actual words are irrelevant: "process outweighs product." [196] Others, however, have gone to great lengths to suggest a miraculous and secret history enfolded within those pages. [197] Katherine Dunn is rumoured to have invented her own version of Karen's journal.

Karen, however, does not restrict her activities to just writing. She frequently retreats outside where she works on the garden, weeding, clipping, and even planting. We often find her singing quietly to herself, anything from popular tunes, old Slavic lullabies, to a song about how many ways her life has changed and how she would like to get her feet back on the ground.

It seems that the most significant observations concerning this segment concern Karen's smile. There is no question it has changed. Lester T. Ochs has traced its evolving shape from Karen's days as a cover girl, through the months spent living at the house, the prolonged separation in New York, to her eventual return to the house:

Whether on the cover of Glamour or Vogue , Karen never failed to form her lips into those faultlessly symmetrical curves, parted just enough to coyly remark on her barely hidden teeth, so perfectly poised between shadow and light, always guaranteed to spark fantasies of further inferiority. No matter which magazine she appeared in, she always produced the same creation over and over again. Even after they moved to Ash Tree Lane, Karen still offered up the same art to whomever she encountered. The house, however, changed that. It deconstructed her smile until by the time they had escaped she had no smile at all.

Then further on:

By the time she returned to Virginia, some expression of joy and relief, albeit rare, was also returning. The big difference though was that now her smile was completely unmannered. The curve of each lip no longer mirrored the other. The interplay was harmonic, enacting a ceaseless dance of comment and compliment, revealing or entirely concealing her teeth, one smile often containing a hundred. Her expression was no longer a frozen structure but a melody which for the first time accurately reflected how she was feeling inside. [198]

This of course responds to the extraordinary moment on the evening of May 4 ^th , when surrounded by candles, Karen suddenly beams brighter than she has before, running her hands through her hair, almost laughing, only to

cover her face a few moments later, her shoulders shaking as she starts to weep. Her reactions seem entirely unmotivated until the following morning when she offers a startling revelation.

"He's still alive,' she tells Reston over the phone. "I heard him last night. I couldn't understand what he said. But I know I heard his voice."

Reston arrives the next day and stays until midnight, never hearing a thing. He seems more than a little concerned about Karen's mental health.

"If he is still in there Karen," Reston says quietly. "He's been there for over a month. I can't see how there's any way he could survive."

But a few hours after Reston leaves, Karen smiles again, apparently catching somewhere inside her the faint voice of Navidson. This happens over and over again, whether late at night or in the middle of the day. Sometimes Karen calls out to him, sometimes she just wanders from room to room, pushing her ear against walls or floors. Then on the afternoon of May 10 ^l ", she finds in the children's bedroom, bom out of nowhere, Navidson's clothes, remnants of his pack and sleeping bag, and scattered across the floor, from comer to comer, cartridges of film, boxes of 16mm, and easily a dozen video tapes.

She immediately calls Reston and tells him what has happened, asking him to drive over as soon as he can. Then she locates an AC adapter, plugs in a Hi 8 and begins rewinding one of the newly discovered tapes.

The angle from the room mounted camcorder does not provide a view of her Hi 8 screen. Only Karen's face is visible. Unfortunately, for some reason, she is also slightly out of focus. In fact the only thing in focus is the wall behind her where some of Daisy and Chad's drawings still hang. The shot lasts an uncomfortable fifteen seconds, until abruptly that immutable surface disappears. In less than a blink, the white wall along with the drawings secured with yellowing scotch tape vanishes into an inky black.

Since Karen faces the opposite direction, she fails to notice the change. Instead her attention remains fixed on the Hi 8 which has just finished rewinding the tape. But even as she pushes play, the yawn of dark does not waver. In fact it almost seems to be waiting for her, for the moment when she will finally divert her attention from the tiny screen and catch sight of the horror looming up behind her, which of course is exactly what she does do when she finds out that the video tape shows