angry, and []shamed.
" 'Look what you done boy,' he said in a whisper but I could have heard that whisper across the whole valley. "Look what you done. [ ] shot yourself a doe." [
] I almost killed myself then but I guess I thought it couldn't get any worse.
] that was the worst. Staring at that dead doe and then watching my dad turn his back on me and just walk away." [134]
At this point Flint's analysis heads into a fairly pejorative and unoriginal analysis of vi[]lence. He also makes a little t[ ] much of the word "doe" which Holloway used to describe his first love E[ ]zabeth. However since Flint is not the only one to make this association, it is worth at least a cursory gl[ ]nce.
"A vengeance transposed on the wild," Flint calls Holloway's killing of the doe, implying that to Holloway's eye the doe had become Elizabeth. What Flint, however, fails to acknowledge is that with no certainty can he determine whether Hollow[]y described Elizabeth as a "doe" while he was going out with her []r afterward. Holloway may have described her as such following the ill-fated hunting trip as a means to comp[ ]nd his guilt, thus blaming himself not only for the death of the doe but for the death of love as well. In [ ] Flint's suggestion of
brimming violence may be nothing more than a gross renaming of self[]reproach.
Flint [ ] argue that Holloway's aggressive nature was bound
to su[]face in what he calls Navidson's []Hall of Amplification."
Holloway's latent suicidal urges [ ] when Wax and Jed insist on turning back. He sees this (incorrectly) as an admission of failure, another failure, th[]s incr[ ]sing his sense of inadequacy.
Holloway had over the years developed enough psychic defense mechanisms to avoid the destructive consequences of this self- determine[ ]f defeat.
What made this incident different from all the rest was the []ou[]e.
In many ways, Navidson's house functions like an immense isolation tank. Deprived of light, change in temperature and any sense of time, the individual begins to create his own sensory [ ], [ ]d depen[
]ng on the duration of his stay begins to project more and more of [ ] personality on those bare walls and vacant Hallways.
In Holloway's case, the house as well as everything inside it becomes an exten[ ]n of himself, e.g. Jed and Wax become the psy[
jlogical demons responsible for his failue [sic]. Thus his first act—to sh[ ]t Wax—is in fact the beginning of a nearly operatic s[]i[ ]de. [135]
Certainly Flint [ ] not alone in emphasiz[ ]g the impl[ ]t violence i[ jsuicide. In 1910 at [ ] conference in Vienna, Wilhelm Stekel cla[]med [ ] "no one killed himself unless he[]either wanted to kill another person []r wished a[]other's death" [136] [ ] 1983 Buie and Maltzberger
described s[ ]cide [ ]resulting from "two types of imperative impulses: murder[]us hate and an ur[]ent need to es[]ape suffering." [137]
Robert Jean Cam[ jell sums up t[]e psych[]dynamics of suic[ ]s as fol[ ]ws:
... sui[ ] or a suicide attef ]t is seen most freque[ ]ly to be an agg[ ]sive attack directed against a loved one or against society in ge[ ]al; in others, it may be a mis[ ]ded bid for attention or may be conceived of as a means of ef[ Jting reunion with the id[]al love-object or m[]ther. That suicide [ ]n one sense a means of relea[]e for aggressive impulses is sup[ ]ed by the change of wartime suicide rates. In Wo[ ] War II, for example, rates among the participating nations fell, [
]times by as much as 30%; but in ne[ ]/ countries, the rates remained the same.
In involutional depressions and in the depr[ ]ed type of manic[]depressive psychosis, the following dynamic elements are of[ ]n clearly operative: the d[ ]essed patient loses the object that he depends upon for narcissistic s[ ]lies; in an atte[ ]t to force the object's return, he regre[ ]es to the oral stage and inc[ Jporates (swallows up) the object, t[]us regressively identi[ ]ing with the object: the sadism originally directed against the de- sert[ ] object is ta[]en up by the patient's sup[ ]goand is directed against the incorporated object, w[ ]h now lodges wit[ ]« the ego; suicide oc[ ]s, not so much as an attempt on the ego's part to esc[]pe the inexorable demands of the superego, but rather as a[ \enraged attack on the in[ ]orated object in retaliation []or its having dese[ ]d the pati[ ] in the first place. 297
[It[ ]s added f[]r em[ ]asis]
Of course the anni[]il[]tion of [ Jself does not necessarily preclude the anni[ ]n of others. As is evident in sh[ ]ting sprees that culminate in suicide, an attack on the[ ]incorporated object" may extend first to [ jattack on loved ones, co-work[ ] or even innocent by[ ]ders—a description, which ev[ ] Flint would agree, fits H[]lloway.
Nevertheless th[]re are also numer[ ]s objections to Flint[]s asser[ ] that Hollow[ ]'s suicidal disposition would within that place inevitablf] lead to murder. The most enlight[ ]g refutation comes from Rosemary
Enderheart w[]o not onl[ ]uts F[]in[] in his place but also reveals somet[ ]g new about Navidson's history:
Where Flint's argument makes the impulse to destroy others the result of an impulse to destroy the self, we only have to consider someone with similar self- destructive urges who when faced with similar conditions did not attempt to murder two individuals [
]
SUBJECT: Will "Navy" Navidson COMMENT: "I think too often too seriously a[]out killing myself."
Will Navidson was no stranger to s[ ]ide. It sat on his shoulder more often than not: "It's there before I sleep, there when I wake, it's there a lot. But as Nietzsche said, 'The t[]ought of suicide is a consolation. It can get one through many a bad night.'" (See Dr. Hetterman Stone's Confidential: An In[ ]view With Karen Green 19[ ]
Navidson often viewed his achievements with disdain, considered his direction vague, and frequently assumed his desires would []ever be met by life []o matter how f[ ]ly he lived it. However, unlike H[ ]loway, he converted his d[ ]pair into art. He [ ]lied on his eye and fdm to bring meaning to virt[ ] everything he e[]count[ ]ed, and though he paid the high price of lost interaction, he frequently conceived beautiful instances worthy of our time; what Robert Hughes famously referred to [ ] "Navidson's little windows of light."
Flint would [ ]test [ ] while
both Holloway and [ ]vidson camped in the same dale of depression, they were very dif[ ]rent in[ ]viduals: Navidson was merely a photographer while, to quote F[ ]nt "Holloway was a hunter who [ ] crossed the line into territories of aggress[]on."
Flint sh[ ]ld have done his Homework, if he thought Navidson never crossed that line.
In the 70's Navidson became a career p[ ]journ[]list and ultimately a famous one but at the begin[]ing of that de[]ade he wasn't carrying a Nikon. He was manning an M-60 with the 1 st cav[ ]y at Rock Island East where he would eventually receive a Bronze