just as the door wrenches loose and tumbles into oblivion. The whole thing does not last more than a handful of seconds, but like Reston, Navidson notes how this brief bit of acdon still leaves a lasting impression. From The Last Interview:

A few moments ended up feeling like hours. I was just dangling on that brass handle, not daring to look, though of course I did. The floor was steeper than the Lhotse Face, dropping right off into that familiar chill. I knew I had to get to Billy. I just hadn't figured out how yet. Then I heard the ripping. The hinges weren't supporting my weight.

So I did about the only thing I could think of: I swung the door left, right, then left, and right one more time which closed the gap to a few feet from where Reston was hanging. Just as I made my jump, I heard the first hinge and then the second hinge tear free of the frame. That sound stretched the seconds into hours.

[Pause]

Once I made it though, everything sped up again. The next thing I knew we were both out on the front lawn getting soaked by the rain.

You know when I finally went back to the house to retrieve the Hi 8s, I couldn't believe how quickly it had all happened. My leap looks so easy and that darkness doesn't seem dark at all. You can't see the hollow- ness in it, the cold. Funny how incompetent images can sometimes be.

Those last words in particular may sound a bit glib, especially coming from such an esteemed photographer. Nevertheless, in spite of numerous Hi 8s mounted all over the house, Navidson is right: all the images recorded during this segment are inadequate.

Too bad Navidson never holds a camera. The entire sequence covering the escape from the house is reminiscent of something taken off of a cheap surveillance system in a local bank or 7-Eleven. The clips are impartial renderings of a space. If the action slips past the frame, the camera does not care enough to adjust its perspective. It cannot see what matters. It cannot follow.

Only the interviews inform these events. They alone show us how the moments bruise and bleed.

Outside rain overwhelms everything, drenching the street, filling the gutters, stripping trees of fall leaves. Reston sits on the grass, soaked to the bone but refusing to take shelter. Karen is still unconscious, lying in the car exactly where Navidson put her.

Daisy and Chad, however, are still missing.

So for that matter is Tom.

Navidson is trying to decide how he should reenter the house when the sound of shattering glass draws him to the backyard. "It was definitely a window breaking" Reston remembers. "And when Navy heard it, he just took off running."

Reston recalls watching Navidson disappear around the house. He had no idea what would happen next. It was bad enough that he was without his wheelchair. Then he heard Daisy scream, a high-pitched burst bright enough to pierce the hard patter of the storm, followed by shouts, and then something Reston had never heard before: "It was like an immense gasp, only very, very loud."

Reston was squinting in the rain, when he suddenly saw a shadow separate from the tree line: "By then dawn had begun to creep in but the storm clouds were still keeping the day pretty dark." Reston immediately assumed it was Navidson but then as the figure got closer he could see it was much smaller than his friend. "A strange walk too. Not fast at all but very deliberate. There was even something threatening about it."

Chad just nodded at Reston as he passed by him and climbed into the car. He never said a thing either, just sat down next to his mother and waited for her to wake up.

Chad had seen what had happened but had no words to describe it. Reston knew if he wanted to find out, he would have to drag himself toward the back of the house, which is exactly what he started to do.

Daisy had stopped screaming because of Tom.

Somehow Tom had managed to make his way through the heaving house to the upstairs hallway where he began to close in on the cries of the terrified five year old. What no one knew then was that Chad had already snuck outside, preferring the solitude of the early morning to all the packing and panic curdling inside.

As we can see, Tom finally finds Daisy frozen in the shadows. Without a word, he sweeps her up in his arms and races back down to the first floor, avoiding the precipitous drop into the living room—the way Navidson had gone—by dashing instead toward the rear of the house.

The whole place keeps shuddering and shaking, walls cracking only to melt back together again, floors fragmenting and buckling, the ceiling suddenly rent by invisible claws, causing moldings to splinter, water pipes to rupture, electrical wires to spit and short out. Worse, the black ash of below, spreads like printer's ink over everything, transforming each corner, closet, and corridor into that awful dark. Then Tom and Daisy's breath begins to frost.

In the kitchen, Tom throws a stool through the window. We hear Tom saying: "Okay Daisy girl,make it through here and you're home free." Which might have been just that simple had the floor not taken on the characteristics of giant conveyor belt, suddenly drawing them away from their only escape.

Cradling Daisy in his arms, Tom starts running as fast as he can, trying to out race the shock of the void yawning up behind them. Ahead, Navidson appears in the window.

Tom pushes harder, edging closer and closer, until finally as he gets within reach, he holds Daisy out to Navidson who despite the fragments of glass scratching long bloody lines along his forearms, immediately rips her free of the house and into safety.